Canyon of the Eagles

At the end of 2008, I went to Canyon of the Eagles. It’s a resort of sorts in some small town in the hill country of central Texas. I have to admit, I don’t entirely remember what Canyon of the Eagles had to offer. It had canyons, probably. I think there was hiking. I know for certain that it had bike trails: raised, wooden paths lined with cacti and Texas trees and other dry flora. As any rural space in Texas, it must’ve had a beautifully star-spangled sky that emerged as the sun set. From the name, I’d have to assume Canyon of the Eagles was attempting to assert itself as a patriotic place – regally upholding the American values of strength, courage, freedom etc. Canyon of the Eagles was probably mourning the final days of Bush’s presidency back then, lamenting the beginning of another democratic reign in America. Or maybe there were just a bunch of eagles who nested there.
 

Back at the end of 2008, gas was only $1.85 a gallon. The iPhone 3G was a six-month-old, and I was a six-year-old. America was in a recession. Our first black president waited readily in the wings for his inauguration. O.J. Simpson had very recently been sentenced to 33 years in prison, not for killing his wife but for robbing a casino. Phineas and Ferb was finishing out its first season, a masterpiece. Opportunity and ruin were twin devils staring down from the shoulders of the end of the third millennium’s first decade, and I was in the midst of first grade. 
 

Ruin really had its time in the sun during the one, singular moment I remember from Canyon of the Eagles. We were biking: me, my mom, dad, and brother. It might’ve been fun at first, but it certainly wasn’t fun for me by the end. It all started to fall apart when my dad got a nail in his tire. My parents stopped to investigate as my older brother and I barely went ahead, just beyond the next curve in the bike path. Somehow, someway, I managed to wedge my tire precariously off the edge of the wooden trail. I called out to my parents, but they were busy inspecting my dad’s tire. So, I fell off my bike and into the spindly arms of a cactus.
 

The prickly pear cactus grows all across the United States, bragging the largest range of any cactus in the US. It’s been to more states than I have. It’s a beautiful plant, complete with big, flat, oblong sections of flesh. In late spring or early summer, it sprouts eye-catching, bright yellow flowers that subsequently morph into a lovely pinkish-red fruit. Back in December of 2008, I saw no flowers nor fruit. But what remain year-round, and what I did get to experience to the fullest degree, were the spikes – the cactus’s sharp weapons against its adversaries, such as falling six-year-olds. 
 

The prickly pear is famous for its spines. The big ones suck. They’re quite a few inches long, and they’re stiff, and they will stab you mercilessly. But they pale in comparison to their little friends. Every big spine is surrounded by an evil cohort of countless tiny, baby, microscopic needles: glochids. They’re so, so little you can’t even see them. And you’re just stuck wondering what in the hell is irritating you because there’s nothing there. Nothing visible, nothing tangible, just a spiny little nuisance that runs all along your arms and legs like those invisible, nagging ideas that get in your head and inflame it to twice the size it was before. That’s what the little glochids do. They sneak right under your skin, before you even have time to realize they exist. 
 

I was born in 2002, the Year of the Horse. My week in Canyon of the Eagles fell within the last month of the Year of the Rat. Fans of the Chinese Zodiac know that the Rat is the Horse’s second least compatible partner – a match that’s bound to cause conflict. The only worse pairing for the Horse is the Ox, the year which was preparing to begin at the end of January in 2009. The Year of the Ox was prepared to pull America back up by the bootstraps, out of the recession, with its strength and surety. Unfortunately, it was also preparing to violently trample me into the ground. 
 

I was lucky when I fell into the prickly pear. I was lucky because it was winter, so I was wearing my puffy pink coat. My mom loved that pink coat. Luckily for me, a puffy coat proves to be somewhat decent protection from a cactus. When the jacket came off, so did a majority of the spiny guys. But it wasn’t that painless; many of them had already embedded themselves in me. I vividly remember the pain in my hands – my most exposed skin, not protected by bike helmet or jacket. I remember looking down at my hands, through stale tears, and wondering if they would be okay. 
 

Just yesterday, I fell again. I tripped walking up the stairs, for virtually no reason aside from God’s smite. I fell hard. In the bathroom, with my friend gently applying neosporin and band-aids to my bloody knees, I couldn’t help but cry. I was just standing, looking down at my newest wound, and I felt like a kid again. I felt that deep, unavoidable feeling of this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me bubbling up beneath my pride and desire to keep it together. But deep down, I knew it wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened to me. Arguably, falling into a cactus at Canyon of the Eagles was probably worse than falling on the concrete – way more needles, way more difficult recovery. 
 

My mom still loved that pink coat. I loved it too, after that. Overestimating the harm a cactus could do, I was convinced that it had saved my life. Once we got all the noticeable spines out of her gleaming pink armor, we determined she was still safe to wear. But thanks to the glochids, this wasn’t the case. My first month in the year of the Ox was mysteriously glochid-riddled, invisibly irritating. My first-grade teacher finally convinced my mom it was time to put the pink coat to rest. She had had a good life; she got to see snow in Big Bend and about a million days of elementary school, and that was enough for her. 

At six, my rendez-vous with the prickly pear was probably the worst thing I’d experienced. Based on my unreliable memory, it was my first real fall, the first of consequence. It scratched my shining innocence and conveyed the all-important knowledge of pain. It was a fitting farewell from the Year of the Rat. “Welcome to the real world, staying upright is hard here,” it said to me. It was by no means a fun debacle, but then I figured out I’d live, and things were okay. I didn’t know Phineas and Ferb would be canceled the same year that America would hand the Executive Branch over to a blatant misogynist; I had no idea I would be diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder within the next year; I was so unaware of the irreparable damage and possibility of the iPhone 3’s beautifully demented successors; I barely knew how to live in the tumultuous consciousness of a mentally ill six-year-old, but I knew that I (unlike my pink coat) could fall into a cactus and live.