MESSAGE FROM CRAIG - 2009

It was a strange and eerie message that arrived on my cell phone. I was walking along the river enjoying the autumn sunshine.

CRAIG WILL PICK U UP 2DAY

I read it quickly and stuffed the phone back in my pocket. Another insistent beep. New text message:

CRAIG WILL PICK U UP 2DAY

The only Craig I’ve ever known is my friend who died of brain cancer six months ago. My birding buddy.

Ok, I know. Wrong number and all that. Just a coincidence.

I called my wife and told her about the messages. “Creepy,” she said, and asked me when I would be home. I told her about 3:30, “unless Craig picks me up before then.” I promised to drive carefully and did.

Craig never showed up, of course. He’s gone for good. Poof! Nothing but a memory.

The next few days I thought about an old question: What would you do if you knew it was the last day of your life? I had that put to me in a college freshman English class. I wrote that I would go trout fishing. At the time I was living in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and did a lot of trout fishing. More to the point I knew my professor was an avid trout fisherman. It got me an A but I still don’t know if I gave an honest answer. Who could say what they would do, especially at 19 years of age?

Once you turn 60 you think a lot more about death. Part of that is the age; the math is not that complicated. Part is having the luxury of more time to think about such things.

When I was little I figured the one good thing about dying was that when you got to heaven you could get all your questions answered. Sort of a “Google in the Sky.” If true, Craig now knows what caused the brain tumor that killed him. Whether there really are any ivory-billed woodpeckers still alive. How the universe was created. What his wife is going to do without him. Think of all the mysteries God could clear up for you. If it were true.

Instead there’s just this: a moment in the universe. The sound of your feet shuffling through fall leaves. The sun sparkling on the river. A guy talking to his dog (a rottweiler wearing an orange jacket) like it’s a kid: “What are you doing? You can’t just run up to people like that.”

Then the moment passes and it’s only a memory. Eventually even the memory fades away.

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RAINY SEASON - 2009

The rainy season has started. Unlike my prior lives in the Midwest and East Coast, I love winter in Oregon. The rains turn the Willamette Valley into a waterfowl haven. Duck, geese and gulls by the millions return from their northern summers to spend winter here.

Along the river walk in Eugene today I admired the new arrivals -- wigeon, gadwalls, cormorants, glaucous-winged gulls. Then a white-headed runner went by. It happens to me now and then. He reminded me of Craig, though not as fluid. I could picture Craig effortlessly running along. An ephemera.

Then the sadness, thoughts of the tragedy of his passing, tears welled up. I focused binoculars on a pair of wood ducks, among the most beautiful birds in all the world, feeding in the pond weeds. That returned me to the moment.

A blue kingfisher sat on a wire. Away I went again, remembering other exotic kingfishers: over-sized ringed kingfishers that Craig and I savored along Rio Grande marshes. Tiny green kingfishers, tropical-emerald hued, that we discovered after a dusty winter hike along the San Pedro River in southern Arizona. If I let it, virtually anything I see in Nature can remind me of a moment with Craig, or make me wish I could tell him about it.

Funny, it's not like we spent all that much time together. You could total it in weeks, though those were some quality weeks. I really don't know how you could live with such loss if the measure was in quality years. I wish I could help Jean but it's not like my sadness makes any difference.

I spotted four river otters. They had discovered a pond near the river, just a block from Eugene's big mall. It was a fast food court for the otters -- each caught a fish every couple of minutes and would chomp it down. An amazing urban spectacle.

I wanted to stop the people passing by, eyes front, oblivious to the otters dancing just a hundred feet away, rushing to get somewhere before the rain returned. "Look, look there!" But I didn't. Craig would have.

COLUMBUS DAY - 2009

"End Is Coming/ Are-U-Saved/ Yeshua's blood/ at-one-ment"

I can't explain it either, but that's what the guy's sign read at the crossroads on the University of Oregon campus. He stood there -- gray beard, little white pork-pie hat, his dog patiently lying in the sun -- ranting about Columbine and brainwashing and what-not. I don't think it had anything to do with today, which is Columbus Day. I'm sure he's just as nuts on regular days.

It was news to me to learn that there is an entire online universe obsessed about whether "Yeshua" is the correct name for Jesus. News, but not surprising. I guess each of us has to fill our lives with something.

Across the mall, the messages were more timely:

"For America To Live/ Columbus Must Die"

"Columbus Was a White Supremist (sic)"

"Custer Had It Coming"

"Christopher Columbus/ America's 1st Terrorist"

Polite-looking and nicely-dressed young Indian fellows sitting at the tables seemed to belie the radical slogans on the signs. But who knows? I was just glad to be refreshed by snippets of conversations going on about politics and social issues -- hardly the stuff of sidewalk talk where I live in Cottage Grove.

Here it's just 20 miles but a world away from the campus where bright young things have the luxury of going class to class on a sunny Monday. Soon enough they will confront the realities of earning a living in a depressing economy while changing diapers at 3am. Still, I doubt that many of them will end up in Cottage Grove pumping gas at the Safeway or standing all day at a checkout lane at the Walmart. Even on Columbus Day.

According to the Eugene newspaper some felt the anti-Columbus Day signs "went a bit too far": "Their effort is legitimate but the 'Columbus must die' sign may be a little extreme," said David McNeary, a 21-year-old former UO student. I wonder how he felt about the "end is coming" sign.

THE PECOS PIG - Epilogue: When Pigs Fly

“What color was the cake?” demanded Ray when I picked up my cell phone. I was 900 miles into nonstop driving from where I had left his and Ann’s home in Bullhead City, Arizona, early that morning. And 140 miles from getting my poor car with its new radiator, condenser, battery and engine home to Cottage Grove, Oregon, where we had left six weeks ago to the day.

Ray was asking about the wedding cake from Tim and Mary’s wedding reception yesterday in the Fiesta Room of Bullhead City’s El Palacio restaurant. Tim is a long-time Bullhead City architect. Ray and I worked together as land developers years ago and Tim had been our colleague and friend. Passing through Bullhead City on the weekend of Tim’s wedding was happy serendipity.

At the reception Ray had casually told the bride that her cake “looks like a Halloween cake.” Ann, of course, was mortified. It must have still been a topic of their conversation, which explained Ray’s call to me on the road.
Mary, who already was a nervous wreck, having flown from her home in Washington, DC, to marry Tim among his coterie of oddball friends, had taken it fairly well and still smiled for the cameras as she and her Guam childhood flame had cut the white cake covered with orange and green flowers.

“Ray, I don’t know what color it was,” I answered him a bit too shortly. I really didn’t remember.

“Well, why did I call it a Halloween cake?" he said.

“I don’t know,” I guessed. “The cake was orange?”

On our way to the reception Sunday morning, Ray, Ann and I had stopped to buy a wedding card. A desert fire was burning in the wind, down near the Colorado River. All weekend the blue sky and mountain vistas had been blurred in heavy smog from L.A. and Las Vegas. Over in Laughlin amid the casinos the annual biker festivities were winding down. (“Though marred in 2002 for a fight between the Hells Angels and the Mongols that resulted in three deaths, Laughlin River Run continues to draw a bigger…”)

Ray was telling us what to expect at the reception. We weren’t sure if Tim and Mary were going to get married before coming to the restaurant. We only knew that they were being married by “Reverend” Gary, a retired realtor (now living the high life in Flagstaff) who had his ordination from the online Universal Life Church (“We are all children of the same universe”). Gary wore a black short-sleeved t-shirt stenciled with a minister’s outfit.

Tim, though a brilliant architect, is notoriously casual. I have never seen him in anything but Hawaiian shirts, shorts and sandals; his wedding day proved no exception. Recently Tim moved to live with Mary in Alexandria, Virginia, and had taken a job at a real architectural firm. He had withered under regular office hours, boring work and typically-DC-competitive colleagues. So he quit. He said his headaches were starting to go away. After the reception Mary was going to fly back to DC. Tim was riding his Harley to the East by way of Ft. Myers, Florida.

“One thing I can tell you about this wedding for absolute sure,” Ray said to us as we pulled into the pharmacy parking lot. “It is impossible to make a faux pas,” he laughed, apparently proud of his conclusion that he was soon to conclusively disprove with his Halloween cake crack.

A few days earlier I had flown back to El Paso to retrieve my car. One more cheesy motel – this time the Airport Microtel – $78, plus the $50 cab ride to the Honda dealer. Ka‑ching, ka‑ching! I had to pay Rudolph Honda the $5,060 bill myself, since they still hadn’t gotten the insurance check. Rick had been driving my car home at night, just to be sure it was running well. When he pulled it up for my departure we both noticed that the exhaust still slightly smelled like it did when the head gasket blew – it had reminded one of the car guys of burnt brisket. I talked to the mechanic, however, and believed he and Rick had done everything possible to fix it right. “It will get you home,” the mechanic assured me, with genuine (and, as it turned out, well-placed) confidence. Rick gave me his cell phone number and made me promise to call as soon as I got home.

About 20 miles west of El Paso a pickup truck in front of me lost its load of aluminum siding. Big sheets caught the desert wind and one-by-one flew into the air and across I‑10. I slowed and missed them all. And then I was free of Texas.

In six hours I was in Tucson, where I was to stay with Ben and Jay, the bachelor brothers. Ben grilled baby-back pork ribs in honor of my big pig adventure. First, though, I went to the Sonora Desert Museum and hiked around in the cactus for several hours. I lingered at the exhibit of a herd of javelinas. In the midday heat they were flopped in the shade of a stone bridge over their habitat. So close, they appeared twice as large as I remembered the size of that dead pig rolling down the highway behind my car. No wonder it had done so much damage. Lucky the whole family hadn’t shown up.

A nice-looking couple was standing on the bridge, also enjoying the pig show. “I hit one of those five weeks ago,” I said to the woman standing next to me. “Just today I got my car back from the shop.”

“Did it last very long?” she asked.

I thought that an odd question about my car. “It was an extended, agonizing event,” I said smiling.

She didn’t ask me to elaborate and they walked away rather quickly, it seemed to me. I saw them again and recalled our brief exchange. Then it hit me. “Oh-h, now I get it,” I thought. She was asking about the pig, not my car. I considered correcting our miscommunication but decided I didn’t really care if they thought I was happy that the pig had suffered an “extended, agonizing” death.

As for the Bullhead City wedding cake, Ray and I never agreed on why he thought it reminded him of Halloween. Ray’s mind works in mysterious ways. Like the universe we share.

I called Rick at the Honda shop in El Paso the morning after I got home. “Be sure to look me up if you get back to Texas,” he said.

“When pigs fly,” I laughed.

“Well, you did make one pig fly.”

- the end -

"Revenge of the Pecos Pig"

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THE PECOS PIG - Part 5. The Evil Pig, Texas or God

“Does it show Rick’s third eye?” the mechanic asked me this morning. I had just taken Rick’s picture next to my Honda, my rental car and my newly reorganized bags on the floor of the repair shop. The mechanics all think that Rick is cursed. I assured Rick that it’s not him. Blame it on that evil pig. Or Texas. Or God.

Now I’m spending the day, Tuesday, here in the El Paso airport waiting for my flight home to Oregon. Eight days is enough. Rick still marvels at my ability to keep smiling, but last night, when it became clear that my car’s overheating problems are more serious than just a blown head gasket, I confessed that I was running perilously low. “I can’t imagine,” Rick said. “I can’t stand to be away from home even three days. You know, I get home from a tough day at work, my wife’s upset, the kids are fighting – that’s where I belong.” I think my travails have re-enforced priorities for Rick.

And mine. My lifeline has been my cell phone connection to my wife. Yesterday morning when it still appeared my car was going to be fixed, I said to her, “Meet Rick,” and handed Rick the phone. “That was mean,” he said after he had promised her to get me home. “I thought you needed more pressure,” I explained.

I really thought my luck had changed. Saturday, driving south across New Mexico, where “only the curvature of the Earth limits your view,” a warning light came on my rental car about 50 miles north of Roswell. Despite my initial panic, it turned out to be just a faulty sensor – probably from the dust.

Then on Sunday hiking eight miles up a canyon in Guadalupe Mountains National Park with Mark from El Paso who I met at the trailhead, he told me that it was good luck to rub the “smooth-as-a-baby’s-butt” bark of the Texas madrone tree. You can bet I rubbed hell out of every damned one I saw. For good measure, Mark told me he would “say an extra prayer for me” that night.

Before I left the park for the Super 8 Motel in El Paso, I stopped at the Frijole Ranch and met Jo Ann, a retired park volunteer who took care of the little museum in the desert homestead. She stayed past her 4:30 closing so I could study the pictures of Mescalero Apaches, soldiers and ranch families – all whom had called home this remote canyon with its precious springs. The Smith family had grown apples, peaches, apricots, plums, pears, figs, pecans, blackberries, strawberries and corn in the early 1900s, hauling their produce 65 miles over rocky roads to sell in Van Horn, covering their wagon’s cargo with wet rags and paper and traveling by night to keep it fresh.

A tiny red building next to the house, no larger than a big closet, had served as a one-room schoolhouse for up to eight local students. “Can you imagine going to school in such a place,” I asked Jo Ann. “Yes,” she said, “I did.” Jo Ann showed me more fuzzy pictures of the Kincaid family, who followed the Smiths’ residency there. They looked a lot like the pictures of my own great-grandparents and their families. “I guess life was hard for everyone in those days,” we agreed.

I keep playing the blues line in my head, “if it wasn’t for bad luck I wouldn’t have no luck at all.” But I don’t think that’s right. In the lows of this bi-polar journey it would be easy to attribute direction or malevolence – to the pig. To Texas. To God. But like the stringing together of happenchance, perception and wishful thinking at the “International UFO Museum and Research Center” in Roswell, that would be a fool’s errand.

My real errand? I’ve got a plane to catch. Going home. At least for now.

Tomorrow: "Epilogue: When Pig's Fly"

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THE PECOS PIG - Part 4. The Cost Per Bird

OK, so it’s not on the scale of a blown head gasket but it did strike me as a bit odd that every motel in Socorro, New Mexico, was full tonight. Something about a science fair, the Motel 6 woman told me. Same for the Comfort Inn in Belen. As for two places in Los Lunas, well I got caught by a slow-moving train while trying to find them and gave up. Eighty miles north of Socorro I finally found a Motel 6 near the Albuquerque airport – $57 (senior discount). Monica had all kinds of trouble getting me checked in, having to change room assignments three times. “I’ve never had this happen,” she apologized. “It’s perfectly understandable,” I said, and let it go at that.

Rick the Honda guy called me on my cell phone yesterday with the bad news. “I failed you,” he said. So there I was trying to make him feel better. “I really thought I was going to get you out of here today,” he kept saying.

Rick is surprised at my mellow acceptance. Like I told him, am I supposed to get mad at some anonymous kid in a parts assembly warehouse somewhere in Ohio who missed putting the head gasket in the nicely sealed box sent to El Paso for my Honda? First, no plug. Now, no gasket.

But wait. There’s more. There’s always fucking more!

The “overnight” shipping of the new box of gaskets isn’t really overnight. Something about this having to be “cross-shipped.” I wanted to ask if that meant it was being delivered by a transvestite on a bicycle but thought better of it. The upshot: delivery Monday instead of Friday.

Rick didn’t call me today as soon as he learned the bad news because he “didn’t want to ruin my morning.” And it would have. Instead, I paid my third visit to this burlap-covered bird blind in the Franklin Mountain State Park. I was surprised to find one very large man already inside with a camera.

“Come in. Have a seat,” whispered Richard, the man who had built this bird blind, put out bird seed every week and kept the watering hole working by carrying in water by hand to a 55-gallon drum. Richard was a former rodeo photographer who got hurt and now had trouble even walking. But he had convinced the park bureaucracy to let him build and maintain this blind. He had only gotten interested in birds four or five years ago, but had marvelous enthusiasm about the sparrows and towhees he watched every few days. Now, he said, the park wanted him to create a butterfly garden. Richard was stalled because of the drought and because they wouldn’t let him plant any wildflowers: “‘No way,’ they told me. That would have to be approved by Austin.”

I did have a nice stay camping alone last night in the park. Poor-wills surrounded my camp at dark, making their “poor-will” calls with a little hiccup at the end. New life bird #27 for the trip. When I was at bird #25 I had told my friend, John, on the phone how much the trip was costing me, but bragged about my list of new life birds. “A hundred dollars a bird,” he noted dryly. At the time of the Poor-will, #27, I figured I had brought the cost down to maybe $90 a bird. That was before I knew I had the weekend to kill.

That’s what has sent me north into New Mexico, trying to fill two and one-half days. Rick was nice enough to call late today and confirm that the gasket would not arrive tomorrow, Saturday, but should be there Monday, 10:00 am. “So enjoy your weekend,” he said in his message, with absolutely no irony in his voice.

Tomorrow: "Part 5. The Evil Pig, Texas or God"

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THE PECOS PIG - Part 3. The Pig's Revenge

The birding in South Texas was excellent. But when I left Pecos three days ago in my supposedly fixed car, I had one goal: Get the hell out of Texas. Twelve miles shy of the New Mexico border a head gasket blew. At least there’s this: El Paso beats Pecos as a place to be stranded.

Oddly enough, I have Edel to thank for not breaking down on I-10. I was impressed with Edel’s radar detector in his monster truck on our high-speed radiator odyssey. So I had my eye out for a Best Buy to get me one before I left El Paso. I was getting off the freeway for that purpose when the engine blew in a cloud of white smoke – at a near-perfect spot, if there is such a thing for a break down in Texas. Four miles from Rudolph Honda (“El Paso’s only Honda Presidential Award dealer”).

Back in Pecos, after Gary had met me waiting at his fence gate 8:00 Monday morning, he explained that he had gotten another new radiator, installed it, charged up the A/C and all appeared fine. We had settled up and I asked him how things were going with Emlyn. Not so good, it seemed. She was bored and missing her family. And, I learned, Emlyn had never been taught any domestic skills, including cooking or cleaning. Gary was slowly teaching her the basics, like cracking an egg, dusting, running a vacuum. While he and Emlyn had been getting acquainted via their Web cam, he had often seen her pushing a vacuum and being domestic. She finally confessed that it was just an act: “You never heard the vacuum running, did you?” Gary, however, was genuinely OK with all that. His real complaint: “She won’t talk to me about her feelings. Even if I can’t fix things, I can at least comfort her and sympathize. Like when I have a bad day at work.” I told Gary he was one smart guy.

We had talked for about an hour when Edel showed up and we changed the subject. Edel told us about how many jack rabbits he had hit with his truck in the past week (four or five every day). Gary asked Edel if he had ever seen one of the big ones with antlers. We thought Gary was kidding and I made some crack about “jackalopes.” He became indignant and said that three times they had come right by the shop. “With horns?” Edel asked. “No, not horns – antlers,” Gary fumed. He promised to get a picture next time and email it to me. And off I drove to my next interruption 220 miles later here in El Paso.

Rick, the service manager at Rudolph Honda, is working hard to get me out of here. “But you couldn’t have picked a worse week since we’ve got a spring break overload,” he told me. “Rick, I know you didn’t mean it that way but of course I didn’t ‘pick’ anything here,” I replied. It’s clear that Rick feels my pain. When Rick told me he was sharing the story of my pig plight with his wife, I knew he was for real. Imagine that. Genuine empathy from a car guy. Of course, Rick is fixing cars, not selling them.

Rick is an average-looking family man, 40ish, glasses, still with most of his own hair, including a short goatee and mustache. One afternoon he pointed to this gorgeous black and chrome Harley Davidson next to the shop. “That’s my wife’s,” he said. “Only has 200 miles on it so I rode it to work to use up the gas before it goes bad. I have a fat boy.”

I told him about my first trip to Texas in 1968 riding a Harley. Looking for a place to camp I buried the bike in a giant mud hole. Hours later, covered in water and mud, I escaped by piling branches in the mud and inching the 450-pound motorcycle out by flopping it from side to side in the water. Later, it broke down completely in Meridian, Mississippi, and I hitchhiked home to get a trailer to haul it back. That Texas mud hole may have been where I got the hernia that helped keep me out of Viet Nam, but that’s another story.

Even Rick with all his empathy can’t control the pace of the machine shop, which is where my engine heads went today for machining flat the warped surfaces from being overheated. Rick’s hoping to get me out of here by Friday but I’m not real optimistic.

Monday I dealt with the insurance company and that is not a pretty picture. I faxed them eight pages of make-shift receipts of my costs to date ($828.41, not counting motels and rental cars).

I’ve seen a fair bit of El Paso now. I’ve met Border Patrol guys, park rangers, car guys, museum staff and Tony. Yesterday I watched nesting peregrines on a cliff where I hiked high in the nearby Franklin Mountains. That’s where I met Tony, dressed in desert camo, and carrying a lot of water in his pack. Young Tony was an expert, having just come back from Iraq where 140 degrees is common. “The gear adds another 20 degrees,” he told me. Tony was with infantry kicking in doors and shooting bad guys, a challenging definition, I would think. Drinking water nearly non-stop was what you did, he said.

Tony told me about the huge camel spiders that they would catch in Iraq. He spread out a hand to show its size. Then the other hand came up as he described the spider fights they would orchestrate. Like cock fights. But with giant arachnids. Tony was climbing the mountain at a brisk pace, day one of his personal training regime before going to Army Ranger school. Tony had been stationed in upstate New York so we traded stories about our respective experiences there. “Small world,” he said when I told him I had been engaged to a girl in Watertown, where he had lived.

Tony loves his work (and, it seemed to me, his life). He had foregone a $75,000/year job offer in Houston oil to stay in the Army. He wanted to go back to Iraq. He was envisioning a possible future with military contractors, like Blackwater. I told him that having a job that you love, especially at his age, is rare. “If you get up in the morning and you don’t hate the thought of going to work, you are real lucky. Don’t give that up,” I told him.

I took Tony’s picture on our shared mountain ridge, got his email address and promised to send him a copy. Now, sitting here in the lovely little Chihuahuan desert garden on the University of Texas El Paso campus, I’m doing my best not to let that damned pig get me down again. After all, I could be watching spider fights in Iraq.

Tomorrow: "Part 4. The Cost Per Bird"

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THE PECOS PIG - Part 2. Easter in Pecos

Fast forward 48 hours – Easter Sunday noon. Forty-three degrees and raining, sitting here in my still-dead car in the Eagle Automotive Repair junkyard in Pecos, Texas. I am being rescued soon by Craig in his rented Prius. He’s driving it 400 miles from San Antonio. Then he turns around and we drive back 400 miles to San Antonio, then 200 miles south. After a week of birding in South Texas, I will be back to pick up my hopefully un-pig-damaged car. That is the plan. Assuming no more pigs, real or metaphysical.

I picked up my new radiator yesterday just fine. Edel drove me to Midland where we met Frank at Leo’s Radiator Shop (“Serving the Permian Basin for 21 years”). The Permian Basin is the local oil field. Edel told me all about pumping oil from 4,000 feet and getting it to refineries. While the rest of the country is in recession, here business is booming. With oil at $100 a barrel they are pumping like crazy. Lots of jobs. No housing left. I asked Edel what guys who move here to work do when they aren’t working. About all he could come up with was the local video rental.

Edel dropped me and my radiator off in the early afternoon. I sat in the junkyard all day, waiting for Gary to get started. Gary had promised to install an engine in a little Isuzu truck for another stranded traveler from Amarillo. I rode over to AutoZone with the guy to get new plugs. An odd fellow, a young Hispanic home boy (“fucking going to fucking Odessa tonight for some fine fucking bitches”) who loved to ride a mountain bike and visit parks (“I can never find anyone to go with me”), and was in a panic to get back to work tomorrow (“or get fired”). In the end something was wrong with his new-used engine and it never got fixed. The last thing the guy said to me was, “Well, at least you will have a story to tell when you are old.”

Around 7:00 pm Edel stopped by again just to see what was going on. Sat and watched Gary work on my car. It was not going well. Gary finally did get the new radiator in and hammered out the bent frame where the pig had hit. Then the surprise. Unfortunately, he broke the A/C condenser in his hammering; Freon hissed out for ten minutes. Gary assured me that the car would run just fine without the condenser and A/C. OK. That wasn’t the surprise.

When Gary started to fill the new radiator with antifreeze – surprise! It drained straight to the floor. What he hadn’t noticed was that the new radiator had a plug hole in the bottom (unlike the old radiator) but not a plug for it. No plug! After 30 minutes of trying everything in his shop to plug it, Gary conceded defeat and I called Craig to rescue me.

Gary’s been by three times this morning trying to get out of town for Easter with his new wife, Emlyn. I commented that he looked more white than black today. I didn’t mean it the way it may have sounded but Gary took no notice. The last time he stopped, Emlyn was in his truck so I walked over and chatted with her, a lovely woman of around 30. During her frequent calls to Gary yesterday, I learned that they call each other “baby.”

So now I’m sitting here alone on this goddamned cold, rainy Easter Sunday in goddamned Pecos, Texas. Goddamn that pig.

Tomorrow: "Part 3. The Pig's Revenge"

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THE PECOS PIG - Part 1. A Not-So-Good Friday

Lying here naked and drinking wine at 4:00 in the afternoon in a Motel 6 in Pecos, Texas, was definitely not in the plan. I was supposed to be driving east to San Antonio to pick up Craig for a week of birding in South Texas. Blame the pig.

Late yesterday after driving 60 miles out of my way to camp in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, I found the campground full. So there I was flying down deserted TX 652, hoping to find a motel in Pecos. Turns out, all the motels were full. But that’s getting ahead of the pig. Which I didn’t.

As the sun set over the pancake landscape the pig (a javelina) came trotting across the highway, left-to-right, hesitating, then going. Bull’s-eye! Like hitting a bowling ball. In my mirror I watched him rolling down the road, a 60-pound sack of dead lard.

No damage to the car was apparent. But 30 miles later, it died too. I told AAA that I was 24.1 miles south of Orla and about 17 miles north of Pecos. AAA’s message to B&B Wrecker Service, however, was “south” of Pecos. It took two hours waiting in the dark with erratic cell phone service until we finally connected. “They screw everything up,” the guy said philosophically as he winched my poor car up on his flatbed truck. The best mechanic in Pecos is at Eagle Automotive Repair, he told me. So he dropped me and my dead Honda Pilot on a weedy side street next to a ramshackle steel building and junkyard. The place was dark and deserted, with no discernable entry door or sign, surrounded by a rusty, barbed wire-topped fence. One street light and a full moon gave everything creepy shadows and a Mad Max glow.

After a long night half-sleeping in the back of the car, listening to passing trains and very early-rising roosters, I met Gary opening up. Over his first-of-the-day coffee, he learned about the pig. I learned about Gary, who started the day with hands already dark from grease stains. The most amazing thing, which Gary told in his matter-of-fact way, was that six days ago he got married to a Filipino woman. And went back to work three hours later. “She was real mad,” he admitted. He had met her on the Internet two years ago. Gary, who has this unsettling way of pausing for a few seconds when he talks and staring blankly with his slightly mis-aligned eyes while he collects his thoughts, told me that it cost many thousands of dollars to bring her over. Now he needed even more to get her work papers and to bring over her young son. So it seems the boy is going to have that pig to thank, at least in part, for getting him to the USA.

I almost left the USA by accident earlier yesterday. On a whim, I tried to find this “wildlife sanctuary” I saw on a map of El Paso. Somehow, though, the highway I sought became the freeway to Juarez, Mexico. After passing numerous “no guns” signs (I have one), the big sign overhead proclaimed: “Leaving the United States of America.” Then, just before the border guards a little sign read “U-Turn OK, 350 feet.” By the way, I did finally find the “wildlife sanctuary,” a scruffy square of dry vegetation and ponds surrounded by chain link and No Trespassing signs. Some days whims pay off. Other days, not so much.

Tomorrow morning, Gary’s friend, Edel, and his monster Chevy truck will pick me up from the Motel 6 to go to Midland, thanks to Gary calling all over this part of Texas to find a replacement for the radiator that the pig destroyed. He used private numbers to reach guys who ran the parts and radiator shops; all were closed, as today is Good Friday. “I’ve got a customer here who broke down ‘cause he hit a pig and needs to get to San Anton’ tonight,” he explained to each of them. Finally, after many dead ends, Frank in Midland said he could get one by 10:00 tomorrow. $250.

Edel is charging me $120 for the 180-mile round trip to Midland. I told him I thought that was fair. Edel, a large, friendly 48-year-old Hispanic man, works the oil fields around Orla (near the dead pig’s home). Tomorrow is his day off and he’s free because his wife is having a Mary Kay cosmetics party at his house. Edel came by today and gave me a ride to the Motel 6 around noon. The woman at the check-in desk said, apologetically, “They raise the rates over spring break,” regarding the $57 price.

Room 120 is on a corner near the fetid-appearing pool. Outside an Asian man with a pick is digging in the baked dirt. I went for a hot, bleak run through this sad, desolate town. Then took a shower. Which is why I’m now naked. As for the wine at 4:00 in the afternoon, that should be obvious by now.

Tomorrow: "Part 2. Easter in Pecos"

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TRUE TALES FROM THE EAST - 10. Art & Landscapes

My last two days in the East I mostly spent in art museums in DC. I've been to them hundreds of times during the past thirty years. One of the bonuses of getting fired from NWF a year before we moved to Oregon was the time it gave me to spend on the National Mall, and especially the National Gallery of Art. I made it a point to go there three times a week for an entire year. After an absence of several years it was like visiting old friends.

A favorite place(National Gallery of Art)

My favorite architecture(East Wing of the National Gallery of Art - I.M. Pei; Alexander Calder mobile)

My favorite room(Rembrandts at the National Gallery)

A favorite artist
(Jean-Honoré Fragonard)

Another favorite artist(Johannes Vermeer)

My favorite sculpture("Last Conversation Piece," Juan Muñoz, Hirshhorn Museum lawn)

My favorite nude (sculpture)("Nymph," Aristide Maillol, Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden)

My favorite Native American sculpture("Spirit of Haida Gwaii," Bill Reid, Canadian Embassy)

My favorite lunch spot
(National Gallery of Art cafeteria)

Western Oregon where we live has almost everything I love. But it's missing two things: friends and art. As for friends, well, there's this here story... And some come visit us in Oregon. Facebook fills the gaps.

As for art -- the National Gallery of Art kind of art -- it's scarce in Oregon, but then, no place equals the National Mall's art, gardens, science, history and culture. What Oregon does have, however, is a stunningly diverse and beautiful landscape. For me, that landscape is constantly renewing and surprising. Friend Al observed the other day that however beautiful, landscape does not challenge you intellectually the way art does. True, but there is no place I would rather be than right where I'm at.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

- the end -

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TRUE TALES FROM THE EAST - 9. Friends (Part 3)

John:

And then there is my friend John. I headed to rural Cortland County, New York (pop. 48,302, 96.3% percent white, median home value $74.700). This is where John grew up. After his marriage fell apart years ago he bought a tiny 1840s-era farmhouse with room out back for a big garden and fruit trees. Then he fell in love with Jennifer, the official local dairy princess, they got married and have lived happily ever after.

John, a Ph.D. biologist with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, retired about a year before me. He was my role model for retirement. The last few years of his career he and Jennifer lived in a Honolulu high rise with John managing pollution clean-ups in the North Pacific. Bright lights, big city. What a contrast to the back-to-the-earth lifestyle of upstate New York. But when he retired they returned to the frozen north without a backward glance.

All those questions I raised with David about northern New England's lifestyle challenges? John and Jennifer -- they love it all. They are becoming one with their homestead, canning and freezing local vegetables, fruits and meat; tapping trees for maple syrup; splitting firewood; keeping a local bird list; reading; watching movies and the Weather Channel; and occasionally traveling to see John's grandchildren on both coasts.

I met John the same way I met Rick and David, through Great Lakes environmental work. John and I first crossed paths in 1978 on a U.S. Coast Guard ice breaker in late-winter on the frozen river below the Soo Locks. I had tagged along on a fact-finding trip to see the potential impact of that part of proposed all-winter shipping.
John is another of those unsung heroes of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River environment. Where some of us used politics and media, John used science and biology (and some fancy internal politics) through his federal agency to undermine the winter navigation proposal.

John (right) and Abbie Hoffman - 1983

We became fast friends and it's lasted a lifetime. John was a trusted advisor through my entire career, especially at some key moments. Only one time did I ignore his advice, which was: "Don't hire her. Don't let her ruin the National Wildlife Federation like she ruined the Fish and Wildlife Service."

I was in charge of the search process to hire a person to run NWF's conservation programs, the "senior vice president for conservation programs." And our head hunter wanted us to hire the woman, Jamie, who had been John's boss and head of his agency during the Clinton Administration. I resisted but finally relented for an interview with the search committee after all the other candidates fell flat. We were impressed and, as they say, the rest is history. And an ugly history it was, though that's a story for another day. She certainly didn't ruin NWF; others deserve credit for that. I've always wondered how different things would have been had I stayed with John's advice.

During my recent visit with John and Jennifer it rained but we went bird watching anyway. They live on a deserted gravel road with almost no traffic and have seen more than 100 bird species on their walks. Best for us were the bob-o-links, black-white-yellow grassland birds, nearly done nesting already in June and ready to head 6,000 miles back to South America.

We drove to a little bird preserve and found dozens of one of my favorite birds just arrived from Brazil called the veery. This tawny, robin-like bird has a call that sounds like a flutist falling down a well (www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Veery/sounds). It's a signature sound of the New England forests in spring. John, Jennifer and I soaked it in.

And so my trip to the East neared its end. My scorecard:

Friendships forever lost: 1

Friendships apparently lost: 1

Friendships rescued: 2

Friendships renewed: lots

"You know what they say. They say it's all good." -- Bob Dylan

Next: "Art & Landscape"

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TRUE TALES FROM THE EAST - 9. Friends (Part 2)

David:
From Rick's island I headed northeast along the St. Lawrence River, across the top of Lake Champlain to about as far north in Vermont as you can get where David and Micha live. The hospitality was just as warm, their property nearly as remote as Rick's place, but the architecture changed dramatically.

Like Rick, David had a dream of living in the place he loved. So after a couple of marriages and a DC political career while living in Arlington, he built his dream house in Vermont. Exquisite is the best way to describe it. Beautiful craftsmanship throughout, the house sits on 70 acres looking south into the valley of Lake Willoughby. It's a fiord-like glacier-carved lake, 300 feet deep, flanked by Mt. Pisgah on the east and Mt. Hor on the west.

I last had visited their home when he and Micha got married there the autumn before I moved from Virginia to Oregon. A major remodeling had made the house even nicer. And not one dead mouse or flying ant did I see. They have their own milliondollar view, this one including immense thunderstorms rolling across the mountains and valley, then engulfing the house in sheets of lightning and rain.

As with Rick, I first met David through my Great Lakes environmental work in the 1970s. He was the head guy at a U.S.-Canadian commission that deals with cross-border pollution. I soon learned that David has superb political skills and instincts.

David & me -- Rainbow Range, British Columbia -- 1981

No one person ever did more to move the political agenda forward on Great Lakes toxic chemical pollution -- you know, the really bad stuff like PCBs, dioxins and hormone-disrupting chemicals in the environment.

It's not that he, personally, got any laws or rules passed. Or got a bunch of money to clean up pollution. What he did was choreograph a new public and political awareness of the issues. He got his staid, conservative institution, the International Joint Commission -- created in 1909 but largely invisible prior to David's imprimatur -- to issue reports that were revolutionary. Not surprisingly, one of his closest allies was Greenpeace's Jack ("never trust anyone over 30") Weinberg. The IJC's meetings became focal points for cutting edge, sometimes raucous debates about social costs of pollution, burdens of proof regarding harm to environmental and public health, responsibility for pollution, and on and on. David's name isn't on much of anything but his marks are on much good that came out of that era.

Today David travels the world for the U.N. trying to get foreign countries to protect their special places, like Africa's Lake Chad. It's a mystery to me how it does it, both the work and the constant travel.

On my visit David told me he had hiked to the top of Mt. Pisgah at least 300 times. He liked to do it really fast. It's seven miles up and back, plus 1,500 feet of elevation gain. But what a hike! To Micha's relief I insisted on walking slow and stopping a lot -- there was much to see. Along the forest trail we caught toads and what I later learned was a hairy-tailed mole. My dawdling let me enjoy close-up and personal a breeding pair of black-throated blue warblers. Atop Mt. Pisgah peregrine falcons that nest on the cliffs swooped below.

Some kind of next-door-to-Canada paradise, eh? Well that depends. You say you don't need nice restaurants, libraries, art galleries, cinemas? You're ok with frost in June? A tiny rural supermarket is good enough for your food shopping? You love shoveling snow from your roof? Minus-30 degrees is invigorating? How about horse flies, mosquitoes, black flies and no-see-ums; you consider them friends?

No, you say?

Well then why on earth do you live in northern Vermont?

We had that conversation and even talked about an alternative -- western South Carolina near a university, where David's brother recently relocated. I know. The state with the "Hiking the Appalachian Trail" Governor. Confederate flags. Eeew! But everything comes down to this: compared to what?

For me almost any reasonably warm place north of Florida or west of Texas would be better than northern Vermont. But that's just me.

Next: "Friends (Part 3)"

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TRUE TALES FROM THE EAST - 9. Friends (Part 1)

There are friends of the road and friends of the heart, says my best friend, Eva. It's a saying usually brought up in the context of bemoaning why we never hear from some old friend.

I got sidetracked from finishing these last tales because of a week-long visit to Oregon from my friend, Al. It seemed more important to actually spend time with a friend than to spend time writing about friends.

I had lost track of Al for 20 years. After moving to Oregon I learned he was living in southern California and looked him up. We've been having a great time ever since, getting together a couple times a year to hike and hang out. We've been friends for nearly 45 years. Here's a picture of Al (on the left) at the 1967 anti-war march on the Pentagon, and a more recent likeness:

During Al's visit we heard Bob Dylan say that "friends are God's apology for our families." Never mind that it's an old quote by someone else, it's still pretty good, don't you think?

After leaving Craig and Jean's home in rural Virginia, I traveled for ten days visiting friends in New England before returning for Craig's memorial service.

Rick:

"I must not have got all of him." OK, that's not something you expect to hear from your host regarding the goo on the floor swarming with flying ants that you found in your guest bedroom. But the remnants of a long-dead mouse is not an altogether unexpected experience in the rustic quarters that Rick has created on his island on the St. Lawrence River in upstate New York. Since the shop vac was right there next to the bed, no problem. Whoosh and no more vermin. We doused the remaining ants with Cutter's insect repellant, Rick put out the last of his mouse poison, and all was well. Except for the live mouse spotted later in the evening running across the kitchen counter, but that's another story.

You put up with such minor inconveniences in order to share Rick's little bit of paradise -- a place of his own in The Thousand Islands on "The River." Rick fell in love with the River when he was young and it defined his life. He bought his land on Grindstone Island when he couldn't afford it, then found jobs that would pay the mortgage and let him spend time building a cabin. Like being a merchant seaman.

He started with just the raw land -- woods and marsh with no dock, electricity, plumbing or phone. The only way to get to his place is by boat. But he did have a million dollar view. And today, decades later, Rick has a two-story cabin with running hot water, electricity, phone and dock. His recently finished knotty pine upstairs is beautiful, with a little deck off his bedroom that looks across his bay to the River -- it's still a million dollar view. The first floor remains, shall we say, a work in progress. But Rick has realized his dream. He is a happy man.

I've known Rick since the 1970s when I lived in Michigan and worked for a state conservation group. Our paths first crossed when we both were trying to stop a multi-billion dollar boondoggle by the government to open up the Great Lakes to all-winter commercial shipping. It would have been an environmental disaster for the lakes and his river. Rick is a born community organizer; it's in his genes. Working with others who live on and along the river, including then-incognito Abbie Hoffman (a.k.a. Barry Freed), they created Save the River. We joined forces and after years of real hard work killed the project. It wouldn't have happened without Rick's brilliant organizing and lobbying. And Rick wouldn't be who he is without that battle. In fact, it led to him going back to college; his master's thesis was a political analysis of the history of winter navigation. And all that eventually brought him to his longest-held job as an organizer for the National Wildlife Federation.

It was my fourth or fifth visit to Rick's island since the 1980s. We talked long about political battles won and lost over the years. Mostly, though, we soaked in the wonder of the River. We watched the sun set over his marsh, a mink hunting along the shoreline, redwing blackbirds calling from the cattails. One morning we boated close to a mother loon with two babies riding on her back. We hiked across the interior of Rick's island -- my first time -- and identified lots of his forest birds.

Bird watching is a new thing for Rick. When he retired from NWF last fall he decided that birding would be a good thing to do and set about learning how. He spent the winter traveling the country and by the time he got to Oregon in late February he was better really good at it. Now, after owning land on his island for half his life, he finally is seeing and hearing how many different birds live there.

I asked Rick what he was going to do next winter, since staying in his isolated cabin all year isn't feasible. He really had no idea and didn't seem the least bit concerned: "I'll figure something out."

Next: "Friends (Part 2)"

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TRUE TALES FROM THE EAST - 8. Ask, I'll Tell

"They say a secret is something you tell one other person
so I'm telling you." - Peter Mulvey

Seeing the White House from Constitution Avenue was a special thrill. Even though I've seen that view hundreds of times, this one was different. Now Obama is in there. Apparently, the country had to teeter on the edge of chaos, run to the brink by charlatans and bandits, to wise up. Every place I went I found friends with enthusiasm for Obama, the kind unseen in a generation.

None more than Johanna. After Craig's memorial service I headed to New England for visits to several friends. Rick picked me up in his boat at Johanna's dock in the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence River. (More in a later post.) Johanna was Abbie Hoffman's partner and had lost little of her sixties zeal for political activism. She had attended Obama's inauguration along with "my five lesbians," as she put it. I think she said something about them trying to exorcise the White House before Obama moved in.

Johanna was upset by Proposition 8 in California that made gay marriage illegal. Upset not that it passed but that new efforts to overturn it didn't go far enough in spelling out gay rights. Later I asked Larry (my friend, Larry, who I stayed with a couple of nights in DC, not to be confused with my not-friend, ex-boss Larry) if he thought that again legalizing gay marriage in California would be a good thing. Larry, who is gay, said he thought it was an important step. I just don't understand why people get so agitated about it.

I can think of only one thing about Obama that has disappointed me: what's with this "don't ask, don't tell" bullshit in the military? It's not that complicated. Just end it, ok? It's really stupid.

I have to confess, however, that I am conflicted since an earlier version of the country's homophobia kept me out of Vietnam forty years ago. I lost my student deferment at the peak of that folly at the end of 1967. That was just after my very first visit to Washington, DC, for the anti-war march on the Pentagon. Sadly, we failed all efforts to make it levitate.

By early 1968 Uncle Sam wanted me. I flunked my first physical at the U.S. Army's Fort Wayne induction center near Detroit, thanks to a hernia. Two months later I was called back.

"So you're going to keep making me come back here forever until I get this hernia fixed?" I asked the bored Army doctor.

"Yep."

"Then there's something else you need to know."

"What's that."

"I'm gay."

He actually rolled his eyes. But he wrote me out an order to see an Army shrink the next day.

Show time! Walking back to the reception area I sashayed past an endless line of potential draftees, naked but for their skivvies. Dressed in my gay clothes (pointy shoes, tight black pants, flowery fake silk shirt, etc.), I got whistles and cat-calls. "Go ahead, you dumb shits," I said to myself. "Whistle all you want. Your asses are headed to Vietnam to get shot off and mine is out of here."

Assuming I could convince the shrink the next day. Me and a handful of other nut cases were put up in a seedy hotel in downtown Detroit. My weird roommate and I went to see "2001" at the big-screen Cinerama. As if life at that moment wasn't surreal enough.

Back at Fort Wayne the next morning I ducked behind a barracks just before going in to see the shrink. It needed to be the performance of my life. So I embraced my gayness.

I remember that the shrink asked me about a "typical gay day." The rest is kind of hazy. When I walked out I didn't know if he believed me or not.

At the final processing table I could see the Army guy was scanning the shrink's report. Reading it upside-down I saw my diagnosis: "Non-aggressive, sociopathic sex deviant." Hey, don't forget the hernia.

So I pretty much had it covered. Just to make sure I also had applied for status as a conscientious objector. I was turned down, but appealed to the State Draft Board. One day found me sitting before three ribbon-bedecked retired military guys with short hair in the Federal Building in Flint, Michigan. They asked me questions like, "if Hitler was raping your sister what would you do?" But I had studied hard for this insane test and knew all the right insane answers. On a 2-1 vote they bought my story.

I had a bunch of draft cards: 2-S. 1-A. 1-A-O. 1-Y. 4-F. Burned 'em all eventually.

Robert McNamara, architect of that damned war, died this month at 93. He was brilliant, a reminder that tempers my excitement about all the brilliant people now in the White House. McNamara long ago concluded that he had been "wrong, terribly wrong" about the war. That was, of course, after more than 58,000 guys like the ones lined up in their skivvies in Fort Wayne were killed for nothing, plus several million Vietnamese. And a generation scarred forever. Fuck him.

So go ahead. Ask me. I'll tell.

Next: "Friends (Part 1)

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TRUE TALES FROM THE EAST - 7. Ex-Boss

I got to Craig's memorial service at the Lutheran Church in Sterling real early. I figured it would be SRO and I wanted a seat down front. As I pulled into the church's driveway, there walking across the parking lot was my ex-boss, Larry -- the guy who fired me four years ago. (Or, more accurately, sent his poor stooge, Dan, to do it.) I ducked into the church without having to make polite chit-chat with the guy.

It always surprised me that it took him a year to get rid of me. This will give you some idea of the quality of our relationship: I asked a lawyer about where the line was for slander.

When he first got hired as NWF's CEO he made his debut at the annual meeting in St. Louis. I was in charge of the meeting's logistics and script and also was head of NWF's communications department. Larry came to me the day before he was to deliver his big speech and asked me to review it. I did. It was horrible. Too long. Too technical (global warming, of course). No personal connections with the audience. Awful.

"Wayne, you are screwed," I said to myself. Brand new boss. Not the best history between us. So do I (A) shine it on or (B) give it to him straight? I picked "B." Larry went back to his room and completely rewrote his speech. He didn't let me see the revision. He never again asked me to review one of his speeches.

His new one was pretty good. Still too long, but he did connect with his audience -- NWF affiliate leaders, board of directors members, staff. He singled out three staff members by name for examples of the kind of behavior from us that he expected. I was one of them. He told the audience of my critical response the previous day to his draft speech. As the new CEO that was exactly the kind of directness and honesty he would expect from us. "Varnish is for floors, not for conversations between real people." He actually said that.

"Wayne, you are so screwed," I told myself.

A month or so later an unmarked envelope appeared on my desk at NWF. It held a copy of a 10,000-word keynote speech that Larry had delivered to an evangelical conference, unbeknownst to me or apparently anyone else at NWF. It was posted on the Internet. Now how on earth do you coordinate message and media if your CEO is freelancing? More to the point, how do you deal with statements made by your CEO that explain that he took the job because he was called by God. I could see how staff who didn't share his Christian faith and sanctimonious zeal could be offended.

In his rambling, autobiographical speech Larry described how he did not want to take the CEO job, but through prayer the Lord told him to apply for the job. Apparently, the Lord also rigged the search process: “I have to tell you that God is good. The search committee ended up being almost all Christians. There was one person on that committee that was not. The chairman of my board is a devout Christian, the incoming chair is a devout Christian, happens to be an African-American. He is just an incredible Christian, the next in line to be chair; so that three chairs are all Evangelical Christians. And this all happened while I was away from the National Wildlife Federation. So it has been really fun to go through that. So I get into this full board meeting, the full board knew I was an Evangelical Christian, there was no doubt about that and where I stood on that…”

I asked Larry about the speech. His answer: "They have interns transcribe the speeches. They made a lot of mistakes." The speech quietly disappeared from the Internet.

Six months into Larry's tenure as God's emissary the NWF executive committee retained a mortal to evaluate his job performance. The consultant asked everyone on the senior staff to respond to a detailed evaluation questionnaire about the boss. "Confidential." Of course.

Despite my apprehension I wrote an unvarnished critique, the way Larry said he wanted it. I spelled out his mediocre leadership, business management, communication skills, decision-making -- general stuff like that. And how did that work out, Wayne? you might be asking.

When the final day of my thirteen-year career at NWF ended I called my staff together, gave them the news, told them to support Jaime (NWF's Chief Operating Officer), and slipped out the door. I got a decent severance package. But I don't recall anyone saying "thank you."

One of my last emails was to Monty in Vermont: "It's over. It's good. I'm out of here." Monty, too, had been marginalized by the new boss who couldn't figure out how to use his talents and experience. So Monty chugged along in second gear. What a waste.

It took a couple more years but Monty eventually got canned. I visited him in Montpelier later in my trip. He now is the director of The Center for an Agricultural Economy (www.hardwickagriculture.org). It's a local consortium that is promoting local farmers and cheese makers. I loved Monty's enthusiasm in describing his work and the new publicity he has gotten for them. It had been a while since I'd seen him jazzed that way.

I once took Monty to see "The Full Monty" when it was playing in Ann Arbor. It was an odd date.

Not everyone at Craig's reception ducked Larry. One told me later, "Within thirty seconds my skin was crawling."

I don't know how the guy has survived all this time. But then, hey, who elected that moron Bush and his evil, control freak sidekick? Why should we expect any better from NWF's Board of Directors? But like those turkeys now gone from the White House, Larry's days are numbered. I suspect that if Congress passes a climate change law that Larry then will resign a hero, at least in his own mind.


Next: "Ask, I'll tell"

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TRUE TALES FROM THE EAST - 6. Happiness

Just before Craig's memorial service I had brunch in Reston with my kid, Matt, and his girlfriend, Ashley. He moved back to Virginia from Oregon a year ago. Herndon is where he has many friends and where he grew up before we moved west three years ago. He and Ashley are living with her parents just two blocks from his old high school. And in the same subdivision where we lived for seven years.

Matt got emotional upon seeing me. It had been the longest, by far, he ever has been away from his family. There's no easy way to be young. Like most 20-somethings he is struggling. But he's holding a job, isn't in jail, and hasn't gotten anyone pregnant. Is he happy, the thing you want most for your kids? I guess for Matt's it's something akin to it. When you raise a kid you learn to adapt to modest expectations. I'm happy with that.

Then there's Matt's sister. Kristen followed us to Oregon, to our great relief, as soon as she completed her French and Education degrees from Virginia Tech. She spent a year studying in France. Less than a year after arriving in Oregon she was married and had a baby. Eleven months later and they have a second boy, who just had his first birthday.

We have a standing joke: "Kristen, if someone had told you when we were living in Virginia that today you would be (fill in here with virtually any typical domestic day), what would you have thought?" They say that life is what happens when you are making plans; Kristen is the poster child. But here's the kicker: she's happy. Happy to be a stay-at-home mom raising two babies with her husband in rural Oregon. Just plain happy.

The babies all start out so innocent. Then they grow up, or at least get older. And everything changes quickly when you're 22 years old. Matt says that Ashley just kicked him out of her parent's house. "I'm screwed," he whined to me on the phone the other day.

During my visit to DC I asked an ex-NWF colleague if she "had a job she didn't hate." She fumbled for an answer and said she wasn't sure if she really enjoyed her job. "That's not what I asked," I said. "I asked if you didn't hate it." She thought a moment and decided that yes, she didn't hate it. Based on my experience, sometimes that's not too bad of a benchmark.

By the way, brunch at Clyde's outdoor cafe in Reston was great. We had waffles with fresh blackberries and maple syrup. And a fresh strawberry parfait. Happiness.


Next: "Ex-Boss"

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TRUE TALES FROM THE EAST - 5. The Reception

"I just love this guy," Linda beamed as she grabbed my arm at the reception following Craig's memorial service.

I really didn't know what to expect since I was going to meet people I had worked with closely at NWF. Former colleagues I hadn't seen in the four years since I had been dumped by the then-new CEO.

There was a raw honesty to the reception. It threw together people who hadn't seen each other for years. There were probably 500 people at the memorial service; most stopped at least briefly at the reception. Many had worked together, so had histories and stories. Most struggled to remember names, like at a high school reunion without the name tags.

A lot of tension drifted beneath the surface. Quite a few people had been fired by others there. Some had slept with others, or at least wanted to. Some really didn't like each other. Mostly, though, it was about people genuinely happy to see each other again. Lots of hugging.

We all had Craig in common. But at that point how much is left to say? It's the start of moving on.

All that made the reception a non-choreographed dance, participants weaving around the food tables and through the crowd, connecting or avoiding, interactions sincere or just polite, brief or longer.

For me it felt pretty good. Most were happy to see me. I was happy to see them. Like Linda, who couldn't stop smiling. We had worked together at NWF years ago. She did marketing and branding. I always loved watching her Sisyphean efforts, largely wasted it seemed to me, on a company that just didn't get it.

Then there was Chris the environmental filmmaker. You usually hear Chris before you see him. "Why Wayne, I didn't expect to see you here!" he boomed, grabbing my hand with typical Chris gusto, flashing his million dollar smile. "Enjoy it while you can, Chris, because this is probably it," I replied. I just love this guy.

Chris, who once worked for NWF, is a clown who stands on his hands for his audience. He reminds me of a public speaking tip I got more than 30 years ago: "When you get up in public just take off all your clothes. They will either love your or hate you but there'll be no in-between."

He is an extraordinary entertainer. A passionate crusader for nature. Some people say he is a shameless self-promoter and a bit full of himself. Well for Christ's sake what do you expect? It's show biz! Anyone ever say, "That Craig Ferguson. I don't watch him 'cause he's so full of himself"? I'm not saying the world needs a bunch more Chrises but having one is good. In moderate doses. I'm just saying...

Midway through the reception I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned and recognized a face. "You probably don't remember me but I'm Amy and I used to work at NWF. You came to see me in a bike race in Reston one time. I always appreciated that."

"Not only do I remember," I said, "but get this. Three hours ago I was having brunch with my son and his girlfriend in Reston. We wondered why the streets were all blocked off. It was the annual bike race. We sat there watching the same women's race that you were in -- what? -- five or six years ago? I told them about your race.

What do you make of such odd coincidences? Those things happen to me often enough that my wife thinks I'm creepy.

I learned that Amy and her husband are moving to Boulder via an Airstream cross-country odyssey. Here's their dream (from Amy's website):


Among the last to leave the reception, I was edging for the church exit when another old colleague from NWF stopped me. She obviously had something on her mind. After perfunctory small talk she asked why she hadn't heard from me in the four years since I left NWF. "Do you hate me?" she asked, tearing up.

It had never dawned on me that my behavior after leaving NWF would be hurtful to anyone. She really set me back. I mumbled reasons about why I had disappeared but it sounded lame. I apologized as best I could. We talked about what an intense experience it is for anyone who ever works at NWF -- good and bad intense. "But are you remembering the good experiences?" she asked.

At the end I said goodbye to Craig's wife, Jean. It is the strangest thing, saying goodbye to someone you are close to and knowing you likely will never see again. Yet life is a mystery and you just never know.


Next: "Happiness"

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