Finding Your North Star

It's a little hot right now for camping, but it is one of those activities I genuinely enjoy. When I was an airline pilot based in California, I used to head out to the Sierras every time I got a few days off, in my SUV, with nothing but a sleeping bag, a fishing pole, and a cooler of pop and sandwiches.

I then didn't go for years. A thousand-mile commute from where I was based as a pilot to where I lived took away that urge. Then, later, with another job that had me on the road constantly, the last thing I wanted to do on my time off was be away from my own bed. 

So being free to pack up and go anytime I want now is so liberating. But oh, has the world of camping changed. My first trip was to a small state park, a day’s drive east of home. What I didn't know was that in the last 20 or so years, camping has evolved from the basics—tents, beer, and sandwiches — to the "established campsite".

As I pulled into the park, I could only think of that Joni Mitchell song "They Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot". Instead of sparsely isolated spots of dirt where the remnants of a campfire might be found, there was what appeared to be the parking lot of the Mall of America, except with RVs.

In Campsite #179, a 300-pound man in a bathing suit (my eyes! my eyes!) was trying to adjust his cable antenna (do they still make those?) on top of his $125,000 "camper".  From somewhere in the bowels of this getaway vehicle, his wife and kids were "roughing" it by not having Netflix.

In Campsite #180 just feet away, a couple was arguing about the fact that the wife had left the cappuccino maker at home, while what was either Katy Perry or someone strangling a weasel played loudly enough to disturb anything hibernating within 75 miles. 

I drove further in, hoping for some of the peace and solitude I craved only to about veer off the road as a chipmunk, with a yellow plastic radio transistor collar, sped across the road, followed by about a dozen screaming children and what was either a small scruffy dog or a rat with hyperthyroidism leading the pack, barking in a high pitched tone that would have broken glass.

I turned back and went to the gate where I'd paid my fee to drive through and see a tree, and then I asked the ranger. "Can I just go in deep in here and pitch a tent to stay overnight away from everyone?" And he said, friendly but firm, "No. You must be in one of the designated sites, but there's plenty to do. Here. You can have site # 278," as he handed me what looked to be brochures from a Las Vegas hotel. "The showers are to your left, the recreation hall to your right, don't forget the group nature walks". He smiled and held out his hand. "That will be $32.00, please." "$32 just to throw down a sleeping bag with my dog?", I said. “The website said it was only about $20."

 

Apparently, I didn’t factor in the extra charges if it’s a weekend, if you want a shower, or if you’re breathing or. . . . "

"In a designated pet camping spot only, which is an additional $2, of course," he said, peering with a smile into the back seat at Barkley, who was starting to growl. "And the dog must be on a leash at all times. It's policy".  "Don't you have something for about $10.00? I pleaded.  I'm just here for the night and don't need to use the showers." That's what the 5 gallons of jugged water in the back of my jeep is for. Check for neighbors, have gun handy in case of bear, take off the clothes and pour it over my head. . voila' shower! It worked in the wilds of Alaska and Africa; it'll work in Pennsylvania. 

"I’m sorry, but the pricing is on our website, Ma’am." (Ma’am?!) Barkley was growling in earnest now, looking as if he wanted to eat the ranger’s hat . . . to start. I gave up. "Does #278 have a fire pit? I'm looking forward to some hot dogs and campfire chili."

"Fires are not allowed in your  particular campsite, Ma'am," the ranger said (I swear one more "Ma'am and I'm going to smear the Ranger Rick here with peanut butter and let Barkley out of the truck)."If you wish, however, you may purchase a burrito at the snack bar.” Burritos? No wonder the only raccoons I saw were in organized groups wearing authentic ski masks.

Granted, I was probably “safe” from four-legged predators. No bear or mountain lion could get through the 12-inch gap between Winnebago’s, though I figured the raccoons would use drones to get any food hoisted up a tree branch at night.

Suddenly, the sky lit up with someone’s leftover fireworks from the 4th of July. Seriously? If I wanted to play with a cannon, I could have stayed home.  

I bid the ranger good day, turned around, and drove until I found some land that didn't look to be privately owned. In the ascending hills, I hiked for a while and pitched my tent. I didn't have a microwave, but I had a small, carefully managed fire, one that burned bright. In its light, my hair was like fire and points of fire burned in my eyes as I savored all of it, woodsmoke and bug spray, paper plates that got all soggy and fell apart, the sounds of the crickets as the sun set, the sun's dying rays reflected in my drink as Barkey snoozed happily by the fire.

As I drifted off to sleep, the branch of a tree brushed against the tent opening, driving in the forlorn scent of the wild. From a distance, a sound, not civilization, but simply the hoot of an owl, felt more than heard, pressing against the night until nothing was left but a dark impression as it flew away. 

There is no video streaming service, no internet, no phone. There is a watch in my backpack with a compass, but even that is not carried to keep track of the time, but only to put time aside so as not to spend my breath trying to conquer it. There is just me, my dog, and the vast summer sky, languid and empty of geese, news helicopters, or the late evening conga line that is Midway Airport at 9 pm. Above me, just the North Star blinking in that vast and empty gesture that is all promise, even as it remains out of reach. 

This is why I come out here, for those times when I don't wish to sacrifice the wonder of the present moment to work, civilization, or noise. I love a broad margin to my life. And I've always been a loner. I can sit in the faded sunlight of a doorway between two giant trees, from dinner till dark fall, rapt in a revere amidst the forest, in undisturbed stillness and solitude.  As darkness settles on me, I wonder about the lapse of time, the evening seeming like a mere moment, time like a season in which I grew like flowers in the night.

Like flying, time spent in the woods is not subtracted from my life, but is simply over and above my usual allowance. Oriental philosophers talk about contemplation and the forsaking of work, and I realized out here what that means. Out in the woods, I don't care how the hours went; the day advances as light comes into it, it's morning, and now it's evening, and nothing memorable is done. My days are not days of the week, minced into hours and deadlines of a ticking clock or an airline schedule. Let mornings be lazy, afternoons pass by in long walks through the woods, the splash of a paddle in the water, and if the day becomes wasted in the warm rapture of a sunset as nature sings its song in your ear - what's the harm? 

THIS is my North Star.  Unidentifiable sounds in the darkness that make you hold your breath at the bottom of your sleeping bag. A good book read with a dying flashlight until sleep came, shadows dancing on the wall of a small canvas tent, and the musty smell of freedom and adventure. A time when growth may not be on the surface but may be internal, as the days quietly drift by in the warm embrace of the woods. - Brigid

Where's Brigid (A Tutorial)

It started with plaster raining on my head while making dinner. Apparently, the 115-year-old chimney had degraded to the point where it was letting water into the attic (and subsequently the kitchen ceiling).  The chimney had to come out.  But it vents the furnace!

We started with redoing the ceiling down to the bones (not just the plaster) and new drywall around the chimney.  An antique light fixture that had been out for a while was finished up, and the entire ceiling was replastered and painted (and the walls where they needed some minor repairs). 

I didn't cry when the original red in which the kitchen ceiling was painted sometime in the 60s was covered up.

Then, to tackle the source of the leak.

A new vent had to be installed through two floors, two walls, and the attic roof before the chimney could be removed.

$15,000 was the low-end quote.

We did it ourselves. 

The closet was the juncture where the new vent would go. Did I mention a 370-pound gun safe that had to come out?  Oh, and that pesky hot water line in the basement?

Once it was reinstalled (you have to pull out the walls and the floor to get that baby out of there now (the wall was rebuilt, the trim and hanging fixtures reinstalled.

It was time to run the new vent up through the second floor and through the roof.

I don't know WHY this old chimney was leaking.

The new vent system is up and running. Tomorrow, weather permitting, the chimney above the roofline will be lopped off (and hauled away) and that area reshingled.  The business that did our roof will do that, the one part of this I didn't want us to DIY (I just don't bounce the way I used to, and that roof has a steep pitch).  

So folks, that's how Brigid and Partner in Grime have been spending their summer vacation.  OK, and building miniature catapults to lob small rocks at one another while playing Mexican Train Dominoes. . . . 

 

 1

On Creativity

Outside of the glow of a small window, evening air breathes against the glass, leaving an invisible print of its presence. The streetlight comes on early, with the overcast skies, bright as a spark that fell unaware on an uncaring landscape. The sun lies low and flat under low clouds, as out on the street, a ragged bus drives towards the setting sun, like an animal being driven to its death. People are on the way home, the sound of traffic, the admonishment of a horn, the squeal of a tire. Everything is noise and motion, leaves crushed under the tires, birds taking flight from the trees.

Inside, there is only peace. For she had already worked a full day, arising when some people were going to bed, getting back to a room where she should sleep, but could not.

She sits at a narrow table, spread fingers splaying out thoughts while the last of the light wraps around the strong beat of her heart. Outside lies a world forgotten as the words fly, sullen clouds and dead ashes swirling, branches stirring like water, drowning in the fading light. She works until the words are freed, then pours a cup of tea to ready herself for a sleep that is but a distant memory.

Miles away, he works late, bent over a shop table, hands scarred and toughened by work, stitching, molding, creating something that will hold a life, even if occasionally the process does draw blood In the corner a fire, warming his hands, driving him to completion, even as his breath quickens with the effort, drawing into his lungs, the searing dark.

They both work, as they are happiest, without witness or judge. One crafts something gently and tenderly with a soft rein of thought, while the other takes that which was once living but is now not, writing its story, tearing down and rebuilding with the ransacking of innermost fears.

Both of them are artists, and both of what they create is art. What defines art, and what makes an artist?

Art is the province of every human being who holds within them talent. It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra thing limited to drawing or sculpting and the like. It's simply a part of your inner self. I know artists who write, who craft with wood, who create things from fine leather, who take photos, who play an instrument, all leaving that permanent mark of their soul's occupation.

Creativity for these people, the expression of it, through picture, word, or craft, is a way of celebrating, of showing what it means to be alive, there in the unbeatable odds against it. Life, by any reasonable measure, is impossible, a human body that is as strong or frail as just one cell, with random acts of irrationality and loss wearing us down, pulling the color out of our blood. Yet, for some of us, we keep drawing in breath after breath, pulling in precious moments of oxygen with the remnants of our happiness, until our blood darkens with strength, slowly filling up those empty chambers in our hearts.

For the artist, creating is a way of taking that breath, of saying in the face of all that impossibility, or dangers that lurk in the dark streets and minds of man, just how worth celebrating it is to just be here. I am here, I created this, this little piece of me, whether you like it or not, it IS me, and it will be here long after I am gone.

Like breath, it builds on just small intakes of life, of thought of the movement of hands, the cut of a piece of wood, the downward stroke of a pen. It is not done with haste or without thought. Art can be built from the soul's imperfection, but it can not find breath with the spirit of impatience, for it is only slowly that you can hear the wind with your eyes or taste the sweetness with your ears.

Growing up in a small town left something with me that remained, despite the urgent need as a teen to get away from it. Patience. For nothing much happened there. Certainly, nothing happened fast. A parade could last two days, it seemed, and if you wanted something fixed, you usually did it yourself, rather than making a phone call to someone with tools and a credit card reader.

Behind our Sixties ranch home was open land and a small rural highway. There were no "Coming Soon! Starbucks" signs. There were cows, nothing on the horizon but the shifting of rumps, the clang of metal as they swung their heads, checking to see if you were bringing cow chow. That was years before the escape to the big city, when mornings dawned early and loneliness roosted in the rafters.

But as a child, all of that seemed larger than life, just as it was familiar and unchanging. Days dawned slow, and time rose and swelled like the curve of a woman's breast. My Dad went to work every weekday, was home every night at the same time. Friday was steak and Westerns, eating on TV trays, Saturday was chores and grilled burgers. During the afternoon, we explored, cheered on by the sawmill buzz of a lawn mower, the sound of the ice cream truck. Sunday was church, sports for my Dad, and more outside play for us while Mom curled up with her books or the ceramics she liked to make and fire.

On those days of play, it seemed as if time itself was suspended, hanging in the air like a curtain, waiting to be opened, lying on the ground to be picked up and put in our pockets, with that piece of string and the little bazooka army guy. We'd play hard all afternoon, there in time's motionless shadow. It was only with the call of Mom's voice for dinner that we realized we'd been outside 7 hours, drinking from the hose, dashing in from the gunpowder dust of August to grab a homemade cookie, in furtive raids.

Years later, I would wake, the city near, waiting for the phone to ring, or the next morning to roll around. My body wakes in its own time zone, regardless of the country or county I'm in. The days are filled with rushed deliberation, deadlines, and demands, as everyone expects answers within an hour —the time we've come to expect any problem to be solved, thanks to TV. It's food on the run, and conversations stammered like an old typewriter, noise and air, sweat and motion.

When I was called, I usually didn't rush to get there. The first responders had done their business; what waited for me wasn't going anywhere, nothing left but the tragic, unspoken bones that would wait for me forever. But once I'm there, time was a blur of heat and sweat and thought. The sun fell, the night grew cold, lights were brought in, and I realized I'd not been out here one hour; I'd been out there for ten.

It is all such things that go into what I wish to say or do, the creation of that which can't occur without your past, a recognition of not just that which is good but the keen edge of a blade that hovers above. Such things make it easy for days such as Saturday, when I will spend nine hours, over time, creating, not what would be defined as art, not something to hang on the wall, but simply two dozen tiny French pastries, made by hand, with layers and layers of dough and butter, formed and shape. They are not things to last, but things to be consumed, with a cup of hot coffee, Strauss on the stereo I sit beneath the art I have collected, above me a signed painting by Bev Doolittle, a piece of art that cost more than some of my cars and of which I would never sell, for it speaks to me of something within me, something only heard as the steady, soft foot of horses in snow

Indeed, we all have our own tastes. I prefer older pieces over modern or abstract ones. I like to look at it and see something I have seen or experienced. Artists of the 17th and 18th century could depict in layers of paint hundreds of years old, a drop of blood on a singe fox whisker It's that tiny drop that draws your eye, that you can't help but stare at, waiting for that moment when it will drop to the ground, to be consumed by the earth. 

But I am not immune to the power of modern pieces, where the artist's vision of heaven and hell, earth and order, passion and prayer might be revealed in pieces of forged metals, depicting in its hammered burden, the secret bridge between religious and sensual ecstasy, a cry out into the night. I am not unmoved by operas that do not calm the waters, but rather, strike up against the rocks, as if the sea were howling for the moon, the depths wishing their darkness to be heard.

Whatever type of art draws you in, we are all strengthened by the growing number of craftsmen and women, people who live to create, to express their joy in living, through their thoughts and hands. When an artist is alive in any person, regardless of their work type, they draw people in. They educate, provoke, and enlighten, opening our minds to discovery. Where those who have no such talents are trying to close the book, the artist opens it, showing there are still many more unwritten pages. The world would stagnate without them, just as the world is more colorful with them; for they make us think and feel and strive and, more importantly, question, as they gain in the work, not outside of it.

And so this evening, I will create, as the words flow from my fingertips. It may be ignored, it may simply be consumed later, without taste, but as I close my words and prepare my bed, the gilded evening light, a sieve for the moon, pours down like molten silver, and I am content. As I breathe in the oxygen, formed from the earth out of the chaos of gases, I am alive, and that's something I would not give up, even if what I create becomes only dust.

I look outside to a world stilled with time and darkness, people home to their lives where they build and create that which makes them happy--food, craftsmanship, words, a home. We are all the artists of our own lives, and our audience is simply our own happiness.

Because the true artist would create even if they had no audience. Yet they regard their work as a means of talking with mankind, not with their lips, but with their mind. Creativity is not a question of pay. It is not a question of willing acceptance on the part of the public. If they are recognized and earn something for their creativity, that's a good way to further it. But even if not, they would still have spoken.

And we are all the better for it.

--Brigid

Dog Days of Summer

Congratulations to author and friend Tom Rogneby and Family for the addition of your new black Lab pup to the family. Our newest rescue, Sunny, the yellow Lab, was a handful as a pup, but adding her to our family was the best decision ever. 

Cool Dreams

Ninety-seven degrees and 51% humidity. I had hoped to go to the run this evening, but it would be sweltering.

I wish I could go out for a quick flight, just to be alone with the cool wind. And the solitude. The air. That is a solitude, one that wavers slowly while you lean back against the leather seat and close your eyes and breathe deep. Head thrown back, you stick your hand out into the air, the temperature of a lover's soft breath, trailing your hand in the wind. Time strolls by like a day at the seashore until the sun melts into the horizon. All you have is the breeze to cool you quick so you can rest, to blow out of your eyes and your brain and your blood all that's making you hot and weary. 

As the light fades, the sky turns silver, like the patina of hand-plastered walls in an old home. There's only a few clouds remaining as storms blew through earlier, laying broad and placid as the palms of hands smoothing the turbulence from the air. From the trees, a flock of birds streams up into a sky that tears their calls onward and away like fragments of paper gently blown by the wind.

 As you dip down towards home, you'll smell the scent of the land, which will remind you of so many fields in the past, the smell fresh and green, a dense smell of grass as the sun sets upon it. The scent lifts off the landscape just as night covers the day, the signal that you're close to the ground, the strip straight ahead. The wheels skip off the grass as the new moon glimmers upon you, a solitary creature riding the crest of cool night air, exhaling with the exhaust of the plane, ready to be home, to sleep cool dreams. - B.

Finding Madeleine

A little touch of just fun for a change, for my author friend Bill Emery, who wrote one of my favorite "gumshoe" novels ("Murder One by WL Emery), and a hat tip to my co-conspirator in this long-ago adventure - G. 

[ Slow jazz piano plays under the crackle of a dusty radio. A distant thunderclap rolls in. A match strikes. Cigarette inhaled.]

NARRATOR (gravelly, wry):

She sits in the corner of my garage like a dame in a cocktail dress at a VFW hall — outta place, outta season, and dreaming of summer. That’s Miss Madeleine Car. A Triumph. Restored and refined, she’s all chrome curves and quiet sighs, waiting for the kind of open country road where the only traffic light is the sun slipping behind a barn.

But me? I drive a beast. A full-size, extended cab 4x4 — the kind of rig that blocks out the sun and flattens the foolish. In the city, where stoplights are more like polite suggestions and every commuter’s auditioning for Talladega Nights, you need mass, momentum, and a decent deductible. Especially in Chicago — the birthplace of the pothole slalom, where the streets are booby-trapped by the Department of Reflex Testing. You don’t drive here. You dodge. You dance. You pray.

Still, I feel safer in that truck than I have in most relationships. It’s paid off, it’s high up, and nothing — and I mean nothing — clears a lane faster than a redhead with no estrogen and a lead foot behind the wheel of a rolling steel fist.

[ Jazz fades. A lighter clicks again. The narrator exhales.]

Work cars? I’ve had ’em. Issued by the Office of Official-Looking Business. You drove ’em like you were chaperoning nuns to bingo — by the book, by the hour, and always ten under the limit. Especially if you saw a patrol cruiser in the rearview. You did not want to end up as the punchline of the week for getting ticketed in what we affectionately called… the Squirrelmobile.

Back then, I was part of a little outfit we’ll just call the International Sneaky Service — a rogue division of Secret Squirrel Ltd. The work was varied, the rules many, and the surprises often had four legs and a tail.

We were on a recon mission, sort of. Midday pit stop outside a diner shaped like a pancake griddle, when the guy we called Lucky — a career op with a busted heart and two years left till freedom — wandered over to the adjacent parking lot where a pet adoption truck was doing its civic duty. He came back with the look of a man who’d just glimpsed salvation in a wagging tail. Said he’d found an old Lab. Gray muzzle, brown eyes, nobody wanted him.

He was asking me. For permission. Me— his team lead. I looked around. My crew was all hard cases: a shot-up combat pilot, a jarhead who cried over fallen K-9s, and a probie who still had that new-spook smell. I gave the nod.

[Jazz fades into soft clarinet.]

Twenty minutes later, Lucky’s got a leash in one hand and a tail-wagging co-pilot in the other. But the ride home was tricky. We had one ride: the official Sneaky Service sedan. Probie’s eyes went wide like we were stuffing dynamite under the seat.

“You can’t put a civilian in the Sneaky car!” he whispered like J. Edgar Hoover was listening.

“Relax,” I said. “He’s not a civilian. He’s a canine. There’s no clause against dogs. No opposable thumbs, no subpoenas.” Besides, the mutt didn’t ask for hazard pay.

Still, Probie spent the ride curled up like a guilt burrito in the back seat, whispering doomsday.

“A DOG… in the SNEAKY car… we might as well be hauling a KILO of COCAINE!”

We got back. No fanfare. No sirens. But as we slid out of the car, our stealth mission met its first real danger: chemical warfare. The Lab had dropped a gas bomb in the back seat so lethal it peeled paint. We evacuated like paratroopers from a burning plane.

The next shift climbed in and recoiled like they’d discovered a crime scene.

“WHAT IS THAT SMELL?!” one of them bellowed.

“DEAR GOD, IT’S… IT’S ALIVE!”

We never admitted a thing. Lucky kept the dog. Named him Buddy. Buddy got a warm bed, table scraps, and a man who needed him more than he ever knew. And in those final years, that dog taught us a thing or two about loyalty… and strategic ventilation.

[ Music swells. Rain patters on a metal roof.]

That’s the tale, boys and girls. A Triumph waits in the garage. A redhead rules the road. And somewhere, in a quieter corner of the world, a dog once gassed a government vehicle… and got away with it.

[Cigarette stubbed out. Jazz fades to silence.]

 NARRATOR (quietly):

Justice wears many collars. Sometimes they’re leather. Sometimes… they drool.

 - Brigid

The Guardians

For Don and the crew at  

• Minutemen Coffee Company

Not only do they make the only decaf I'll drink (water-processed), but they also donate 30% of their profits to community First Responder and Veteran organizations. This chapter, from the International bestseller Small Town Roads, takes place after a tornado strikes the small community where the main character, police officer Rachel Raines, lives.

A Chapter From Small Town Roads - by LB Johnson - Gold Winner - Fiction (Religious Theme) Readers' Favorite International Book Award 

We don’t have to speak for our intentions to be read. Speech seems like a simple thing, a coordination of muscle and bone, nerves and tongue, something within us, just as the ability to control and guide both weapon and machine lay slumbering within the wrists and hands. We can stay silent, but the words are still there.

Man experiences things of great magnitude and cannot speak of them at all. An artist or craftsman creates something that was part of them, honed into art or machine. On completion, they say no words, they call no one, and they simply put down their tool or brush and stare at their vision, incarnate.

Veterans come home from battle empty of all words, bound together by only that identical experience which they can never forget and dare not speak of, lest by speaking of darkness, they are wrapped in its chains. First responders and law enforcement officers often relate as they too see so much death that never again, as long as they breathe, will they ever truly go to sleep alone.

Man experiences the mundane, the meaningless, tweeting and texting of it feverishly. It is as if, by doing so, inconsequential acts become more than the passing of time by the imminently bored. The words can uplift, but they can also sting like so many insects, their incessant noise, finally dimming to a hum.

We speak in different languages, and even when speaking the same language, we often don’t communicate, and when we do, we often don’t truly mean what we say. Promises can be nothing more than words and oaths, empty air, especially when election times near, wherein contests of fierce and empty oratory are somehow, retroactively, supposed to make us believe, any more than they can make us forget. 

We speak in the language of the past, chants unchanged in generations hanging in the air as God is placed into a golden cup, there underneath the eyes of angels. We speak in the language of silent prayer, calling upon God and our reserves, saying prayers without words, as we draw near our weapon as we enter what could be hell on earth. 

Words can support, they can heal. With gentle utterance after a nightmare in the still of the night, the soothing voice that smoothes the frayed edges of a day, with nothing more than the touch of supple prose. Words can injure, cutting like a knife, discharging like a spark of electricity; those words, from someone we love, marking us always with their wounding.

Words, a movement of lips and tongue that can cause laughter or pain; that can divide or conquer. Even in a nation where English is the official language, in parts of our country, there are whole neighborhoods where you won’t hear it spoken. 

Sometimes one doesn’t need to speak at all.

On any given day, tragedy and the earth collide, a flood, a tornado, or the plunging of a mighty machine into a peaceful neighborhood. The details differ, but the response is always the same. When disaster strikes, the land itself turns mute, and those that remain stand simply as silent instruments unable to make a sound. 

I didn’t fully understand that until the tornado came through our town last night, leveling several homes a mile or so north, leaving others, like mine and most of my neighbors, miraculously standing. We were lucky in that there were no deaths, the majority of the homes having basements and a good tornado warning system. But as we emerged from our basement, our house untouched but for a tree that had taken out the front porch, it was as if what I saw was a completely different town. 

Harry, my elderly friend from across the street, was on the sidewalk, Evelyn holding on to him, shaken but unhurt. Ezekiel and Miriam waved from down the block, his shop roof damaged but the structure intact. But just down from Harry’s home, Betty, the widow who lives there, stood in front of what remained of her house of 60 years. It was one set further back from the road than the others; the back portion of the house was completely missing its roof and some walls, leaving no photos of her failed dreams, not even a trace, where the wind rushed through those rooms. She cried silently, in the faded robe she fled in, as one of the neighbors came over and put her arms around her. Behind all of the homes across the street from us, there were so many trees downed, limbs flung through windows, shattering them as if they were thrown like a lance.

A young woman, her face growing older by the minute, stumbled from the walkout basement of the home that had sold when I moved in, a solitary figure, clutching only a stuffed animal, making a path towards what is known. Her brother, serving in the military, was allowing her to live there to care for the place while she attended a community college in a town not too far east of us. We beckoned her to come over to us, and though I am probably only ten years older than she, like Evelyn does with me, I hold her in a mother’s protective embrace. 

The older couple from the corner of the block lost a brand-new outbuilding they had painstakingly constructed behind their house. They could now only look at the work of their sweat and tears strewn about for miles by the force of nature, the wind thick and warm, like blood spilled, pooling around what little remained. A lone tree stood among so many that were downed, torn out by the roots, its nervous branches bent down as if hoping not to be noticed.

The first responders arrived, standing for just a moment, still and mute, hands unmoving beneath the invisible stain of what was, always, needless blood. For just a moment, they stopped, as if by whispered breath or the movement of disturbed air, what little remains would crumble.

They gathered, moving in and around, the firefighters, emergency medical personnel, and law enforcement officers, all wearing blue, black, and yellow. Such garments, solemnly worn, exchanged for once ordinary lives, worn as they shape something from chaos, coaxing that terrible blood wind to give up a sound, the forlorn echo of someone who might have survived beneath the carnage. I waved at an officer I worked with, seeing the relief in his eyes that I was unhurt, feeling like I should be doing something more to help. I realized that I was still in shock as I held my neighbor to me to comfort, as beneath my bathrobe, my precious child lay safe.

It’s surprising how much noise there was in the silence of hope, of grief, of disbelief. It was a sound that one could almost, but not quite, capture, receding like a dwindling song until there were only shadows and quiet. And then a small voice, “Can anyone help me?” low and faint as the Vespers of sleep. It came from a home that didn’t have a walkout basement, and a tree had gone through the sunroom. I had been there, and that would have blocked the basement stairs. Hopefully, the person is fine and can get out once the tree is moved.

Survivors and saviors moved without sound, sending a message as loudly to the heavens as if they were one voice. People were helped from the rubble, the injured assessed, the grief-stricken comforted as best as one could, if only by a touch that resonated straight to the heart, bypassing a brain that could not accept its fate. There were no Teleprompters, there were no cue cards, and there were no words for boundless grief and regret. There was no language for this, no word, no sound; it’s defiant and imminent life, holding on.

Winged Freedom

 In that hour, when night is calmest, Sang he from the Hebrew Psalmist,  in a voice so sweet and clear. That I could not choose but hear.--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I've several bird feeders outside my dining room window, each holding different types of seeds for various birds, a suet holder or two, and a birdbath filled with fresh water twice a day in the summer. I enjoy watching and listening to them while having my coffee in the morning.

Most of the birds that I easily recognize are the sparrows, my favorite, the Cardinal, and the occasional dove. There are ways to tell birds apart other than by looks or color. You can study what they eat and, of course, what they won't eat, by whether they sleep high up or snuggled down safe in a low covering, and by whether they eat more in the morning or at night. By the shape and size of the nest, if there is one. By their connection to the nearest body of water, if one exists, and to what degree that close body of water is necessary, to some of us, more essential than anything we could ever realize. 

Birds are meant to fly free, not be caged in. I've had a couple of parakeets over the years, but I always felt a twinge of guilt for keeping them locked up, even in a large cage. After my last two, I said "no more" and changed my mind about getting another when I moved. When you hold a bird in your hand, it closes its eyes in resignation. Trust. Or fear?

I once had a neighbor in the country who kept a quail in a cage just so he could hear the "bobwhite" of its call. I'd watch the bird in there, reminding me of a prisoner in a small cell in a prison camp, sending out small Morse code signals in hopes of someone hearing him and rescuing him. But no one came to rescue him, and I could only think of him growing old and dying there in that tiny cage, his prison cell, his will deflating, his spirit becoming drab as his prison uniform over time. I don't believe the man did it to be cruel; he simply thought, like others, that he could take a wild thing in and tame it, that it would only require the creature to make an adjustment in its lifestyle, to shift the center of its desire from one thing to another. 

One day, while the neighbor was away, I went over and quietly opened the cage door. The bird was gone in a flash, with the urgency born of imprisoned spring and the awakening of burgeoning truth; to itself, the sun and the wind, not the man who caged it.

The air is smoky this morning, the remnants of someone burning off some brush after we had a good soaking rain first. From the smoke, the birds escape up into the clear sky, up from the dense remains of green into the veined complexity of sky, where space and freedom interface. From aloft, they spot my feeder, simply looking for some shelter and some food, while keeping the freedom of their wing.

For isn't that what we all desire

 - Brigid

On Timing

Doc Holliday:  What did you ever want?

Wyatt Earp:   Just to live a normal life.

Doc Holliday: There's no normal life, Wyatt, it's just life. Get on with it.

Wyatt Earp: Don't know how.

Doc Holliday: Sure you do. Say goodbye to me. Go grab that spirited actress and make her your own. Take that beauty from it, don't look back.  Live every second. Live right on to the end. Live Wyatt. Live for me.   Wyatt, if you were ever my friend -  if ya ever had even the slightest of feelin' for me,
leave now. Leave now... Please.

Timing is everything they say.

In ballistics, indeed so. In the outcome of a day, even more so.  I missed a flight on a plane some years ago because I woke up that day sick to my stomach. All aboard died.  My stomach bug was not the flu but an unknown and unplanned pregnancy.

How many of us, unknowingly, missed a vehicular accident, a violent crime, or a whack from Mother Nature simply because we forgot our phone and ran back into the house, decided to linger over that nice new book in the store, or simply had too much, or too little caffeine?
Timing.

Timing can be good.  It can also be lousy. Missed trains, missed job opportunities.  Missed dreams.  I've heard from more than one guy friend that he was bummed the "girl of his dreams" had found someone. Yet, he never asked her out, couldn't express the feelings until it was too late, sometimes remaining silent for months or even years, growing only older of bone and pride.

Timing.

When we were kids, we ran around with time simply carried in our pocket, as dense and round as a coin, many coins that jingle as we ran. We are told by some grownups that we soon will have to grow up and leave childish dreams behind, but we don't listen because we have nothing in our experience to gauge their caution by, to give the portent of a structured future any range and meaning.  Besides, we are too busy just doing things that kids do, even if that means just sitting and waiting for hours for a fish to bite a tiny hook.

Then, seemingly overnight, we fell into that grown-up, carefully measured, and timed world, picking up our watch in the process. The dreams of childhood passed behind as we jumped on board a fast-moving train, losing our innocence before we even fully realized we possessed it.
As adults, we are governed by time, watches, cell phones, alarm clocks, and schedules.  Mechanical clocks and biological ones. We rush headlong into actions without consideration as if the sheer and simple arranged succession of days was not fast enough, constituted without capacity enough, so that weeks and months and years of living had to be condensed down into one moment, and it is today, now.  We, as a society and as individuals, are not able to closely watch and wait for that which is worth waiting for.  We feverishly work for things we do not need, and we vote without thought for those who promise us prosperity without effort, success without sacrifice.

Everything is based on now. Do not pass GO; do not collect $200. What do you mean you haven't got a date, a spouse, a house, or a baby? We need to talk to you about those extra 25 pounds.  Everything is on a time schedule, and it's not necessarily ours. Meals are microwaved, we speed date, express wash, Kwik-e-Mart, and you know what? We find that in rushing toward what we're supposed to want, we miss the things that can truly change our lives.

Reset your clock.

Just once, turn off your computer, cell phone, and social media apps like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, and clear your calendar for a few hours.

Pick up that old firearm that may have been your Dad's or your Grandfather's and head out into the country.  If you don't hunt, then pick up a camera, a drawing pad, and a pencil.  But take some tool that will open up the wilderness to you and go.
Go out into that rapid and fading backcountry that is retreating as the tide is, walk out into that land that was ours, is ours, field and forest, bayou and orchard, grain and dust, harbor, and thicket. Go on out and decide what is important and what is not, among all the flotsam and jetsam in your life, where it is going and how much control you're going to give to others over it.

Go out into that land that still carries the tracks of those that crossed this nation to build, to grow; men, and women and children, bringing with them their tools and trades, goods and gear, by steamer, by wagon wheel by train, by big slow rivers that sometimes revealed no current and sometimes ran backward, running not to hide, but to dream, all the way to the ocean. It was a land on which a man ate only by the sweat of his brow, the ability to plow a straight furrow or chop down a limb without removing one of his own.  It was a land of milk and honey, steelhead and gold, which offered itself up on rare occasions from the earth as compensation for torn lives and broken bones, a payment which neither man nor his government proffered for the weak or the foolish.

Find a spot in this expanse of history and sit, taking it all in.

There is so much that might have been, could have been, wrong place, wrong time, so boundless in capacity is man's imagination to burn and scatter away the refuse of probability, leaving only yearning and dreams. No time, space, or distance can keep you from what matters, even if to the world, your dreams for your life and the kind of world you wish to live in are little more than transparent scratchings on depthless glass.
In his last months, I'd sit by my brother's bedside as the chemicals went into his body that would or would not kill the cancer that was consuming him with fire that bore no warmth. There was the steady whoosh from machinery in the room, the movement of unsleeping blood, and the intake of air. The room was simple, but its corners and edges held the quiet, complex lives of two very secret people who long ago escaped from a place that had only pain. There, in that season between thunder and any thought of rain, they found their own shelter with a new family.  Now, we had no season; the hospital room alternates day and night in a vacuum, in which light was only a hope.

As you sit out there in that countryside, think of these words. Stop and look and breathe. Pick up a discarded piece of wood. Think of what you have, what means the world to you, and what and who you will fight for as an individual, as part of a family, and as a citizen.
Then carve your name on that little piece of wood, carve the name of the one you fight for, or simply carve "Freedom", the letters bearing one clear, unfettered voice that sounds out, through the delicate attenuation of your actions, through the ringing bells of your worth, through the tone that is the weight of silent guns - I WAS here, I AM here, there IS still time.

Then go back home to your home and your memories.  A heart-shaped locket with a young woman and a man in an airman's uniform, months before the war, separated them for years. A shirt that could fit a thousand others but which only one wore so long that you will forever know its wearer by the simple feel of the fabric underneath your fingertips, the echo of sandalwood that clings to blue cotton. Go back to your present. A photo on the wall of those who still live to tell you their stories, to hold firm your past, memories that are borne on the air that you still breathe, invisible, yet essential as air itself. Go back to your future. A flag on a wall, one for which your loved ones gave up much of their life, or even life itself.

Go back and claim what is there while there is still time.
 - Brigid