GREAT OUTDOORS
by
As a wilderness outfitter, I sold hard gear and soft at Great Outdoors, a rustic sporting goods store in a 100 year old log-built hunting lodge nestled on the
On my last day of work after twenty years, I looked forward to hooking someone up with decent gear. I tell my customers that whatever piece of equipment I put in their hands could save their life, because it could.
It’s something else that helps folks survive, something I can't sell.
Fourteen weeks later I’d piled 100 pounds of equipment on the living room floor and after sorting through decades of expedition technology, my pack was loaded. Leftover gear was boxed, stacked, packed at the end of season.
I was going out a little late in the year for most tastes.
The choice is between solitude and safety. Bad weather can stir up any time of year. If there is anything I've learned after twenty years of helping people to survive in the wilderness, it's that you can't take stock of a person by the gear.
I put the kettle on the stove, let the cat out the back door.
A scoop of smoky, greasy coffee beans rattled into the hopper. I cranked the grinder by hand until a single serving of coffee piled in the little wooden box. I dumped the contents into a paper filter cone over a Navy mug, turned on the computer then joined the gato stretching on the deck.
This is the best time of day, when everything is a possibility and no one's in your face. No phone or email unless I want it, no one peeks over my shoulder to see how long I’m sleeping.
May be the best time of my life, as well.
A rogue storm stalks the dark, alpine canyon where I work my way by headlamp down a thin, muddy trail toward unfriendly trees below. Lightening blisters roiling black clouds...it shimmies, then leaps onto a strobelit crag and pounces into the woods, pulverizing a treetop under which I'd planned to pass.
Slanting, shivering raindrops rattle my raingear, splatter my muddy pants.
My headlamp's hot, yellow beam snakes up through the rocks, skitters over slick, granite boulders and perches on my waterproof journal. I could find a hundred ways to perish out here before I rest.
A night like this reveals the mischievous, the lost souls who lurk about, waiting for the weary to make a wrong step. Out here, among these playful creatures of the night, I wish perhaps to find my own lost soul.
Alone in bed eating takeout and watching old movies is where you'd normally find me, dreaming of just such an adventure. I'd pack and repack my zero-degree sleeping bag, my freeze-dried lemon grass and tomato Thai chicken pizza, waiting for the chance to test my full mettle against the void.
We are rogues, this storm and I. We both adore chaos, but I am mortal, a grievous handicap in the game of nature. We hominids create enough terror in our waking hours. It is fitting we should sleep, but sleep can be privileged only to the very young or very old.
I can't say I failed to prepare for this weather, freaky…almost purgatorial as it is. I planned for everything, and threw in a little extra, just in case.
The gear pile in my lovingly restored World War Two Quonset hut rose nearly to the curved ceiling when I first began selecting gear for my expedition, everything there was something I'd selected for a particular job.
Like my dream last night, it was time to go to that place I've never been...not on any map I've seen.
I poured boiling water through the filter of fresh-ground Arabica, added some Alpine goat milk and a last dollop of hot water. I hoisted my big pack from its special chair and strapped myself in.
My world changed instantly with the big pack on my body.
I am part man/part gear, separated only by gravity. I grabbed my stash box and mug and ambled across the deck, down the stairs through the back yard into the woods, winding through cypress, pine, cedar and maple down a narrow trail to the pond, my favorite spot on the property.
.
Myself and big pack took our usual places. I in my well worn
Its mobile communications and navigation capabilities are state of the art consumer electronics; the optics, imaging and defense platform designed by the best (myself). It's a little more than "home on your back."
The coffee was especially good, churlishly hot, playfully swollen with flavor hinting sweet through an aromatic base of treelike vapors silting the tongue and overwhelming the sinus, beginning its trellis reach beyond the cerebrum where all is nothing but transcendence.
Then I rolled a doobie.
I thank someone for this load. It looks good on me because I carry it well. It's more than I would ask for but it's no more than I can handle if I work at it every day and dream of it every night. I am more at ease contemplating the load than hoisting it. My excuse is that every aspect of the load must now be considered for its wealth and wisdom, its breadth and depth, mass, form.
I see time brings no mercy to the journey.
Though my shoulders have given in strength what they have gained in poise, I am more in measure than those parts of myself that strode before me. The best evidence is in my flesh, so stranded before tender mercy and the violent crush of each individual destiny, each straining warp and each immaculate weave of the tapestry, the fabric…the matrix, the conscious body that brings us life even as we discourage or discount it.
Nobody's perfect. But we are all beautiful, as no one of us is more suited to the purpose of humanity than another, no one of us is a larger vessel of light than another, if seen without the bias of night. Fear consumes light, and thus obscures the simple beauty of life. To bow before fear is to rob us of our natural dignity.
A body needs quiet from time to time. A place apart from others. a temple of solitude where weight of the world is lifted from our shoulders. With a mailbox at least a few miles distant. As moss begins to gather on the hinges, we realize we owe a debt for our lives.
Sometimes the less one needs the more one can gain from the experience of solitude. There isn’t room for everyone in the world to be alone so the one who requires the least ultimately wins.
Every year the pond grows more lush, more sublime. The vegetation, now waist and shoulder high displaces the carpet of native ferns, dug up and moved to the front of the property along the fence. Digging the pond was the first project I attacked after I built the house, and it’s where the best solitude can be found.
Sitting and smoking here since before the pond, I must have become part and parcel of this place. I remember the day the pond was born, because I was in the woods tending a very private crop when it happened.
One bright Saturday morning a flatbed truck pulled up the driveway and unloaded a backhoe, which churned down the ancient rail winding through the pygmy cypress and redwood trees of the mostly untouched forest toward the shore a couple of miles distant.
Grey, alkaline dust plumes rolled off fat tires and hung unsteadily in the air. Centuries old, the trail hadn’t suffered a vehicle for decades.
A greasy, snarling, insect-like machine roamed through mature trees no more than a yard tall, stunted by the salty, unforgiving soil.
The machine paused at a soggy spot in the trail where a tiny spring created a perpetual bog. In lieu of a path, a collection of boards and branches helped keep passersby from sinking into the threatening mire.
Agile, powerful, the backhoe lunged and retreated, its claw on one end ripped up the dry, caked soil near the muck hole. A bucket on the opposite end scooped the torn-up earth and dumped it in a growing pile.
It gnarled at the ancient surface, churling, grinding, it snapped roots and tore up rocks, tearing with its claw at the most tender vegetation sprung from the dry seabed. The machine proved itself on the food chain as a wrecker of things.
The sun edged the low horizon, the light grew weary, the backhoe spun around and disappeared up the trail from whence it came. It left behind a hole cavernous enough to contain the monster that created it, as though the machine, limited to industrial logic and hopelessly dependent on petroleum, could perceive its own demise.
A hole in the ground will eventually attract something, mostly due to simple laws of gravity. The pond hole collected rainwater and debris and over the years the trickling spring filled the hole with muck and clutter, up to its stagnant brim.
The mounded berm that rimmed the murky pond held the darkest soil from the deepest part of the hole. It yielded the richest color, like ground cocoa. It sprouted, and as the pond’s turgid waters settled, the mound came to life.
Naked soil grew resplendent with plants, shrubs and saplings, with every empty area crammed with virulent ice plant.
The pond slowly metamorphosed from a soggy, insidious nuisance to a glorious
It seemed the pond had always been right where it was. The ancient trail always led to this peaceful place of lush contemplation, oasis for hundreds of airborne visitors.
They came and went, come and go, and some stay longer than others, but always the strong survive. The pond became proof of life, a scratch in the earth infected with vigor and flourish.
A ladybug buzzed lazily along a low trajectory over the stubbled patch of bogwood when it spied the pond and circled to reconnoiter the area. It cast a tiny shadow over a knot of striders, spider-like insects on the surface of the pond, who snapped to attention, ready for combat.
The ladybug slammed into the water on its back, half-submerged and completely confused. The striders jumped on it in a hoary mass of long, sticklike legs clattering for a chance to murder the invader.
The mightiest of the crew seized first upon the ladybug and held it with several arms while fending off hungry cousins with several others. Its remaining legs struggled toward the shore, and strategic advantage. There, the warrior bug snapped legs off at the joints, ripped heads clean off fat, shiny bodies as it dragged its drowning dinner into the ice plant, and a more easily defended position.
The battle raged, though all the striders grew weary in the sun and their bodies dried. Soon, the ladybug regained its breath, and flexed its wings inside the strider’s many grips.
Suddenly, the ladybug broke free and soared into the sky in a widening circle that flattened out toward the seashore.
The striders stood motionless for a moment or two, strode across the water and collected in a knot at the opposite end of the pond in the shadow of a century-old bull pine that managed to grow about five feet tall.
I was in no hurry for the two-mile walk to work through the woods and over the ridge, past the
Or really stoned. My power to heal or to obtain greater spiritual awareness has always been intimately related to the judicial implementation of plants and fungus or an occasional fanciful notion that simply won’t go away, otherwise, copal fumes and frankincense suffice today, a song to bong the gang slowly.
Freezing rain turned to snow. Resting my pack on a slushy rock bench, I switch on the GPS for a satellite fix and it tells me it may take fifteen minutes to figure out where I am. This provides ample opportunity for a wee spot of the old Tullamore Dew and a puff on the Meerschaum, the due of every Irish storyteller.
I switch off the headlamp and turn on two lithium area lamps strapped to my pack. Their crepuscular, craven dim glow illuminates an eerie scene, rather like a postcard from purgatory. It could be the LED bulbs of the area lamps, or could be the pipe and flask, but faint, blue snow seems to be obscuring everything in sight. I wake up and wipe the snow off my glasses.
I’ve a reading on the GPS. I know where it is I am determined to go though the infernal instrument doesn’t seem to show me an easier way to get there.
I packed my steamer trunk snow began falling a trick to pack enough can never take it all the khaki or loden worsted or twill a hat or knife a boot too much overfilling the bill I saw solid gold idols far north of Katmandu rode camels for a week sipped tea in Timbuktu looked for El Dorado sailed on seven seas rode across Bolivia over the Pyrenees shrunken heads beds of nails olden cup tiger’s tail crystal skull the magic lyre these and more have crossed my trail each has left a curious tale as when grandpa and I dug for clams at low tide nasturtiums thrashed at the old canvas circus tent disturbing my slumber I rose from my cot slipped into storm gear rolled my bike into the night muddy tracks hugged an agate beach I rode a ridge threading Arcadian wilds pines heaved rhododendrons on my legs this engine drove me to rush the moon huge and orange over a winding treebound river rode my brakes down the wet trail where the river snakes into the Atlantic the marina's swinging electric lights hissing in the rain cast shadows dancing on a shiny boardwalk mud splattered from tires sticking to my knickers at the far end of the pier moored the dark teak and ivory and brass trimmed Waterfalls of Suriname raindrops pounded my helmet I peered in a tree twinkled in the candlelit salon cheery on the mahogany counter supper wafted from the decks pulling anchor to head East full sail a bone in her teeth she made for the far islands drawn like a shimmering wraith a white speck blown into the horizon waterspouts shot skyward splattered I dug against a fresh northerly wind my task was done and a meal won sand beneath the toes and feet sucked by the incoming tide I often wonder how my life would be sitting with the wife and kids in our two story home I’m out here on this bike instead rushing the moon the twilight has set free I should be mortgage-broke scared of life afraid of anything resembling a thrill I should get my answers from the same source as everyone else the same grind the same mill shouldn’t tell you of my secret lives I know the dangers of telling you what brings me pleasure or tell you where to find my treasure life’s like well-worn cookie jar that’s felt the tugs of a dozen generations of little hands won’t find what I’m looking for until I dig the deepest like when digging at low tide for clams that boiled the wind-whipped orange nasturtiums pounded the tent I played one-handed scrabble by a Coleman lamp the night was coal black and the campfire spent I ate clam chowder won and lost word games and learned lessons about rain sea and sand I zipped on my weather suit left the dry tent and rode into the rain I love being dry when the world is wet biking through a storm fat knobby tires splashing mud I love to rush the moon rising huge and orange from the banks of a slow river I think digging for clams is like life in how you muck through the sand in order find the good like a big cookie jar with a cookie in there that's got my name on it baked from a special recipe one big fat cookie in a bleak cold universe and the harder I pedal the sweeter it will taste I rush the moon because I can I won't find satisfaction with the crumbs.
I tapped my roach on the arm of the chair, black after many years of this habit, and dropped a tight round bud into my glass pipe. The MicroTorch lighter disappeared the golden herb to white dust in seconds.
I’m on target, but can no longer see the trail. Soon I’ll be in deep woods and could lose the GPS signal entirely. Magellan himself would have a hard time charting a course through this thickening snowfall. They said this stuff could kill me, but I’m warmed by the flask and pipe.
I have 103 ways to die out here.
Sure, there was a woman. The heart of any good story beats inside of one. I made her up. I’m a writer…that’s what we do.
I examined her from every angle, an orchid hunter alone in the jungle, with no one looking over my shoulder.
I could not capture her, nor could I live without her. Nine years of enchantment was all I could handle, in the end there’s nothing left but words frozen on a page.
At the close of my rousing final semester of teaching English at
My renderings of Kerouac while wearing sunglasses and smoking a cigaret would have seemed natural any place else but a classroom, pacing back and forth on a table while spilling coffee and kicking papers to the floor.
Stony Shakespeare and fractured Ferlinghetti did little to capture my audience at eight in the morning, so I gradually learned how to let my classes do the teaching while I became the observer.
Sadly, the Governor’s push to build more prisons resulted in budget cuts that eliminated my position. Faced with the prospect of a long, dreary and possibly unemployed winter, I was overjoyed when I got a call from Dean Lustic at Honey Springs Academy of Women…widely known in academic circles as
Most teachers don’t last long around the headstrong, super-smart, gorgeous women on campus. Beyond the rarified air, sweet waters and whispered librettos of the trees, elements conspire in Honey Springs, they dwell in the forest and ponds around
The water in Honey Springs is as sweet as plum blossoms, it bubbles freely from the earth. Grapes and pears in Honey Springs are more tender and juicy than anywhere. The air never seems to stand still and breeze-blown hair is an irksome, everyday condition among residents.
The Academy is nicknamed Breathless U because it is home to some of the most beautiful women in the West. The campus is an icon of exquisite rapture. A place where reality can often be stranger than fantasy.
It is no surprise Dean Lustic hired me. It’s said the truly afflicted are those with no afflictions. My affliction is a surly devotion to Tara Vinson, the multi-gold-winning R&B singer who is the most beautiful woman in the human population, and the presumed cause of my status as a vacant Holy One.
One ruled entirely by recent memories, all of Tara Vinson.
Dean Lustic assumed my affliction would save me from being distracted by the students while I taught the most electrifying class on campus at Breathless U: ROMANCE TECHNOLOGY: TARA VINSON 101. I supplied my own chalk at Mudville. Breathless offered multimedia computer platforms, a selection of learning suites and a personal interior designer.
I chose a cozy corner suite looking out on olive and nectarine trees and cool
I came early to chew a pencil and stare out the window. I chose deep maroon wallpaper to compliment the red carpet (though Deepak, my designer, fought bitterly for burnt umber), scarlet, maroon/umber and white striped silk drapes, red leather sofas with white silk throw pillows and a white Boesendorfer grand piano.
Color copies of my pencil drawings of Tara Vinson hung in gleaming brass frames on every wall. An Osaka-bred periphonic sound system finished my suite, loaded with Tara Vinson, natural soundscapes, as well as Tara Vinson singing in various natural and atmospheric tone realms.
The women of Breathless U have quite a reputation for being just a little out of hand. They revel in everything they do, and they basically do just about anything they want, from Barbies to Children of the Corn.
I recall the fatal morning toward the close of my first semester, as the last Sycamore leaves fluttered past the French doors and Tara Vinson sang and danced on the 70-inch plasma screen TV…which I lovingly rechristened the TaraVision.
Verushka Polodonia was having breakfast at her workstation (dining in class had apparently become commonplace if not mandatory).
I sat staring at a tasty wall. She loves lemon-custard panisse femme…she jabbed at it with her fluttery long tongue and dislodged a randy dollop that splattered much too near her MacBook. Verushka licked her leglike fingers, sucking custard from a maroon raisin jubilee nail, flawlessly shaped and polished, smiling at me from between sticky, lip sucked digits as Scarlett McQueen, a Belle de Jour in a scrappy red dress and greasy Doc Martens, pulled a plate of leftover duck l’orange from the microwave and shared it with her very pregnant sofa-mate, Summer Knights, Scarlett explaining to Summer that she didn’t know anything about having no babies and shuddered visibly at the very thought, jettisoning her appetite as Summer wolfed the remains of the platter next to Cher and Cheron, the twins, who munched on salmon and brie and butterfly cookies, disgusted by Summer’s incessant baby chatter they shook their permed heads at the quiet, earthshaking terrors of pregnancy, weight gain and genetically modified food while Sedna Waycat sucked slowly on her 44-ounce Big Shot, savoring the tablespoonful of hot cherry frappe, drawing it slowly up the straw, sloshing and gurgling, her peachy lips extracted the last of the liquid from the noisy tube and she let out a deep, throaty laugh, tossed her rambunctious red curls everywhere, lit a Camel and punched up her girlfriend on a flipfone, fixing her hazel feline eyes on the professor collecting himself as Cami approached his desk, toting a shiny bag of Crunchems that she offered and we sat there crunching in unison as I stuck my hand again and again into Cami’s little bag. She stared into my eyes and popped more Crunchems into her mouth…stretching, flipping her wavy hair, yawing as though suddenly exhausted from munching Crunchems yanked from her hand by Terramundi sulking at my desk, glaring at Cami with smoking eyes…flaring her racehorse nostrils…Terramundi cocked her hip, threw a handful of asslength hair over her shoulder slipped her fingers into the shiny little bag forcing a tight smile from her unguent, rubygloss lips aimed at the professor.
She stared into my eyes and popped more Crunchems into her mouth, stretching, flipping her wavy hair, yawing as though suddenly exhausted from munching Crunchems:
“Jou haf time tonite-a to a-help a-me weeth a-school. No?”
“Not tonight, hot stuff!” Sugar Gold leapt over her table, cartwheeled to my desk. “It’s the gymnastics meet tonight, Prof!” She jiggled to stasis then deftly mounted herself with a stark, fluid skill bordering on torturous, muscular rapture.
“You promised the whole squad, Prof! Don’t let us down.” Cami flushed, her fists on her hips, ready to mount all over.
“Gee, I don’t know, girls…better work on the story tonight.” I pondered lamely, having worn such excuse into the ground. Laranda, front left corner, crossed her legs. No skivvies. Again.
“But professor, have you forgotten about me?”
I took lunch with a gallon of Dreyer’s peanut brittle ice cream. In the sauna I smeared the contents all over my skin. Miss Apesbury slipped in. With no glasses, she’s bat-blind. She sniffed the air. Her damp, round eyes stared.
“Professor! I see you’re at it again. I have never seen this approach to teaching.”
“The English language is about feeling, Miss Apesbury. You see, I just feel different.”
A crunchy handful slipped down my thighs. I jammed some ice cream into my mouth, placed two blobs over my eyes and let them melt over my cheeks and drip onto my chest, down my belly to the floor.
Dean Parse sauntered into the sauna, munching on a piece of celery. She plopped down next to Miss Apesbury. She paused, chewing her stalk.
“Obsession as a learning tool.” She sweated into a puddle.
“How’s that working for you, pray tell?” She leered.
I smeared two big handfuls of ice cream through my black hair. I filled my armpits and mashed it between my toes and dumped some down my back.
“Developing language is learning how to ascend.” I snorted an errant nostrilful of ice cream onto my knee. I thought for a moment of some place without ice cream. Some place possibly bereft of any moment of joy or promise of ascention. Some dreary, dreamwracked place in need of love’s attention. Melting ice cream spread upon my hips, flowed down in a sweet declension.
Dean Santana, towel wrapped around her hair, slipped into the sauna.
Dean Santana gazed at me. Her lips parted, her nostrils flared, she sighed and her eyes took on a hard, electric look.
“In my department, we need every stimulation we can get.” She gulped. She undulated over to where I melted glacially.
“Do you mind if I have some.”
I dug my hands deep into the box and smeared it all over Dean Santana.
She choked and shook slightly. Her skin erupted in goosebumps, then withered in the heat. Her eyes danced like twin candles in a breeze.
“Oh.” Dean Santana murmured. I scooped again.
“My.” Dean Santana murmured. I spun her about and did her backside. I’m not a huge fan of peanut brittle, strawberry would have looked better on her ass. I dropped Santana’s towel and smeared handfuls through her long, silky hair. Sticky messes, we all showered and leapt in the pool then got dressed.
Miss Apesbury fiddled with a welk on her chin, checked her teeth and did lipstick. She yanked on her pants, laced her boots and slipped into a lacy tank top. Dean Santana toweled her naked slippery self slowly, as though she didn’t want to miss a thing. She shot a glance at me that would turn
I fumbled around in my locker for something that wasn’t there…something I was likely never to find. I always regretted the short lunch breaks at
When I returned to class the girls were playing the new Tara Vinson video “Taj. The girls had abandoned their workstations and gathered around the TaraVision, munching popcorn and sipping sodas and power drinks.
Tara Vinson belly danced inside the Taj Mahal in seven veils…any one of which no more than a wink of an eye.
Fully dressed She was completely naked. Snakes writhed at Her feet and doves fluttered about marble columns.
Some of the less afflicted students sat on the red carpet, milled about or pondered aimlessly as the professor sat at his desk, clearly hypnotized by the TaraVision. Completely bored, Phelandra tossed two corn pops at Donprakarnen, who pulled them from her hair. A few errant strands caught on her lips. She pulled at them slowly and gazed at Phelandra, who sat crosslegged, grinning with her hands on her knees.
Donprakarnen picked up her plate of pate and crawled over to Phelandra. She scooped up pate with her little finger and stuck it in Phelandra’s ear, removed it with her tongue. Donprakarnen finished her chore, and the two wrestled loudly across the carpet.
Triplets Akira, Aprika and Aria scolded the roughhousers:
“Will you porkers get out of the way so we can see Tara Vinson!”
“She’s down to four veils!” Aprika roared angrily.
Chesney Maidenshire grabbed Donprakarnen’s leg, dragged her across the carpet. Phelandra snagged Donprakarnen’s bangled, tattooed wrist and dragged back. Somewhere in the mixup clothes were getting lost. Donprakarnen grabbed a handful of pate as she slid past and splattered Chesney in the head. QP Thunders stuffed her rice, mango, swordfish wrap into Sara’s big face. Sara dumped
“You guys!” Glee hollered. “She’s down to three veils!”
Verushka Polodonia yanked Glee Chumley’s collar, poured Sedna Waycat’s hot cherry frappe down her lithe back, staining her snowy linen tee a bright scarlet. Sugar Gold stood spread-eagled in her cherry pink cheerleader’s uniform, blocking everyone’s view of the TaraVision. Sugar mounted Terramundi and wrestled her to the floor. Running shoes and Argyle socks, water bottles and orange peels, parfaits, baguettes, bon bons, Caesar’s salad Boston Baked Beans, garlic croutons flew over the crowd derelict debutantes.
Cami yanked handfuls of Pica’s curly mop, Akira and Shoshone took each other in sweaty, muscular half-nelsons, Ginger Pokorny locked Sakumatokatuni Watanabe in handcuffs, and pinned her to the floor, chewing on her face in mad lust. Poppy Munfritz rolled in cannoli and knocked over poor Vesuvia, she got fresh-out-of-the-oven tofurky stuffing unloaded on her lace bodice. Caledonia Gatoraded the entire crowd.
“Chill out, you maniacs! Two veils left!” The writhing, slimy females froze in tableau. “Quiet, you guys. One veil!” Verushka snarled.
You could’ve heard a slice of pepperoni hit the carpet. Chancellor Frugalhorn strode into the center of the suite. One veil remained but Frugalhorn hit the remote, grinning menacingly at the huge black screen.
“I hate to seem rude, but how does this relate to teaching?” Collective groans, tsunamis of sighs swept the squishy, lumpy wet mobsters.
“Isn’t this whole Tara Vinson thing a bit like climbing
“Can’t you teach Shakespeare or something? Alice Walker? Palahniuk?” She sneered at the students, the suite and mostly at me.
“You call it a learning tool, but it’s how you cope.”
Some folks will hang themselves with an inch of rope. That’s what makes teaching so hard at
Language liberated me from
I drove at dawn with a Thermos of coffee, a sack of toasty bagels with cream cheese and a digital recorder. All I ever wanted to do was drive. Now, being there is most of the fun. Many mornings were spent with a telescope tracing my hike from the deck of my Quonset hut.
It wound around several small alpine lakes between Two Sisters and back to the pass. Dark crevices, a razorlike ridge, a glimmering snow patch or two.
I studied a hanging valley mottled in sunlight or nearly lost in haze much of the time, an unseeable, unknowable place from the rail of the Quonset deck. Often, by moonlight I could imagine myself somewhere in the folds of rock and scatter of trees beneath the saw tooth ridge buttressed by the Sisters.
Some place devoid of man. Or the trappings.The dark places, wide open spaces…rainbows and light, thundering might of wind and rain, of sun and storm…the brilliance of day, the dark forlorn.
Majestic magenta, the sunset’s show, purpling sawtooth ridges of snow. Sway and knock of wind in the pines, ravening thickets of boughs and vines. The moribund glens, coves in the gloaming fetch little comfort for I, who am roaming.
The lightless, terrible bleakness of things, the coming of darkness and all that it brings. Things that I don’t hear, things that I do visit my mind as they’re passing through. The orbit of fear over dreams of the mild. In the deep of the night, the call of the wild.
It call is as deep as the waters and it flows as a river of dreams.
As long as memory it has been here, bathing, blessing, feeding my people carrying us afar and back once more. My people give it old familiar names that change as time flows past. Always it flows to salve us every one.
Water builds cities, washes our dead brings us to war and wins our peace, it lifts our despair and cleans our eyes. Hatred raging as unslakeable thirst flows past the doors of my people. They taste from the soul of the Beast.
The river is my people full of dream, drunk on want and bloated desire, arid souls and hollow hearts flaming. The river promises a sumptuous kiss…seductive plenty without satisfaction threading beyond curtained windows.
People and river being one and same, starving beyond a hope of fulfillment, build boats to trade jewels and spices but gain nothing when our homes are lost and seeds lay on soil destroyed by the sun.
A river of love flows past my people, yet it is wisdom abandoned if we do not drink. It flows past us with eternal promise but my people damp their tongues on tears.
My lap has filled with snow. I guess it’s time to go. Each of us has the power to create destiny. Warmed by the Tullamore Dew and funky Meerschaum, I could easily camp right here and be happy.
But I wouldn’t be home for Christmas, like I promised, and by the time I wake up, the trail would be impossible to find. I switch off the area lamps and switch on the headlamp. With the aid of trekking poles, I am miraculously raised from the rock. My inbound tracks are gone. I’ll follow the arrow on the GPS until the signal fades.
Curiously comfortable out here, more than that provided by expensive technical gear or the flask and knob. I seem to know where I am going, beyond the GPS, the compass, the dotted lines or notched trees.
My boots have bones in their teeth as they haul through foaming fresh powder. Thick woods, deep snow and pitch dark don’t bother me. My Big Pack seems to lead the way, and I must struggle to keep pace with it.
With the money I spent on this gear, I could have bought a huge home theater system, and right now I could be in bed, watching a rented movie about a guy who goes out into the woods to make a fool of himself over a woman. My laughter is sucked instantly into the silent night.
My poles and boots punch their way up a ridge toward a plateau. The snow ceases, a full moon glows bright behind scudding cumuli. A cozy glow throbs from the ridge above, my steps are light, as though carried on air.
The trees scatter, the ground flattens and before me stands my home, under a thick blanket of snow. My snuggly cabin reaches out to me with golden window panes and four smoking chimneys, beckoning with ham and pie in the ovens, and coffee on the stove.
Every stone and log is as it has always been. The path winding from the heavy oak door leads right to my feet. A gas light shines from a pole to light my trail, and from it hangs a wreath, tied with a red ribbon, a bow at the top. I plunge past the door and its well-oiled hinges, leaving the dark and empty behind.
This is Home, as I left it a lifetime ago.
I lay in my winter's nap, eyes fixed on the moon. Neither awake nor asleep, dreaming nor stirring I think of coffee and perhaps a bowl of something friendly at my side. Thick blankets curled around me like the
Between the moon and sun, night and day I lay suspended, a shipless argonaut on the backside of orbit.
I smell cinnamon.
Light and airy, it dances around my nose. Intoxicating aromatics, familiar to a thousand generations of slumbering souls, sink deeper into my consciousness. A hot, glacial, buttery sugary flow bubbles over a swollen swirl of sweet, speckled cake teasing and tantalizing complex implications from my mind's sunlit pantry.
Hovering at the trailing edge of sleep, when the warmth of linen and comfort of blankets blissfully drown the awful noise of the outside world and there seems to be nothing left but hope for sleep, a pungent rasp of sourdough bread baking in one of the ovens muscles aside the sweet cinnamon and makes way for cedar boughs, spicy cones and the pungent, woodsy grip of a noble fir tree dominating the downstairs living room, next to the fireplace same as always.
Persimmon cookies, fresh out of the oven on a cooling rack next to the loaves of pumpkin and cranberry bread, waft spicily through the steamy kitchen, collecting a mob of juicy, provocative smells from bubbling ham to carrot cake, mince pie to fatass ganga, hot cocoa and dank furniture, pungent old women and mulling spices, gingerbread, oak and maple yuletide fire, blasts of cold fresh air along with mysterious hashish clouds swirling in a tangled vortex rushing up the stairs to collect beneath my snoozing snout.
I descend the stairs haltingly as a scene opens up before me, expanding with every step. A small dog scurries to the foot of the stairs and wags its tail, staring. It blows out a couple of nervous yaps, but draws no attention from two small children playing with a trainset on a dark brown oval rug. One of them looks up slowly at me as I descend the stairs. A little girl. She knits her brow curiously then returns to her toy locomotive.
An elderly woman in a deeply faded salmon dress walks past, carrying a platter of sliced bread to the long table cascading with layers of food arranged around huge roasts of turkey, ham and beef.
A lovely blonde, pigtailed girl in red and green sits at the long table scribbling in a coloring book, resolutely ignoring the old woman's platter as it lands at her elbow. Another step or two reveals the sofa, where men and boys and cat sit at a clamoring television set drinking from cans, bottles or glasses.
At the piano, a couple of youngsters hammer at a vague, seasonally-inspired melody but balk at the suggestion of a Christmas carol, as though they had been asked to dissect a rotted manatee. A baby plays quietly at one end of a wooly brown rug, a shiny black coal car in her little hand.
Another older woman stands by a window gazing outside, a cup in her hand. A gush of ganja drifts upstairs from an unknown quarter of the premises, a bright Purple Kush accompanied by a talented, brash Arabica, fresh off a brewing cycle. (bit slow on the roast but not long from
So many people, and they all smell familiar. Most of them seem to be busy chopping tomatoes, washing dishes, putting wood on the fire, but as I reach the bottom of the stairs and the whole buzz of activity becomes clear.
I see it cannot be the doing, so much as the being that seems to matter. Few do little, observe the fellow sitting with his notebook and pen who doesn't seem to be completely aware of space and time. He stares out the window.
Two more little girls sit near the Christmas tree playing with dolls. One busies herself forcing a tiny saddle shoe onto the foot of her preppy ornithologist, the other brushes thick strands of long, perfect chestnut hair on a sullen ecotech, booted, scarved and appropriately accessorized for a Bolivian scientific expedition along with her birdwatching friend.
The splendid tree, perfection in every respect, topped by a bright silver star, reaches to the ceiling. Hours of work and years of tradition seem evident in the intricate dressing and decorating of the tree: the marvelous strings of lights and dozens of kertylis, little candles clipped to branches but never actually lit. Chains of golden foil, icicles of bubbling water, glass globes and red-capped, white-dotted mushrooms made of ceramic and wood hang next to snowmen and reindeer, the most enduring arboreal icons of the winter season.
Some fabulous sports moment erupts the tv crowd in hoots, spasms and sly reprimands so the conversational level among the women in the kitchen quickly rises to match. The noisiest among the cooks stirs a kettle with a long wooden spoon...she turns her head to nod at the woman next to her who jabs a melon balling spoon into the air while attempting to make a point.
The heavy front door swings open and more hoots and hollers ensue as another old woman smelling of bottled frangipani and turgid violet followed by an equally smelly old man (tobacco, the lady's second-hand perfume, whiskey, coffee and roasted chestnuts) rumble into the room lugging armloads of shiny shopping bags and giftwrapped boxes.
The little mutt yaps incessantly as his springlike front paws bounce off the floor, then he zigs and zags among the dozens of shoes back to his spot where he curls up beneath the tree blinking his hairy eyes.
A big gush of air from the outside carries scents of trees and fresh fallen snow. Icy and penetrating, it disappears among the happy people.
Presiding over all of this hangs a framed Jesus, looming over a shiny walnut bookcase jammed to the margins with fiction, romance, poetry and derring-do. His eyes follow everyone in the room from His perch by the curtained window. They follow mine as I weave my way through the proceedings to the living room, the sliding glass door and the great outdoors.
The icy deck hangs over a pristine snow field untouched in every direction, fresh fallen it sparkles in the moonlight...billions of jeweled specks shimmer like the starfield overhead fleeting among the clouds. The oblivious vastness of night sucks up much of the joyous clamor inside, the teeming silence of the deep woods all around drawing into the dark, into the intimate lair of blackness. I hover at the rail alone in my thoughts. It seems I am a singular celestial object floating over a starfield...this starfield…all of this is my creation.
From my aerie it seemed the colors of night are simpler, a more limited pallet thus more options for extravagance. A pewter and silver moon surrounded by glistening pearl cosmonauts ensconced in indigo velvet.
Night is the time to sneak around. Were I snow, I'd cunningly drop my blankets while no one is watching and dance naked in the woods...skirting across rolling fields...draping lace across meadow fences...powdering bough and branch, pebble and plant. Sprinkling the most brambulous thickets with a creamy cloak of innocence, under the full moon, the tide on the rocks...
...the blackened forest curled in dreamy slumber.
When all is still in field and farm, locked in cold and sheened with ice...when nothing is about to see me come and go I'd pull my blankets across the sky and drop them at my feet. I'd make a gentle mess of everything in sight. They'd curse, but forgive what I do.
Were you I, you'd not resist the temptation to fix the world in the same soothing light...to freeze the moments between the seasons, painting life with simple tools but a curious nature.
Chilled to the bone, I turn and slip back into the warm, friendly cabin. Kids gather around a small table as adults spread a feast before them. Adults, as though alarmed by a silent bell, begin to migrate toward the long table. They jockey for chairs as I pass, making my way up the stairs, I turn for one last look as the long table fills with noisy, delighted people.
I curl up in bed, wrap myself tightly in temples of worship and gaze out the window at the battered nickel moon, lifting into the night sky.
There is a moment at the close of a long journey when the kneecaps tingle though they haven’t left the chair. My coffee was cold, I tossed it among the iceplant. Tepco china. Don’t make them like that any more.
I tap my roach on the wide, flat arm of the old
According to established routine, it would now be time to hike back up to the house, snag a bagel or something and head off to work. Something about the last day of work, the last day of reckoning how I can help a bloke get on in the wilds. It can wait...maybe I’ll stay a little longer here.
I reckon the best are as good as what they leave behind.
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