Westward Ho!

Last night PW and I watched a (nother) western movie in preparation for our epic "Westward Ho" trip this September. Neither one of us has even a smidge of bow-leggedness in our bones, nor do we "pack" our pistols when we pack, but we're really looking forward to experiencing the Great American West. We have begun stacking stuff by the door already, which is our motus operandi work-around for PW's ADD and my leaky brain. The reasoning is that if we have to trip over it to get to the car, we won't forget it. So far we have stacked our Grand Canyon hats, some Levi's and our chic-kicking rodeo boots. The hybrid Rav-4 is not exactly the Westward Ho type vehicle you might think of when you think of the West, but we've pimped it out with black and tan seat covers, and at 43 miles to the gallon, I couldn't care less if it was a clown car. But for this trip, it can be a rodeo clown car. Supplies yet to be purchased are snake venom antidote and sun tan lotion, and perhaps motion sickness medication for the Balloon Ride we plan to experience in Albuquerque on our escapades. I love that Albuquerque is our first stop, because the city's name has "quirky" in it. I'm calling it "al-buh-quirky," with no disrespect intended to the spanish royalty aftter whom it is named. Beginning from our our cabin in the woods, our first stop will be Hopkinsville, Kentucky, which the internet informs me is one of the few documented sites for the Trail of Tears. From there we will venture on to Kansas City, and then to Sioux City and Rapid City, South Dakota. Plans are to arrive in Billings, Montana, where we will visit Mt. Rushmore, carved by the Confederate stone carver Gutzon Borglum, who also carved Stone Mountain in Georgia. We also plan to swing by Sturgis, famed for biker-types and bare-chested women, although there will be nothing of a leud and licivious nature happening at that time. Just in case, though, I have my tatt design already drawn up: it's an angry parrot, sporting a "Ride or Die" helmet on his head and his wings on the handlebars of a Harley. Just need to get the magic markers. From there we enter Glacier National Park, where hopefully, there will still be a glacier to see. Sadness. But I digress... Next stop is Great Falls, Montana. I have never been to Montana but I can smell it from here. That's how I picture it, at least. The travel videos we've been viewing look very green, lush and scenty. I imagine it to smell like Acadia in Maine: all Christmassy, all the time. Lovely. Freezeout Lake is next, where we will also take in the Missouri River on our way to Bozeman and Galatin, where PW wants to do some river fishing and I'll cop a squat with my binocs, hoping for some new stars in my bird book. Stay tuned as we complete preparations and begin our trip to see our great big beautiful country!

I don't know about you, but the lens through which I view my life has been drastically transformed this past year. Before the pandemic, the things I worried about were not even marginally comparable: should we walk around the neighborhood in the morning, or save it for the evening? Ribs for dinner or barbecue? Which cute little North Carolina town shall we visit today? Banner Elk?, Blowing Rock?, Boone?, Brevard?, Bryson City? Or do we go really crazy insane and consider visiting a town that doesn't begin with B? The pandemic changed all that, and I imagine most of us are glad to leave 2020 in the rear view. But perhaps this is a good time to focus on that mirror, and try to find the positive, even if "positive" is a BAD WORD these days. The internet is gracious to give us the Top Ten Awful Things That Happened in 2020: Coronavirus, Australian Bushfires, Ukrainian Flight Crash, Death of Kobe Bryant, Lockdown in Italy, Postponement of the 2020 Summer Olympics, Taal Volcano Eruption, PIA Plane Crash, Taj Mahal Incident, the death of George Floyd...and those are just the "highlights." So in defiant retaliation, I offer you a list of a "Johnny Carson-esque" Top Ten Twenty-Twenty Warm Fuzzies from many different internet sources, in the hope that it uplifts you and reminds you that, as bad as 2020 was, there were some good, maybe even some great moments we can focus on as we reflect on the year we just closed out. 10: Drive-in movies made a comeback, and home-made movies became a family event, from scripting to filming to watching the finished project, with extended family members of all ages participating. 9: A ground swell of people sewed face masks for people who needed them. 8: Andre Bocelli held an beautiful, emotional concert on Easter Sunday in an empty Milan cathedral. 7: People bought books. And read them. 6: Board games returned. Families shared time with each other. 5: Our. Amazing. Doctors and Nurses. God love them and bless them all. 4: People...outdoors?? Say WHATT??? 3: Many families used the down-time to exercise, and no doubt felt physically and mentally better for it. 2: Our planet was given a well-deserved break from carbon emissions and ocean garbage. 1:We had our priorities rearranged. While I do not ever want another pandemic to descend on our planet, I am grateful for the reality check. It has thrown my happy little world into the diminsion of stark reality, reminding me that time is short. This observation makes the words of Mark Twain even more poignant: "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." We all can do a better job answering that second question. Twain knew something about the urgency of finding that "why." He was born two months early and was in poor health for the first 10 years of his life. His mother coddled him, which must have exasperated him enough to develop his mischievious streak. But "Mom" got the last laugh, though. When she was in her 80s, her son asked her if she had been uneasy about his poor health. She told him she was worried about him the whole time. Clemens asked her if she was afraid he wouldn't live. She said, "No. I was afraid you would." Now we know where he got his sense of humor. Would that we all were just as feisty, and all our mothers just as terrified. Perhaps that is the "gift" that 2020 has given us: a refocusing of our priorities so that we can fully appreciate those two important days in each of our lives, and share our reason for being here in a meaningful way.

When I was a college student some decades ago, I majored in English and minored in journalism. At that time the majority of American households received a newspaper. Radio and television news broadcasts were anchored by the likes of Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, David Brinkley: men who seemed to me to be unbiased, honest and noble, and beyond reproach. Even in my childhood I recognized the journalistic weight that Walter Cronkite brought to the television screen. These news men and women of my formative years were professionals, dedicated to objective reporting. These days, however, anyone with a computer or smart phone can set forth their own agenda, including me. And it makes me wonder: are we better served? Is a podcaster or blogger even in the same league with the journalists of my youth? How do the major network news reporters of CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC,or Fox News measure up to the journalists of decades past? And perhaps more importantly, does a plethora of opinions translate to more insight, making it easier to compare and contrast and get to the truth quicker? Or are we just calling it a broad spectrum of views when, in fact, it is nothing more than an infinite number of personal agendas? Is the noise of so many voices actually leaving us with no real absolute truth? Is there even such a thing as absolute truth, if the backdrop is a corporation aimed at getting ratings to boost their ad sales? There is no getting away from a corporate bottom line. This is our system, and it is a good one. But it is far from perfect. And what I'm seeing now, in some news outlets, is frightening to me. There is a news outlet for every political leaning. Instead of newsmen and women offering us unbiased, (or at least balanced) recounts of the day's events, we, as consumers, seem to want our own personal version of the truth. Give me that, we demand, if you want me to watch. Skew it toward the other guy, and I'll turn the channel and buy what they're selling. I have always tried to be open-minded. I try to listen and learn from other people's perspectives, keenly aware that I don't know what I don't know, and what I don't know amounts to just about everything. There is always something to learn; I may not have thought about something the way you think of about it. The year we just closed out has tried to teach us that important lesson. It has showed us (more of) our weaknesses, and it has pointed us to improvements that can be made, if we are willing. America is nothing if not an evolving movement forward, of people from all walks of life, and points of view, and creeds and religions and every other kind of word that embodies diversity. I believe we still harbor the desire to understand each other on a personal and meaningful level. I believe we still want to find the common ground. This is what makes us special. This is what makes us strong. This is what makes us America. God bless. And Happy New Year.

In the interest of staying mentally and physically healthy during this damnpenic, as I like to call it (...shout out to all sisdecklicks...) I would like to provide you with a list of the Top Ten happiest, most encouraging, productive, and just down-right funny things I've collected through these weird and wacky times. Number Ten: Home improvement projects Since the pandemic arrived, PW and I have spent the months working on our log cabin in the woods. It's the perfect pandemic scenario: we have nothing but time to imagine, and then build, a cascading waterfall pond in the back yard, or stain the deck, or trim out the ceiling. It ain't all that fun, Not sexy, but these things do need to be done and the sooner we do it, the sooner we can start drinking at 5. Number Nine: Personal hygiene We have given ourselves the latitude to grown our hair out. For me, that means shoulder-length, tri-colored hair (the remanants of "Golden Honey" hair coloring) mixed with my naturally retreating Mousy Brown and Old Lady Gray. And if the color isn't bad enough, add in the creepy, ultra-fine hair that, as one hairdresser described it, and I quote, "literally crawls cross across my scalp." That is a true story. And I even kept going to him for years afterward. Number Eight: Movies. Movies. Movies. Movies. We watch movies we've seen before. We watch movies we haven't seen before. We watch movies about movies. We film our own movies. If we could watch them in reverse (like we used to do with home movies, laughing at Grandma walking backward till we peed our pants), we would do that too. Number Seven: Adult Beverages We drink. Like, a lot. Number Six: Edification I read a book! With pages, and words and shit. Number Five: Religion We found a beautiful stone church to attend before the dampenic and were getting to know a few folks before the Recent Unpleasantness BUT we we have found great solace in watching the services on-line. It certainly isn't a substitute for hugs and handshakes, but it will have to do for now. And it has given us a new appreciation for face-to-face interaction. Number Four: Family We have visited with relatives we haven't seen in a while. My mother is in an independent living community near by, and we see her several times a week. We have seen my husband's family more this year than ever, and we have a new appreciation for how precious time is. My sister comes to see us, and brings a child or two. This makes me very happy. Number Three: Animals I have always had a special place in my heart for wildlife, but since we have been here full time, we value their presence even more. There is something quite extraordinary about tossing a chipmonk a walnut and watching him stuff it into his chubby cheek and racing off, tail at full staff, back to his burrow. We have seen black bears, deer, turkeys, all manner of birds, groundhogs, just to name a few. The pandemic has given us the gift of slowing down, so that we can take the time to see the beauty that has always been here. Number Two: Writing Not blogging, or developing a story line for a book or play, but LETTER WRITING. You know, like on stationery, with a stamp on the envelope. And Number One: Holding hands Just because we can. The Damn Penic of 2020 is not something I would want to revisit, but I am grateful for the experience, and for my loved ones being spared. If we can find anything positive through this rough time, I think it would be that 2020 gave us the gift of sight: to be able to see what really is important, and what is not.

                                                    A BUMP IN THE ROAD


Life's little setbacks are often called "bumps in the road." Sometimes bumps happen because of  our  own poor decisions--decisions that seemed right in the moment but look disastrous when viewed through the rear view mirror. Sometimes other people cause bad things to happen, crashing into our lives and often making us feel out of control and resentful.

And then there are the bad things that you can't blame on any one person or thing. Through no fault of your own, sometimes bad things just happen. Period. End of Paragraph.

I have a wonderful friend who is my writing partner. We take turns suggesting topics and it is interesting how we each interpret the subject matter. His most recent essay focused on a friend dealing with cancer, and how he, as a friend, could best respond.

Keith, this is my rebuttal.

I have had my share of grief, and experienced many disappointments. But all in all, I have lived a charmed life. So I guess it's my turn for bumps now.

My family had begun to notice a drop in my mental acuity: repeating myself, asking questions several times, not retaining information. It was nothing that concerned me, although I had noticed that I was forgetting things more often and relied more on writing things down. Everyone forgets things occasionally, right?  Everyone walks into a room sometimes, and can't remember why.

I likewise consoled myself that we have had a lot on our plates lately:  moving to an apartment after selling our home of 18 years, burning up the interstate almost every weekend working on our cabin or to visit our daughter in Ga. We have also been dealing with aging mothers on both sides of the family. But under the direction of my GP I went to a neuropsychologist for a 5-hour memory test.

I scored well on all parts of the test except recall. Information that had been given to me a few minutes earlier was difficult to retrieve. That same information was completely gone after 30 minutes.

I could make excuses: it was freezing cold in the room, the examiner read the questions too quickly, I couldn't write anything down, the instructions were not clearly explained to me. I could tell you the test was unnecessarily difficult. But of course, all those excuses are just that--excuses--and precisely why I was there.

I am fairly young for a diagnosis of Alzheimer's, but that's what I got. Yea me. I'm ahead of the curve. But hopefully not barreling down the road so fast that I lose control.

The examiner noted that I have a high I.Q. and I guess that was supposed to make me feel better, as if understanding the reality of it all was a good thing. He told me there are things I can do to help stave off the progression. We've always been healthy eaters, and I have always exercised. We have never been heavy drinkers (until the diagnosis....if anything would make me throw a straw in a bottle of cabernet it's this, but of course, now I've practically given it up  entirely.)

The  doctor suggested I interact with people (umm, excuse me, I am an INTROVERT. People scare me.) He said I should look for ways to engage my brain, such as reading and problem-solving. I could also do memory exercises (I would give you some examples of that but I've forgotten them. Sorry. Bad joke.) 

So this ugly diagnosis is a wake-up call for me and I'm hoping for you as well. Life is short, and capricious, and if there is a takeaway, it surely must be that we should prepare ourselves for the inevitable bumps and curves life throws us, and be ready to deal with them.

I have a friend who has macular degeneration and is now completely sightless. And yet, she still skis. She has certainly been a role model for dealing with bumpy roads. She has three handsome boys, one of which she has never seen. She is a respected and sought-after Christian speaker. She has also battled cancer for years, and she has the best attitude of anyone I know. When I'm in her presence, I actually forget how many bumps in the road she has met and overcome. She does not let bumps define her. For Alex, that means fighting it by leaning hard into God's loving arms, and  trusting family and friends to help.  Alex is my driver's manual for bumps in the road.     

I urge you who are reading this to make the same commitment. We have a few choices when we encounter these inevitable obstacles on our individual roads in life: we can take the long way around and tell ourselves that the bumps won't find us, or we can meet them head-on with faith and the courage that comes from it. As for me and my car, I'll trust my the co-pilot. There's no bump that surprises Him, and no curve He can't handle.

It is absolutely mind-blowing what God will reveal to us when we have quiet hearts and open eyes to receive His miracles.

 

Friday morning was a beautiful bright day with temperatures in the high 60s at the cabin. I took a peach outside for breakfast and was eating it over the railing, dripping juice and making a mess of myself, when I noticed a hummingbird a few yards to my right at the nectar feeder. I stood very still, not wishing to frighten her, with the peach at my mouth as if I was one of those Vegas street performers you think is a statue until you poke them.

I was a peach-eating statue, chiseled in mid-bite.
 
After a few minutes the hummingbird left the feeder, and helicoptered over to check out my peach. I stood nose-to-beak with her, literally inches from this beautiful bird. Her rotating wings, beating at 50 times a second, whipped the air into an audible bumble bee buzz.
 
Well that doesn't happen every day, I thought to myself, almost incredulous. What a blessing.

Also this weekend a spotted cucumber beetle (beautiful green ladybug with black spots) hitched a ride on me at a rest stop. I didn't notice her until we were back in the car, underway. She sat motionless on my finger all the way to the cabin--more than an hour's drive. When we stopped for gas, she finally moved, letting me know that it was time to part company. I put her in a lovely lush area full of leafy greens and thanked her for trusting me. I thanked God for giving me the blessing.

I say "blessing" because I believe God was at the center of those two encounters. And if that wasn't God, then I surely do not know what is.

That led me to think about the little things. The beautiful miracles that I, so often, have failed to see. How could I apply this myopic view more broadly?

I don't mean the traditional definition of "myopic view," implying a lack of vision, but rather the larger perspective of seeing the smallness, the grain of sand. It takes faith, perseverance, dedication and love for a gardener to see the tiny green sprig poking out of a dead stick, watering it and propping it up with the hope that one day it will be a fruited brown turkey fig tree. It takes faith, perseverance, dedication and love to appreciate the silk web, realizing the energy and artistry and faith required of the spider to weave it and then to wait, for God to provide. It takes faith, perseverance, dedication and love to empathize with the snail, laboriously tracing a head-cold path as he lugs his RV on his back across a mica-flecked stone. It takes faith, perseverance, dedication and respect to understand that the great pool of water-only a drop or two to us-on the shaded leaf where something much smaller than myself, and in many ways, much larger, journeys for a drink. 
 It takes faith, perseverance, dedication and love to see the small things, and seeing the small things is no small thing. 
 
Theodor Geisel understood the macro in the micro--this definition of myopia. His Whos were a complete civilization on a snowflake. The same is true for the myriad worlds under our boot. And it is the cruelest kind of short-sightedness-and perhaps our undoing-to ignore that fact.  

There is much to cherish, and I am still learning. I will take the time to be still, and to appreciate those small miracles that I have too often overlooked. I will take the time to be still, and know that God is God, the great I AM.        
 

 

Sent from my iPhone

 

 

 

 

 

A CABIN UPDATE

I've been vilified for not blogging more often with updates about the cabin. If the complaint came from some average Joe I would shrug it off, but THIS guy...this guy who gave me the "what-for"...for this guy I will bow to the admonishment and comply.

The cabin has ceased to be mostly a construction zone and is slowly, oh so very slowly, becoming a home. We have that toilet (oh how we creatures love our comfort) and that hot shower, and a kitchen sink with hot-and-cold. We have a mattress that sits on top of a bed frame (no box spring but hey, we're mountain men. We don't need no stinkin' box spring) and an installed, unfinished, hardwood floor on the main level. We have a metal pole in the master bedroom closet, on which I have displayed several hangers for hanging up clothes such as civilized people are known to do. I can even put my shoes on the floor and not expect ants in them in the morning.

We have a TV and a RADIO and a BOX FAN, and a PORTABLE AIR CONDITIONER and a WORKING OVEN and a STOVE TOP. If we get too much more uppity we might be in danger of being called city folk, which is quite the opposite of our intention...at least until it's time to cook, or shower, or watch Blue Bloods.

This past weekend we worked outside, the temperature being so nice: a very livable 70 degrees at the peak of the day, while back home, where our house still hasn't sold, it was 92 in the sticky shade.

Oh the pleasure of working outdoors when it's breezy and fresh and mild. Especially when you're trying to roll drippy brown stain onto fascia boards 20' above your head. It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't been standing on a pea gravel slope that skidded away from me each time I tried to swing that flexible extension wand up. The effort required to get the drippy brown stain roller up to the boards was the same effort that would be required to send it sailing off into the woods. Which is pretty much what happened--or threatened to happen--with each hurl.

Meanwhile the noon sun burned a hole through my retinae.

After I finished staining myself and the boards and after my vision wasn't all purply any more, PW promised me I could do an easier job: digging great big holes with the post hole digger in the dirt banks, where roots the size of intestines snaked throughout. Into these holes I was responsible for planting the chestnut trees and the magnolia. Each of these trees were in 50-gallon buckets that had to be dragged to the holes because I did not have access to a forklift. After the holes were dug 2 hours later, I switched hats and became a one-person water brigade, hoping to give all my hard work a fighting chance.

The blueberry bushes were easier to plant, since they were just 5-gallon buckets and only needed to be planted in full sun on a rock ledge that repelled the spade like some sort of magnet.

I came away with blisters, a pounding headache and some heat-induced dizziness. And where was PW, you may well ask, while I was doing all the work?

In the basement--where it was FORTY DEGREES and flat, with no pea gravel slopes, dirt banks or rock ledges--working on his movie theater wiring.

We're still married and no one killed anyone, so I suppose you could say it was a successful weekend. In addition to cabin work, we met with Father Robert who shepherds a flock of Episcopal sinners--soon to include me and PW--in our little NC town. We were present for the fledging of 3 healthy, hungry Eastern Phoebes. We watched some gorgeous deer run up an embankment as if it was flat land, just in awe of their physicality and beauty. We enjoyed the antics of chipmonks scurrying in and out of rocks looking for fallen bird seed. And we were, once again, treated to the miraculous sight of Blue Ghost fireflies and Lightning Bugs, blinking their mating calls in the inkiness of night on raw land in the mountains, where there is no light-polluting Walmart.

So my dear friend from Peace, if you're reading this--and you darn well better be--thanks for being "this guy" and giving me the nudge. It was just what I needed.