While walking Bloomington’s B-Line trail Saturday morning with puppy Scampi, two encounters stayed with me.
The first, with a woman just ahead who, when I caught up with her, turned, prompting me to say: “You look familiar. How do I know you?” She laughed, said she “has a public face.” I will preserve her privacy here, but just know that she worked with our wonderful local coop for 40 years, meanwhile also owning and operating a famous local bar. Both these adventures are done now. What’s next? She doesn’t know.
I asked her, “how old are you?”
“65.”
“Oh, you’ve just begun. I’m nearly 82. Each decade gets better and better, more and more interesting, because there’s more to remember and put together again, larger and larger arcs of meaning as we trace events through time. Like, noticing how the first time I did something I was a complete mess; the second time, at least I paused inside the maelstrom and began to notice what I was doing; the third time, I carried it off with aplomb.” She got it, and says she really appreciates learning from her elders!
The second encounter came right after the first, this one with a woman who looked to be in her 50s with an enormous dog, so huge that I thought it a wolf. “Everybody says that,” she said. But actually he’s a black German shepherd.”
The she launched in: “This dog was supposed to go to my 16-year-old son in April. But right before that happened, I went to check on him one Monday morning before school — and found him dead in his sleep. He had ingested fentanyl the night before; I was the last to know.”
She kept returning to that refrain: “I was the last to know.”
It turned out he had been self-medicating since he was thirteen, starting with Benadryl. Again, she didn’t know that either. All his friends did, however; and four of them had been getting fentanyl at Switchyard Park (which is on the B-Line trail) from somebody who got it to them from a nearby smoke shop. Her son was the only one who died.
But good news: that very morning, 100 of his friends were about to gather at Switchyard Park to honor their fallen one. That’s why she was there, with the dog that was supposed to go to him.
When she told me she found him dead in his bed I instantly broke into tears, and rushed to hug her. This surprised me; prior to my own son Colin’s catastrophe 15 months ago (and ongoing, see caringbridge.org), my emotional life would not have been so close to the surface; nor would empathy have been so strong.
I’ve been reading through old journals. What a kick! Puts me right back there. An excerpt from 7/14/93, i.e., 31 years ago!
The Feeling for Trees
The feeling for trees began in a forest in Oregon — sitting underneath, and with my back to, two tree beings there.
The first, a lonely old ugly withered but still living outpost at top of mountain — teaching me about the isolation (and the view!) at the alpine top, enduring the elements, buffeted by winds, scorched by lightning.
The other a huge old redwood in rain forest below — teaching me about the power of the low, of connecting to everything — the intermingling below nourishing one to grow straight and tall to seek the sun above.
Then, back here (Jackson, Wyoming) a week ago: the big old pine tree [outside my yurt] teaching me to “find strength in what is below” — and the aspen [as I walked the river trail] the other day — its interpenetrating roots teaching group mind, group feel, yet each tree separate and individual.
As I uproot from the old I search out this new/old way of rooting — that I may, with a healthy foundation now, grow straight and tall as a tree.
9/8/93 Dream:
*I am with other women, we are attempting something for first time. It involves some kind of transmutation of several elements? creatures? The feeling is of something long buried, now in light — all these “creatures” up in tree? or up high in something like a tree? I’m up there once, so are others, by turns — something extraordinary and brand new going on, never before seen! We all know it, and what differs is our reactions when we begin to realize what this event? situation? in tree? might mean. . . . I am struck when one woman, who is a veteran of important evolutionary changes, and who I had brought in because she would be perfect for this experience — suddenly quits and leaves. I don’t even see her go, just know it later. It dawns on me that some accommodation she had with the regular world, “USA Today” — meant she couldn’t go further or she would lose that accommodation, and she knew it. I am struck by how utterly perfect it is that I came at this from the outer edge of culture, so that I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.*
The feeling, when I awoke, of awe, terror, majesty, witnessing some kind of rebirth/birth/alchemy of coming together of forms and of being present a the beginning. Of holding the space open for it to happen.”
This role, of riding culture’s razor’s edge, feels natural. Nature’s way, with me.
Clif High has an interesting substack post today:
A Natural Man Walking the Earth
