Arrowheads and Ghosts

This Christmas, it seems that there are more productions of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol than ever. However, my new holiday tradition is the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus “Home for the Holidays” concert, now in its 11th year at the Center for Spiritual Living in Santa Rosa. A hundred and eighty strong, they practically overflowed the stage. And right in front, with the tenors, was Steven Gallagher, one of my very first childhood friends.

The show was brilliant. During The First Noel, I found my eyes tearing up as the chorus hit one particularly sublime chord. Then we practically fell out of our seats during their version of Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer, performed as a plea for acceptance of the LGBTR (R, for Reindeer, of course) culture. The show was packed with gorgeous music, polished voices, sharply dressed men of all stripes, outrageous humor, audience participation and the true spirit of the season. To close, they performed the carol du jour, Silent Night, sung as a round with Peace, Peace. As lovely as this mash-up may be, it has become an instant cliché. But their version soared. Really. They added sign language movements to Silent Night and, once the round was completed, they did one final verse without music or voice, just expressive hand movements accented with the soft rustle of 360 coat and shirt sleeves moving in unison. A truly Silent Night that still gives me chills.

As I said, Steve and I go back a long ways, back before attending UC Davis together, before Tam High, before Boy Scouts, all the way back to Cub Scouts. In fact, Mrs. Gallagher was our Den Mother in Strawberry Pack 33. She guided our feeble efforts to be productive, upstanding citizens and kept us fortified during weekly after-school meetings with her homemade cookies. In my memory, she was a genuine slice of Norman Rockwell.

Not that it was all fun and games. No. We were expected to earn “Arrowheads” on our steady rise from Bobcat rank to Wolf, Bear, Lion, and the loftiest of lofties, Webelo. These Arrowheads weren’t terribly difficult to attain, unless you are only 8 or 9 and have the attention span of a 6-week old cocker spaniel.

Anyway, one November back in the early 1960’s I embarked on earning my Cooking Arrowhead. This involved planning a meal, shopping for ingredients, and preparing it—with parental supervision, of course. Usually, one did this for one’s own family, to avoid bringing shame upon the household should things go understandably awry in the kitchen. But as my brother and father were off on a Boy Scout camping trip, we invited Mrs. Gallagher and the twins, Steven and Scott over for my five-star dinner, which coincided with my birthday.

What I cooked for an entrée is lost in memory, though I suspect it was something chicken-y. What does stick in my mind was the dessert, a layer cake made from a mix. But ever the avant-garde-ist, I decided that the white frosting just wouldn’t do. So I got the food dye from my mother’s spice drawer and, with a little experimentation, achieved a rather startling shade of blue. We turned out most of the lights and wished me a happy birthday as I blew (blue?) out the candles. That’s when we heard The Ghost for the first time.

As we sat there in the semi-darkness, we suddenly heard the tread of muffled steps. It sounded for all the world like old Jacob Marley dragging one foot across the floor of Ebenezer Scrooge’s bed chamber. It went something like this: shhhhh-thunk…shhhh-thunk…shhhh-thunk. Softly, it haunted the living room and kitchen. We listened and giggled nervously, but it wouldn’t go away. Shhhhh-thunk…shhhh-thunk. It was too regular to be a noise from the storm outside; or a branch scraping the side of the house. Perhaps it was a leftover ghost from Halloween two days previous.

Intrigued, Steven, Scott and I fanned out, like so many Hardy Boys, to locate its source. We were certainly “not afraid of no ghosts.” We looked under the couch, behind the chairs and up the chimney. We opened closets and slowly crept down the stairs to the basement. Shhhhh-thunk…shhhh-thunk. Just as we were about to go completely insane (okay, that may be an overstatement), I climbed up to the living room soffit, where the sound seemed to be loudest. That was when I discovered the noise coming from our stereo speakers. Shhhhh-thunk…shhhh-thunk. Then, I remembered I had been playing a record to set the mood for the arrival of our guests and the mysterious sound was the phonograph needle still tracking around the final grooves, over and over, 33 1/3 times per minute: Shhhhh-thunk…shhhh-thunk. That was our Ghost.

Back to the concert. All the proceeds went to benefit Face to Face, a program of the Sonoma AIDS Network, with the goal of encouraging more people to get tested. At one point, the emcee pointed out that nearly everyone in the audience had been touched by HIV/AIDS and asked us to think of someone we knew who was no longer with us. For some reason, my thoughts went back to The Ghost on that dark November night and when the emcee asked us to say the name aloud, I said, “Scott Gallagher.” Sadly, he had been infected with AIDS in the early 1980’s, back when it was still shrouded in mystery, and had passed away shortly thereafter.

Over the years, I have come, more and more, to believe in ghosts. Whether they are real, imagined, or simply echoes in the memory, they reach to us across the ether and across the years to touch our being, especially at this time of year. And especially if we listen with our hearts.

Hills and Flats

I just got back from one of my favorite bike rides, known locally as the Lucas Valley Loop. It includes a five-mile stretch of country road that climbs gently from the tiny West Marin town of Nicasio up to Big Rock, where the pavement plummets down into Lucas Valley on its way toward Highway 101. On any day, this section of Lucas Valley Road is an ideal place to ride – not too much traffic, a rolling ascent, and beautiful scenery, too. On a hot summer day, the redwood tree-shaded lower part of the climb usually has a mini-climate that is many degrees cooler than almost anywhere else in Marin. I like to imagine the roads in Heaven will be like this.

Today, as the miles passed beneath my skinny tires , I thought about how many of life’s lessons I’ve learned while on my bike, but two stand out in my memory. Coincidentally, they both occurred while ascending this same gentle climb.

My first Lucas Valley lesson was during high school, back in 1973. Instead of regular gym class, a handful of us lucky cyclists would earn our P.E. credits by simply signing in at the beginning of seventh period and then going for a long afternoon jaunt. On this particular day, we headed north from Mill Valley up to Fairfax and west out to Nicasio, being led by Marc Horowitz.

Now, as far as we were concerned, Marc was the Real Deal. He rode a British Ron Cooper racing bike with a full Campy Record group (the best stuff at the time) and his hands seemed to be permanently tattooed with chain oil from fine-tuning his steed. He held the national junior record for the 10-mile time trial, I believe, and had even won a stage of the Tour of Mexico in a solo breakaway. Like I said, the Real Deal.

As our group rode along, Marc would impart wisdom, encourage us and provide a helping push if one was needed. That afternoon, as we approached the crest at Big Rock and sat up in anticipation of the swooping downhill, he chided us. This, he said, was the perfect time to attack in a race. Just as your opponents are catching their breath and grabbing for their water bottles, you have a real chance to open a gap. It was an opportunity not to be wasted. Then he suddenly sprinted out of his saddle and bombed the twisty downhill, with the rest of us trying desperately to catch up to his fast-disappearing Ron Cooper.

I learned the second lesson by myself, lower down on the same road and several years later. Riding solo one afternoon, I punctured and pulled off to change my tire. In those days, we all rode “sew-ups” or tubular tires. These enclosed the fragile rubber inner tube completely, thus requiring an entire new tire to be mounted on the rim after flatting. After a few minutes, my spare tire was installed and inflated, and I was back on my way. Unfortunately, I suffered a second puncture not more than a half-mile further up the road. Now, this was embarrassing, since I never carried a second spare. There was nothing left to do but get off and hitch a ride.

I tried to flag down passing motorists, but they were few and far between. And the ones that did pass never even slowed down. After half an hour of this, I had a flash of insight: Maybe they just thought I was a lazy cyclist, hoping for a free ride up the hill? To test my theory, I took the front wheel out of my forks and held it up in one hand as I raised my other thumb in the universal signal of the hitch-hiker. The very next driver stopped and gave me a ride back into town.

So there you have it. Nothing earth-shattering, but then, most of life’s teachings can be fairly subtle. The first lesson taught me that when you are just about tapped out is the ideal time to reach deep and find that hidden extra gear. It was a much better illustration of than the old saw of “giving 110 percent.”

The second one was at the opposite end of the spectrum, a lesson in humility. Simply said, when you need help, make it clear to those who might be inclined to step in. So many times, we suffer in silence, yet are incensed that no one hears our unvoiced cries. In my experience, there is a surprising amount of compassion in the world, waiting to be tapped.

I've lost count of the number of times I’ve climbed up to Big Rock, but I’m always aware that the next lesson may be just around the bend.

Peaches and Towelettes

Getting my teenage daughter to eat fruit can sometimes be a chore. For a vegetarian, she is a particularly picky fruitivore. But, yesterday, as we drove home from school, she resurrected a "pluot" (a plum-apricot hybrid) from her lunch bag and bit in. The smell of ripe fruit and the warm afternoon brought back memories of fruit stands and long family car trips.

The following narrative is not contemporary. In fact, I wrote it during my college years at UC Davis. But it certainly fits the theme of Bourbon and Bitters, since it does describe an actual event from my early childhood. I have transcribed it verbatim, even though the punctuation is somewhat haphazard. For me, it is fascinating to peer into my young adult mind from 35 years ago.

Incidentally, at the end I wanted to describe the image of a shaft of light squeezing between two objects, like the summer solstice shining between the enormous blocks of Stonehenge, in England. So, I just made up a word, "stonehenged." I was marked down for that. Oh, well. I still like it.

Down the San Joaquin: A Descriptive
Narrative of a Non-event Remembered

Great orchards - peaches, oranges, walnuts - swept by the highway. Rows of trees spun like helicopter rotors past his car window, flickering. As each row came into view, he saw something past it. Something; then it was gone. A tractor, a car, a man walking (or was it a woman? too quick to tell), or maybe nothing. Just another ordered mass of trees beyond, rotating in unison with the nearest, yet slower (why always slower?).

Sitting, melting on the hot vinyl bench seat, the family station-wagon, forest green. The plastic sweated a greasy-feeling substance (why?) that refused to be wet. He folded his arms in his lap, rested his head upon them, and tried to doze. Whether he succeeded he didn't know. Be he woke up soaked in perspiration, a womb-like wetness that was, at the same time, both stagnant and comforting. Vaguely, he remembered the others talking of road signs, orange-juice stands, and blackbirds, all this while in a sleep-like stupor. They played Highway Bingo on little cards with sliding glass windows that were red. He lost, unable to find an s-curve sign.

The highway rose slightly, skirting some hills. They were naked except for the golden grasses on which herds of dairy cows grazed (didn't they get tired of standing like that all day?). Pavement mirages mouldered ahead of the car, always out of reach. He looked down at the roadway where the mirages had been (where had the puddles gone to?). His mother was doing a crossword from the Sunday paper. Her glasses were tipped down on her nose and every so often she would stare off into the distance, resting her eyes. He tried to read some of the words (m-a-n-d-a-t-e, man-date, man date, mand ate?). She gave him a scolding look, so he sat back and gazed out the window. At least the window seat was his for this portion of the ride. It lacked support on the ends yet it was better than sitting in the middle. He hated being there, his legs astride the center bump, the hard seat torturing his butt and, worse, nothing to lean on (why were car seats always like that?). But the window was his and the telephone lines sped by rhythmically. Wires crossing and recrossing, rising and falling, crossing-recrossing. They abruptly veered away from the highway and rushed off towards the horizon along an irrigation ditch between two fields. He slept.

The sign said "Freshest Peaches in the Valley - 500 ft. on right." To his surprise, the car was slowing down, pulling off the road onto the shoulder, stopping. He opened the car door and got out, pulling on his shirt-tail to unglue his back from the dampness. A zephyr spun through the parking lot, cooling the perspiration on his back like a refrigerator. He ran the back of his hand down his spine and looked at it: dripping. His shirt had a peculiar feel to it, cool, wet, dirty. He took a pre-moistened towelette from his back pocket and tore open the metal foil. It smelled good, clean and moist. He stood there and just held it unfolded over his face, enjoying. Then he cleaned his hands, his forehead, his mouth with it, and looked again. It was soiled and didn't have any more of that perfumey scent that he savoured. He folded it and put it back in its wrapper.

The fruit stand stood beneath two large oaks, the ground around it was littered with spoiled fruit, but its cement floor had just been hosed down and looked cleaner than any he had seen in the past (hadn't they cared?). A No-Pest Strip hung in either corner of the building, apparently doing nothing to get rid of the countless flies that were present. The fruit stand was a strange place: in addition to the produce there was Mexican papier-mache pottery for sale (did anyone ever buy it?). His father handed him a washed peach; it was bigger than his outstretched hand. A chill went through his body when he tried licking the fuzz. He rubbed it on his shirt and bit in. The juice trickled down his chin, into his palm, and down his forearms. He sucked up what juice he could, bit at the yellow flesh, sucked, bit again, till he came to the pit, wrinkled and red. Bits of peach clung tenaciously to it and he nibbled free each strand, that is, until his mother took it from him and gave him another towelette. He held it over his face again and walked back to the car, peering through the paper. His sister held the car door open and he got in, luxuriating in his perfumed world, imagining himself in an all-white room, air-conditioned and faintly feminine. The motor started and his sister got in, nudging him into the center. He feinted fastening his seat belt and lounged backward on the seat, face covered, imagining. After they got under way he washed himself and stuffed the used towelette into the litter bag. His ear hurt.

DIP (that was a silly sign!). The dip make his stomach feel funny, like turning somersaults. He and his sister giggled. Billboards flickered by, advertising hotels, motels, restaurants: forty miles, thirty miles, fifteen minutes, five minutes, just ahead, turn left here, a blaze of light, clusters of buildings and then, You just missed... There was a Travelodge sign with a sleeping bear in a nightshirt, holding a candle with one hand and yawning with the other. He yawned; dusk fell.

The pain woke him up. It seemed to come from inside his head, like in the television commercial (why does it hurt so much?). He whimpered, and his mother turned around. Just a little farther, dear. It's his ear, I think, said his sister. We'll give you something to make you feel better when we get to Grandma's, she said, frowning sympathetically at him and turning back around. Streetlights, neon signs and brightly lit billboards leered in at him. Minute scratches in the windshield made long-rayed stars out of approaching headlights. The rays spun as the car flew past. It ached, it ached, it ached, it ACHED.

He opened his eyes and he was in bed at Grandma's. The light show on the highway had stopped. His mother took his temperature and sat on the edge of the bed. It made him feel secure when she did that. She gave him half of a medicine capsule covered with jelly on the open end. His sister arranged his toys on the windowsill by the bed. The ceiling light was on, but it was alright since it didn't move. He watched the plastic dinosaurs on the sill. They were marching in a line: Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, Tyrannus Rex. He knew their names and slept. He awoke the next morning feeling better. The sun coming up across the street between two houses stonehenged a gold and silver arc through his window...

February 1976

Rivers and Meadows (Part I)

One of the downsides of wandering through my memories while writing this blog is the danger of running into ghosts. The longer I'm alive, the more of my friends and loved ones will have preceded me into the Great Beyond. My father passed away at the beginning of this month, having lived an amazingly long life. My best friend, Steve Boughton, was taken five years ago today and the hole his departure left is still an open wound at times. The following was written for his memorial service at the Presbyterian Church of Novato in 2006...

Down Warm Springs Creek Trail

You know, Steve would have liked to have been here, surrounded by all of his friends. I am proud to be counted among them and proud to say that he was my best friend.

The last time I saw Steve was a year ago on July 4th. We visited the Boughtons in Hailey, marched in the big parade carrying a ten-foot smile advertising his dentistry, went camping up by Redfish lake, and watched the fireworks from their back porch. But my favorite memory is of the last bike ride I ever took with him, because I had Steve all to myself. It was easily one of the best and the hardest days of my life. I hope you’ll indulge me if I tell you the story of that epic journey.

Our ride starts out easily enough as it winds through the tiny town of Fisher. It seems to be very doable and I’m not breathing too hard, which is a good thing, since the clouds of mosquitoes are pretty thick in spots and encourage closed-mouth breathing. I even go ahead as Steve stops to talk to a local man who is out for a run. Since I have known him, he seems to have all the time in the world and is always ready to strike up an interesting conversation with someone along the way. I remember that one of his favorite things to do in Rome was to take in the passagiata, the evening stroll where everyone just walks and talks.

But Steve soon passes me and disappears up the rocky fire road we have been ascending for the past forty-five minutes. Granted, he is acclimated to mountain biking at six thousand feet of altitude, but then again, he is several years my senior, so it should be a wash. In spite of the effort, I am glad just to be here, riding in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho with Steve. Now the road has kicked up to about fifteen percent, which is very steep for a loose surface, and I find it impossible to continue, so I unclip and walk uphill for a brief stretch, huffing and puffing.

Finally, the slope eases a bit and I hop back on for the push to the top of this first climb. I catch up with Steve in a small clearing where he is taking a long pull from his water bottle and admiring the scenery, which, being Idaho, is spectacular. But now it’s decision time: Do we continue on our planned loop that includes the next climb—which I am definitely not looking forward to—or do we descend along Warm Springs Creek to meet up with the Salmon river, northwest of Stanley, a longer but hopefully easier route suggested by Tim, the mountain-biking owner of the local bakery? I know that I’ve got the legs for distance, so I vote for the creek trail. Steve agrees and we start descending.

Now, my experience mountain biking has been on local trails here in California, and a few ascents of Mount Burdell, a local 1,500 foot nob in Novato. I’ve handled some roughish fire roads, but nothing too taxing. Almost immediately, I find that I will be learning lots of new things as the trail zigzags down a scary-steep sandy hillside for what seems like at least a thousand vertical feet. I learn to take one foot out of the clips so that I can skid tripod-like around corners. I find myself holding my breath on more than one occasion as we hit tight hairpin curves that drop out from under us. And I learn that sometimes the safest way through a tight spot is simply to back off the brake levers and just “let ‘er rip.” Most of all, I don’t want to disappoint Steve. But my confidence is building with each mile and by the time we hit the bottom of the grade, I am feeling pretty good. Besides, Steve is letting me try out his new mountain bike and it is a dream next to by overweight bomber.

At the bottom, we encounter a small group of very fit-looking bikers who have just been down to Warm Springs Meadow and are now about to ascend the route we just came down. I don’t envy them a bit. One rider stops to ask where we’re heading. We tell him, and he gives us some advice about how to cross the meadow, where, apparently, the trail becomes a bit confusing. He says not to follow the trail all the way, but cut across to the fenceline on the other side, to avoid getting caught in a big mud bog.

In hindsight, I do remember him giving us a quizzical look and a quick once-over when he first learned of our plans. Perhaps he was thinking, what on earth are these two geezers doing out here? And do they really know what they’re getting into?

We thank him, say good-bye, and then enter the aptly-named Rock Garden, where the trail merges with a dry creek bed. Steve suggests that it may be a good time to get off and walk till the trail smoothes out. Thirty yards later it does and we find ourselves suddenly in Warm Springs Meadow.

Now I grew up hiking and camping in the Sierra Nevada, so I am used to alpine splendor, but this literally takes my breath away. The meadow is bursting with wildflowers of every color and our isolation only adds to the beauty. Unfortunately, I have not brought my camera, so I drink in the view, trying to create a permanent image in my memory. It is not hard to do.

We come to a narrow stream, too deep to ride through, so we step gingerly across, feeling the icy water seep into our shoes. We don’t know it, but crossing streams will be a frequent obstacle on this ride. As we continue on, three guys on dirt-bikes pass us noisily. I wonder if they are even supposed to be here at all, but they are only a momentary distraction as they quickly disappear up the trail with their whining machines. Once again, the meadow sounds take over.

The trail is easy to follow through the lush green meadow, but the going is deceptively difficult. I find that I have to be constantly on the look-out for small to medium round rocks to either side of the narrow dirt track. If I hit one of them on the down-stroke I will certainly being going for a trip over the handlebars at best, and could even break a crank. The thought of having to walk out of her while dragging a broken bike is not inviting. So I pedal carefully, eyes scanning the path for hidden obstacles.

This is where I get the first feeling that this ride may not turn out to be what it seems. That is because I am starting to hallucinate as we pedal across this beautiful meadow. Of course, this effect is caused by our focus on the sunken earth trail, which means that the brightly-colored flowers become a psychedelic blur. When we stop to get our bearings, Steve is apparently feeling the same way. We slow down a bit and it gets easier.

As the path gets more and more muddy, we realize that we have, indeed, taken the wrong path. We backtrack to where a very faint track splits off from the main path and heads off across the meadow to what we hope is the aforementioned fenceline. If many cyclists have been through here this spring, it is not very apparent. The track is more a vague impression than a trail. We cross through several beaver ponds with water up to our thighs. Finally, we are through the meadow and back into the woods. Warm Springs Creek is somewhere off to our left, though it sounds more like a river than a gurgling brook. Another hair rises on my neck.

The going through the trees is much easier now, and more of what I am used to. There are rolls and drops and whoop-de-do’s that make me feel like a kid again, zooming across empty lots on my three speed cruiser. It is now a couple of hours since we started, so we stop for lunch. We figure we’re probably about half-way, but can’t know for certain. I am still having the time of my life.

After lunch, the scenery becomes eerie as the forest gets denser. There are many dead or dying trees; I suppose from some sort of pine borer or beetle. At times we have to hoist our bikes over fallen snags. The canyon also narrows, imperceptibly at first, and then alarmingly. The roar of the creek gets louder.

(To be continued...)

Rivers and Meadows (part II)

(Continued.)

We are switching bikes at regular intervals, a gift from Steve to even the effort. The trail is much clearer now, but we are descending between large boulders alongside the stream. I don’t want to be a wimp, so I am going as fast as I can; after all, we have a lot of ground to cover. But it is getting more technical by the minute. Sharp turns, sudden dips and narrow tracks between rocks are coming at us fast and furious. I get safely through one passage with a speed that astounds me and even Steve is impressed. He gives me a hearty “Way to go!” and we press on.

Another hour of this and we are still lost in the woods. Steve is out of food and I am out of water. A couple of times, my legs start to cramp up and I can tell Steve is worried. I get off, stretch them out and press on.

It’s not all downhill, though. At times the trail turns sharply away from the creek to ascend past an obstacle. Some of these we can ride; others cause us to get off and push our bikes uphill. At one point, I am in the lead, barreling along when I come to a short rise. I pedal to the top and come to a skidding halt. The trail drops fifty feet down a gravel slope – right into Warm Springs Creek. Only this is no creek. Late spring run-off has swollen it to a thirty-foot wide torrent. Not more than eighteen inches deep, but moving very quickly as it disappears out of sight around the bend. But where is the trail?

Steve catches up and we survey the scene. There doesn’t seem to be any way around on this side, which is a straight cliff and he sees where the trail cuts up the far bank. There is no choice, so I hoist Steve’s bike on my shoulders and start across.

Very quickly, I sense that I am in trouble. The water pulls at me and I have no way to balance. My bicycling shoes slip on the mossy rocks and my legs start to shake. Barely ten feet out, I feel myself beginning to lose it. I don’t want to risk falling and having Steve’s bike swept away, so I carefully turn around and go back the way I came. I don’t know if I can do this. Steve and I talk for a bit. My suggestion is to go back upstream a bit and see if there is an easier crossing, but the canyon is narrow and I’m not sure if that will be any better. Steve wants to give it a try. He is wearing tennis shoes and thinks he will have better traction. He is also not as tired as I am. He carefully makes it across with one bike, and then with the other. I get across with the help of a stick to balance me.

At this moment, I am overwhelmed. I am glad to be across, but slightly ashamed that I was unable to do it without help. Steve makes light of the adventure by claiming to have had better footing, and I feel a bit better. With most other guys, I would have been in for some serious ribbing, but not Steve. He finds a wound and then heals it. I suppose that is why I keep a photo of him taped to my computer monitor. In it, he is setting off on a California Aids Ride and looking back at the camera and smiling with white zinc oxide on his lips. He is raising money for a worthy cause because it’s the right thing to do. I look at that photo often and instead of asking myself, What would Jesus do?, I bend that around to, What would Steve do? In my mind, he is the the guy I most wish I could be like.

Steve’s generosity has blown wind into my sails and the creek crossing is the last time I will feel weak on this ride. I will need it as the trail continues ever onward. We cruise through a pretty meadow and I fall off my bike, for the first and only time, while attempting to make it through a boggy section and up a short bank. I keel over at about one mile per hour and squelch softly into the mud. I laugh when I think of all the places I could have fallen and done myself some real damage. I also laugh because, as much as I want to see the highway, I am still having fun with my best friend.

The rest of the ride continues to be a non-stop series of challenges. It is almost as if some being is observing us from above and saying, Let’s see how they handle this! And, suddenly we find ourselves pushing our bikes up a hundred yard dirt slide or carrying them across a boulder field. I find that I am getting pretty good at side-slipping down sandy slopes, the same way I do when skiing. We keep thinking we can see where our canyon meets the higher wall of the Snake River canyon, but appearances are deceiving. The sun is getting low, we are out of food, and wondering if our families are getting worried. They know where we are – sort of. All that exists is this trail, which doesn’t even appear to have been ridden on this season.

Then, miracle of miracles, a barn: the first sign of civilization. We push diagonally up one last rocky hillside and drop onto a wide road that leads to the campground where our second car is parked. We had left it there in case we wanted to go this route—probably our only good decision of the day. One final effort and there we are, taking apart the bikes and putting them in the station wagon. I take a good look at Steve and am surprised to see that he looks as wiped out as I feel.

Now it must be noted that our thirty-five mile loop down the Warm Springs Trail is not in any of our mountain biking guidebooks, which classify routes as Beginner, Intermediate, Expert, and “Abusive.” No question about this one. This has easily been the hardest physical thing I have ever done in my life.

We gratefully slip into the seats and drive back to town – we will pick up my car later. Our wives and daughters are not back yet, so we crack open a couple of beers and enjoy the mild Idaho sunset. Later that night, at dinner, we see our baker/biker friend Tim again and give him a recounting of what we went through on his suggested detour. He thinks for a moment and replies, “Yeah, I kinda forgot. That trail is pretty epic.” Epic. Now he tells us.

* * *

Fast forward, four months. I am just returning from my fiftieth birthday in Hawai’i. Why? Because that’s where Steve went for his fiftieth. I pick up my cell phone messages in the Honolulu airport and it is Lynn, Steve’s wife. He has just been diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia, a particularly nasty cancer. I am devastated.

When I get back to the mainland, I call Steve in the hospital. He is in the middle of his first round of chemo and sounds weak as hell. We talk about everything and about nothing. I tell him I love him and wish him well. Over the next six months, whenever we talk, it is the same. He is filled with positive energy, even when the news is discouraging.

* * *

The last time I spoke to him was the Sunday he went into the hospital for the last time. He was happy because their new house had closed, he had been up to Redfish Lake with his wife, Lynn, and had just finished a 13-mile bike ride. Looking back, I know what he was doing: He was simply making sure that everything and everyone were taken care of. That is so like Steve.

You know, about a month after our ride down Warm Spring Creek, a huge forest fire ravaged the entire valley, including that gorgeous mountain meadow. Steve and I may have been some of the last people to have seen its beauty. I suddenly wish that I had taken a photograph, but instead have to reach into my memory for the picture. Fortunately, it is still there: the day is beautiful, the insects are buzzing, and the wildflowers are blooming. That is how all my memories with Steve are: crystal clear. I hear his voice on the phone. I feel his hug. I understand his love.

It’s curious, but with Steve gone, I’m no longer afraid of what comes after. In fact I’m not even worried. Just as he showed me that Warm Springs Creek wasn’t too hard to get across, I feel his presence now waiting on the “other side.” It’s not so far and it’ll be just another step on the way home.

I’m wearing this Hawai’ian shirt tonight because "aloha" means good-bye and hello. I know that Steve and I will meet again someday. In the words of Don Forbes’ song, “He just got there first.”

I hope you can hear me: I love you, Steve! Aloha!

Songs and Gifts

As many of you know, my dad has been in assisted care at The Aegis in Corte Madera for several years. About a year and a half ago, he was moved into a memory unit (“Life’s Neighborhood”), where they could cope more easily with his day to day care, medications and failing mental faculties. 

My sister, Kathy, took this photo on Dad's 91st birthday this year.
She commented that he "looks happy in his own thoughts."

It has been a difficult time for him. At first, he was the most “with it” member of the Neighborhood and that frustrated him no end. Fortunately, his lady friend at The Aegis, Edna Engel, was able to visit him nearly every day.

Sadly, this spring he began his final decline. Just last week, Hospice of Marin called to say that his passing appeared imminent. Of course, we visited numerous times, but he seemed to be unaware of our presence and lost in his own world.

Last night, as I entered his room, I remarked again to myself how small he appeared in his bedclothes. Yet, in my mind’s eye, his aura was as large as ever. Even at the end, when he sometimes responded poorly to the attendants’ attempts to re-position him in bed, often rudely throwing his arms about, you couldn’t help but notice the man’s physical strength and presence.

I stayed with him for a couple of hours as he alternated between sleeping peacefully and scratching furiously at his skin (due to a build-up of uric acid in the blood from kidney failure) as if wanting to rid himself of the body that had ultimately failed him.

I sang him old-time songs from a book I found in his room (he used to have a wonderful voice that was noted by many at the Aegis) and mentally gave him permission to let go. When he became agitated, I found that if I placed my hand atop his head, it seemed to calm him. I think it helped Dad to know that someone was there. Then my wife, Pat, came and sat with us for a while until we finally said good-bye. I kissed him on his forehead and wished him well and a smooth passage. I didn’t think I would be seeing him again in this lifetime.

This morning, as I was out on one of my favorite bike rides, the Aegis called with news that my father, William Lorin Clark, born May 7, 1920, had died quietly at 10:00 am with a nurse by his side.

Though he had been slipping away for quite some time, I am still processing the concept that he is gone. After all, he was my Father, a role that he never relinquished during his life. Perhaps he would have been happier at times if he had learned how to be simply a friend, but that wasn’t in the cards. He was our Provider and Protector, from beginning to end. I can’t help think of The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, and its message of unconditional love and sacrifice. If you have it in your collection of children’s books, take it out. If not, then borrow it from the library and read it with one or both of your parents in mind.

It seems, as the years pass by, that we allow these incredibly important people to become more and more irrelevant to us. Our lives diverge and we neglect to appreciate the gifts they have given us over the course of their lifetimes. As I sort through the pluses and minuses that were my legacy from from my father, I find myself lingering on all of the wonderful things this man gave me and I know that much of what is good about me is directly because of his influence. When my time comes, I hope my daughter will also be able to find a path through all of the contradictions that I have been, and come to the same conclusion.

But for now, all I can say is, thank you, Dad. I love you.

Innocence and Cocoanuts

It’s the second week of June and summer has finally arrived in Northern California. At the Novato Art Wine and Music festival yesterday, I passed someone in the sweltering crowd who smelled strongly of cocoanut oil. Back in the day, that odor wafting off sweaty bodies around our family pool meant summer was in full swing.

Of course, sun block hadn’t been invented back in the sixties. You covered up when mom was looking and, when she wasn’t, you just went ahead and got a healthy burn anyway. It only took a couple of episodes of “don’t you dare touch my back” and engrossing hours peeling your skin off in long strips before you had laid down your summer tan, which was impervious until school started again in September.

Suntan oil was for the girls, who wanted to keep their skin soft and supple as they browned nicely on their multi-colored beach towels with their bikini tops enticingly untied. Cocoanut oil was the choice for the tanning pros in the neighborhood, such as Jan Baroni, who already had a head start with her natural Italian coloring. On rare occasions, we pre-pubescent boys would even be put to work anointing those unreachable areas on the girls’ backs. I suppose they assumed we were too young and innocent to get turned on. Our main thoughts were how to extend the suntan oil slathering closer to the infinitely more desirable and mysterious regions of the female anatomy. Of course, that never happened.

We spent a lot of time outdoors in the summer. Actually, nearly all of our daylight hours. It was important to become as sun-resistant as possible in preparation for the ne plus ultra of summer outings when we would all go inner-tubing on the Russian River. I am sure that the older teenagers would have preferred to go off by themselves, but we “little kids” were probably part of the negotiations that involved the borrowing of family cars and gas company credit cards for the day.

Now, I had no idea where one acquired the enormous inner tubes that we used, but Chris O’Connor and Gary Montgomery did. They would inflate the huge black rubber doughnuts down at the Flying A gas station that used to stand at the entrance to South Knoll Road and tie them down to the tops of cars and in the backs of pick-ups.

The drive north took only an hour or so, and half the cars would be left at end of the planned trip, where we would eventually pull out. Then we would cram ourselves into the remaining vehicles like sardines and go another ten miles or so upstream. A quick lunch and we would plunge into the river.

Life jackets? You must be kidding. Thanks to our weekly block parties at the pool, we were all fairly strong swimmers. Besides, the few rapids we encountered were relatively tame. There were even some so shallow as to require getting out and portaging.

Mostly, we just floated along with the lazy current, baking in the hot sun and cooling each other down with frequent splash fights. Along the way, we would drift past fruit farms and occasionally, if the coast was clear, sneak onto shore and snatch fresh peaches off the nearest trees.

The only part of the trip that I didn’t care for was the ritual stop at one section of the river that had a row of high cliffs overhanging the water below.

However, for the others, this was where the testosterone-estrogen contract was sealed. The bravest teenage boys would challenge each other to higher and higher feats of diving, soaring off the slippery rocks while the prettiest girls would stretch out languidly in their string bikinis on the rocks opposite, like so many county fair prizes to be won. I was terrified of heights and the thought of jumping off even the lowest ledge gave me the willies, so I always made an excuse to go explore the meandering rapids nearby with Lynny Montgomery or Mike Baroni, who was even younger than I. Not that any of the cliff divers cared, I’m sure.

Finally, the day would end and we would carpool back up to the start of our floating adventure and drive home. The inner tubes were deflated and we fought to ride in the beds of the pickups or the open back of Johnny Baroni’s Scout.

Looking back, I can’t believe we got away with that. If I ever found out my daughter did something so reckless, she would be grounded for life. But, back then, it all seemed perfectly safe. The river rapids were gentle and Highway 101 was a harmless open-air thrill ride as it passed by the roadside gas station in Petaluma that advertised cigarettes on an enormous billboard that remains to this day. As we rode south, the trailing scent of cocoanut oil combined with our innocence to get us through summer unscathed.

Wax Cups and Buffaloes

It’s a heart-wrenching thing to clear out your parents’ house for good. For me, it was the only family home I had ever known. Yet when the time came, I found that I was simply not interested in most of the art objects and bric-a-brac that, at one time, I thought I might like to keep.

That’s why I find it odd that one of the mementoes I saved was a small red wax paper cup that resided in my mother’s bedroom desk. “Hit the Jackpot at Harrah’s” is printed in yellow and white on the side and it holds about a dollar’s worth of pennies that she once touched. Actually, it should have been filled with nickels.

My mother was one of the smartest persons I’ve known. Phi Beta Kappa, University of Rochester Medical School, New York Times crossword puzzle every Saturday. But she also longed for down-to-earth pleasures (see Rackets and Racquets, October, 2010) and often went to the casinos at Lake Tahoe with the other ladies of our South Knoll Road Gang. Fortunately, they had a place to roost once they got there, since the Ratto family – one of the original SKRG families – had recently moved to South Lake Tahoe and welcomed their company. My mother, Rita Baroni, Alice Montgomery, Laverne Schwartz, and even Lois Roberts made the pilgrimage several times a year.

While they did play Keno during mealtimes at the casinos (the Rattos even occasionally won pretty big prizes, in the tens of thousands of dollars, I recall), their game of choice was the nickel slots. You couldn’t get any more down-to-earth than placing five-cent bets in a smoky casino. But, of course, the goal was not to win jackpots (though that was definitely a perk); it was to spend girl-time together, sitting side-by-side on padded chrome and red plastic stools and challenging the one-armed bandits with a free cocktail in your hand.

Sometimes, I would get to come along, usually in the company of Lynny Montgomery, my best friend and almost-neighbor. At the Rattoes, we got to camp-out in sleeping bags on the deeply carpeted floor and gaze up at the popcorn ceiling, which sparkled magically with flecks of mica, like the clear Tahoe night sky. During the day, we would either play at the house - if any grown-ups were in - or go to the casinos with our mothers.

Once there, Lynny and I would be left to our own devices, which mostly meant hanging out in the kids’ lounge. There were vending machines, a snack bar, and a single television. Video games would have been fun, but this was back in the 60’s, so we made do with pin-ball machines instead.

I didn’t like the kid’s lounge very much and therefore don’t remember most of the time we spent there. I do remember how creepy I found most of the other youthful inmates, with their hard eyes and knowledge of mysterious pin-ball etiquette such as how to put a quarter on top of the machine to claim your turn. I suppose we were all pretty creepy at that age, but you notice it less when you’ve grown up around your own friends’ particular brand of peculiarity. No, I preferred to wander around the brightly carpeted casino with Lynny until it was time to go home for lunch or dinner. We were never abandoned for very long. Besides, what I was waiting for depended on how successful my mom had been.

After a delicious Italian supper cooked by Mrs. Ratto, my mother would present me with her winnings. Not to keep, but to comb through for special nickels for my coin collection. I emptied the bulging wax cups of coins on the carpet and proceeded to ferret out the ones I was still missing. Mostly, I was hoping for Buffalo nickels, which had been minted up until 1937, only thirty years previous. Today, a Buffalo nickel in my change would stop me dead in my tracks, but back then it wasn’t that unusual. On rare occasions, I even found Liberty Head nickels in my mom’s haul, like this one:

The Liberty nickels instantly conjured up images of me walking into a Main Street soda shop somewhere in Kansas territory and ordering an ice-cold sarsaparilla soda.

Rarely, did I come away from those weekend trips empty-handed. My mother’s Jackpot cups were my mother-lode. Now, all that the red wax cup in our hutch holds is copper pennies. But, in reality, it is filled to the rim with memories more valuable than gold.

Raindrops and Teardrops

I’ve been in Memory Overwhelm lately. Recent torrential rains revealed a small leak in our garage roof, which was dripping into the area where I have been storing some of our family history. Boxes and boxes of albums, slide carousels and memorabilia were in there. Fortunately, the water only damaged a few of the boxes and not the contents. But I realized it was time to get things out of cardboard and into plastic containers. I also wanted to take a rough inventory of photos and artifacts that I might find useful for this blog.

I went out and bought eight large clear plastic crates (more expensive, but easier to view contents), and then almost immediately bought a dozen more. The slides and photos of the many trips my parents took around the world I put away without sorting and started in on organizing my own stuff.

I never realized what a packrat I’ve been. Long forgotten memorabilia surfaced. In November I blogged about being a grip for a KQED auction during my high school days – and here was my plastic ID tag from that event. I was delighted to find that I had saved a French newspaper from when Eddy Merckx won his fifth Tour de France, probably one of the most iconic cycling news editions ever! Love letters from college sweethearts; painful let’s-just-be-friends notes from others. My high school aptitude test, ski racing ribbons, Pinewood Derby cars – all future blog fodder.

At times, I felt like Aladdin in the Cave of Wonders, with too many treasures to count. Then a note from a long-lost college buddy or a photo of a departed South Knoll Road neighbor would plunge me into an abyss of melancholia. As I read hundreds of greeting cards from graduations and birthdays, I despaired over how rich my life had been as a child and all the hopes those around me had had for my success. Had I measured up to any of their expectations?

Next, I tackled my theatre mementoes. Old programs, posters, photos and reviews were sorted by show and filed alphabetically. What I found most engrossing were the notes from fellow cast members and those whom I had directed. These heartfelt wishes on opening nights and closings caught my imagination and brought be back to why I love the theatre so much – the intense work, the camaraderie and intimacy, the ad hoc family that is created and broken apart with each show. It all made me eager to tap into that energy again.

Finally, I delved into the Clark family history. Fortunately, my dad had done a pretty good job of going through the photo albums from his parents and grandparents before he closed up the old house, carefully labeling what he could. I have to admit that I was hoping to find some photos of my own very early childhood, pictures that had always seemed to be missing. There was the well-thumbed album of black and white photos of my brother and sister cavorting in diapers with a bucket and hose on my grandmother’s lawn in Fresno (no doubt the temperature was hovering above 100 degrees), but none of Yours Truly. Yes, there was the single photo of me riding a rocking horse in our living room, but where were the rest? We used to joke that my dad had burned out on taking pictures of John and Kathy and that I was simply old news, baby-photo-wise.

It was when I was looking for a picture of Goose Lake (Cheerios and Salmon Eggs, July 2010) to add to that blog post that I found my answer. First, I tried an Internet search, but the alkaline jet ski-infested lake I found online looked nothing like my memories. So I re-read that portion of my dad’s memoires and found that one of the few camping trips my mother had consented to take was to Mammoth Lakes. Could I be mistaken? I went back to the boxes in the garage and came across a single album of large 2 ¼ inch Kodachrome slides. I had ignored it initially because the first pages were photos from the National Guard and Mexico, but then I hit the Mother Lode.

Here were color pictures of our house being built in 1956 at 38 South Knoll, of my maternal grandmother on a rare visit from Connecticut and holding me in her arms while sitting on a chair in our newly-poured driveway. Groupings of neighborhood kids on our pristine front steps, my sister playing with a crude homemade train (my dad’s work?), and dozens of slides of me as a little boy in the yard and with my family at the beach.

I hadn’t been a victim of family neglect, just one of advancing technology. The medium-format color slides could only be projected one-at-at-time, so they were almost never brought out, and color prints were probably too expensive at the time and certainly not printable at home, the way my father made enlargements from black and white negatives.

Then I found what I was looking for: slides of that camping trip I had remembered. Here was an actual picture of me riding on my father’s saddle and cradled in his arms – one of my first memories – and another of our tent where I had gotten my unusual bucket-bath one stormy night. There was also an intriguing photo of us, taken in front of a Park Service trail sign. I got out a magnifying glass and all was revealed – it pointed the way to Duck Lake, not Goose Lake. I got out a map of the Sierras and quickly found Duck Lake and neighboring Pika Lake, where I learned how to fish. As I thumbed through the album I whooped and hollered. This was simply amazing stuff to me. The cloudburst of my emotions rivaled the rainstorm outside.

There is so much to take in that I now feel like an archaeologist at the beginning of a dig. This will take some time and I know I will sometimes have to fight back the tears as I am haunted by the ghosts of time gone by in those slides and elsewhere in mountain of memories in the garage. I am glad that the family history is now enclosed in plastic boxes, to keep everything dry. But how will I manage to keep myself from washing away?

Fried Shrimp and TV Tables

Trader Joe’s is always an adventure to me. It’s not where I normally shop, because I get lost easily. But there is always something intriguing to try. Sweet potato gnocchi? Sure, I’ll give that a shot. Smoked salmon and spinach-filled crepes? Why not?

Yesterday, as we were wrapping up a quick hunt-and-gather around the store, we were offered samples of Trader Joe’s Battered Shrimp. Not only were they pretty tasty, but they opened a floodgate of unexpected memories.

My mother was an excellent cook in her day. She regularly introduced foods from around the world into our diet. But she was not immune to Modern Time-saving Conveniences, especially on the evenings when she worked late or had PTA meetings. We didn’t mind. That meant that she would serve one of our favorite meals – TV dinners.

Of course, back then, they would be Swanson’s Frozen TV Dinners. And for reasons unknown to me, my favorite was always Fried Shrimp. I don’t think I ever ate fried shrimp in a restaurant. The closest I can remember was the shrimp cocktail down at Sabella’s, the Italian restaurant near the Richardson Bridge in Mill Valley, where we would also shamelessly scarf those little sugar cubes wrapped in paper, thus helping send our family dentist’s children to college.

Anyway, here’s what my dinner looked like:

It’s funny, but even seeing this old magazine advertisement makes my mouth water uncontrollably. Yes, I can remember the rubbery texture of the crinkle-cut French fries, the too-heavy breading of the shrimp (which was nothing like that at Trader Joe’s), and the way the peas seemed to invariably escape from their corner abode. (Naturally, before I could dig in, I had to chase each one of them back to their little pea-home.) But there was no way to spoil the cocktail sauce and the whole was miraculously more sublime than the sum of its parts.

We never ate TV dinners in the living room, but in the Den. We set up the metal folding TV tables with the flower patterns on a black background (remember the kind that would sometimes collapse without warning?) and watched Car 54 Where Are You?, Gunsmoke, The Flintstones, The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy.

But the best was when we got to eat dinner in the Den and watch Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color on our new color TV. Walt himself came into our home and would introduce each show. My favorite character was Ludwig Von Drake. I loved his German accent and the way he would use his nephew Donald to explain principles of science. Don’t see much of that in TV cartoons today.

The Den was where we were entertained, where my mom would darn socks and pay the bills, and where we watched history. It was where I sat for the first moon landing on a hot summer afternoon in July, John Kennedy’s funeral on a rainy November day, and Lady Diana’s wedding to Charles, all the way from Westminster Abbey. My father watched countless football games in the Den, all the time complaining how the cameramen never showed what was happening downfield, only focusing on the offensive line. That drove him crazy.

Most important, the Den was neutral territory. It was a refuge from the arguments that would sometimes erupt at the dinner table. My father, at the losing end of yet another dispute with my mother (she was often in the right), would protest loudly that “I guess I’m not allowed to say anything in this house!” and disappear into the Den to watch sports. No one ever followed and we were left to finish dinner and do the dishes in silence.

But times change. It is now only on special occasions that my family eats at our actual dining table. Instead, we sit on our sagging couch, join hands and say grace, and then watch The Big Bang Theory, Jeopardy or Glee as we eat with our plates in our laps. How terribly uncivilized.

Are we regressing into trailer-trashdom? Maybe so. Conversation about our day is limited, but we do interact, laugh a lot and relax. Once a week, we try to turn off the TV and play games such as Mexican dominoes or Milles Bornes or Scrabble, but between Jessica’s homework and doing the dishes, we often simply veg out till bed-time.

Thinking back, I can’t remember many of our often tense regular dinners around the Clark dining table (except for the holidays). But I do remember with fondness the forbidden pleasure of eating Swanson’s Fried Shrimp Dinners off flimsy TV tables in our Den. So, perhaps our unorthodox dining habits aren't necessarily the end of the world.

Fresh Snow and Frozen Fingers

When we awoke this morning, there was a dusting of snow on the high hills in the Bay Area. No, I suppose for the poor residents in the East and Midwest who are digging out from “Snowpocalypse” and other record winter storms, that is no big deal. But for us folks in Cali, it’s still a novelty to have snow this close to the Left Coast. While I am still hoping and waiting to wake up in Novato one morning and find several inches of snow on the ground, I’ll take what I can get.

The most recent time it really snowed here was in 2003. That day, I woke up, got in the van and started the relatively short drive to my job at Riverdeep Software in Ignacio. I didn’t get very far – onto Rowland Boulevard – when I caught sight of Mount Burdell, just north of town and covered in a mantle of snow from about five hundred feet up. Serendipitously, I happened to have my camera with me and made a detour to capture the view for posterity.

Unfortunately, everywhere I drove, there were trees or power lines or houses in the way. I just couldn’t get the clear shot I was looking for, so I decided to get closer. I parked at the trailhead on San Andreas Drive and thought I would walk quickly up the gravel road to where the meadow opens up, which I knew would give me a spectacular view of the mountain (really more of a very tall hill, at only 1,500 feet). The going was awkward in my dress shoes and chilly in my jeans, but at least I had a thick coat.

Reaching the meadow, I got off some excellent shots. If I left now, I would only be slightly late to work and in time for my 10 o’clock departmental meeting. Instead, I chose to climb higher up along the Middle Burdell Fire Road.

Pretty soon, I was walking on a dusting of snow, which quickly deepened to three or four inches. I tried to walk in others’ footsteps, to keep snow from filtering into my shoes. Soon, that was impossible, as I was making fresh tracks.


Tire tracks in the snow.

 A mountain biker passed me, leaving tread marks in the pristine whiteness. It was now only the two of us on the upper reaches. Without being conscious of it, the decision had been made to blow off the meeting altogether and push for the summit. I passed Hidden Lake, named because it disappears in the summer, but now beginning to freeze solid. Soon it would be hidden beneath a blanket of white.

As I ascended the steepest section of the Cobblestone Fire Road, my shoes slipped on the snow, threatening to throw me into gaping drainage ditches. My feet went from cold to numb. I took off my shoes only to discover that my toes had become blackened with frost-bite. They swelled so quickly that I couldn’t get my loafers back on, so I kept going in my stocking feet, trying to keep Jim and Jennifer Stolpa out of my thoughts.

A couple of hundred feet higher and my food and water ran out. I could also no longer remember where I had left my backpack, tent, and sleeping bag. Too late, it hit me how foolish it had been to attempt this route without oxygen, as hypoxia began to muddle my senses. Still I climbed. I tried to call the office, but my cell phone had lost reception. I tossed it away into the snow drift mindlessly, a hasty action that I would regret later when my monthly bill came and I discovered that all my Anytime Minutes had been used up to call drug traffickers in El Salvador.

My pace slowed as I struggled to place one foot ahead of the other, cursing my decision to leave my crampons in my underwear drawer that morning. Step-pause-breathe. Step-pause-breathe. My thought processes narrowed to just one seemingly unattainable goal – reaching the top.

The mountain biker passed me again, going back down the mountain. His hair was frosted with rime, his corneas iced-over and his mouth a frozen rictus of cold and pain. If he even saw me, it didn’t register as he whizzed past on bare wheels, his knobby tires apparently having become so brittle from the cold that they had literally shattered off the rims. Then I realized that he was probably already dead, his spinning wheels the only things keeping him from falling over in his ghostly descent down the mountain.

Toward the end, I was flat on my belly, making upward progress only by digging my chin into the snow and pulling myself along inch by inch. In the back of my mind, I think I knew that this would now be a one-way journey. As my fingers became numb, breaking off like icicles, I ate them, eager for whatever energy they brought to my depleted body. If this continued, I would consume myself entirely before I achieved my goal.
 

View toward China and Pakistan.

It took me several minutes to suddenly realize that I had made it. I stood slowly and looked out over sleepy Novato, far to the south, and the snow-covered flanks of Mount Burdell, spread out below me like a plus-size wedding gown. As I gazed north, I could see into China and Pakistan, actually looking down onto the 20,000 foot peaks of the Karakoram mountain range.

Realizing that I was now in the Death Zone, where the body starts to deteriorate rapidly due to the effects of high altitude, I ate the last of my digits and began my stumbling descent into the abyss. Hypothermia now began to make me shiver uncontrollably and I lost my footing often. Several times the ground disappeared from underfoot and I found myself falling over jagged glacial bergschrunds.

My arms were frozen into this grotesque position.



Miraculously, I came across some native Novatoans in their indigenous garb just above Hidden Lake. I tried to communicate with them, but my words were addled and my frozen lips could not form consonants. They took pity on me and snapped this photo. Here it is:

The rest is a blur to me. Apparently, I was rescued, spent ten days in a mud hut at the corner of Simmons and Novato Boulevard and then weeks in a medically-induced coma as new fingers were cloned from frost-bitten tissue carved from my toes.



Do I rue my decision to climb all the way to the top of that frigid peak? Definitely not. I still have vivid memories of the day I summitted Mount Burdell in the snow. Would I still have remembered whatever was discussed in that departmental meeting that I missed? What do you think?

Quince and Chowder

I drove my daughter to school this brisk winter morning and passed a house on Gallinas Avenue that displayed a patch of flowering quince in the front yard. For most of the year, quince plants are pretty unremarkable: a low shrub with dense, dark-green foliage. But in the early spring, they are the rockstars of the garden as their joyously red flowers with bright yellow stamens bloom shamelessly on bare stalks. For the first 21 years of my life, quince were off my radar, as were most things having to do with gardens. Until I met Helen Nelson.

In 1977, I was graduated from college and trying to figure out my next steps. I had decided to continue my education at the College of Marin, studying drama, but I also needed to start earning money. I only knew Helen peripherally, as the sister-in-law of my parent's close friends Jean and Ancy Nelson, but she was looking for a gardener (slash) handyman, and I got the call. She lived alone in Mill Valley, in a house with a commanding view of Richardson Bay and her substantial garden. Over the next twenty or so years, I would work in her garden, organize her home and her office, hang and re-hang her artwork numerous times, help her produce a major film documentary on the Consumer Movement, and plan her gala 80th birthday party.

In turn, she would become first my employer, then my mentor and, eventually, one of my closest friends. But this is the story of my first day working at 249 Perry Street.

I arrived early in the morning and Helen showed me around the yard. She pointed out various plants, where she kept the house key hidden (in a jar of bird seed), the tool shed (a disaster) and the "utility area" (another disaster). Then she gave me a list of chores and projects for the day and I made my first attempt to decipher her scrawled handwriting, a task I would become only marginally better at over the coming years.

That first morning, she set me to pulling weeds on what she called "The Mound", which was the long raised flower bed that one saw looking out across the lawn toward the Bay. It was filled with annual flowers, a few perennials, and a broad selection of especially pernicious weeds such as blackberry, crab grass and poison oak. I tackled that for a couple of hours and then moved on to a larger project on the list: removing the climbing fig that was slowly prying apart the eaves of her house.

I made very sure that she wanted me to remove it entirely, and not just trim it. There would be no going back. It was hard work, as the fig clung desperately to the gutters, but I kept at it. My two hours of weeding The Mound had showed only marginal progress and I wanted to complete something showy. Actually, that would become my modus operandi for all of my jobs: to split my efforts between making slow but steady progress on a necessary but un-glamorous task and another task with higher visibility that made my employer feel good about my work.

Anyway, just as Helen returned before lunch, the entire climbing fig lay on the ground below the eaves, from which it had been torn. Something seemed to be tearing at Helen, too. "Wow, you did that fast," was her only comment. I think she had wished we had started by simply pruning the fig, but it was too late. In time, I would learn to anticipate her impulsive desires and occasionally temper them with caution.

As we conferred and laid out the rest of my day, she was suddenly struck, "Oh dear, I don't have any lunch for you!" I told her that was okay; I had a sandwich in the car. She replied that, clearly, that wouldn't do and could I wait a half an hour for her to get something for us? Naturally, I said yes.

I moved on to trimming back the aforementioned quince, which held sway outside the office window. Unfortunately, in addition to being very attractive, it was also very invasive and constantly threatened to take over its neighbors in the side yard. Then I heard Helen announcing her return and for me to wash up for lunch.

Over the years, I have worked for literally dozens of bosses, some considerate, some decidely less so. Never have I worked for one who had the panache of Helen. As we sat at her artisan kitchen table, with its inlay of eight large colorful tiles, she apologized again for the delay and then laid out our meal. Amazingly, she had driven over to The Seven Seas restaurant in Sausalito and returned with cracked crab, clam chowder, and a loaf of fresh Bordenave's French bread. Then she opened up a bottle of chardonnay and we shared the first of hundreds of memorable meals at that table.

From that first day, our relationship was never one of boss and employee. We were friends and we were both helping fill each other's needs: She needed help keeping her yard and home in order, and I needed a steady income.

More important, though, she sought out my creativity and sense of humor, and I eagerly took advantage of having my first true mentor (other than my mother). Over the years, Helen would provide me with countless opportunities to learn and to branch out. She also showed me the true meaning of joie de vivre in everything she did. That, I think, was her greatest gift.

As I often do with close friends that are now gone, I wish that I could drop by her house just one more time, like in the old days. We would sit at her glass patio table beneath the spreading Japanese maple, lunch on some delicious snack that she had managed to whip up out of the mish-mosh of things in her kitchen, and watch the hummingbirds visit the copper birdbath that dripped water into the cement pool below. Perhaps a red fox would pass across the yard on its way to points unknown. She would tell me of her recent adventures and I would tell her what was happening in the theatre. We would drink too much and then take a walk around the garden with her showing me the new arrivals.

I sometimes wonder if those who have passed sense when we are thinking of them. That seems plausible to me; sort of like a phone call from the living, or even a "tweet." If that's so, then I hope you're listening, Helen.

Time and Money

My current job ends in 13 days. Fortunately, I knew that it would come to a finish eventually and, even though my status as a “transitional employee” has been extended twice, there is a finality about January 28 that is unavoidable.

As I sat in my cubicle yesterday, closing out loans on my computer, I looked out the window and saw myself looking in. I know it was just my usual reflection, but it seemed like more of an out-of-body experience this time. What was I doing here, trapped inside a stuffy office for eight hours a day? Is this how I envisioned myself when I was my daughter’s age? It reminded me of something my drama instructor once said. I believe it was a quote from Francois Truffaut (and I am probably mangling it), but it went something like this: “How many of us, back when we were teenagers, if we could have seen ourselves in middle age would not have immediately committed suicide?”

The experience made me think of probably the most important thing my father ever told me. I was in the back bedroom of our home in Mill Valley and I don’t remember how the conversation started, but we got on the subject of finances. He told me that he thought the old adage, “Time is money” was wrong. According to his thinking, the real equation should be, “Money is time.”

From an arithmetic sense, the two should have equal meaning. But, from a philosophical point of view, they couldn’t be further apart. “Time is money” suggests that the purpose of time is increase wealth. It's frequently used to convey the message that if you are wasting time, you are passing by on limited opportunities to get ahead in the world. What it doesn’t address is the issue of why you are compelled to increase wealth in the first place. Presumably, the answer is to acquire more “stuff” than your neighbor. Or as a 1980s bumper sticker once proclaimed, “He who dies with the most toys, wins.”

No, my dad argued, “Money is time.” That is, if you want to have more money to buy more things, the deal with the devil is that you must give up a portion of the most valuable commodity you have – your life. In other words, imagine every day as a slice of your time on this planet. Then, everything you buy is exchanged for a number of days working at some job that is probably less enjoyable than whatever you would be doing if you didn’t have to work.

Ferenc Mate, the author of A Reasonable Life, puts it this way: Let’s assume you are building a house and decide that your simply must have the three-car garage that only adds, say, $100,000 to the $900,000 cost (not out of the ballpark, here in Marin County). Reasonable enough, you might say. Then, figure that roughly $100,000 in interest will be paid to service that $100,000 in principal over the period of a 30-year loan at 5% interest. So, your garage now costs approximately $200,000. Now, let’s assume you and your spouse earn $150,000 per year and manage to keep $100,000 after taxes. I’ve simplified the math quite a bit, but that’s two years of both of you working at your job, rather than spending time with your kids, traveling, gardening or just enjoying each other’s company - all for a garage.

Two years may not seem so important, but as I see elderly residents of my father’s assisted care facility clinging to the last few days, weeks, or months of their lives, I wonder how many of them would have liked to have swapped some of those years they spent in the rat race for time spent really enjoying life, back when they were able?

But perhaps you are not planning on buying a $900,000 home. As I look out my window, I can see the top of Mt. Tamalpais. I have ridden up there many times, up the Old Railroad Grade, right up to below the fire lookout I can see from here. Would a $4,000 mountain bike make the climb that much more enjoyable? If so, then I need to prepare to spend at least two more months at my keyboard, entering data, instead of riding.

Ultimately, there is a cost to everything we buy, and it is a slice of our life, lopped off our limited number of days on this planet. That isn’t to say that some things aren’t worth earning. Just that it is good to keep desire and happiness in perspective.

I plan to spend some of my time, once I am officially laid off, contemplating that equation and weighing the trade-offs in my life, as I plan my next move. I will be doing my contemplating, however, atop my $35 mountain bike, climbing up past the Double Bowknot on my way to the summit. I will also be thinking of my father, whose wisdom is no less valid today than it was when he offered it thirty-five years ago.