Some call it a miracle. Yes, it was an amazing journey from degenerative disease to consummate health, a transformation from depression and dysfunction to well-being and true love. But, a miracle? It was simply the result of following a specific course of action.

Parts of my story may not be easy to read. It wasn’t easy to write, and it certainly wasn’t easy to live. For years, I battled Ankylosing Spondylitis, chronic pain and depression, substance abuse, and behavioral addictions. These are conditions modern medicine cannot cure, so I made it my business to cure myself.

At first, I approached my goal as you’d expect, waging war and summoning the will and weaponry to suppress the symptoms of disease. I soon found this strategy to be greatly limited, though it offered an astounding and useful revelation: The “warrior” is an archetype of a personal struggle, a war waged against oneself.

The warrior mentality goes something like this: It’s me against my disease; me against my fears, me against my world. But when you wage a war against yourself, who wins? Thus a dilemma, an enigma in a puzzle wrapped in the mystery of incurable disease.

I changed my perspective and set out on a different path to healing. With the right attitude and attention, I conquered degenerative disease, chronic depression and crippling despondency. Most importantly, I found the template through which lasting health thrives in the body. In my opinion, healing from many “incurable” conditions is no miracle, because almost anyone can follow the steps to do it. This book lays out a clear example and account, in precise detail, of exactly how I beat the odds—and how you can too.

Born into this world, you’ve embarked on a hero’s journey. Life really is an epic adventure, so prepare for action. You are about to discover a deeper level of your own power and wisdom.

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Chapter One

Seize Opportunity

A near-death experience can produce strange phenomena. If you have ever watched your life flash before your eyes, you will never forget it, and you may well remember it now. You experienced every second of every minute, in every hour of each day, each week of every month and all year of every decade of your entire life—right up to and including this very instant—simultaneously and in immaculate detail. It's a complete mind-bender that defies reason; staggering, confounding, and impossible to describe in human language. Like some sort of speed-reading or speed-sensing, it’s a hyper-experience in warp drive akin to reading every word in an encyclopedia while drinking from a fire hose during a train wreck in a split second, flat.

The sensory overload was incredibly intense as I rode the emotional coaster. Then, the seismic spike of adrenaline settled into an eerie, sedative calm as the vision faded into ether. The phenomenon seemed to transmit a profound moral and message mixed within madness; a sense of abandoning myself completely, a dimension divorced from logic, beyond thought, belief and human emotion, a place I had not beheld before.

I then passed into observing deep desperation and the uselessness of completely blowing a tremendous opportunity. I simply knew, without knowing how, that my life had been utterly wasted. I had watched the whole lot of it like watching a movie and saw no rationalization, no excuse and no way to justify it. Until that moment, I thought mine a normal life, but this odd and perturbing odyssey left me with the clear and sinking feeling that I’d completely missed the calling and purpose that life could offer.

Calling and purpose? Isn’t the purpose to do one’s damndest for wealth and comfort? The notion seemed profound as a kindergarten finger painting class compared to this mind-warping heart breaker. As if someone had shoehorned the proverbial “judgment day” into my brain, I witnessed a surreal trial in which I alone was judge, jury and defendant. The verdict proved clear as crystal that I hadn’t passed muster in the game of life. That's it, game over, I lose.

The vision vaporized into thin air and I slammed back into conscious awareness. Oh, right—I'm hurtling to my death....

The heart-in-your-throat cardio sledgehammer pounded as adrenaline jammed my survival instinct into high gear. One moment I was out in the rain, up on the roof of my house patching a leak; the next, a slipshod shingle busted loose beneath me and I flew over the eave, through the air and headlong into destiny. With a fitful twist of form and good fortune, I managed to land squarely on my two feet and stick it like a gymnast. The sudden impact crushed me like an accordion into a full squat; I smashed my backside down hard on the rocky floor and bounced up to a standing conclusion that would have garnered perfect tens from any peanut gallery. As I ricocheted off the hardpan desert mud, I felt a deep and unsettling “pop” in my back, like the snapping of a twig; I braced for the pain to crash down and knock me into next week, but it never came.

Then it hit me… I had just survived a near-death experience. Thunderstruck, I pondered the misstep that could have cost me dearly, even taken my life. I felt it was no accident; the vision was a catalyst for an awakening, a waking dream in which I watched myself from outside my body and beyond all control. In an uncanny instant, I witnessed things from an entirely different perspective, somehow observing myself from the outside.

In a trice between time and eternity, a truth was revealed. I didn't know it then, but it was a turning point that would change my life forever. The trick is to absorb the epiphany for what it’s worth and translate it into meaningful action. The event told of purpose, hinted at the very meaning of my life, but I chose to bask in the personal entitlement and thrill of invincibility that comes with the itinerate gratitude of surviving a dangerous feat unscathed. That’s right… I’m bulletproof.

What a rush! There was no injury to speak of, just a mild throb that faded in and out for the rest of the day. Morals and messages are cryptic, confusing, and all too easy for a twenty-year-old man to ignore. The shock and awe faded away, and I went back up the ladder to tack a tacky patchwork to the roof of the ramshackle cottage in the high desert between Vegas and Phoenix.

The next morning I was jolted awake by the sound of someone screaming bloody murder. Consciousness blazed in on a blinding white light, and the pain of a thousand blowtorches fired flames inside my body. I realized that the person screaming their lungs out... was me. Paralyzed by a contiguous muscle spasm from neck to feet, I had been screaming in my sleep. As I choked back the wails that could wake the dead, a doomsday scenario paraded through my mind. Had I been poisoned, maybe bitten by a spider wielding a deadly neurotoxin? I clambered for answers and suddenly remembered the snap I felt in my spine when I hit the deck the day before. Did I break my back? Couldn't have... if I’d broken something I would’ve known immediately, right?

The E.R. doc studied the pictures carefully. His telling grimace gave me a clue that it wasn’t good. “Is it my hips?” I asked nervously.

“Not your hips,” he observed, “it's your back. Ruptured discs, lumbar four and five. Bulging out and impinging the sciatic nerve. It'll take a while to settle. I'll write you a script to help with the spasms. Go home and lay on your back with your legs elevated, knees bent, until the pain and swelling go away.”

“How long will that take?” I wondered out loud.

“Could be a couple of weeks, maybe a month...” he returned. Then he offered the advice I would field repeatedly for the next ten years: “Don't lift anything heavy and remember to take your pills. At this point there's nothing we can do.”

I felt I had no choice; I simply had to accept it and believe him. After all, he was a doctor—and doctors are people who tell the rest of us how it is. I knew that if they don’t have the answers, nobody does.

On Your Feet, Hit the Street

Days passed into weeks. The pain and spasms didn't let up at all; the medication hardly made a difference, and the damp and punishing winter weather only worsened the stiffness and pain. There was no point in returning to my job in construction; I could barely walk, much less roof a house—and if I couldn’t keep up I’d be sent packing as soon as the boss got wind of it.

After two months of lying on my back in the rain soaked hovel, I was out of a job and out on the street. Pain or no, I had to get off the couch and get moving. Evicted from my home, financially busted, with no car and unable to work, I had to find a way to survive. With no insurance and no support from friends or family, I found myself bumming around in podunk towns, wearing out my welcome wherever I went.

It took little time for me to alienate my acquaintances and the opportunities they once afforded. When you're disabled and needy, offering little in return for the favors good people give you, it takes real talent to sponge off them for long. Reluctantly, I took to the streets—sleeping in boxes and abandoned cars, eating garbage and doing my damndest to kill the pain by way of intoxication. I learned that alcohol doesn't really dull the discomfort and distress as much as it builds apathy; you just don't give a damn about the pain as much as you do when you’re sober.

But alcohol came at a premium, and I was flat broke. With no money or friends to enable my cravings, I began self-medicating by sniffing chemicals—glue, refrigerant, shoe polish—whatever I could find in the acrid, overflowing garbage bins in the industrial district. For months, that was my modus operandi. Then one day I found myself huffing gasoline to get high, and it finally sunk in. I had hit the skids and nobody, not even I, gave a damn.

Enslaved to a pernicious habit of substance abuse, I was barely able to admit it to myself or anyone else. I was physically and emotionally corrupt, a living victim of circumstance with tombstones in my eyes. There was no way out; victimhood was the name of the game. I'm not responsible for what’s happened to me and nobody can do anything to change that.

Angry at God and myself for this miserable turn of the screw, I nose-dived out of sanity and into suicidal ruminations and behaviors. What’s the meaning of this life anyway? I mean, when it comes down to it, what's the point?

I got used to waking in the middle of the night in strange and seedy places, heavily intoxicated, unable to remember where in hell I was or how I got there. It's incredibly spooky, a fiendish, freakish feeling... confused and disoriented, waking up from a bad dream into a real nightmare.

Yet it was in the still of those creepy and hopeless nights that it happened. In the witching hours of dark desperation and eerie insanity, I could sometimes hear it... a voice emanating from deep inside, urging me to take heart. "You're gonna make it, don't give up," it said.

I’ll tell you now—I’ve heard many scary voices in my head, the surreal hallucinations of destitution and depravity. Serious addiction possessed me body and soul, and I had lost the very things I once imagined could never be taken away—self-esteem, self-worth, personal dignity, freedom and even the will to live.

Yet this faint inner voice was something completely different; it was as if an apparition of sorts had beamed into my consciousness, emanating from my core, radiating light into the shadows of my twisted imagination. It would take many years to ferret out the chestnuts, but I sensed at the time in the depths of my being that I had stumbled upon the conduit through which love and healing make their way into heart and mind.

From my eerie ordeals, I also learned that the dark and terrifying experiences we endure ultimately serve us, by revealing that deep within us lives an aspect that transcends the pain and suffering of life. I had once heard someone say that real beauty is so deep within that you have to travel through the shadow to reach it. Such is the darkness and light of life; the depth of desperation one feels is inversely commensurate with the heights of ecstasy one can attain.

I also learned that comfort and consolation are not found in escape or denial. By facing our challenges, win or lose, we recover the treasure. An inner voice of love and integrity arises beyond the tribulations that seem so important, yet make no difference to the world when we’re gone.

I had no idea how to label this voice, but I knew it wasn’t limited to a religious belief or mental concept. I now know it’s a beneficent and powerful inner force, ever-present and available when we most need it, realized in a meaningful relationship we make with ourselves.

I survived on the streets for many months, intoxicated day in and day out, suffering mental torment and developing destructive behaviors that I have since learned are criminally insane. I lived and learned as much as I want to know about the dark side of human nature, from my own experience and from the homeless people I befriended in those challenging times. I found it isn’t ever obvious or formulaic just how people end up on the street; even the most wretched of them were happy once. Many had been productive members of society before they landed on skid row.

I came to see victimhood in a manner that struck like a crushing hammer on a resilient and resonant piano string. For instance, I knew how it felt to be judged a total loser by the people I cared most about, and it was exceptionally difficult to deal with. Yet it led to the advent of meaningful insight and purpose... how could I make a positive impact on those who judged me as I drifted in and out of their awareness?

Darkness and desperation morphed into the motivation and calling to help those who truly need it. Today, I thank the universe that my life took the drastic turns. The turbulent and trying events I lived through led me directly to where I needed to be. Without the challenges, I might never have found the way.

Send Me an Angel

Angels come in many forms, and you may have met a few yourself. Pokey was his name. He said he earned the moniker because he was born late, and he’d never been on time for anything since. Slow down, enjoy yourself, and life will last a lot longer, he preached. Yeah, swell, the last thing I wanted was for this life to drag out any longer. I had turned to the extreme and the deadly and I didn’t give a fig if I lived or died. I would never take the cowardly way out and pull the trigger—suicide is murder—but I wasn't afraid to OD on chemicals or get killed in a street fight. I listened to him absently for a while before fading into a reverie of the mysterious and riddling event that had shaken me up a week earlier....

After midnight on a cold and rainy night, I limped through a decrepit downtown neighborhood, dragging myself to a place I hoped I could crash for the night. A junkyard dog bayed in the distance and an ominous drizzle permeated my clothing, teasing the muscle spasms and sciatica that refused to allow a moment's peace. Shivering and depressed, drunk and hobbling in the fog of mist and cheap booze, I naively navigated the back streets and alleys, trying to avoid the dregs who'd jump me just as soon as say hey. I hustled quickly as I could, looking down at the ground and cursing the world under my breath as I went.

I didn't even look up as I shuffled out of the blind alley and into the street. From out of nowhere, I was garroted by the throat and thrown to the ground in a pile. I looked up to identify my attacker... and a dump truck screamed by at high-speed just inches in front of me. It must have been doing sixty! Had I continued aimlessly into the intersection, I would have been splattered like a fly on a windshield.

The gravity of the situation sunk in, completely killing my buzz. It took a few moments to gather my wits and pick myself up off the pavement… I looked around for the guy who had clocked me, but there wasn't a soul to be seen. I called out twice, “Hello? Who's there?” No answer. Casting about high and low, I searched the scene and groped the ground for the wire or rope that could have clotheslined me and found... nothing. Who—or what—had throttled me and saved my life?

The uncanny incident birthed a personal revelation. Maybe I'm supposed to be alive... maybe my own life is about more than just me. The whole thing was either a gin-soaked pitfall or a divine intervention; perhaps it was both. Either way, I felt I had cheated death yet again, and the eerie experience reminded me of what the inner voice had said. “You're gonna make it....”

Stunned and struck with shock and humility, the “aha!” moment was deafening. I had met lots of people who told of freaky experiences and ambiguous life lessons, but the point is to absorb what you can without holding on too tightly to what you can't. Okay, I get it… time to pay attention. I have to reach up to touch bottom, but I’ll do whatever I can to make it out of this living nightmare.

I made the decision and resigned myself to get a life. A huge attitude adjustment set in as I set out to make my way on the few remaining miles to my destination. As fortune would have it, I was allowed to stay there for the night.

The experience forged a memory I have never been able to shake. Meanwhile, Pokey continued to blather in that lento Texas draw of his, giving me a sidelong glance as if he knew I was mentally absent. "Ya know," he mewled, “if a feller was willin’, he could git some work over to the Date Creek.” His tempo flowed like molasses on a midwinter morning.

I took the bait. “What's Date Creek?”

“Cattle and citrus ranch. Phil's just taken on all the calves in the county and he's hurtin' fer help.”

“How do I get there?” I needed money, and this sounded promising.

“You can ride with me, if ya' got a mind. Been out there muhself, pickin’ grapefruit with th' Mezcans.”

“When do I start?” I was getting the itch.

“Pick ya up tomorree mornin' at three-thirty. Four o'clock comes early at the ranch.”

It was the best news I'd had in a coon's age, as Pokey would say.

The next morning we arrived at the sprawling desert ranch house before sunrise. Phil, the owner of the enterprise, was an amiable but formidable taskmaster, well accustomed to engaging migrant workers.

“You work cattle before?” He studied me up and down matter-of-factly.

"Not really, no… not unless you count the heifers in the honkytonks." I hoped a little levity would break the ice, but Phil seemed unimpressed.

“Live around here?” he asked.

“Well... not really, no.” I tried not to let on that the only place I lived was wherever I happened to be standing at the moment. I hoped desperately that he wouldn't decide to run me off, but I knew the interview would be short and sweet.

Phil hesitated for a few moments, time that seemed to me like an eternity. He finally broke the tension. “Want to bunk with the hands?”

I suddenly realized that he housed the migrant workers as they came and went. It was music to my dirt-caked ears! “Oh... sure, that'd be OK, I guess.” I tried to keep it cool and casual, but it really felt like Christmas had come early.

“OK then, you’ll start in the orchards. You get room and board, three squares a day and four bucks an hour. Workday starts at four, ends at eight, six days a week. Sundays are for rest.”

I could tell he needed me as much as I did him, and I couldn't believe my good fortune. A job, a place to live, more meals in a day than I'd had all week—and only a four-hour workday!

“We're done at eight in the morning?” I must’ve sounded like the village idiot.

He guffawed and spat. “That's eight in the evening, son. If you're ready, then follow Pokey to the west forty.”

I did as directed, disguising my gimp so as not to compromise what could be a tenuous opportunity. In no time I was up a 30 foot ladder in a giant citrus tree, doing my damndest to out-pick the pros. Eight long hours elapsed in nothing, flat; 12 o'clock noon and already it felt like I had put in a full day of work. The dinner bell rang out and echoed through the valley. It was one of those authentic triangles you've seen at the chuck wagon on every TV western. “Lunch time!” the foreman called.

Phil’s strong and lovely wife, Peggy, prepared lunch. Tall and lean, she often sported a ponytail that swept out the back of the ball cap she wore pulled low on her brow. Her statuesque figure enhanced a warm smile and amazing attitude. She embodied character that was rare to find in a city gal; educated, intelligent and refined, incredibly talented at horticulture and animal husbandry as well. Oh, and a great cook too.

The spread was laid out like Thanksgiving dinner on a table as long as a cowboy Cadillac. The food cascaded endlessly; loads of complex carbs and protein—breads, pasta, fruits, lunchmeats and flank steak. It was obvious that the proprietors knew they couldn't wring a double shift out of a skinny and hungry laborer.

We all bellied up, and I did my best to keep myself from sprawling on the tabletop and wallowing in the feast. I wanted to impress the hosts with my sterling table manner, imparted to me by my elegant mother. I also wanted them to know I was an upright guy with an element of decency, while camouflaging the fact that I had lived and lurked on the streets only just yesterday. Turns out, most cowboys and migrant crop pickers couldn't give a tinker's damn about manners, but the owners quickly noted the difference between me and the working minions, which was my intent. “Where do you come from, Peter?” Peggy asked.

“My dad was a military officer, so I don't really know.” I tried to play it tongue-in-cheek without letting on that for me, no place was home.

“Army brat, Eh?” Phil dealt the question casually.

“Air Force, actually.”

“What type of work you do before you landed here?” he volleyed.

“Oh, construction work, mostly masonry.”

“That so?" Phil winked at me. "We may have found our man, Peggy.”

I hoped Phil had taken note of the Protestant work ethic I packed with me. I had been laboring for bricklayers—carrying hod to the tradesmen—since the age of 13, plying the backbreaking trade since the first summer of high school and every summer thereafter right up and through graduation. Working for non-union slave driving masons all summer in the blistering Arizona heat had built me into a man with no fear of the conditions at this country club.

As it turned out, Phil had indeed noticed my ethic. In a few days, I was pulled off the orchards and put to work converting an old duck pond into a swimming pool and girding it with an adobe block retaining wall. They bought the tools I requested and allowed me to keep them when the job was completed. The work was fine, but the fifteen-hour days were taking a toll on my tortured back, and I relished the lunch breaks with high gratitude. Without them I would never have found the wherewithal to complete the mission, and the mission was to work like a mule, get myself off the streets and build a life from there on out.

I didn't know how or where I would end up, but I resigned myself to take it one day at a time. There wasn't a Hindu's chance in heaven, as Pokey would say, that I was going to squander this golden goose of an opportunity. I really wanted and desperately needed to clean up my act and get a life. This could be my last and only chance.

After the midday meal, I spent the remainder of the lunch hour reclining in the ranch library where I perused many books. I found one on the subject of self-help and devoured it voraciously. The book's take-home message: You've got to play the cards you're dealt and be grateful to be in the game. It was the advice I needed; real, true and lasting medicine.

Talk about real medicine—six days a week of fifteen-hour days will wear you out but good. The backbreaking labor was hard on the body but nourishing for the soul. On Sundays, I was always so spent that I didn't even wake until noonish and usually laid around for the rest of the day. For fun I'd often engage one of the Mexican laborers in a conversation and learn a few jokes while brushing up on my Spanish.

Gregorio was a middle-aged man with an affable demeanor; a devout Catholic, lighthearted and as strong as Atlas. The hardest worker I've ever seen, before or since, bar none. He had a modicum of English and was eager and willing for bilingual banter. I learned more in a few months of Sundays verbally jousting with him than I did in those two years of high school Spanish classes—and I had pulled A's!

Gregorio was a ranch owner himself; he had a farm and family in the state of Sinaloa, across the border in old Mexico. He told me in broken English that every year he'd walk the three-hundred some-odd miles home with his yearly earnings in cash strapped to his body. It was two months before he would come back from over the horizon, completing his migration and returning to Date Creek. Phil once told me that every year he offered Gregorio a ride home, or at least to the border, but Gregorio had always declined—he preferred to walk. He said it was a great love of his life to marvel at the beauty of nature while clearing his mind in the walking meditation and sleeping outdoors under starry skies on the soft spring nights. That is fortitude, pure and simple. Judge as you will about migrant workers, but that humble and honest man embodied strength of character that I was truly fortunate to emulate. From him I learned things that no school can teach you.

As for hygiene, well, that was another matter. The bunkhouse we slept in was, as you’d expect, no place to set up housekeeping. Most days, no one even showered after the long day's work—you were simply too beat to stand up any longer, and besides, what was the point? You'd be out of bed at three-thirty, into dirty clothes and out on the range after breakfast by four. It was generally noted that we showered once a week whether we needed it or not.

What we really needed was a fumigator. The sheets and linens in the quarters weren't laundered very often, if at all. There was an industrial washer on the premises we could use as much as we wanted, but—hey—cowboys and sharecroppers aren't exactly heralded for their hygienic habits.

In any event, no matter how many Sundays I washed my beddings, by Monday the critters were back—and teeming. Yup, lice. The kind you've heard about. You know... remember the one about the poor yutz who picked up genital carnivores in a public toilet? “Crotch crickets,” Pokey called them. Easy for him to say; he lived in a nice, clean travel trailer that seemed like the Taj Mahal compared to my two-by-five foot bunk smack in the middle of the miniscule and infested barracks. What could I do? This was my home—I was damned thankful for it and I wasn't going anywhere.

One of the cowboys told me to shave off half my pubic hair and light the other half on fire. Then stab the critters with an ice pick as they come running out....

Okay, got it. Suck it up.

Good thing I was building all this character, see, because the work would only get tougher. My back was killing me by degrees, but I couldn't find any time to cry about it. There was no alcohol and no drugs at the ranch, so the hands would all head into Wickenburg on Saturday nights. We’d tie on a good one, maybe get in a fistfight for fun and then sleep it off on Sunday. Eventually, I found the gristle to kick the addictions, but—damn! The pain was epic and I needed to pay attention to the signals my body was sending. Take it easy. Don't lift anything heavy. Yeah—right, doc. I could use a shot of Morphine with a whiskey chaser.

Fun and Games

Ever rope a 300-pound calf and wrestle him to the ground? I hadn't either. It's called flanking cattle, and its one damn good way to separate the men from the boys. When I had finished the masonry work, Phil asked me if I was ready to try my hand at flanking. I needed the money and had no place else to go, so I did my macho best to impersonate a tough guy, and they don't get much tougher than the cowboys who do these gymnastics for a living. “Thought you'd never ask...” I said. I was willing to jump on any opportunity and do ever-what it took to hold a job and keep moving forward. Learning to cowboy-up was next on the agenda, and I don’t think Phil even noticed as I nervously choked on my spit-up. “Count me in” I said.

The day is like this: Rise at three-thirty, eat and hit the trail at four. Ride your horse about ten miles up the highway and find the herd. You and the crew coerce, cajole, trick and bully about fifty head of cattle back to the ranch, and if you're swift you've only put in an eight-hour day so far. Saddle sore and hungry, you eat lunch, gather yourself and go back out to start the real work. Separate the bulls from the cows and put the males in the flanking pen so the fun can commence.

One at a time, you rope them. I tell you, they are scared to death and hard to catch. There are a couple of frantic Mexicans chasing calves all around the pen throwing lassos, and two or three well paid professional cowboys roping from horseback, watching the melee and laughing their asses off. A herding dog or two scurry around, baying like banshees and nipping at the heels of both men and bulls. I belonged to the frantic brigade, by the way. I'm a white boy, but in this outfit there was no doubt I was low man on the totem pole.

When you get one lassoed, you pull as hard as you can to rein him in, and then try to position yourself beside him laterally. With both arms, you reach over his back, grab him under the far side of his belly—his flank—and in one fell swoop, lift him up off the ground and throw him down on his side, flat as a pancake. That is the “flanking” part. Oh, and did I mention? They don't like it. They fight for their lives and give you all hell, and they sometimes outweigh you by twice.

When you have him flanked, you dive on top of him and pull his foreleg back up behind him, like twisting a person's arm up behind their back. Then you've got to pin the raging beast down and not give in, no matter what. Meanwhile, he's raising Cain and his rear legs are flailing like mad; if you get kicked in the wrong place you could easily be done for the season. Another guy dives into position to handle the legs. He grabs hold of the upper one (the bull is lying on its side, remember) and pulls it back as far as possible, while simultaneously pushing the lower leg with his feet as far forward as that leg will go. It's like using your hands and feet to stretch an archery bow to capacity while sitting on the ground. If you can picture it, the calf's lying on its side with its hind legs spread-eagled like he's doing the splits, stretched to the max so he can't kick. That guy on the rear legs had better hold on for dear life or someone's gonna get pasted—and if he lets loose, it'll likely be him. If the bull doesn't kick him, you can bet the guy on the front end will.

Now the dogie is in a state of shock and stressed to the hilt, but he ain't seen nothin' yet. The rancher or one of the cowboys comes in to perform the castration. With a pocket penknife, he slices off a third or so of the scrotum. Then he reaches up inside the animal until he's almost elbow deep and grabs the testicles, stretching them far enough out of the sack to do the business. They look like hardboiled and peeled hen's eggs connected to a milky white cord of sinew. He pulls a surgical tool from his back pocket and snips off the rocky mountain oysters, throwing them in a bucket or to the madly barking dogs. That procedure is another thing the cattle don't particularly like and they're raising bloody hell, heavy on the “bloody” part. The meatball surgeon fills the emptied scrotum with a powder coagulant so the poor beast won't bleed to death.

But wait, don't put the book down yet—the really good part is next. Fresh from the furnace, the branding iron makes its mark. This is the worst part, folks. The cattle really, really hate this. As the smithy wields the white-hot poker, you can feel the intense heat from a yard away, searing your face with blazing intensity. Sweating? You bet... the 1000-degree rod hits the hide, and—sha-sizzle! Acrid white smoke fills your face with a bitter, foul stench and the calf screams and bellows, mucus pouring out of its facial orifices, dung spewing out the other end and all over the guy on rear leg duty (yup, usually me)... and you simply have to hold him (and your lunch) down until it's over. Takes about sixty seconds, then he gets hormone injections, a tag in his ear and... you're done. Let him up. The frightened steer lopes off and as the dust clears, its one down, twenty-four to go before you call it a day. Need a shower? You'll get one next Sunday.

Did I say tough job? I guess it's all relative. For me the real job was in the therapy. It was as if my inner purpose was playing itself out in my outer occupation, as I wrestled with beasts that needed to be neutered. I found the strength to tackle my personal challenges, and I even found muscles I didn't know I had because they ached all night long. It wouldn't be so tough, Phil explained, if it weren't so late in the season. The calves would not have grown so big if we could have gotten to them earlier. That's why we had to put in the long hours and get the job done. In a couple more weeks, they'll have gained another half of their body weight, and if you think it's tough now....

It took another eight weeks to finish the herds. Phil had contracted with other ranchers in the area to do their stock because the calves had grown so large their owners didn't want to tackle the job themselves. Eventually, both the cattle season and my run at Date Creek Ranch came to an end. I realized that there's nothing like a ninety-hour workweek, free room and board, and nowhere to go on your day off to save up some cash. I'd been at the ranch for nearly five months, and my eyes shined like the silver dollars I had dreamt of as I counted the spoils.

My plan was to move to the city, get a place to live and start working my way through college. I knew I had enough to get started. Pokey had long since moved on, leaving weeks before when all the citrus had all been plucked. I think he had neither the hair nor the hankerin’, as he might have said, to work the cattle. But he had provided me with the guidance I needed when I had nowhere to turn and I'll not forget it. The man offered me the opportunity to get myself off the streets, and I seized that opportunity. As it is with many angels you meet, I never saw him again.

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Heal for Real

Heal for Real

A Year of Healing

A Lifetime of Wisdom

Introduction

Chapter One

Seize Opportunity