1970

1970 was likely the most difficult year of my young life then. I turned 22 in 1970 and my world had exploded in 1969. So, though 1969 was the most explosive and crazy and time of changes in my life which turned my whole life path upside down (literally) it was not the most painful and hard to survive year of my life like 1970 was.

God sort of grabbed my life and completely turned it upside down to the point where I wasn't sure which end was up then. While many friends were getting married and settling down my life just got more and more chaotic and unfathomable for me personally.

Of course it's also true that friends left and went into the Viet Nam War that were male friends of mine that I often turned to for solace and communication too. So, this was a problem for me too. On top of this all the girls that I had dated at this point in my life seriously (seriously meaning it could lead to marriage) were now in the religion that I separated from in 1969 that I had been born into and that my parents were ministers in to the point of them running the Los Angeles Church of the religion we were in from the time I was 6 until 12 years of age when my mother's father died and my mother had a nervous breakdown when her father died from all the unresolved things between her and her father at that point.

So, transitions can often be hard to the point where you almost don't survive them. 1970 was a year like that for me in my young life.

But, like many transitions some of the best parts and best ideas also came from those times too.

Because "Necessity is the mother of invention" and only a series of near death experiences like I had was going to move me forward in my life the way that was useful to God and the Angels in my life then and now.

I drove a couple (a man and his girlfriend and dog) to a commune in Taos, New Mexico around Thanksgiving 1970 and met a girlfriend I knew since I had graduated from the same high school as her in Santa Fe for my senior year. We thought about getting married at the time but it wasn't practical for me even though she was likely mature enough to have succeeded as a wonderful wife for me.

The problem was that if we had married she would have had to give up her religion and it would have caused a lot of problems for her family because of this. So, I let her go realizing I had to be the bigger man in that situation. I had parted with the church on not very good terms because I just asked too many questions being the Free Thinker that I am. No church can withstand philosophical questions like I tend to ask so I understand that now. When you approach life as logically and as scientifically as I do it makes complete sense what happened because I tend to ask questions like an engineer would about everything.

And NO religion can withstand this kind of scrutiny because they are not logical nor reasonable in the end.

But, I left Santa Fe with a broken heart because I knew I had to protect her from harm but at the same time I was going to lose her too which was horrific for me at the time.

But, I have always been capable of making the right decisions even if they temporarily destroyed me and my life at the time.

So, I returned to the desert where my parents were living near Yucca Valley and we eventually returned to Rancho Bernardo near San Diego then where I returned to college at Palomar College and the Experimental College at San Diego State University in San Diego.

So, Surviving that year was pivotal to staying alive for me at the time. I knew I was changing radically but I wasn't sure who I was changing into yet at 22.

By 25 years of age I had met my first wife and we had a son when I was 26 and this made me much more of a family man and I could no longer think like a single man taking all kinds of risks so I gave up rock climbing in Yosemite with friends when my son was born because I just thought that was too risky. At age 27 or 28 a friend of mine died at Castle Crags Free climbing and another friend around that time pulled a 6 or a 9 pin zipper and fell many hundred feet pulling out pitons until one held.

When I was in my 30s I found out another high school friend from Santa Fe had drowned kayaking on a river in Colorado. So, even then in my 20s and 30s my friends were dying one by one taking risks like I had always taken too which made me even more careful to stay alive to raise my children.