left her feeling frustrated with her progress. When George tried to practice with her at home, it was funny. Funny if you were watching like a fly on the wall. Not funny if you were Jill. At six feet five, he was more than a foot taller than her. His strength was too much for her, and she often got hurt when sparring. George seemed to take perverse pleasure in blocking her punches and then taking her to the ground. The final blow came when he lost control of his takedown, and she banged into a chair. She flew backward into the chair and banged her head on the arm. She hit hard enough that they debated whether to take her to the emergency room. For three days afterward, Jill sported a lump on the back of her head.
From that day forward, Jill refused to do anything related to karate, at least not where George could see her. George continued his lessons and would come home telling her in detail about his katas and his progress. After nearly two years of seemingly obsessive effort, George announced he had achieved a first-degree black belt.
The obsession did not stop there. He was nearing the next evaluation for his second-degree black belt when the Bundy brothers and other rancher supporters occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Jill was realizing there was no use trying to persuade George to relax over the occupation.
“So what are you going to do?”
“I think I might just go over to Burns and see what I can do,” he responded. “I know the authorities won’t like it, but I don’t see that they are doing anything about it, and that just pisses me off!”
“You know, George, going there would be dangerous. I mean, they are carrying guns, and they seem to know how to use them,” Jill complained.
“Aww, I don’t know. I’m just so pissed, and they are getting away with this. I may just start with some letters to the governor and to some of the other lawmakers. I have to do something! I will think about it, but I think I will go. Even if it’s dangerous. I will think about it,” he said, shaking his head solemnly.
George stayed up until 2:00 a.m. writing emails to Governor Kate Brown and congressional representative Peter DeFazio and Earl Blumenauer and Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley. Between emails, he signed petitions and complained to friends on Facebook. With every new bit of information on the occupation, he paced, fumed, and cursed.
How did this happen? he thought. The refuge is such a wonderful place. All the times I have visited, I never imagined that some bunch of cowboys would take it over and act like it belonged to them. How the hell does it belong to them? The government is letting them get away with murder. They let them off in what’s the name?
He googled it and found the name Bunkerville and April 2014.
That’s it. The government is just a bunch of pussies! They need to just do whatever it takes to get control over the refuge. I don’t care if someone gets killed. This is bigger than the people involved.
George finally went to bed. He tossed and turned for several minutes; then he tried to push his thoughts aside using techniques he had learned at Tech Space. George Henry was part owner and primary visionary of the company, but he had some difficulty completing some tasks due to overthinking. With some encouragement from his business partner, he invited a local employee assistance company to do some in-service trainings for his small staff. He had learned to remind himself of two thought-changing techniques that helped him sleep when nothing else did. He learned to ask himself if there was anything he could do in the moment to change the circumstances that worried him and then write out anything that needed to do tomorrow. He also learned to persistently refocus his mind on a pleasant environment. On this night, nothing worked.
At nearly 4:00 a.m., exhaustion overcame him, and he fell into a restless sleep. His dreams carried on the struggle for Malheur.
Cattle came in huge dusty herds, charging directly at him. Riding the front cow was a man wearing a wide-brimmed cowboy hat and laughing. He pointed a gun and laughed again. George tried to move, but shit held him like glue. Glue covered everything. Birds dying and fighting against the glue-like shit. Men sitting in leather chairs watched and cheered the struggle.
George snorted himself awake. He stared at the time on his phone. Four thirty in the morning. He started to go back over everything he had been working on but stopped himself. Giving in to his drowsiness, he finally fell back asleep. On Sunday, he did not awaken until late morning. He dragged himself to the kitchen. Jill impassively watched him slowly move his tall, bent, and disheveled body toward his chair.
“Had a rough night?” she asked rhetorically.
George nodded. “Yeah, pretty rough.”
Jill waited. She knew it would be a while before they had an actual conversation. After a brief period of heavy sighs and a sullen expression, George dragged himself out of the recliner, walked ponderously to the espresso maker, and set up a very stiff Americano. He grabbed a bagel, sat down, and waited for the coffee. He looked at his iPhone and clicked his Facebook app.
“Shit! Nothing has happened. God, I hope this doesn’t end up like Bunkerville!” he exclaimed.
Jill had some idea of what Bunkerville was about, but she wasn’t sure. With apprehension, she asked George to elaborate. Eagerly, George explained that Bunkerville was the location of a standoff between sympathizers of a Nevada rancher and law enforcement. The story behind this was that the rancher had been in at twenty-one-year struggle with the Bureau of Land Management over his grazing of cattle on BLM land. He had refused to pay for grazing his cattle on land owned by the BLM, as required by law. The rancher had claimed that the BLM did not have the legal authority to manage the land on which he grazed his cattle.
As he explained the background of the situation, George frequently interrupted himself with, “That’s just bullshit!”
When he had finished explaining the history of the standoff, he added vehemently, “That land belongs to all the people, not one particular person or rancher.” Shaking his head enough to agitate his thick black hair, he continued, “These ranchers have been getting a great deal on their grazing rights for years. They are often referred to as ‘welfare ranchers,’ and I think they are making money and degrading public land while they do it. And they are so arrogant that they want the government to give the land to them. It’s bullshit!”
George stared off into space—his long face stern and his eyes looking but not seeing anything but the images in his mind, images of cowboys stealing the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
After some time staring at nothing, he stood and announced, “I am going. I know you don’t want me to, but I think I have to.”
Jill knew it was useless arguing with him. She touched his shoulder to get his attention and said, “I would feel better if you had someone with you. Why don’t you invite Russel?”
George looked at her with a furrowed brow, his thick black eyebrows bending together to form one mass over his dark eyes. He relaxed some and said, “I don’t know if he could take the time off.”
Russel Jones was his birding buddy. Every spring for the past twenty years, he and Russel would travel the three hundred miles one way to the refuge to camp, observe the birds, and compare their photographs of birds and other wildlife. Their interest in photography had developed in the past few years. These trips and had become as important as discussing the Portland Trail Blazers over a pint of beer. Hanging around the campfire, exchanging critiques of their photos, their daily wildlife sightings, and the quality of the beer they were drinking had become like a spiritual pilgrimage.
With the events at the refuge, it was more than a philosophical
