The snake moved nonchalantly into a sparse thicket and disappeared.  It was a small snake to be sure, but did this bush really have enough stalks to create such a thorough hideout?  It seemed to draw in its tail and vanish completely.  I too had been travelling, if not nonchalantly at least casually, in this Southwestern desert, and having been warned about rattlers and scorpions, had had my eyes to the ground, well, not entirely since the rolling landscape and bluish hills are so beautiful here that one simply has to admire them.  Still, I was sufficiently attentive that after an involuntary oath and a quick sidelong dance I was, I believed, out of harm's way.  No, I was in no danger and neither was the snake, and we both knew it, but I was genuinely curious as I carefully circled that thicket how brother snake hid himself so perfectly.  I never found out, partly out of prudence and partly because the flinty-grey clouds from the north were now covering the sun - my signal to abort my literary outing up the arroyo and head back to shelter.  The desert has been unusually wet this season and I am writing this now in the comfort of my bed, to the sound of falling rain. It is not really "my" bed, my lifestyle precludes that luxury, but that of Verlie, a new friend of mine and an old friend of Ruth's, my partner.  Verlie is a Southern Belle, one of those born to grace and hospitality.  She is 84 years old, vivacious and welcoming, with a soft Arkansas accent, impish blue eyes, and an embracing manner that put me at ease instantly.  More than that - and here is a note of caveat - I sense that she turns every man she meets into an admiring lover.  Age means nothing except to callow youth. Verlie lives in an alternative community peopled by those who grew tired of the artificiality of modern life and came here to build something more real.  The buildings are ecologically sound, made of local materials for little cost, often experimental (bricks whose shape shows they were formed in bags; rubber tire walls held together with mortar), and to me they often resemble hobbit dwellings.  Dome houses of clay pierced with empty bottles for light and colour, the entire thing sunk a metre or more into the ground, alternate with simple wood houses, campers and trailers.  Some are decorated with tiles, Earth Goddess images or Lewis Caroll figures and inside they are very welcoming, cool and comfortable.  Verlie has one of each: a rectangular, fairly standard wooden structure, large and cluttered and homely, and a round house whose construction I have not yet examined.

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But for all my liking it, it creates a problem for me.  You see, I have never much trusted this behemoth called America, have usually felt uncomfortable visiting, and have been entirely too much influenced by Hollywood and television's violent stereotyping and glorification of venality for the purpose of selling soap.  The people we have met here, both in the community and elsewhere, have been well-meaning folk and simple in their tastes almost to boredom.  Forgive me if I sound uppity, but how else does a trained composer come to 3-chord country music or an experienced and worldly palette to a Denny's omelet?  I won't even mention McDeath.  These people just do not fit my programmed picture of Americans. 

A young man at a Phoenix bus stop is a good example.  He was wiry and dark, his eyes intense, his hair in braided lines across his head, and I had seen him before, many times.  In movies and on TV shows he is invariably a two-bit punk, dressed like a pimp, spewing racial hatred and committing casual horrors.  I regarded him with curiosity not unmixed with a frisson of anxiety, and nearly laughed out loud when he spoke to us.  He said, "I'll move over here so my cigarette smoke doesn't come your way."  The Media, whatever that is, has done this young man and myself a horrible disservice and I doubt if he realizes it.  It has done America a horrible disservice too, and is responsible for much of the fear in this country, fear that is now being exported to an eager world that wants to be Western and is watching its TVs voraciously.  But hey, there's soap to sell.

Somehow Verlie, lovely Verlie of the soft peach hair, seems free of this fear, this stereotyping, despite watching (gasp) soap operas.  She hasn't been mesmerized by The Media, at least not as much as her more thoughtless compatriots, even coming from the Deep South (another powerfully negative stereotype) as she does.  I have the feeling that the people who founded this community (not the hangers-on) are also free of fear and in most cases don't watch or even own a TV set.  They seek simplicity, to live naturally in the desert like that snake and to disappear just as effectively.  If they have a fear it is that their government will take notice of them.

Mention the government and their eyes will roll.  Some bureaucrat has recently decided, for example, that the water treatment pond, perfectly serviceable for all these years, now needs to be lined with plastic.  So it will be done no doubt and after a few years, invisible to all, the plastic will disintegrate and the pond will return to its dolomite foundation.  Regulations will have been satisfied and somebody in an office with too much time on his hands will have been able to justify his job.  This is the reason for websites like this one.  This is the reason I prefer to own little, especially property.

There was another snake that came into my purview on this visit, a less fortunate one.  It serves as a warning to those wishing to escape the behemoth, and its death must have been truly agonizing.  In its rush to escape some human activity it had become wedged into a hexagonal hole in a chicken-wire fence.  By the time it was about 1/4 through it could go no further.  Snakes don't have a reverse gear that I am aware of, and it suffocated - a normal, gracefully coiled body led up to that fatal hole then fell, unnaturally straight and discoloured to the ground on the other side.  The sad thing is that had it not been frightened it might have noticed the ample space below, between the chicken-wire and the ground.

So:  If you are contemplating escaping the behemoth, don't do it in a fearful rush.  Do your homework, make sure the hole is big enough, make sure you can back out if necessary and take another route.  This advice, by the way, has nothing to do with money.  It has entirely to do with attitude and acceptance of life as it is.  I am the proof.  I have little of the former and a growing fund of the latter and I wander the world turtle-like; my backpack is my home.  My life is simple but not primitive, just like those who live in this community, and I have escaped the mini-behemoth that Canada has become.  See, I'm not even American but I still wanted to escape, and escape is becoming ever more difficult as the chicken-wire of empty consumerism slowly strangles the innocent snakes struggling to wriggle through, and subtly ensnares the hatchlings eagerly coming up in the 3rd world.  Oh, I do love florid metaphors!
 

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In England when I was there, the pubs closed at 10PM.  Pub-goers didn't like this, but whenever there was a plebicite on the topic of opening hours, they were too laid-back to go out and vote.  So the zealots kept the hours limited.  Democracy is frail and difficult to keep pure, and it surely requires the vigilance of the governed.  If said governed have been lulled by prosperity, had their brains and bodies weakened by junk food and additives and their conversation pounded out of them by excessively loud and raucous entertainment, what hope is there?  What is the hope of escape in a world so thoroughly in the grip of what you are running from?  There is a McDonald's in Lhasa, Tibet - did you know?  There is a wildly popular TV show called Malaysian Idol - did you know?  The business of the peasant fruit sellers on Sumatra slowed to a trickle during the World Cup as people stayed home to watch the games - did you know?  I was there.  I saw it.  I saw those very vendors innocently mesmerized into watching the games too.  They cheered.  They sang in their chains like the sea.  No, escape is only a temporary answer if you are only going to place yourself in the midst of what you say you are escaping.

Go to the 3rd world and wait for the pond-liners to catch up with you?  What for?  Changing the system (beginning with yourself) is the only permanent answer and thus the question becomes:  "Do I work for change at home or abroad?"  This publication is called "Escape from America Magazine", so 'home' means America in this context but I'm sure, nay, I am certain that over-regulated citizens of other lands will also take heart from these words and from this magazine.

The entire website is devoted to those wishing to leave the behemoth, but not everyone wants to do that, not even those who are thoroughly frustrated with government corruption and war profiteering.  My surprise impression after only a short visit, is that decent, loving people here outnumber by far their unfeeling leadership and that a simple shift in thinking, a real and unselfish application of the lessons in those Civics classes in school, would make Americans proud once again.  We have met too many of them abroad who feel they must pretend to be Canadian.  The considerate people we have encountered here do not deserve that.  The young man concerned over his cigarette smoke deserves a healthy, non-stereotyping entertainment industry that promotes acceptance and quality programming.  The friendly and helpful people on the streets and behind service counters everywhere deserve not to be seen as global bullies.  The down-to-earth gent who at 57 described to us over coffee at a bleary bus stopover how he follows the rodeo circuit riding bulls (my God, he's almost as old as I am!) deserves, well, I think he just deserves an easier life.  The ground must be getting harder and harder for him.

So there you have it.  Americans, Canadians, Western Europeans, Australians, your governments are out of control and you are the only ones who can rein them in, but you must act now before the voting machines are set up to exclude you too.  If you love your homeland and want to stay and see it change, bravo - I wish you every success!  If you feel you can't do any more at home and must reluctantly leave, beware - I wish you every success also, but you must be on guard and willing to work to keep what peace you may find.  Don't just sit comfortably waiting for the bean-counters to start wrapping you up in their red tape before you move on.  Sooner or later you're going to run out of places to run.  Or worse, don't sit by while the corporate generals bring a lucrative war to your doorstep.  Live well, eat thoughtfully so that you can think clearly, avoid the lies of your Media and seek your own truth within.  That young man's simple moving over dispelled years of TV poisoning.  This is how easily attitudes can shift.  Be happy.  Adios.