My Secret Place - July 2009

By Mike Mullane, as told to Devon Jackson

My wife and I have been married for 43 years, and we have three kids. I fell in lust with her in 1965. We met at a party. She was from St. Mary’s and I was from St. Pius. When we were engaged, I saw her a total of maybe six weeks before we got married. That’s because I was at West Point, and it was hard to get back out here to New Mexico. So I courted her by mail.

Anyway, as a kid, my dad was in the Air Force and we traveled all around. I was born in Wichita Falls, Texas, and I’d lived in Georgia, Florida, Hawaii, and Mississippi before we moved out here. My dad came down with polio when he was 33, and we had to find a place where he’d be able to get around in a wheelchair and get a job, too. He chose Albuquerque. Had my parents not settled here,
I wouldn’t’ve become an astronaut.

Growing up, my four brothers and my sister and I were basically nomads, and my parents were avid explorers and loved the mountains and the West. When we lived in Texas, we’d always throw some camping stuff into our Pontiac station wagon and go out to Holy Ghost Canyon in the Pecos [Wilderness]. Even after my dad got polio, he never let that slow him down. He had me and my brothers carry him all around in the woods in his wheelchair.

So back in 1966, I took Donna, my future wife, up to Holy Ghost Canyon, and we carved our names into one of those aspens up there in the Pecos. I carved it without having a clue of how my life would be. That tree is a book, and the date on it is like the first chapter. Ten years later, Donna and I went up there with our three kids and stood next to that very same tree. It’s spiritually and emotionally moving up there.

When you’re 63, like I am now, you look back on your life and how it all flowed and developed from other things, and that tree represents that life and our kids and grandkids. It’s one of those poignant reminders for us. Every time I go up there, I throw a handsaw into the car, just in case that tree ever falls. I’m gonna cut out that one piece I carved into it and take it home. The Forest Service might throw me in jail if I do, but that’s what I’d like to do if it gets to that.

Astronaut Mike Mullane, now a motivational speaker and author of Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut (Scribner, 2007), flew three orbital missions on the Space Shuttle. He and his wife live in Albuquerque, in the house Donna grew up in. www.mikemullane.com