A Waste of Time

   I recently returned from New Mexico where I had volunteered for a job at the Gila Wilderness. The job did not work out so I came home. Some friends have told me that they are sorry that I wasted my time going all that distance.
   It was bitter cold in Deming, New Mexico where I stopped for gas and coffee. An old guy came walking by. His had a pack and layers of cheap sweaters and jackets. A little dog followed him. I asked him if he could use a five and he told me about being used to the cold and how he had his dog for twelve years, far longer than any of his three wives. He explained that his dog was a wild dog, as evidenced by a total lack of dew claws. He said goodbye, God blessing me with a grimy handshake.
   The weather worsened as I went north toward higher country and finally came to a hill that I could not climb with my two wheel drive. I backed to a place where I could turn around and drove back to a lodge that was closed for the season. I could hear talking and laughing so I knocked and asked if I could get a room. They opened a room for me, even though they were closed.
   A guy was playing guitar in the dining room so I asked to join him. We played for a couple of hours as I joined a reunion of friends and family of the lodge owners. They invited me to their family New Years Eve Party that night. The family and nearby friends, mostly aging hippies made me welcome. Three of us played guitar and I danced with the young ladies. Firewords, menudo, and a lot of laughter. The next day the road cleared enough to go to the Wilderness.
   Two days later I was on the road home. Not one regret.

Vision Quest

During our high school days we sought wild and remote places for our rites of passage, disguised as camping trips. We packed the necessities; beanie wienies,, potted meat, corned beef hash, etc. Much smoke was called for, so we bought cheap cigars which we smoked until our tongues were blistered. We drank a horrible alcohol ladened concoction called Champale. The name says it all. We always set up beside a stream in which we skinny dipped, occasionally lining up as God made us to wave at rare passersby. At night our transistors picked up clear channel AM stations from far cities playing old rock and roll.
The center of it all was a huge fire around which we philosophized through the night into the early morning hours, talking about girls, cars, our futures, and girls. We marveled at the seriousness and lack of energy of our respective parents, especially since we had life so clearly figured out. 
Every so often we would all stop talking and listen.

Gifts

   Some years ago I was in Inverness, Scotland. A policeman recommended a nice B&B on the banks of a beautiful river. The first night I went into town and stopped in an old hotel to listen to a folk group play a few. A very tall young man walked toward the corner where I sat. He wore the type of beard that starts just below the eyes, covering most of the facial features, except for a scar that went from an eyebrow, through his mustache, then down his chin. We talked between songs, his thick brogue and my grits accent making that somewhat difficult.His scar came from an IRA bomb in Belfast, where he served with the British army. We traded war stories and he sang along with the band on a couple of songs. When the last bus was due, he said with that wonderful burr, "I'll miss you, lad."
   The next morning at breakfast, I asked the proprietor about hitchhiking to Culloden Moor.  Another customer overheard my question and said he was going to a boat and engine show in that direction. He had recently moved from Australia to reopen a small shipyard. We toured that sad battlefield, then rode to Loch Ness and the nearby trade show. He talked of his move and his family. He was so proud of his children, especially his Downe's Syndrome son, whose picture he showed me. After wishing me a good trip and dropping me at the B&B, he went on his way.
   In those two days, traveling alone. so very far from home, two total strangers gave me the gifts of their kindness, a bit of their lives, and a small story to keep and share for as long as I live.

Communion

I walked a silent path this Sunday morning. None of the other walkers asked where I was last Sunday or if I had been walking another path. No one criticized any other trail as being too fundamental or too worldly.
Some walkers were solitary. Others walked as couples, some holding hands, and the make up of the couples didn't matter.
And so I took communion; without rule or restriction, without barrier, conduit or interpreter.

Priscilla's Neckless

  I’m not a particularly handsome man so when she fell for me I was more than surprised. Priscilla was beautiful, a honey blonde with green almond shaped eyes, with a slight tilt. Her cheek bones were perfectly sculpted. She was beautiful and I should have fallen in love with her forever, except for one thing.

  Priscilla had no neck. I don’t mean that she had a short neck. She had no neck. Her chin was constantly chapped from rubbing on her chest. Her ear lobes touched her shoulders. When she turned her head she had to look up at a forty five degree angle. I never knew whether she had a collar bone.

  Now, I am a tolerant man and possibly I could have overlooked this imperfection in, for example, a bald woman, or one of large proportions, but I could not bear this flaw in my otherwise perfect goddess. My eyes and thoughts kept returning to that one imperfection, as they would to a mustache on the Mona Lisa or a plaid jock strap on the David.

  It all came to a head on her birthday when I thoughtlessly purchased a cameo suspended from a rather short gold chain. It is difficult to describe the painful conclusion to that evening. She looked up at me, something she shouldn’t have been able to do, and told me to leave. I turned once to see her strange silhouette running down the empty street.

  I didn’t see her for five years; five years during which great strides were made in vertebrae transplants. Her chance at normalcy came when a donor, a former center for the Boston Celtics, died in a crash. We tried to rekindle that old feeling, even tried to neck, but it just wasn’t the same.

  The evening came when she again told me to go, then bent down to kiss the top of my head.

The Lipham Store

  She owns and runs the Lipham clothing store in downtown Talapoosa, Georgia. The store takes up three store fronts of former businesses. A Red Goose Shoes sign, common when I was a child, caught my eye. We went in and experienced that near forgotten smell of leather, cloth, and oiled floors.
 She owns and runs the Lipham clothing store in downtown Talapoosa, Georgia. Her grandfather started the store in 1895. Her father first brought her to the store as an infant, in a box. At age two, she had the job of bringing string to her Dad in those days before paper or plastic bags. She is now 86.
  The prices are surprisingly low, but many of her older suppliers are out of business or headed that way, due to overseas competition and super store dominance. Her store has two qualities that can't be matched in any superstore or mall; vast experience and personal service. She knows, for instance, that a farmer's overalls have to be larger in the waist and shorter in the legs than his regular pants. She will check to see if she can find odd sizes and call the customer to let them know the outcome. She knows the families. She knows history.
  If you get down that way, do yourself a favor and go to Talapoosa, and buy a shirt or two from a vanishing piece of American history.

The Felsenmeer 10/29/2011

   It is one of those fall days, the first cold windy day after a relatively warm string of autumn days. The air is clear and the wind gusty. Leaves are falling and swirling.
   On a similar day in Germany, some years ago, we drove into the Odenwald  to an area called the Felsenmeer, the sea of rocks, an area where an ancient continental glacier had once deposited tons of rocks in giant piles and rows where hardwood forests would eventually grow among the stones.
  Our first daughter, almost two at the time, was enchanted by the combinations of colors; lichen, leaves, granite and trees. As we walked the trails she became most uncharacteristically quiet. Finally, she began to dance with the blowing, falling leaves. Round and round, as a child will do with her arms stretched out to catch the colors and her blonde curls bouncing on her head. Sometimes I believe in magic. Sometimes I believe in enchantment.
   A day like this always brings this memory back to me.