The year is 1969. Pat, my wife, and I were on an extended tenting camping trip. Our interest in natural beauty and hiking inspired me to carry my balky genes through the moderately tricky 6.5-mile uphill hike in Glacier National Park to reach the Grinnell Glacier. This resulted in an unyielding fatigue that my wife Patricia, whom I thought was less athletically fit than I, did not experience. The fatigue led me to suggest we forego our plans to head for Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and head home. Pat readily agreed, not being weary but sensing that heading home was the wise thing to do. My genes and the stress of the hike were the penultimate cause of the nearly fatal heart attack and open-heart surgery I underwent three days after arriving home.

Several male members of my family had succumbed to early fatal heart attacks. That suggested that my genes were indeed balky. Taking note of this, Patricia became the inspiration for my life thereafter.

She knew of my work’s stress and insisted that I cut back on my load. I tried but flunked. “Change or die,” she would say.

Within a few months, I had let everything go, arranged for continuing care for my patients, and left the practice to those who had helped create it.

“But what would be the plan forward?” I asked. “We’ve cut back to eating little but salads, and I’m on the treadmill exercising each morning. I’ve let go of the stress of practicing medicine, but doing nothing is stressful, too!”

“You’ve always talked about your passion to pursue more relaxing endeavors when you retired. When? If not now,” Pat said. “I deem you retired!”

Severely cutting back on our income, how would we live? We gave up golf, the country club, going out to eat, and buying anything but T-shirts and jeans.

OK, but what would we do? Pat insisted that we had to change our environment or be sucked back into the vortex of a medical practice we shared. Winter was fast approaching, and we couldn’t tent camp.

Our neighbor suggested we return to school, but a special school, “Quartzsite University.” He told us, “They have no majors or degrees, just classes in everything imaginable and all without homework. There is no pressure, just the excitement of learning new skills and meeting people who view life differently.”

So we followed his advice, bought a small RV, and lived in the desert among people interested in those “Other things.” Over the years, I became an acrylic painter, sculptor, rockhound, and silversmith. Best of all, I learned to do all these things without seeking perfection, which was different from practicing medicine. Pat, similarly, found new hobbies, blowing glass beads, wire wrapping jewelry, and designing necklaces. With the passage of time we went through several re-inventions of ourselves.

Flash forward to 2012, and I was still alive. But the Fresno-polluted air was dangerous to Pat’s lung condition. The doctors at Stanford insisted she move to the coast. We did, but I left behind my large shop of equipment for working rocks, stained glass, and a studio room for painting. Like others, a few years later, COVID limited us. We entertained ourselves as did others. Mostly, we talked for hours, as I reviewed boxes of journals, essays and notes regarding my family I had dragged along. Out of nowhere, Pat asked me why I had to become a doctor instead of an artist.

“That’s easy,” I said. “My passion was for both, but I was educated in one area and lacked any skill or family support for the other.” That led to many interesting discussions. It uncovered the secret sauce of stress reduction for me. Pat and I enjoyed reminiscing about family values and

expectations. We talked to and fro about our family experiences for days.

In discussing my family, I was fascinated by more than what they did, but how and why they did it. I then began to wonder, are we mostly a result of our nature, our genes? Or are we mostly a product of our nurturing, culture, parents’ attitude, lifetime experiences, or even our friends who influence us?

Pat intrigued, then said, “Your family history stretches for about two hundred years and involves horrible trauma, love stories, mystery, amazing decisions, and creativity leading both to success and failure. Why don’t you write a novel?” she asked. “Maybe you’ll get some clues to those questions.” We talked about it for two days. Finally, my wife inspired and compelled me to write about it.

I hope you are entertained by this fascinating odyssey that began roughly one hundred and fifty years before we climbed that glacier. For me, this was a case study of me and my ancestors. For you, it is a mystery story, a love story, a tragedy, a success story, and an opportunity to self-reflect if you choose to take it.

My storyteller, Elijah, tells this story to a group of campers at Quartzsite. Our fellow campers’ discussions are representations-based on real opinions and self-reflections of the group interactions we had at Quartzsite University, but are not exact details of the real conversations. No tape recorder was used. The historical events are hopefully accurate, but names have been changed. The first book subtitled “My enigmatic Beginning” is about the travel of my nomadic genes from Eastern Europe to create a successful life in America. The second book, subtitled Nature vs. Nurture covers my coming of age, a quirky and tumultuous life story. The third book, soon to come, is about the nomadic genes as they guide me through my college years. Enjoy.