Doug Fine: Author, Journalist, Adventurer, Goat-Herder

So after a lifetime of wandering as an itinerant writer and journalist, I finally have 41 remote acres I can call my own, and the first time I shed my clothes I get intruded upon by a 61-year-old neighbor and her poodle. I wasn’t even parading around, flaunting my right to every possible meaning of Private Property. It was about three days after I moved in. I had stripped for a shower, and my cell phone rang. As I hadn’t yet changed over to solar hot water (I haven’t forgotten my promise to post on that endeavor), I had 10 minutes to kill before my profoundly-misnamed “on-demand” water heater kicked in, so I checked the phone. It was a call I wanted to take, so I started chatting, strolling around my irises in only my Chacos. That’s when I heard the poodle yip. Followed by a chipper hello from the former owner of the place, Nicole. Knowing the property well and thus hiking in, she came to tell me about the fire danger from recent tinderbox conditions. She didn’t call first.

I wasn’t going to apologize. She was the one who trespassed without warning. I just kind of said, “Hi, lovely day, isn’t it?” and slowly sauntered inside for a towel.

But after she left I posted the above sign. It seems to do the trick. If more security is needed, I can get more elaborate. Pressure-triggered trap doors, for example. Those would be ideal, because the FBR property line is at the top of a devastating cliff a solid half mile from my front door. Perimeter security is something I’ll have to think a lot about if society collapses and I’ve got 100 years worth of water, power and seeds on-site.

I know this sounds like extreme survivalism to some readers, but in New Mexico no one blinks. (The Rockwell song, “Somebody’s Watching Me” just kicked on the iTUNES as I’m writing. Why this song is on my iTUNES is another question.)

It’s true that when I travel to places traditionally thought of by the people who live there as civilized, like, say the U.S. Eastern seaboard, folks generally think I’m kidding when I mention that “perimeter security” might one day be as important to me as “keeping the inverter for the solar system working” or “harvesting enough corn to keep the truck running.”

But in this part of the world, I’m just thought of as sensible. My life-long New Mexican friend DL, a neighbor whose front yard car sculpture gallery I once harvested for a cigarette lighter that I used to run my first solar powered inverter, knew exactly what I was talking about when I proposed a buried, alarm-tripping (with the option to explode) pressure sensor at the top of the long cliff-side dirt driveway to the Ranch.

“Like the Border Patrol uses,” DL said, nodding approvingly and spitting tobacco juice when he first visited the Funky Butte Ranch. “You’ll know anyone that tries to come on to your spread.”

“Useful for covering up habitual nudity as well as armed repulsion of food and electricity poachers,” I pointed out.

And as for whether, say, an old truck with lots of spare parts could keep running for the two generations of transition time I was willing to give my descendants to get back on their feet if society collapses, well, have you taken a look at the streets of Havana lately? The answer is “yes, even with tail fins.” But still there is the question of whether the survivors in my immediate Mimbres Valley neighborhood would together have the skills necessary to become an ad-hoc tribe if both co-ops and Wal-Marts went away. This came up during a party at a local hot springs not too long ago.

“Who will make the shoes?” I wailed, whapping a spray of boiling water with my arm and sounding a little panicky.

“Um, I could,” my friend and neighbor Sunny said, wiping the spray from her face.

“Really?” I asked. “You’re a cobbler?”

“A boyfriend of mine learned how to make sandals out of hemp and car tire treads from a Rarumari Indian in Mexico,” she said humbly. “I could learn from him.”

“Congrats. You’re part of the tribe, pending initiation,” I said, as though I made that decision, as though I was contributing anything significant enough to warrant my own inclusion as anything other than a meal. “We’ll be the new Mimbrenos.”

The original Mimbrenos, in fact, were one of my sources of optimism about post-societal survival in Southwest New Mexico. Before they disappeared with the 14th century equivalent of the oven on, the members of this indigenous culture were so successful in my very valley that adults were known to live well into their thirties. That humans did well here long before Wal-Mart I found encouraging. We’ll see how long I survive.

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