by Suzanne Strazza

“Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.”

—Walt Whitman

  •

Early this morning, I shut my front door and drove east. In the first eleven miles, I saw no other vehicles. On my right, the sacred mountain of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe towered over me. On my left, a national monument. I can walk 20 miles north or south and the only traces of humanity I will encounter are crumbling walls of 800-year-old homes tucked into the red rock cliffs.

There is enough emptiness to embrace the inner workings of my mind and my soul. When my world seems too small, my burdens too heavy, I have a place to scatter the unpleasantness and revive my sense of well-being. 

Clear my mind.

Chase the squirrels from the attic.

  •

I travel across miles of ranchland, glacial valleys, over winding mountain passes, and through narrow river canyons. The waters flow clear and cold; granite peaks rise thousands of feet straight up. Trees touch clouds. Impossibly deep gorges open up on either side of me. 

These are landscapes of my past. Penitente Canyon, Sangre de Cristo, the Collegiates, the Flatirons. Memories flood my brain with each mile. I want to stop at every locale, physically connecting the dots of my life. I don’t.

My limitation is time, not a lack of freedom. I have appointments to keep. I will return another day to take a leisurely drive down memory lane. My brain downshifts out of anxiety, my lungs swell with the air of possibility. If I want to return, next week or next year, I can.

  •  

This will be my first time inside a prison. A few years ago, in a moment of adolescent stupidity, my son came very close to living behind the concrete walls of the Colorado State Penitentiary. Instead, thanks to a compassionate and wise judge, he emerged from his trials with only years of probation and monitoring. He maintained his freedom to be outside, make his own choices, fall in love. I am relieved that the person on the other side of the glass wall will not be my child. 

But that person is someone’s child. He is also innocent. His name is Javier, and he is my client. Twenty years ago, he was convicted, without evidence, of attempted murder of a police officer. Javier is serving 96 years for pulling a non-existent gun on a cop. Ninety-six years for being a person of color in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ninety-six years because that officer lied after mucking up a routine traffic stop where the only weapon drawn was his own; the only person shot was Javier. 

Javier has requested my help in proving his innocence and returning him to the land of the living. This is our first meeting.

This is my job. I help right wrongs. I investigate innocence claims, seeking the exoneration of men and women who, without a miracle, will spend entire lives behind bars and razor wire for murders they didn’t commit. Men and women who will never have a connection to place other than the one-foot square view out their cell block window. 

If they are lucky.

  •

I am nervous about this visit. When I mention this to my boss, she assures me that prisons are one of the safest places around . . . if you’re a visitor. 

That’s not what makes me nervous. What I fear is having my heart broken. I am afraid that I will see something so terrible, so inhumane, that it will crush me.

I already feel guilty for my ability to walk out of that place, leave the fencing behind, and have dinner with my son and his girlfriend. I will be utterly self-conscious about my privilege.

•

I stop to swim in the Arkansas as I wind my way towards the city and the explosion of craggy rock formations that sprinkle the foothills of the Rockies. I lie on the sun-warmed rocks listening to the squeals of tourists splashing by on rafts. I inhale the scent of cottonwood trees. A mosquito bites my ankle. I breathe in the fragrance of freedom.

This is me at my happiest. Independent, solitary, wandering. I am giddy. My soul is at peace, my joy unsuppressed.

•

Due to COVID, prisons canceled all visits for inmates, allowing no connections with the outside world. My clients told me that survival was their sole focus. Terror of an agonizing, lonely death spread faster than the virus. Masks were not provided; social distancing was a joke. Pleas for our help became more insistent. The worst part: inmates were no longer allowed to go outside. Quarantine meant only breathing air that had already been used by someone else.

While the pandemic allowed me the opportunity to slow down, take long hikes, and get my hands dirty in my garden, it provided a death sentence for prison inmates. As I melded into the landscape, Javier melded into the concrete blocks of his cell.

In the solitude of the shut-down world, I found solace. Being outside, moving my limbs, heart pounding from exertion, oxygen expanding my lungs became upsides of a global pandemic. Amidst universal panic, the canyon cradled me, fed, and revived me.

  •  

The noise and chaos of the city are so over-stimulating for my tender psyche that I want to park my truck on the side of the highway and walk back home. My lifeline is knowing that I will soon leave.

I’ve created a life that requires nothing from a big city. My days involve vast emptiness, sleeping under countless stars, indescribable beauty, and my dog, Elvis. The mayhem of the Front Range has receded into the file, “Places I Once Inhabited.” 

At home, the only sounds I hear are the neighbor’s tractor and the finches demanding that I fill their feeder. The nights are black and silent, but for the shsssss shsssss shssssst of the side rolls and the yipping of coyotes. These are real coyotes, not those that traffic desperate people across US borders. The predator in my neighborhood is a mama mountain lion.

Javier shares space with El Chapo.

  •  

I have conversed with Javier on the telephone. I know that he is soft-spoken and humble. This is how I communicate with clients, if they have phone privileges and $1-a-minute to spare. Otherwise, we exchange information through handwritten letters that are opened and censored. Nothing is private. Nothing sacred.

Another inmate, Dre, tells me that I am the only person on his phone list. His family abandoned him long before he was convicted of burning down a house with a child inside. He survived alone on the streets when he was 11.

During one conversation, Dre inquires, “How was your weekend?” I tell him that I went rafting on the Dolores. He asks, “What’s river rafting?” I send him a photo of my son rowing in Utah.

The next time we talk, he hesitatingly asks, “If I ever get out of here, will you take me rafting?”

My heart squeezes, and tears flood my vision. 

“I would love to.”

  •  

Eight of my nine current clients are men. Men of color. Erroneously convicted of crimes of poverty: robbery, drugs, murder. The pain and confusion in their voices is enough to dismantle me. I get off the phone and lie down in the creek behind my house, letting the sweet water wash me free of the world’s injustice.

  •  

I imagine my blue raft floating down the clean, clear river loaded with a handful of 240-lb middle-aged Black men in life vests that barely fit over their muscled chests. Shaved heads, tattoos creeping up necks, battle scars surrounding the smiles on their faces. I have seen their mug shots. I know I am not wrong. Most of them look like they could kill someone with their bare hands. 

And yet, they say things like “Oh my goodness,” and “Say hi to your kids for me.” They call me Miss Suzanne and express gratitude for every breath I take, once again proving that looks can be deceiving and not all convicted murderers are bad people.

Not all convicted murderers are even killers.

What fun to go on the river with these men.

  •  

I stay with my son who I haven’t seen since he moved up here four months ago. An eternity. 

Before visiting Javier, I meet with his sister and daughter, Juanita, at their home. Javier has not hugged his daughter in 20 years. She has been raised by his graceful and loving sister. She hasn’t visited her father since 2011; it is too painful to walk away, leaving him behind a glass wall. They talk on the phone, write letters. She looks like him.

I have missed four months. Javier has missed 20 years. I hug Juanita when we meet, but it feels so unjust that I hesitate before putting my arms around her. She wants her father home. Wants his embrace. Mine is a paltry second.

  •  

The morning of my visit with Javier, I head south from my son’s at 6 am. Siri guides me through highway traffic leading me closer to my destination. She advises me to stay in the lane second from the left but does not tell me what to expect when I arrive. 

I tell Siri that I am nervous. She says it seems like I need a friendly person to talk to—who should she call?  

 •  

The prison complex is massive. It is a blank spot on the map. Hundreds of acres encompassing hillsides and cornfields, and wild horse pastures. The buildings, rather than tall and imposing, are tucked into ravines, wrapped in fencing that reflects the rising sun’s rays.

The light is in my eyes, glistening off the sea of steel and wire. The pastures are verdant and lush; there is enough corn for every inmate to have a buttery treat. I wonder if they ever reap the rewards of their field labor. 

I doubt it.

No jewelry is allowed. Removing the turquoise from my neck and the silver spirals from my ears feels like removing bits of me, leaving them in the truck with my wild side to put back on later.

I look at my watch and wonder if I will have time to see friends in Crestone on the way home. I have choices around how I will spend the rest of the day, the rest of the week, the rest of my life. Javier does not. Neither do Dre nor Jamahll nor Rudy. No freedom to choose what to eat, what to wear, where to walk, who to see, or who to hug.

 •  

The family visiting area consists of small round tables with three or four chairs, vending machines, carpet, windows, curtains. Once I can no longer see the metal detector through which I have just passed, I could be visiting my grandmother in a nursing home. 

Except I am not family. My visit is “no contact,” so we will have a private room with bulletproof glass and telephones on the wall. It is clean. It feels civilized. I see sunlight coming through the door that Javier uses. I think, “It’s not so bad.”

I’m even a bit let down that I will have no tales of near death to share. 

And that’s when a man with translucent skin walks in and picks up the phone. Skin completely devoid of Vitamin D. It gives me the willies at first. Then, I fill with pity. I’m a bit embarrassed by my sun-ravaged Italian skin. How long has it been since he lay in the grass with the sun shining on his face? 

This is what I feared. A shattered heart.

He asks about my son, my drive, his daughter. I look through the glass, phone to my ear, and see a man who is fighting to not break, to not give in or up. He has kind eyes that never stray from mine. I see a man who wants the same choices I have, the same liberties to connect with place, breathe clean air, and hold his loved ones.

He deserves these basic freedoms because he is innocent. He needs them because he is human.

As we talk, I wonder what Javier thinks of me. It’s important; he is trusting me with his life. The only promise I can make is that I am on his side. I am determined to fight for him. 

Hopefully to some avail.

Hopefully, so he can be the parent that he wants to be.

We meet for three hours. Javier is innocent. I believe him. My challenge now is to convince others of this. I feel the weight of his hope, the trust that he and his family are putting into me. I experience overwhelming fear, not because I am trapped inside a maximum-security prison filled with caged men; instead, I am afraid Javier will not trust me. More than that, now that I have looked him in the eye, I am afraid that I will fail him. That I will never succeed in getting him fresh air, blue sky, and space big enough to absorb his hurts.

As we part, I want to bust through the glass and wrap my arms around his aching heart. I want to promise that I will get his name cleared and he will see his daughter again. Instead, we fist bump through the wall of glass, desperately inadequate given the solemnity of the moment. 

 •  

I do not ever take my life for granted. I am eternally grateful for the quietude and the beauty that surrounds me. I have worked hard to be here, in my home of choice.

What I do foolishly take for granted is my liberty to make the choices that brought me and keep me here. It is a privilege to exist so connected to the earth. To grow in the open air.

Javier may never sleep under the stars or hug his daughter again.

He may never laugh around the dinner table with his family or see the peaks that are a mere five miles from where he sits today.

He may never drive down a dirt road hanging his head out the window like a golden retriever.

He may never see water that isn’t running out of a rusty faucet.

He may never feel a sunburn or the tickle of green grass between his toes.

When his brain is jumbled, will he ever have the option of wandering aimlessly, listening to birds until things settle down upstairs?

This list of impossibilities runs through my mind as I drive west from Canon City. I felt so confined, suffocated in that glass room, knowing I was being watched by unseen forces.   

•  

Each rotation of tire on pavement loosens something within me. My lungs expand as I gulp fresh air full of sunshine and freedom. I stop for ice cream because I can. I am aglow with having spent two days loving on my child. I am returning to my guy, my canyon, Elvis.

My life is not easy. I have been broken. I worry about money. My truck has 240,000 miles on it. I have no 401K. I am aging, and my body is deteriorating. But, when this all becomes overwhelming and terrifying and unmanageable, I have the freedom to walk out my front door and lose myself in the desert, returning only when I am ready to. My movement in the natural world refreshes my sense of self-reliance and fortitude. My liberty to wander allows me to remain sane. My soul is fed by a sky full of stars and endless vistas.

When I need it, it is here.

For this, I am grateful.

 •  

I vow that I will take Javier down the river. I wonder, will the sky seem overwhelmingly big? The air too clear? Will it be too quiet without shouting and clanging and the sound of cages being locked? 

Will the silence be terrifying?

How do I reconcile the discrepancy between my clients’ fates and my privilege? How do I find joy when I am so acutely aware of such injustice? 

 •  

It is unfair that I am on the winning side of this juxtaposition between Javier’s life and my own. If he was guilty, I might placate my unease with judgments about life choices. Even so, wouldn’t he deserve to breathe? Perhaps a little sunshine would make him a better person.

I feel the crushing weight of responsibility; it is daunting to be someone’s last chance. Their last hope. I cannot balance the imbalance. My discomfort does not alleviate Javier’s pain.

What I can do is persist, doggedly, to free this man to live a life that he deserves. 

To give him a chance to heal. 

To hope that someday he has the freedom to exist in beauty.

To be spontaneous.

To breathe fresh air and feel sun on his skin.

To hug his child.

To change his mind or his clothes.

To have an ice cream cone, nap in the grass, feel snowflakes on his face.

To relish the healing power of solitude.

To grow in the open air.

To eat and sleep, at peace, with the earth.

Suzanne Strazza has been writing from the west for over 30 years. She has been a journalist and regular columnist for Four Corners Free Press and Inside/Outside Magazine. She has appeared in many publications including Paddler Magazine, Mountain Gazette, and the recently published collection Wet: An Anthology of Water Poems and Prose from the High Desert and Mountains of the Four Corners Region. She was a participant in The Raven Narratives, a live story-telling event, and was awarded an Artist-in-Residency through San Juan National Forest. She has found home in a remote canyon in southwestern Colorado.