Saturday, January 1, 2011
Summer 2010
Once again, we, the editors of this blog, feel that it is necessary to warn the reader that this blog has little to do with kayaking. Over the course of the “summer,” the author read Kundera, Saramago, and Tim O’Brien; and visited the grave of Hemingway. Many of the views presented here are not his own. We wish as always that he would take more of the editors’ suggestions, but he instead relies on the statement or argument, “artistic differences.” Please use your reader’s discretion, and the scroll bar, at will.
To know where I started 2010 at, emotionally, you probably need to read last year’s blog. This is the most famous German poem ever written, one which all German children must learn by heart:
On all hilltops
There is peace,
In all treetops
You will hear
Hardly a breath.
Birds in the woods are silent.
Just wait, soon
You to will rest.
You will recognize how beautiful it is only when you read it in German.
Uber allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipflen
Spurest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vogelein schweigeu im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhes du auch.
“then at last she realized that the poem speaks of death: he wanted to tell her that he was dying and he knew it. It had never occurred to her before that those innocent lines, so good for schoolchildren, might have this meaning.” -Milan Kundera from the book Immortality
It is so beautiful. It is such a happy representation of the memory of a loved one in the last lines. We miss him of course. But it is so much better to think about the silent birds in the treetops.
“After his death, calm did indeed begin to reign. That calm was in her soul and it was beautiful; let me repeat: it was the calm of silent birds in the treetops.” -Kundera
What if we got to repeat everything until we got it right? My friends and I will run the same river twice, even ten, twenty, thirty times. Each time is new. We learn, change, and improve. Always we try something new, like bringing a different coffee cup, trying a different costume. As you will later read, I was able to join a group for about my tenth trip down the lower Main Salmon River in Idaho. As you shall shortly read, I was able to join my sister-in-law for my fifth trip down the Grand Canyon in Arizona. We fill our hours telling river stories. This year’s blog theme is repetition. If we keep repeating things, can we get them right in the end? Or, do past mistakes make it impossible to repeat certain events and get them back to a state of rightness in some instances. A beginning point and related question is how do you tell if a river story is good? And, more importantly, how do you know if it is true?
“You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let’s say, and afterwards you ask, “Is it true?” and if the answer matters, you’ve got your answer.
For example, we’ve all heard this one.
Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and saves his three buddies.
Is it True?
The answer matters.
You’d feel cheated if it never happened.”
Tim O’Brien from the book The Things They Carried
My grandpa has a story about WWII. When he was under fire for the first time as an officer, he started pointing directions to his men. This made him the target for the enemy because they could see he was in charge. He never repeated the gesture of pointing again during the war. Is the story true, does it matter? The point is he never repeated the commanding gesture; it had no place in the war. When my other ½ Cherokee grandpa returned from the war, he had a hard time returning to the farm and got drunk and drove his car off the road. Did he mean to drink so much? Would he repeat the gesture again, if given the chance? The decision still affects my family through the ripple effect. We don’t talk to Grandma about it. Will a butterfly’s movement in the jungle create a thunderstorm in Portland? Does it matter? My Cherokee great grandma once chased her abusive, drunk, white husband out the door for the last time with a frying pan. Is this story real? It is written in the Horner history book. Does it matter if it is real? The point is, they are good stories, I like them and I’m not worried if all parts of them are true. I enjoy telling them and I hope you, the reader, don’t care that it isn’t always certain what is true and what is partial fiction.
Lets start the year off with our annual Superbowl shoot off at the farm.
Shooting an expired 2007 super bowl tagged Coors mini-keg while smoking a cigar and sporting a Che Gavara T-shirt with a friend's AK-47 on the old air strip at my family farm on super bowl Sunday 2010. Would make a good Visa commercial, priceless. The hardest part was convincing Tony from the farm that the beer wasn't drinkable anymore and it was ok to shoot it.
My editors are now suggesting that I start talking about kayaking. Let us go then, you and I, and hear of the great adventures of our Grand Canyon trip over SPRING BREAK 2010!!
The thing to know about a Grand Canyon trip is that it could fill a book. That said, it is never a book that I will write. I always leave the Grand Canyon happy and knowing that I will miss it. It is like the love affair that you don’t tell your friends about. It is just too good and perfect and you don’t want them stealing the girl away from you. This year’s permit belonged to my brother and his wife, Roxanne. She had to skip the November trip two years back because we thought it would be too cold for her. This was the perfect opportunity. The crew was my brother Josh, sister Carrie, Niki, Jim Busse (the now famous East Coast boater), Monty and Brian, my brother’s long time friends, and our old boating friend Tim Senior, his son Tim Junior, and their friend Steve all drove from Colorado. Niki and I would walk out of the canyon at Phantom Ranch and my sister’s boyfriend Alex and my brother’s neighbor Russ would replace us. On the drive out, I had to finish grading finals from winter term. Monty kept looking over my shoulder and giving my students advice, “Greg you are never going to make it in this world if you don’t step up and do better at math. Etc etc etc.” Boise didn’t live up to its name this year, but we can always try again on a different trip. The plan was to spend the second night of the drive in Utah, but it seemed a sacrilege to spend St. Paddy’s day in a state with a 3.7% cap on its beer. So, we drove straight through to Page Arizona and just might have cracked a beer in the back of the Tahoe. Page proved worthy of our Irish ancestors. Then we spent a slow day prepping the boats.
It turns out that Tim Junior had left his ID at home. We found out later it was sitting on his Chemistry homework that he also seemed to forget at home. Wonder why? So the night before launch we cooked up a fake student ID from a scanner image his mom sent us at the local Wal-Mart. When he turns 19 maybe we will make him a different fake ID, but he better be nice to us.
The ranger seemed exceptional nervous this year as he gave us the safety talk. As a teacher I’m familiar with people nervously giving speeches. But the big difference here was the ranger’s nervous tendency was to play with his gun in its holster. That would put a twist on watching a nervous student speech.
Some highlights included Monty finding every cactus plant ever know to man, the med kit tweezers were his best friend. Roxanne brought an “I can use the toilet” kids book that included a flushing sound button that added an extra touch to the groover. Monty the chef cooked up some mad dinners, never knew that cactus wrapped in bacon could taste so good. The “kids” book Little Miss Chuckles and Mr Happy’s Adventure kept our group entertained for many an afternoon as Mr. Giggles gave Miss Chuckles a boxed gift at Chuckle cottage.
Steve's brother drew a caricature of us for our Winter Holiday Card this year.
It was nice to kayak instead of raft this year. I'm still not a fan of big water in the little boat though.
If you look close, you can see Tim Junior bravely following me down Hance Rapid
Monty and his cactus fetish
A glimpse of the red box and our river kitchen
I thought Carrie said go right?
The man, the cook, Monty. Never again will we eat so good on a river trip.
The worst part about walking out half way is that Niki and I didn't get the experience In and Out Burger this year.
Like I said, I don’t like telling too many of the details of a Canyon Trip. That said it has become a tradition in my blogs to at least tell one of my Grand Canyon dreams. This years dream happened on night two. I dreamt that we woke up and drove the Tahoe back to pick up supplies. I grabbed a better pair of hiking shoes, Monty got more bacon, Roxanne got batteries for the “I can pee” book, Carrie called her boyfriend, Jim got supplies to fix his popped Thermarest, Timmy Junior grabbed the science book he had left on his desk, Josh got more Bloody Mary supplies, Brian picked up some red toe nail polish, Tim senior grabbed some better cigars, and Steve picked out some more great Vermont maple syrup for the pancakes. Then we all went to watch a fire works show in Stayton, Oregon. While we watched the rockets, a flat bed ford that was driving beside the bleachers slammed into a cop car. An off duty brain surgeon quickly jumped into the passenger seat and took a quick brain scan of the inebriated driver. A hitchhiker ran up and started screaming, “He’s going to die; he’s going to die.” As we walked down to check out the damage, the brain surgeon bumped into me with his black leather jacket, pierced eyebrow, and decorative goatee. He was calling the wife of the flat bed driver; he needed a brain scan of their son to compare the results. That was it; I woke up, crawled out of my tent, and searched the kitchen for a sip of absinthe. Five days later Niki and I hiked out. It was a sad day to leave a group well on its way to a good trip. We met Alex and Russ at the halfway point on the trail. They should have been earlier, but the top of the trail was covered in ice, next to thousand foot cliffs. Luckily they managed and luckily it had melted by the time Niki and I got there. The trail up was nice, except for the last 2 miles. It sucked. Niki and I had some great drinks in Flagstaff, then it was back home to teach another term.
“The Creator loaded a detailed program into the computer and went away. That God created the world and then left it to a forsaken humanity trying to address him in an echoless void – this idea isn’t new. Yet it is one thing to be abandoned by the God of our forefathers and another to be abandoned by God the inventor of a cosmic computer. In his place, there is a program that is carelessly running in his absence, without anyone being able to change anything whatever.” - Immortality Milan Kundera
My first big overnight rafting adventure as a kid was the lower Owyhee River. I have repeated this river many times. The thing is you repeat stuff till you get it right. This isn’t crazy, it is just life. The same inputs will always lead to the same outputs but you can tweak things just a little. Bring a different coffee cup, try a different meal, or try a new crowd. This is what the Owyhee River in Eastern Oregon is to us. The scenery and bird life is amazing, but the crowd is awesome. Here, I feel like I have a little more control over the computer. This year our friend Melissa brought a new boater on the run whom will forever be called TP Mike when he is on the Owyhee River. At the hotel on the way to the river, Mike Ross asked Mr. TP to steal the TP out of the bathroom because he had forgotten to pick any up at the store. At the start of the river, Ross purposefully left that roll in the car. As soon as we entered the first canyon, he asked Mr. TP, did you grab that toilet paper? “Oh no, I forgot!! I do have a couple of tiny rolls in my dry bag.” Perfect, explained Mike Ross, we would use that tonight and borrow some from a different group the next day. The next day we saw a group off in the distance and Mr. TP raced off to score a roll. Success. While unloading later that night, Mike Ross pretended to accidentally kick the TP into the water and I swam out and saved it. Cindi Ross pretended to get angry with her husband; she is a rather well accomplished actor. If you can see us drying out the TP next to the fire, you now completely are seeing the great humor in this joke. We let Mr. TP in on the great joke shortly after when we pulled out a big box of TP.
Let us imagine the river camp as it is a stage and we are the audience. We have the boats to the left in the foreground; Cindi is busy cooking dinner at the camp table as the lights come up. Mellow music introduces us. To the back right a group of boaters twirl a wet roll of TP over the fire. William Ross is lying on his Paco Pad reading a book. To the back left, behind a bush, Michael Babcock sits on the toilet reading a book. Shane carries stuff back and forth from the boats. Wooden cut out animals decorate the side of the stage. Just then Mike Ross enters from off stage carrying and sipping from a large jug of liquor and the spotlights follow him as he brings the jug to the kitchen table and Cindi takes a large drink. There does seem to be some great struggle between the main characters but there also seems to be a great peace in the river and even a quiet joke with Babcock on the toilet and the TP warmed over the fire. I will now let you, the audience, imagine this scene and the tale of the river trip and I will move on to a different adventure.
Somewhere last November or so it became apparent that our mom wouldn’t be able to afford her house anymore. It isn’t the farm, we moved from there years ago. None of us really have any major attachments to the house. So, it was time to move on. The thing about divorce for kids is that we keep getting to repeat the divorce over and over again. We spent months working on fixing up her house, and then we sold it. She moved in with my brother and his new wife. Not the easiest living situation for anyone. Then my brother helper her buy a bank owned house in Silverton. Josh did most of the work, but I would spend the summer between river trips working on mom’s house. In the end it looks good, but all the kids are tired. Next year, we tackle landscaping. At least that part of the project sounds like fun.
Silverton Oregon at the intersection right next to Silver Creek
It felt like it was time for a party. Seemed like a good idea to invite my coworkers and the kayakers together. In the end it was a good idea. Carrie and Sara Pool helped me create some food, we set up the river tarp in the back yard to protect us from the rain, brought out the twister game, and had good times. Talked one of the Deans into his first drink of Absinthe. The quote of the night, “this feels more like a college frat party.” Success.
“… he is on a sinking ship; there are only a few lifeboats and there isn’t room for everyone; there is a furious stampede on deck. At first Father rushes along with the others, but when he sees how they all push and shove, ready to trample each other underfoot, and a wild-eyed woman strikes him with her fist because he is in her way, he suddenly stops and steps aside. And in the end he merely watches the overloaded lifeboats as they are slowly lowered amid shouts and curses, toward the raging waves.” -Immortality Milan Kundera
I sometimes wonder what I would do if I was on a sinking ship with a lack of lifeboats. I too would get tired of pushing through the crowd. It’s not that I would want to stay on the ship; it’s just that I wouldn’t feel like fighting to get off the ship. Maybe with the right company, a cigar, and some whiskey: I might even enjoy the experience.
So, for the last 5 years in a row, we have been able to do repeated trips down the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho near the end of the spring run off. This run really needs no changes; it is perfect. On the way to the river my sister and I stopped at my cousin’s graduation in La Grande. Why does everyone giggle when I text them that I’m staying in a college dorm room? My cousin once went into a local automotive store for some car parts. The cashier asked her if she wanted a beanie baby with her order. “Is it free?” “Yes, my wife left me for another man and I’m giving all of these away, she loved them.” As we helped my cousin pack some things for her move back home, divorce monkey became the mascot for the Salmon trip this year. After the graduation, we picked up Babcock who had just got off a flooded trip down the Snake River and headed to the launch. I’ve told so many stories about the Middle Fork. I don’t have that many more from this trip. The first couple days include two flipped boats and quick rescues. Cool but manageable weather. Then we got to a camp near Loon Creek hot springs. I remember a different trip at Loon Creek. 15 of us stuffed into the red raft and we somewhat floated down to the hot springs and walked back to camp after our soak. But that boat was chaos and my life would never be the same. We got scared, we worried, and we walked away from something good. This trip I lowered by standards, packed my backpack with beer, jagger, and vodka and enjoyed the day. It was a good day. Life was OK. Not perfect, though. I think I will need to keep repeating this adventure and this hot springs until I get it right. I imagine I’ll be sitting here when I’m 70 smoking a cigar, and saying this is perfect at a certain level. After all it was at this hot springs that I broke my Sternum in a horse accident: I feel it every time I turn too quickly and I will forever be remembering this place anyway. Then a couple more great days and we were at the last camp. We have a new favorite spot for the last camp. Across the river is a giant cliff and we call it Sheep HD Vision. We set up our camp chairs and watched the mountain sheep jump and dive their way to the river for a drink and then head back to the top. Whenever one of the youngsters would kick off a rock, we feared for its life as the rock rolled down the hill. I have never heard so many oohs and ahhhs from a mildly buzzed campsite crew.
William Ross getting ready at the put in. A couple hours later via some bad communication, "This isn't Velvet Falls," he had his first flip.
Our trip leaders, sans kids because of the higher water flows
Drunk Divorce Monkey
“A gesture cannot be regarded as the expression of an individual, as his creation (because no individual is capable of creating a fully original gesture, belonging to nobody else), nor can it even be regarded as that person’s instrument; on the contrary, it is gestures that use us as their instruments, as their bearers and incarnations.”- Immortality Milan Kundera
In Immortality, Kundera creates his main character based on the simple gesture of an older woman that he observes at a pool. He wonders what could make her so easily create this young gesture and what her life has been and how many times she has repeated this gesture to perfect it so nicely. As he sits by the pool waiting for another created character, Professor Avenarius, he creates his main character Agnes. I suppose as I ride back to Portland on the train from a math conference in Seattle, it is time to describe my editors on this napkin. The senior editor lives in Nelson BC after immigrating there from a dead-end relationship. He has a fine taste for Canadian whiskey and younger women. When editing these blogs, he can be found at the Oso Bear CafĂ©. We don’t pay him much, so you might also find him teaching at a local trade college. On a Friday night, it’s anyone’s guess. Taking the role of senior support editor is Sylvia. While editing, which she does at a furious pace, her son and daughter can be found entertaining themselves outside the Arizona cabin. Sylvia often focuses on the emotional needs of the reader. Our most recent editor has his roots in a small farm in Eastern Oregon. Between editing sessions you will find him out hunting or drinking in Christmas Valley Oregon’s only drinking establishment. We are quite proud of him, and his remarks greatly influence the readability of these blogs. Our junior editor is currently being modeled after the furious look of a young female passenger towards her phone as it failed to send a text message. As I wait for my lawyer to meet me at the train station, I imagine how many times she has repeated the gesture. My lawyer will probably say, “As your lawyer I strongly recommend that you stop observing the habits of younger passengers.” My lawyer hasn’t been given the role of editor. Finalizing our current group of editors, the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson and Pappa Hemingway often read and converse about these blogs as they wander in the clouds of Immortality. We do not have access to these conversations and hence can’t use their suggestions, but the gesture on the part of these immortal authors is greatly appreciated. So, at the suggestions of the editors, it is time to move on. The editors would also like to mention that they aren’t real, but they are happy to be given the opportunity to look at their reflections in a mirror, or a glassy lake for that matter.
On the way home from the Salmon: Niki, Sara Pool, and I stopped in Ketchum where Sara Pool once lived for a couple of years. Sara never did make it as an investigative journalist. She tried to get a job at Ketchum’s local paper, The Idaho Mountain Express, but instead landed a gig at an outlying paper. To support her journalism, she also worked a good bar job. We gave her no lack of criticism when we read the headline for the week, “Local Bass Population Herds Sheep to the North Side of the Hill.” When we drove by the Express, one of the lead 80-year old and overweight journalists was smoking a cigarette out back of the expensive stone building, leaning against one of their high-speed mobile tricycles. They are quite the green company. Sara’s friends nicely put us up for the night. In exchange Niki fixed the toilet that had been broken for two weeks. “Portland Engineer Fixes Local Malfunctioning Toilet.” Spent some time milling around bars and local shops. “Rafters from Oregon Leave Absinthe Bottle on Hemingway’s Grave.” Divorce monkey chilled in the truck. After a pretty blurred day and a night in a different cabin on the creek, we headed home. “Idaho Returns to Normal as Last Oregon Rafters Drive Divorce Monkey Home.”
Colin Whitehead scored his usual Rogue River permit for the Fourth of July, but forgot to send in the paper work, so we ended up on the Grande Ronde instead. It was Colin’s usual party crew and we loved it. “Don’t go down on Broke Back Mountain…” somehow became the theme of the trip. But I guess in the nature of the theme, what happens on the Grande Ronde stays on the Grande Ronde. We had a good trip, the river was fast and the camping was debaucherous and fun.
Our fearless trip leader, Colin Whitehead
I would like to tell you what the girls are talking about as they hold that small elongated stone, but like I said, "What happens on the Grande Ronde stays on the Grande Ronde."
Came back home and worked on my Mom’s new house some. Then it was off to Todd and Laura’s trip on the Upper Main Salmon River in Idaho with a quick detour for Margi and Scott’s wedding near Mt. Hood. The wedding was beautiful. Mike Ross and I had fun ribbing Margi’s mom who we had on a previous rafting trip nicknamed “Cougar” (and we had placed cougar footprints outside her tent). Then we did a leisurely drive to the river, including a stop at a friend’s cabin in Montana. Jen managed to lose her wallet at a store in Montana and had to drive back from the put-in to pick it up. The trip was great. For some reason the theme on this trip was Twilight Zone from the band Golden Earring. On my family’s first trip down the Upper Main, my brother and sister were about 5 and 7 years old and it was their first real rafting adventure. They loved it. On this trip, Michael and Claire Carnes brought their daughter Mackenzie, who Mike Ross, the group, and I teased as much as we could throughout the trip. At one point I went to the extreme of chasing a wild turkey through camp yelling, “Catch it, catch it, that is our dinner.” After we failed to catch the turkey I sat next to Mackenzie and sighed, “I guess its marmot and squirrel again for dinner.” Speaking of kids, William Ross kayaked the entire run with me. He has kayaked a lot of rivers before, but this one was different. He had lots of strong rolls and some good surfing. The warm weather and good friends really helped his confidence.
Dana (my favorite person in the world) and I at Margi and Scott's wedding
It was time for our annual Lower Main Salmon River trip. This was once the trip to introduce friends to overnight rafting. After 8 years it has morphed to a kid friendly trip and a right of passage, similar to how the Upper Main Salmon was a right of passage for my brother and sister. Don’t get me wrong, it is still a party trip, but we have repeated this trip so many times and worked so hard to make it a perfect experience for the kids. The advantage is as we watch the kids get older every year, take on new responsibilities, and repeat this passage that we can dream they will take us down the river when we grow old. This year we had the usual crew of about 46 people and 4 new kids and our friend Thorsten who was visiting from Germany. So many things happen on a trip like this, I will just list some of them and let you imagine how this would be a great trip to repeat and a growing experience for kids and adults. For this trip, I dyed my hair blue and brought along temporary hair dye to polka-dot, stripe, and streak everyone’s hair. Under the pretense of dyeing my brother’s hair, I had him close his eyes, and spray-painted a giant pink heart across his chest hair. One of my favorite moments was seeing the usually quiet Mike Evans with blue and red hair. While the kids were doing dishes, I got the giant orange juice squeezer to go through the dish wash line a record 5 times by sneaking it back in with the dirty dishes. We were proud of the kids this year when they pulled out the sharpies themselves and tattooed everyone. Lots of flipped inflatable kayaks on the smaller rapids. Glow stick carnival on one of the late nights. Loved watching my cousin Casey in his little inflatable for his first time down the river. Taught Austin how to fix his leaking inflatable kayak so he could run some rapids the next day. The first day little 5 year old Josh wanted to ride with his mom, after that he wanted to ride with everyone else. It was fun talking him into jumping off the 4-foot ledge into the water. He never did it without being thrown, but he was willing to have his mom hold him and jump. A lot of the kids got to jump their first time off the 20-foot cliff. Todd Bauch even got his first jump. I can’t believe we let him go so many years without jumping. Taylor gave away all of the teenager’s secrets to the adults. William guided the teenage paddle raft this year and only dropped a few people in the river. Nick ran Snow Hole rapid in the inflatable kayak and almost stayed upright. It is fun how our entire large group has learned over the years to work as a team. I think someone saw the satellite again this year. It has been a controversy for years. Every night at about the same time a satellite can be seen passing overhead and it lights the entire camp up with a reflection from the sun for just a brief second. If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t believe it.
If you look closely, you'll notice that Josh didn't jump on his own
The theme was hobo night. I was Mickey's long lost brother. "Anyone seen my brother Micky. Haven't seen that guy in like 20 years, man. Last time I saw him, he and Pluto were heading to LA to make it big. Man I love it out here, but I miss those guys, brah."
Mike Ross took Hobo night to a new level with a pair of pliars and a missing tooth.
A tired mom and son
Rain on the last night
Then it was back for a bachelor party and wedding for Amy and Tip on the Sandy River. For the bachelor party we floated down the Santiam River and then watched some fire dancing ☺. Then the day of the wedding we floated down the Sandy River past the wedding sight and had a wonderful time at the wedding. I’m still jealous of their honeymoon in Nepal.
Niki, Tobi, and I stuffed in one big trip before school started. We took a boating and fishing trip off the Sunshine Coast in B.C. It is a part of Canada that I had always wanted to see, but you need to have a boat. Tobi’s dad and Uncle hooked us up and we spent a week fishing and exploring. The fjords are reminiscent of Norway, but covered in trees and glaciers. It is a special place and now Tobi’s dad and uncles are in the process of buying a giant cabin that we can visit and help them clean up and finish.
The Fjords of the Sunshine Coast in B.C.
Then it was time to go back to school after a few more weeks of finishing up mom’s house.
School didn’t feel quite right without stuffing in a couple 3-day trips on the Rogue River. One on a cancellation permit and the other after the permit season ended. The weather worked out well for both trip and Josh and Lisa Knapp joined us for their honeymoon of sorts on the second trip. It is a great river.
“Goethe shrugged and said with some pride, “Perhaps our books are immortal, in a certain sense. Perhaps.” He paused and then added softly, with great emphasis, “But we aren’t.”
“Quite the contrary,” Hemingway protested bitterly. “Our books will probably soon stop being read. All that will remain of your Faust will be that idiotic opera by Gounod.” -Kundera imagining a conversation between Hemingway and Goethe
The year was coming to a close. It was December and I had a few more finals then 3 weeks off for Christmas break. Flows and temperatures were looking great for some good kayaking. The stress at the end of the term caused me to have a dream within a dream. I’m in the low security section of a prison and I can see the high security section through the bars. I’m conscious that I’m in a dream (sort of) and I know what is going to happen because I’m also imagining that I’m in a book that I have read before. People keep asking me why I’m here and I explain that I’m not really here, I’m just reading a book and I’m an observer. The high security side of the prison looks awful and the guards abuse the inmates and stiff them on food supplies and work them too hard. I’m not surprised when the prisoners rise up and riot, because I have read the book before. The prisoners run around, loot the food, beat and rape their abusive guards, smoke cigarettes, and create a general pandemonium. But they ignore me as I explain that I’m just the observer. The strange think is that no one really tries to escape and the low security guards are treated with respect as they guard the perimeter. I see terror and violence and at this point the dream becomes a nightmare. I want the dream to stop and I know that I’m in a dream, but I can’t make it quit. But then I remember that someone escapes in the book, just like in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, and I walk around trying to find the escapee. But I can’t find the antagonist anywhere in the prison. Finally the dream becomes too much, I pick up a giant stone and smash it through the paper-thin walls. In the last scene I’m running through a field and no one is following me.
December went well. I found myself on a river every few days and Brett, Jesus John, Niki and I took a trip to the Olympic Peninsula. It was cold but we had fun. Stayed in a friend of a friend’s house. Boated a mellow stretch of the Dungeness River. Saw a bobcat on a scouting mission. Taught Niki how to drive a stick shift on the snow covered back roads. It was good to have Brett back on the River now that his son, Sam, has turned 1 year old.
Brrrrr, its cold out here.
On the second to the last page of Tim O’Brien’s book he imagines himself talking to his girlfriend Linda he lost to brain cancer when he was 9.
“What is it like to be dead?”
“Well, right now,” she said, “I’m not dead. But when I am, it’s like … I don’t know, I guess it’s like being inside a book that nobody’s reading.”
“A book?” I said.
“An old one. It’s up on a library shelf, so you’re safe and everything, but the book hasn’t been checked out for a long, long time. All you can do is wait. Just hope somebody’ll pick up and start reading.”
Linda smiled at me.”
I picture us sitting along the Lower Main Salmon River after all the kids have gone to bed and it’s just adults. He says, “I’m sorry. I miss all of you.” And then we make a gesture to each other. It’s the same gesture that motorcyclists make when they pass each other on the open road. It’s not quite a wave, it’s not quite friendly, but it looks tough and it takes a lot of practice and repetition to master. We get it just right. “Goodnight, I’m going to bed.” “Goodnight.” Just then a satellite passes over and catches the sun just right. A great white light dances over the beach for a second. Did it happen? And to this question I would say, does it really matter?
Take care, Shane.
"So this is permanent." - Joy Division
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