comporting roadwise

COMPORTING ROADWISE
LIGHTNING'S CHILDREN
by RomTom
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
PROLOGUE
1. FALLING STARS
2. WHERE ALL THE FLOWERS WENT
3. TUMBLEWEEDS
4. CHOO-CHOO
5. CLIFF HANGER
6. ASUNDER
7. PRIMORDIAL GENES
8. WOMB
9. 357 GARGOYLES
10. CARROTS UP THE YIN-YANG
11. WILDING HEARTS
12. WINDOW
13. NOBULLRUSHES
14. EUGENICS
15. ASHES TO ASSHOLES--TRUCKS TO DUCKS
16. STARBERRY CREAM
17. 2000 BEERS
18. LEATHER DRESS
19. STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT
20. REVERIE ET MATEUS
21. GOAT BOYS
22. BURNING HEART
23. SURVIVAL SUIT
24. XMAS
25. GEE--LOVES!
26. MADNESS
27. MOTHER CHURCH
28. GREAT SPIRIT LOOKING DOWN
29. ABATOIR
30. FLIGHT
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31. COUCH POTATOES
32. GARDEN
33. PECULIAR ABSENCE
34. HORSE SENSE
35. LAUGHING RIVER
36. ELYSIUM
37. NUTS
38. LOCKED OUT
39. PIGS
40. SUNDAY SOCIAL
41. STUPIDER THAN USUAL
42. SHELTER FROM THE STORMS
43. PINSTRIPE GRAMPA
44. PREDATORS AND PREY
45. PREDATORS AND PREY CONTINUED
46. TOPAZ EGG BEYOND THE RAINBOWS
47. SLOUGH FOOT, SMARAGD MILES
48. LAISSEZ LES BON TEMPS ROULLER
49. DINOSAUR
50. SPARKS
51. CRAWSHAW AND THE FOX
52. MEDICINE DREAMS
53. MOUNTAIN OF COMPASSION
54. SINCE THE DAWN
55. WUTHERING HYPES
56. OWLYGATOR
57. HELLHOLES
58. CAULDRON
59. GANG OF DUCKS
60. SIN
61. SAVORLESS SUSTENENCE
62. BONES
63. HANG-UPS
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64. WHIRLPOOL
65. SPIRITUAL RELATIVES
66. CRADLE OF HUMANITY
67. OLD SALT
68. TOOTH SACRIFICE
69. HEART UNCONSCIOUSNESS
70. TOODA'LOO!
71. BATHOS BENNY
72. KINDRED STARLIGHT DWELLERS
73. BICYCLE BUS
74. REVELATION AND IRONY
75. TWO INNOCENT AND DEFENCELESS LOVING FERRETS RUBBED OUT
76. ANXIOUS WORDS WRITTEN IN 1994
77. NOVEMBER 5, 1999
78. IN THE HEART OF PROVIDENCE
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PREFACE
They told us to put our daughters out of our minds -- let them go -- forget them. They said we
should realize that we were out of the picture now -- that nothing we could say or do would matter any
more. That there was nothing the three girls would need from us ever again. But we could not accept
this reasoning.
The circumstances would matter to them. They should hear what happened. But we did have to face
the fact that regardless of what we thought or didn't think -- in all likelihood, our daughters would
never hear the story. Oh, they might get a distorted fragment here, a muddled tidbit of hearsay there -but we had no reason to assume they would ever get more than that.
I felt like I owed them some answers -- and an opportunity to know their mother, who in being
tragically riven from them suffered immeasurably; for she too is a woman like themselves. They would
surely understand her. But alas, it appeared all too possible that they might never meet her. Oh! God
forbid that eventuality! But what if that were the case? Then the only thing I might try to do would be
-- to introduce her to them through these words. They should at least have that.
So, I told my wife I wanted to write the entire thing down. But not necessarily with the intention of
publishing. I merely was compelled overwhelmingly to set down the details in the vague hope of
someday having the opportunity to put them before our daughters, for their edification, for their heart's
sake.
Year after year continued to pass, and I continued to agonize how I might write down all the
memories that weighed so heavily upon me -- upon us...
Often friends who managed to tear remnants from our souls, told us ever and again that we
absolutely should put the story down in writing because it could benefit others -- not just our daughters.
Furthermore, that only through publication might the story reach them.
So, I tried several times, with pen and paper. Scribbling. I don't even remember what happened to
those early attempts.
Then one day in 1989 a Tandy lap-computer fell into my lap from a fortuitous opal deal with a CB
repairman in Canyonville, Oregon, and I realized I finally had the power to accomplish this task to the
best of my abilities.
But did I have the nerve?
Inasmuch as writing this story requires that I reveal more about myself than I would care to have
most people know, I have made painful decisions over what to include. Where these essentials
compromised my privacy or that of my wife, I have usually managed to grit my teeth and wince and
reluctantly bear the discomfort -- and worry.
Even as the tome approaches completion I feel reservations against publication. It took two years of
my life at twelve hours per day just to create the basic manuscript -- and then eight more years of
intermittent work rewriting, proofreading, expanding, deleting... for what? Had I done all this work just
to make a few copies for family and close friends? No...
But these matters are so personal! Oh! I could choose to merely go over the volume and extract
anything that portrays me as vindictive or salacious in the eyes of those who would slaver at the
opportunity to tear me apart on those accounts. --And I could remove or dissemble all the absolutely
dumb decisions I've made that caused so much of our travail, so as to make my own role purified and
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pin all cause upon our many antagonists. But I won't do that. The story will have to hold its own in
spite of my numerous foibles -- or it's worthless. Because one's imperfections do not matter when
someone is jumping up and down on one's skull with both feet. Anyone who asks: --"What did you DO
to deserve that?" is automatically not equal to the task of understanding. One at least must have
evolved that far in life. One must draw a line somewhere.
I would want to be honest about everything. But how does one write a book for the consumption of
the broad spectrum of society that deals with such controversial topics as pot smoking, or freight
hopping, or free love, or communal living? My life is too unique to be understood easily. If I am
writing this book to make everyone understand my side of what happened -- well it just won't work.
People aren't like that. They're not going to change their prejudices that easily.
I am told I sometimes tend to "sermonize" -- and that it makes people mad. I have been urged to
delete all sermonizing -- which one friend speculated would eliminate two hundred pages! I am sorry
about that. But I have written this manuscript for friends and peers and more importantly, for my
daughters, two of who may never know me other than through these pages. I will want them to know
how I felt about things, how I felt deep in my guts. My spiritual thoughts may not matter to everyone.
But I will want my daughters to understand such things. I will go into as much detail as I feel
necessary.
Not everyone who reads this will agree with my decisions or motivations or my opinions or beliefs.
I have been persuasively urged to keep much to myself so-as to keep from alienating the reader. But
whether or not my way of thinking is politically correct is unimportant to me. I don't want to spruce up
my image by keeping silent about my feelings. If I am angry about an "acne faced little brat" who gets
gun-wielding police to help her take away our baby -- and I refer to her as a little Nazi -- I do not feel it
necessary to rewrite the passages and make them socially acceptable. One reader sympathized with her
and told me he thought she was just doing her job. All that meant to me was that I failed to make my
point.
Although this is an entirely true story, I have chosen to change some of the names of people, towns,
and places, to give myself a few less headaches. Wherever I felt the effect of the real names would be
harmless I let them remain unchanged. For instance, in the Vermont section I not only changed the
names of all the people but I even changed the names of the towns and the name of the commune. It
wasn't really MFF. It was something else...
And originally, my intention was not to bring the book up to date. But friends persuaded me
otherwise. Also, I only skimmed over some themes. Writing too much about some topics could cause
trouble for some friends.
Another trouble I foresee may be a major misunderstanding leading the reader to conclude that I
believe police, and welfare departments, and bureaucracies in general are incompetent or plain evil.
Well, I don't. But homeless road people are vulnerable, like a turtle without a shell, and at times they
tend to run up against the lousiest human beings to ever be wrongly given such huge responsibilities.
And some of these stories need telling.
But it isn't my intention to generally disparage all public servants because of a few instances of
grossly unfair treatment that I witnessed. These days in my business I sometimes work with them and I
find them to be, for the most part, conscientious community members willing to endure prodigious
efforts to safeguard their fellow humanity whose fate God has faithfully placed in their hands. I must
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applaud their principles and their devotion to duty. They are amazing men and women.
And besides -- they no longer throw me up against their cars and handcuff my wrists deliberately too
tight! Nor do they beat me up anymore.
On the contrary -- I respect them for the difficult job that they do. And I am no longer surprised to
find they usually treat me with respect too.
The world seems to me to be a much better place than once upon a time.
II.
My father was a career Navy man. Naval aviation. We lived in a little Minnesota town. Our family
went to church on Sundays and afterwards stayed home to spend that special day together. I was the
oldest of five children, the perennial baby-sitter. We all got good grades in school. We all read
voraciously. My childhood dreams were, naturally: go to Annapolis, be a Navy fighter pilot and
afterwards become a lawyer, minister -- maybe a rocket scientist; finally -- to marry Bridgett Bardot
and raise a family.
Yes, childhood dreams.
How easily they scar.
A few miles from where we lived there dwelled a family of six children whose parents were terrible
alcoholics. I went to school with two of the boys -- bruised, subdued children, slow in their studies,
always dirty, badly dressed, whimpery. One night while the parents got drunk in a local bar and the
children were, as usual, home alone, the old dry, dilapidated wooden two-story house caught fire. When
the parents were located people tried to tell them that their home was blazing and their children in peril.
The mother and father were too drunk to understand anything anyone said. They laughed and slobbered
and fell off their barstools and couldn't get back up. Nobody helped them.
The blaze roared, a screaming inferno in the starry night. Against all odds, two of the six children
were saved. As the hours passed the streams of cold water played upon the cinders and the flames; the
smoke and the stench billowed, befouled the winds filtering through the town; the firemen, family-men
one and all stood at their hoses crying.
My father was a volunteer fireman in our town. Fear of fires came with the territory of growing up
in our home. And the stupidity of alcoholism was clearly understood at an early age. As those young
years passed, we were raised knowing there never was the smallest doubt that it is the undeniable duty
of every able person to protect children.
Naturally, I will forever have great respect and admiration for all people who take that task upon
themselves. Often, when reading a newspaper or magazine article about a child whose life has been
saved by one of these, my heart has been wrenched to the skies and I have prayed thanks to God.
Haven't we all?
As a child, my admiration for men and women who risk their lives for others, and especially for
children, was boundless. I dreamed every night of becoming a person just like them.
Dad was transferred to Southern California. So we moved from Quaint-Minnesota-Mississippi
River-coolness to RockandRoll-Sunshine-Ocean-suburbia. The Vietnam War escalated while I was still
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in High School there.
I remember reading the stories in Newspapers and Reader's Digest and Life magazine about the
jellied gasoline, napalm, that was poured out of helicopters upon the jungle villages. The stories said
nothing could get the burning stuff off the skin or put the fire out. It just burned and burned and burned.
There were media photographs of women and children burning alive. In a way, I could vividly relate to
that terror: a gasoline fire in my grandfather's garage had engulfed my right arm when I was ten -leaving great puss blisters and finally a scar. I will always remember the terrible pain. But this fireweapon being used in Vietnam -- unquenchable jellied gasoline? Fire that sticks like honey to the
human body? To innocent civilians? To women and children and little babies? Riveted, I gaped at the
war-photographs with awakening horror.
Who was responsible for this crime? Who was causing this torture to be inflicted upon these poor
suffering third-world people?
Looking back, I always return to this search for answers as the source of everything because at that
junction my path diverged from the mainstream. Seeking those answers set me free as a loosed kite -and at the same time: tied my life in knots like the broken kite-string, falling in rushing crosswinds,
twisting, tangling -- getting hopelessly caught up in the branches of oak and the leaves of time.
**
As this story begins the last dregs of the Vietnam poison were passing down the throat of our nation.
We were in crisis, convoluting in protest and recrimination. The demarcation between good and bad
was up for grabs and confrontations erupted in the bloody streets.
I personally met so-called "humanitarians" who hated police. During the riots in San Bernardino,
while working in a gas station, I personally met a cop who was sitting in the front seat of his patrol car
off to the side of the pumps, industriously filing the nose of each bullet flat -- so they would make huge
holes when they hit people. He coolly explained it all to me as he slowly filed away at each bullet. His
eyes were cold as the metal of his gun when he told me he was going to kill some "niggers" that night.
The horror of that afternoon is now frozen in my heart and soul. Those harsh experiences took their
toll -- not just on me but on anyone who cared to see what was going down. The ugliest natures of
humanity danced monstrously before our disbelieving lives. If our eyes were open even slightly, we
were undergoing Fthe natural process of radicalization. My eyes were finally opening at age twentyone.
Ambiguous forces vortexed around us then -- jigging us, snaring us, buying us, raping us, tearing,
hyping, hassling, spying, beating, burning, robbing, conning, breaking, busting, cheating, lying, hating,
murdering. Heavy days.
And our brothers were coming home, and friends who'd fought the distant war. We welcomed them
to our campfires. We smoked the sacred herb with them; and sipped the tin-can cactus tea. We listened
to their stories. We said: --"Welcome Home!" and we hoisted our packs with them and we walked down
the dusty roads together; fished in the country brooks together, chased the girls.
From what they told us we knew more than ever we wanted that war to end, that war that was
twisting and tearing their hearts and souls: our brothers.
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But there were others returning who hated our peaceful visions. Cursing the liberals who wanted to
bring down Nixon and end the war "dishonorably", some angry war-hawks, due to veteran's preference,
in the late sixties and early seventies found employment in social and police agencies, and used that
platform at every opportunity to deal out retribution in their own way against the war protesters who
wandered out on the roads.
The flowers in our hair wilted fast.
***
The profound bitterness of death
Came home with them from wasted war
Washed our country with salty bath
Burned deeply in unhealing sores.
Moral issues moiled and churned
Depths and peaks of our society,
Made a culture of insanity:
Hearts -- and cities -- burned!
Leaving, fasting, praying, crying;
Wilderness might purge the soul of dying.
Human Rights obscured -- deranged
In troubled conscience of a peer,
And wrestling souls estranged
Loved Ones once held dear!
And so, broken lives and wasted skills,
Homelessness and skewed ideals!
Holding on by fingernails
From sliding down remembered Hells,
Stabbing at suspected causes;
Brooding in the turbid pauses.
Taking, Reaping, Giving, Sowing.
Asking, What's worse?
Knowing -- or Not knowing?
Either way! Answer First:
What wisdom sets this world aright?
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Oh! Brim-filled hearts with naught to say,
What wisdom will you hear this day?
What fires never quench this night?
Where is thought for giving, growing?
Human kindness overflowing?
III
In 1968 two people, separated by thousands of miles, and by language, and cultures, and half a
generation, were going through the changes in their lives that would one day weave their lives together
and become one path.
One was an eleven-year-old girl. Her parent's divorce at age five had blasted any feeling of security,
and left her shuttling incomprehensibly from one relative to another. At age eleven, she began making
her own way, and her own friends, in the beautiful streets of old Montreal.
On these cobblestones and below steeples of the ancient granite churches, in the late light falling
from windows where yawning Montealites peered a last look out upon the settling avenues, walked the
girl, lonely (and so young!) to begin to wander in search of the heart that is so illusive and yet so vital
to us all; so very young!
A waif soft and frail!
A mere child sought this grail!
To have no place to sleep in this sleepy-eyed city!
The city wind flailing her long silky hair,
Bringing fresh Pizza odors,
And wafts of French seafood chowders
To the bench where she hungrily rested
Cold, not warm-enough dressed!
A multitude passed -- too busy to care,
Oh mothers! And mothers of mothers!
So tired! So Alone!
Like so many others -She was not sure...
WHERE WAS HOME???
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The girl grew somehow, she gives few details. There was a boyfriend; he was older; he bought a
van. Together in 1974 when she was fifteen years old, they drove across Canada to Vancouver. There
they met other French-Canadian friends and shared rent. There must be more to the story of those
years! But she will not say. Yet somehow she grew up. And wherever she walked heads turned, for she
was as beautiful a young thing as any had ever seen.
And then there was me. At twenty-one years young I awoke to the fact I'd been caught up in a big
old typical California mess -- I knew too much about a stupid organized crime activity. I had been so
desperate to find a job that would provide me with enough money for college that I had allowed some
slick operators to slowly lure me deeper and deeper into their illegal world. They were millionaires,
they were mean, and their loose organization was widespread. Exposing them in any way would mean
doom for me. My wife and child would not be safe either.
Desperate, I turned to the Bible to find out what I should do. I kept coming back to the verse about
the hundredfold which promised a wonderful future to those who were strong enough to leave
corruption behind them and go seeking God. The world was closing in on me. There didn't seem to be
any alternative but to leave the state. My wife refused to go with me so I left her and our four-monthold son in the safekeeping of her parents. I would be no good to them anyway until I found myself and
set my feet firmly upon a good path. I told her I'd return within two years. Hopefully by that time, I'd
have found a safe place for us. I promised to write. Would she wait two years? She promised she
would.
Sometimes incredible things happen to a person who leaves a dark entangled life and walks out
under the stars to pray. For the first few months I hung out in Laguna Beach, sleeping in the cave on the
beach, smoking pot. Then, on Nov 11, 1968, an amazing thing happened to me. It seemed like I
suddenly realized everything in the universe in the twinkling of an eye. I don’t know any other way to
put it. Those who know what I am talking about, KNOW. Those who don’t, DON’T. It was like ten
billion cells in my mind had never known daylight and all of a sudden, they were AWAKE. It was the
Catharsis of Catharses. It was being alive, a billion times more vibrantly than I had ever known
possible. In the days that followed I met people who looked at me and smiled. They knew too. They
were experienced too. And I met people who didn’t have the foggiest idea about any of it, people
walking around practically totally asleep. A lot of them had university degrees, powerful jobs. Totally
asleep. I also discovered I had the power to wake some of them up. And I did. Probably about a
hundred of them. Maybe a lot more than that.
So, it became my mission to wake people up, to give them this experience. I spent one night writing
a 21 page book which helped do that for awhile. I would hand it to certain people and ask them to read
it, and they would get about three pages into it and suddenly fall backward on the grass with huge eyes,
grabbing their heads and saying “Oh my God! I SEE it! I SEE it!” And that is how things went for
awhile. Some of the people I woke up made copies of my little book and used it to wake up other
people. They came to me exuberantly afterwards telling me what had happened. I created quite a
commotion actually. I mean, in a small way. Because, as I understand it now, there were many people at
that time who were doing pretty much the same thing, on large scales, writing and publishing books
and such about the experience, and getting rich from it too. They lived in posh houses and drove
expensive cars; they were totally protected from the world. They reached thousands and hundreds of
thousands of people with their books and seminars. Everyone takes a certain amount of personal
baggage into the experience with them that does not entirely disintegrate or disappear. Greed is a biggy.
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And pomposity. I would run into some of them in the years to come…
But I didn’t know about them in the beginning. I thought I was the only one in the world that the
experience had ever happened to. And I lived on a beach illegally in a worn and torn old sleeping bag,
and had to sparechange if I wanted to eat. There was no fancy buildings or vehicles for me to hide away
in, nothing to protect me from the forces of hatred except the Light of Creation, and my own wits.
It was funny though – how much the police still hated me. Because I was sleeping on the beach and
hanging out, wearing old clothes, looking scraggly… I was not exactly the type of person ritzy Laguna
Beach residents wanted wandering around their downtown area and sleeping on their beaches. I tried
turning the police on too, showed them the book... They just treated me like I was crazy. They wanted
to beat me up. Laguna became very unsafe for me.
I could say a lot more about the experience. Its impact upon my life was over and above any other
experience I would ever have. Its ramifications would affect everything I would ever know or do.
Numbskulled as I was beforehand, it was like putting the light of a billion stars between my ears. But
the vestiges of my original mind and body were still within me and so I did not entirely understand
what it all meant or what I was supposed to do with the incredible gift I had been given. One thing I felt
I did know was that I was not supposed to get beaten bloody by policemen and crammed into a cage. I
stuck out my thumb and left Laguna.
Sometime in early December 1968 I wandered out into the Joshua Tree desert and found myself
knocking at the door of the Thompson’s Ranch commune. I’d heard about it from the people in the
meditation room of the Mystic Arts Bookstore in Laguna. Thompson’s Ranch was supposed to be a
holy place, a spiritual commune of brothers and sisters. During the summer months it unfortunately
attracted some violent drug crazed bikers and there had been some very scary scenes there from time to
time. But in the winter there was no one there except hardy meditators who were truly committed to a
spiritual path. So I was lucky I arrived when I did.
There could have been no better place for me to go through the changes I was going through. The
brothers and sisters at Thompson’s Ranch understood me. They were devout souls in ways that
wouldn’t immediately be understood by the average Christian in suburbia. They were hippies. They
were hitchhikers, wanderers. They were vegetarians. They were dumpster divers. They slept in holes in
the ground, with the desert air in their noses and the desert starry sky above their sleeping hearts. They
prayed in a circle several times a day, with all their hearts. Some of them fasted without food or even
water for over a week at a time. Everyone gathered together in the evenings around the living room
fireplace passing huge bowls of popcorn around and sometimes gallon jugs of wine. They lived from
their hearts.
A middle aged man named Jessie came sadly to our door one day, searching for his daughter who
had run away. Haggard and distraught, he had been searching nonstop for days without sleep. None of
us had seen his daughter. He told us then that he wanted to commit suicide and he went for a pistol he
kept under the front seat of his car. We took his gun away and asked him to pray with us. It was night
by then. The sky was thick with clouds from horizon to horizon. Brother Cameron and brother Rabbit
prayed and asked God to show Jessie and everyone present a sign to prove to them that life had a
purpose and that God was involved in our lives and that we should none of us ever give up hope. As the
prayer ended we all said the holy word Om together and put our heads back to look up into the sky.
And in that very moment an amazing thing happened. From the exact center of the sky above our heads
the clouds began to part expanding outwards 360 degrees in all directions at a quick rate of speed
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revealing the brilliant desert stars. Understand, the clouds did not rush away in a wind from the north to
the south, or from the east to the west, but from the very center outwards in all directions. There was no
doubt in any of our minds that we had just witnessed a miracle. Jessie stayed on and lived with us, until
the night when teams of sheriffs and state police closed in on Thompson’s Ranch from all directions
and drove us all out arresting many. I escaped into the night.
And so, I hopped box cars and thumbed rides away into the dark, strange wastelands and oases of
Arizona and the Spiritsong adobes of New Mexico -- followed by a whirlwind tumble through half the
other states and provinces, in the tumultuous year of 1969.
I even passed through Montreal in 1969. I wonder if I noticed the lovely young girl with the long
hair? I might have passed her as she sat on that cold winter bench...
Frequently I stayed in communes: Drop City in Trinidad, Colorado; Five Star in Taos, New Mexico;
the Roshdale building in Toronto, Ontario; and a score of other similar places. I burned my draft card
and became an outspoken anti-war activist. Wherever I went I carried a ragged and torn copy of the
small book I had written, and also a copy of the Upanishads, and a pack of Tarot cards, and a Bible.
In my travels I spoke in Student Unions on the nature of our Divine alternatives while living on this
planet. At various times there were hundreds of people sitting around me listening to what I had to say.
When a man commits a crime against other human beings in our country the FBI may seek him. So it
came to pass that as I journeyed I was wanted by the FBI for my own crimes against humanity, namely,
because I would not participate in the war -- which would have been a true crime against humanity to
me. This was one of the ironies I faced daily.
Throughout my journeys there seemed to be a great wind carrying me along across the land, at times
it felt as if I were flying. It was as if God and the angels had me in their arms and were hurrying me
from one place to another deliberately, and I was constantly in awe with the immensity of the purpose.
For I knew what horror the fiery napalm was doing to mothers and their babies, and I knew that there
was a dark power destroying families, mocking the love that should bond all families, that should bond
all people of the earth. But sometimes, when I was confronted face-to-face with hate and malice which
labeled me as a criminal, a coward, a vile and useless person, I felt wounded, and I would be overcome
with guilt and selfdoubt. All I could do then was pray, and I did that a lot.
Then came the rainy summer day in the cornfield in Iowa. I was with a bunch of hippy friends
having an adventure. We were driving an old school bus from Michigan to California and the bus kept
breaking down. So it was that we were parked in the mud in the cornfield in the pouring rain and I was
laying on my back under the bus in the mud holding a starter in my hands, trying to bolt it into place. A
brother named Dan was up in the engine compartment with a wrench trying to fit the nuts onto the
studs. Inside the bus were four or five other hippy brothers and sisters trying to keep dry. That’s how
things were when the bolt of lightning hit the bus. The explosion was something like being instantly
immersed in an electric Niagra Falls. The bus rested on four rubber tires. But I was the conduit from
the metal bus into the earth. I was soaking wet laying on the earth and I was solidly attached to the
engine of the bus. The lightning bolt hit the bus and traveled through the engine to me and through me
into the earth. Afterwards Dan told me he was looking right at me when it happened and that I turned
totally translucent blue and he said he could see right through me. I remember looking at my arm
holding onto the starter. It was blue light.
Everyone in the bus was, gosh, I don’t know how to describe it – “brilliantly alert”… They just
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looked at me in amazement when I came inside the bus. Then we were all talking at once about the
experience. According to everything any of us knew we all figured I should have been dead -- but there
was nothing wrong with me. In fact none of us were hurt at all by the lightning bolt. And the bus wasn’t
damaged either. After we regained our senses we finished repairing the bus and proceeded west again
on the old back roads of Iowa.
As far as I can see the lightning bolt that passed through me served one purpose: never again would
I have any serious doubts as to whether the Creator was involved with my life, with the paths I would
walk, the people I would meet, and the things I would accomplish. That doesn’t mean that hate-filled
people would never again stare me in the face and accuse me. But it means I would have wisdom
within me inspired by the source of that lightning bolt when it came for me to understand hate-filled
people.
So in the space of six of seven months there occurred three events which I considered to be
miracles. The first was the experience on November 11th and my involvements with the awakening
people during the month that followed, the second was the clouds parting from the center outward over
us as we prayed together in the desert, and the third was being struck by a lightning bolt in the cornfield
in Iowa. I could not doubt that I was blessed.
I was for a long time a very happy man. I sang alongside the roads as I wandered. I could lift
people’s spirits. I could. Everywhere I looked I could see the Garden of Eden beneath the hulk of
civilization and the handiwork of man. And the Garden seemed beautiful like heaven. When I pointed
to it and spoke about it other people said they could see it too. Those days were amazing. I remember
the fragrances of the earth, the smells of the evergreens, the flowers, the blackberries. They were a
millionfold anything I had ever known before. It was as if wherever I went I was floating in a warm
sacred river inside the very heart of God.
After two years of wandering I returned to California as I'd promised I would, to my wife and son,
to ask them if they would come away with me to the communes of Northern New Mexico. Gwynn told
me through the screen door that what I described wasn't her idea of a suitable life at all. She said there
was nothing in her life that needed anything to do with me anymore. So I went away again. I had been
believing that Gwynn would be moved to see me in a new light, and that she would come with me and
start a new life and we would be a family again, her and I and our son. As I began to realize those
dreams would not ever come true a great depression came over me which lingered for many months.
That winter in Tucson, Arizona I continued to feel depressed though I had good friends and good
times, too. One friend, Casey, persuaded me he had discovered a secret Indian mystical experience that
was amazing -- He wanted me to try it with him. So we split a Belladonna pod. He ended up going to
the hospital in an ambulance. I frantically went off into Sabina Canyon holding my head in my hands -to fast for five days and nights with no food or water. The fast cleaned out my system and strengthened
my spirit -- but some of the poison seemed to remain. The following months were a pretty weird dream.
I remember stumbling into New Buffalo commune in Taos, New Mexico, and being unable to talk.
They asked me to leave. I went north to San Crystobal and Llama Foundation -- and collapsed in a
room. I thought the brothers and sisters there would help. But they wanted me to weed in the garden -and I could barely stand up. I tried to explain... Angrily, they sent me out their door, back onto the road.
I returned to Southern California. The cities were a blazing fire of macabre energies, a lewd angry
thing. My family didn't much recognize me. They kept saying the FBI was looking for me.
14
--"Well there's no harm in lookin!" I would answer.
My mother wouldn't open her door when I knocked. She said: --"Who's there?"
I answered: --"Your son!"
She replied: --"I have no son."
That wasn't like her. She's usually kind. It wasn't her fault. Those days were awful hard on families.
And when you stop and realize how strange I must have looked to her and to the rest of my family it is
no small wonder how she behaved.
So I walked to the beach and wandered there talking to the stars. One dark stormy night I dove in off
the end of the Newport's black rock jetty and swam out into the giant black waves invisible in the black
of night; saying: "Take me if you want me, God. Otherwise, let me go."
About thirty feet out, amidst monster rollers, I turned around and swam back to the invisible black
rocks and after several crashing bloody attempts, I managed to climb up their cold slippery mass. The
towering waves chased me as I ran along the jetty back to the beach, crashing, foaming around my
ankles and my knees as I struggled to keep my feet. A resident somehow had seen me out there and
phoned the copshop. A policeman in a patrolcar was waiting when I walked wetly up from the sand.
The red and yellow lights flashed chaotic in the alley as we stood there talking. He wrote down
particulars on his note pad. I asked him if it was illegal to swim in the sea at night in Newport in the
winter? When he looked at me he seemed frightened and strange.
Weeks passed and I could not stand walls. Walls loomed, tilted, melted, whispered. I backed out of
doors of cafes... I found small release beneath the eternal Heavens. Needless to say, by this time I had
sworn off any drugs, even pot. Still, Lady Belladona continued to wreak her havoc on my life. My head
ached and a great void enclosed me as I walked uncounted miles of coastal sands between Laguna and
Seal Beach -- and the only thing that seemed to help at all was a little Boone's Farm wine. And so, with
a bottle in my pocket, I haunted the alleys and night streets of the gold and silver cities till the wine was
gone and the ache came back and I could not contain the pain that erupted and I became one of those
who talked endlessly to himself on aimless peripatetic meanderings: in dirty clothes, with hungry eyes;
praying blatantly on the boardwalks; howling madly at the moon.
The world spun dizzily.
IV
Too ill now to survive any longer on the streets I made my way again to my mother's home, where
later that evening the FBI finally caught up with me and dragged me away in handcuffs.
The trial was a blur. Actually I felt confused, unfocused. I thought they wanted me to restate obvious
things about the war that everyone knew already -- in order to make a mockery of my beliefs. I refused
to give them the satisfaction and spoke nothing in my own defense. Therefore, my conviction took
place in record time.
To make an example of me, the Judge sentenced me to a six-year federal prison sentence, for:
"failing to keep the draft board informed of my current address". (As though I had one...)
I hadn't really expected prison. In my heart I knew that in attempting to resist that grievous war I
15
was standing for something decent and humane and moral. Surely, I thought anything I might have
done from that spirit was not punishable. So much for naiveté and delusion.
I wouldn't have been against other conflicts. Pearl Harbor was necessary self-defense, entirely
justifiable. And Hitler had to be fought. Wars against military targets, against despotic regimes that
tortured and exterminated people -- those were obligations of duty and honor -- and as long as we
refrained from sinking to their level of degradation in our attempt to free the world from those terrors, I
would have argued with other pacifists for the probable necessity of those wars; especially if all other
recourse failed.
But even Winston Churchill deplored napalm. In 1953, shortly before his death, one of his most
fervent campaigns was an attempt to have that new weapon of war outlawed by the United Nations. It
was too horrible -- too likely to be used against innocents. I believed the napalming of suspected
Vietcong villages was a measure of warfare that went beyond the pale of our civilized aims; one that
degraded our purposes, and cast further insurmountable doubts upon the object of our involvement in
South-East Asia's civil war.
Neither ignorance nor dereliction placed me in that cell, but following a star from which I could not
stray.
According to the Quaker church there were 222 of us war-resistors in America's Federal prisons.
While I was inside I received many letters of support from people I'd never met. There was no doubt
that a vast multitude of friends all over the United States and in every country of the world were in my
corner.
The terrible and constant physical headache which I'd had since Tucson was compressed by my
incarceration into a white-hot glowing fire that persisted every waking hour. At least on the beaches I'd
been physically free. Prison seemed to be the depths of Hell.
Most of my prison-time was served in the Federal Prison Hospital at Springfield, Missouri -- in
solitary confinement. The prison authorities explained this was necessary so that I wouldn't corrupt the
rapists, and robbers, and murderers with my beliefs in conscientious objection and moral obligation.
War-resisters were known as troublemakers, holding group hunger strikes and fasts and protest sitdowns. We were of course forbidden to do any of those things, or even to discuss our "crime" with each
other.
I was beaten bloody by guards, placed in cold rooms with no blanket, with unflushable toilets that
overflowed with putrefaction. My head throbbed. And I was beaten yet again -- and stabbed in buttock
muscles with syringes of massive over-size doses of prolyxin -- but without the cogentin which is
supposed to be given with the prolyxin because it is necessary to counteract the extrapyramidal
reactions that occur when the prolyxin is administered alone -- which results in excrutiatingly painful
muscle paralyses. One cannot so much as move a finger. Agony racks every body fiber. The cerebral
cortex of the brain is on fire.
I couldn't get enough air. My lungs refused to breathe deep. I thought I'd die of suffocation.
As we lay on our stomachs upon our metal bunks unable to turn over by ourselves -- the pressure of
the weight of our own torso upon our lungs was enough to kill us! And prisoners had actually died that
way. So the guards watched us writhe, unable to breath, choking, retching, and made sure we suffered
as much as possible without passing out, before they came in and picked us up and turned us over on
our backs and left us struggling and gasping desperately for each breath. On prolyxyn without cogentin
a person cannot swallow. Occasionally a doctor came along and extracted the phlegm from our throats
16
with a suction device to keep us from drowning. But they always let us choke a lot first.
After receiving such a shot of prolyxin sleep is impossible. One can only lay immobile and stare at
the ceiling. Electric lights were deliberately left on all night long to impact the garish nightmare's
maximum potential. The prolyxin's primary effect lasts seventy-two hours -- but many weeks are
necessary for full recovery.
The guards called it the punishment drug and laughed. It was so cruel it was the ultimate nightmare.
Except it wasn't a nightmare. It was as real as real could be.
Another method used by prison authorities to squelch critics was to strap the person nude in a
bathtub of ice cubes -- where screaming was not allowed.
Let me emphasize here once more: "...where screaming was not allowed." Forgive me if I do not
describe that further. It is a terrible memory.
During my confinement the Society of Friends (Quaker) Newsletter, the Peacemaker listed my
name in every issue as an illegally held prisoner in the United States. A gentleman from the Quaker
church came to visit with any war resistors for an hour every Monday. Those meetings really buoyed
our spirits.
A longhaired prison doctor came to visit every few days. We talked in whispers for his safety. He
was himself a Conscientious Objector doing alternative service, (and a very kind and wise human being
-- and a person who on the outside I'd have thought of as a brother.) After hearing all about my
Belladonna experience and asking me many questions, and after giving me a battery of tests: he came
to the opinion he could get me a new trial where I would be released with "time served". He sent a
petition of habeas corpus to the courts with his signed medical statement that my trial had to have been
unfair because in my condition it would have been impossible for me to understand the gravity of the
charges against me. All in all, this was probably accurate.
I asked him to please tell me truthfully what was wrong with me. He responded that the Belladonna
had "burnt out" my mental faculties -- and that they would probably never return. He said the tests he
gave me indicated my attention span was almost nil. Among other things.
Well, his prognosis scared me almost as much as my solitary confinement cell. But I could not
believe what he said about never ever healing.
I began to give myself my own version of mental therapy. With a two inch stub pencil and as much
paper as I wanted I set about writing down all the things that I could remember had happened over the
previous two years: from the fracas in California that busted up my marriage, through all the
adventures in Colorado and Ontario and everywhere, on up to my incarceration. The stub pencils gave
me severe cramps -- but I shook my hand and wrote and rewrote. And it did a lot of good. I prayed a
lot, too.
Well, it worked. Although the throbbing pain in my left temple never diminished, as time went on,
my mental abilities seemed to be returning considerably. And I began to rethink about what the doc was
doing. I knew he was only trying his best to save me from the further hazards of imprisonment; but I
objected to his method of gaining my release -- because I felt strongly about the issues that had placed
me behind those bars, and I chafed to obscure the truth of my cause just to save my life. After having
prison knives pulled on me on a couple occasions, I truly felt this to be a possibility. And too there was
always the possibility of dying during a session with their punishment drug.
One and a half years passed -- and the pile of my writing grew into a 300 page volume -- but
17
neither the Quakers nor my useless court-appointed attorney nor the conscientious prison doctor
seemed to be any closer to manifesting my release. Sometimes I spoke secretly though my window
grate to a strange solitary prisoner in the exercise yard. He turned out to be a fellow war resister
confined under the same zip six sentence as myself. He had already done over four and a half years -and felt he would likely do two more. He told me to forget my dreams of getting out early. And the
doctor terrified me further by telling me that he had overheard some of the prison big-shots saying they
wouldn't even have to release me after six years if they could prove that my unrepentant antigovernment beliefs menaced society. For me to leave prison and return to my former life of teaching
others to dodge the war and run to Canada wasn't healthy for their national image. Who knows what
new and improved wars might be brewing? Was I to be freed only to commit the same crime again? Do
they release a bank robber if they know for certain that he intends to rob banks again as soon as he's
released?
Man-oh-man! They could keep me in prison until I was dead!
Then late one night I awoke with an idea that set me bolt upright in my bunk. The government had
maintained from the onset that I could not be considered a Conscientious Objector because I hadn't
filled out the government paperwork and had not been a lifelong member of a church recognized as
holding those views. But -- what if I could prove that my conscience had motivated me to resist the war
efforts of the United States?
I knew how I could PROVE I was a Consciencious Objector.
Immediately I wrote a letter to the Judge demanding a lie detector test to verify once and for all
whether or not I was really morally opposed to cooperating in any way with America's bombing and
napalming of Vietnam's civilian populations. I volunteered to pay all the expenses of the test myself: the
doctor's fee, the nurses and attendants, and data analysts -- even the sheriffs who would escort me to the
facility. So there was no financial reason for them to refuse me the test -- it would cost them nothing!
And if they were right and I was fabricating C.O. sympathies in order to duck out of military service -they would be totally vindicated! And I'd pay the whole bill. What could be more convenient for them?
--IF they were RIGHT!
I sent copies of the letter to the Quaker Newsletter, my family, my attorney, the prosecutor, the
Judge, the warden of the prison, the governor, and the President of the United States.
I was never given the test. The day after sending off the letters I was placed in deep solitary
confinement again.
But a week later -- I was released out the front door of the prison with all charges dropped, a free
man.
V.
My sudden release from prison in October of 1972 brought me to a turning point. The war was
about over -- almost history. I didn't have to run any more. I didn't have to travel around to Student
Union Lounges speaking against the war and teaching other young men all the different ways of getting
into Canada. Shouldn't I give up the road and try to fit back into the mainstream? Try to get a job?
Raise a family? I was twenty-five years old. What should I do?
18
I lasted two weeks, job-hunting around my mother's home in Southern California, walking through
the junior college, roaming the beaches. I sure didn't fit in. Too many dusty roads under my belt, too
much wilderland independence haunting my dreams -- too much for me to listen to the drooly
machinations of a used car lot boss's golden sleazy mouth. Too crazy-looking from eighteen months in
a cage to be an employee anyone would want to have around his Dairy Queen customers -- too radical
and outspoken to be tolerated with the loafers of a K-mart shoe department.
I looked at the partially finished book I'd written in prison. I realized it was so far from being
publishable that in order to do that I'd have to confine myself to a typewriter for at least another year or
two. No way, Jose. I'd had enough confinement.
And my headache had not gone away with my release. Like a rat gnawing inside my skull, every
waking minute. I knew the pain would never heal in the smut and glut of Southern California.
Would I ever fit into this consumer society? Would this frenetic world my family chose to call home
ever be the home of my spirit and soul? I dreamed of commune brothers and sisters struggling in Taos
and Toronto and San Francisco and homesteading in Colorado and Saskatchewan and Belize. They
sought peace and fulfillment and purpose. Maybe if I could find them I could find myself; I could heal;
I could have a family.
So, I hitched east into a sunrise.
My first stop was the Hog Farm commune in New Mexico. Next I traveled to Tucson where the park
scene was romantic, erotic, and casual. Then I bought an old Metro step-van and drove on to Drop City
and north to Boulder, another favorite old haunt of mine. There I wandered the snow-draped mountains
with Joni Mitchell's new tape Blue playing incessantly from the deck. In the Boulder park, I heard of
Martian Folks Farm in Vermont. MFF.
The untended Metro rolled down a long steep hill one day and smashed into a house. So that left me
walking again with my sleeping bag and my guitar. Boulder Police began rousting sleeping bag folks
from the city's wooded areas and so, some college girlfriends invited me to sleep safely on the sofas in
the lounge of the girl's dormitory. At first this was cool but one night the police arrived and took me off
to the calaboose where they gave me the choice of going to jail or leaving Boulder -- I headed for New
England.
MFF was an orgasm of green. The humid Green Mountain air alone could impregnate the gushing
Rainbow women, it hung so thick and was full of such music. T'were a rapture on the Earth, a blessing
for our hearts. There were many of us! Brothers and Sisters! We coursed through "the land" as though
we were notes spewed from the flute of God. I bought a motorcycle and cruised Quebec and New
England and the dirt roads around MFF. I was given a St Bernard puppy and he became my companion.
Mostly I stayed in my plastic teepee, ate well, drank a little wine each day, smoked a little homegrown.
And so my dreadful headache finally faded away forever. I'd have remained on the land if I'd had a
woman-partner with whom to share my life, to build our cabin, plant our herbs and vegetables, and
beget a race of naturalists and boogaloo dancers.
So, to find that very soul mate, I left on my Triumph 650 motorcycle, bound for California -- with
Demitrious, my hundred pound, six month old dog -- sprawled out on the seat and gas tank in front of
me. Anyone's quick glance gave them the impression the St Bernard was driving and I was the
passenger. What a blast!
I don't know why I chose to look for a life-long soul mate in California -- that moribund, moneyworshipping Mecca -- warmth in the winter, I suppose. There was nothing anywhere in California to
19
compare with the heart-culture of New England and Quebec, but we all must learn -- and relearn -- our
hard lessons.
Oh, for sure, California is beautiful and the climate is warm and all -- but gosh what a personalitydissolving rat race! And vicious! As soon as I rode my Triumph across the border five California
highway patrol cars pulled me over, all at once, and gave me $150 dollars worth of citations! (Well, the
crossing had been rough. I'd lost my wallet and driver's license and registration and the bike had lost its
license plate -- and it never had a muffler... And I was pretty loaded down and grimey... It's not easy
traveling around like that -- though I hadn't had a ticket or any trouble at all in any state since
Tennessee.)
Demitrious seemed to like California. (He was probably glad to just have the trip behind him!) I
think he thought he was a movie star. Maybe it was his sunglasses...
So, once again, I dove into California's malaise like a moth into a flame. I was still not hirable. My
outspoken political views were still unacceptable. Unwelcome even by my family, I wandered the
beaches with my sleeping bag and bike and guitar and dog: homeless. The cops found out about my
aborted prison sentence and became rancid. They terrorized me on sight; frisking me and tossing me in
jail for the dumbest little things imaginable -- like for having my dog off his leash or for standing and
leaning back against a sea-cliff with my eyes closed (which they termed: "illegally sleeping in a public
place.") I tried to tuff it out to see if I could figure a way to get back into college. I thought I could be a
writer, an artist. I thought Laguna was my sort of place. But the bees buzzed and stung without
cessation -- and I began to fear I'd end up stabbed to death in a jail cell there. But still I stayed -- even
after the Judge gave me thirty days in Orange County jail for Demitrious being off his leash again.
(Curled up at my feet, sleeping!) He'd cracked his gavel sharply on the bench and told me next time it
happened I'd get six months!
While I served my time, someone absconded with my dog. That hurt. I'd grown accustomed to him.
Still I stayed. California had me in its grip.
I might never have given up on that surfy-smurfy dream and safely gotten out of Laguna but for the
silent young woman who laid me in the sand early one morning.
I'll never forget the serene passion of her blue-brown eyes looking down into my soul as she
kneaded me like dough until I sprouted a million-fold and then one last kiss and still without saying a
word, she gently rose off me and ran away down the sand.
The main thing was -- she made me lonelier. With all my heart, I wanted to share my life daily with
a woman-friend. A sister-heart -- and California women seemed so darn pre-conditioned to like the
sport of the chase, the spoils of the sortie. I wasn't like that anymore. It seemed like the only thing that
would heal the emptiness I felt in my heart would be if somehow I were to meet a girl who would want
to spend the rest of her life with me. I felt I needed to speak with the Creator about it.
I stood on the shore of the sea and talked to God. I made a promise, that if God would bring me one
woman who would love me forever, I would never leave her.
Then I looked around myself and felt a great weight lifted from me. I knew I would not find my soul
mate in California. I would have to go somewhere where there were women who were more
emotionally suited to accepting a person like me. The only place that came to mind was Canada and all
of a sudden I really wanted to be there. I just literally started running down the highway. When I finally
tired I stuck out my thumb.
20
I hopped freights and hitched back to Vermont, and into Quebec. Then I went west to Vancouver,
B.C., wondering if I could locate a girl named Diane with whom I had developed quite a friendship
through corresponding from my cell. We never connected, but while searching for her I discovered
Wreck beach, an amazing nudist beach that is three-miles long – a place where on a typical summer
day as many as 30,000 totally barenaked people gather.
Gathering and redeeming empty beer bottles supplied me with food-money. Then I began buying
cases of beer and ice which I packed into a gunnysack, and walked along the beach selling to hot
baskers at seventy-five cents a bottle.
One day in May of 1975 while engaged in this occupation I espied an exquisite young Canadienne
sitting on a log, watching: the ocean waves pound the shore, the seagulls circle and sail, the nude
people playing Frisbee, strolling, and tanning, and ducking into the waves.
I offered her a beer. She offered me a joint. We sat on the log together and tried to communicate. I
spoke no French. She spoke little English. Later that day, we made love.
Words were no longer necessary.
Thus met a satyr and a sea nymph; and so begins the tale.
21
THOMAS JEFFERSON TO DR BENJAMIN RUSH
ABOUT WHAT IT TAKES FOR HUMAN BEINGS TO REVERT INTO WOLVES…
On April 21, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson wrote of Jesus in his letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush (who
was also a signer of the Declaration of Independence):
"My views...are the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and very different from the anti-Christian
system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I
am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only
sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others.
<1197> His system of morals...if filled up in the style and spirit of the rich fragments He left us, would
be the most perfect and sublime that has ever been taught by man....He corrected the deism of the Jews,
confirming them in their belief of one only God, and giving them juster notions of His attributes and
government....The precepts of philosophy, and of the Hebrew code, laid hold of actions only. He pushed
his scrutinies into the hearts of man, erected his tribunal in the region of thoughts, and purified the
waters at the fountainhead... Of all the systems of morality, ancient and modern, which have come
under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus. If once the people become
inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall
all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions."
Thomas Jefferson.
22
The first Prologue of Comporting Roadwise lasted the first five years or so. I don't believe I even
possess a copy of it anymore, what with all the hard drive failures I have had over the years. Basically
as I remember, it was a long dark poem about the angels that fell away from God and for their
punishment they were made to live upon the earth as its inhabitants. They built all manner of structures
in attempts to make themselves comfortable, to enable themselves to hide from their own dark
rebellious souls. They used the power they accumulated to push each other around or impress one
another to better improve their own situations. God kept an eye on them, because God is Love and
loves all His or Her creations and always hopes they will realize it and return in Oneness to the heart of
the creator, like Enoch, who at the end of his life, instead of dying, walked with God. But overall, that
original prologue poem was too dark, and did not fit well into COMPORTING ROADWISE so one day
I replaced it with a different poem entitled THE REASON FOR THE SONG. But it was too ambiguous
and I never did like it as far as poetry goes. It wasn't one of my good ones is the way I thought of it.
THE REASON FOR THE SONG was just one of those parts of COMPORTING ROADWISE that I
was never happy with, but didn't know what to do about it. So it remained the prologue for decades
until now. Now is precisely 3:39AM, February 13, 2010. I am very tired at this early hour, having been
sick all the previous day and working hard on various projects none-the-less which all summed up
finally to tell me the obvious, that COMPORTING ROADWISE needed a different Prologue or
23
perhaps none at all. But I had just found the words written by Thomas Jefferson to Dr Rush and those
words seemed to fit more perfectly than anything I have had as Prologue up to this point. So I am
determined to put it all together before morning.
God, our creator, lives in our hearts, though we feel we are all alone. Because our Oneness with the
Creator fell to pieces in that ancient dark beginning. We have no intelligible words to speak of Him/Her
or to Her/Him because, as explained in the ancient story of the Tower of Babel, all our words have been
confused. It's an endless battle to make sense of anything and it all comes down to our lost Oneness
with the God of Love, our creator. We don't even all have the same name for our Creator. For some,
God is He; for others God is She. For some God is Jesus. For others God is some other One. But, by
whatever name, the Creator lives eternally within each of our hearts. Forty-one years ago the God of
Love struck me with a bolt of lightning while I was lying beneath a schoolbus full of my brothers and
sisters in a rutty muddy road in a cornfield in Nebraska and gave me to know that God the Creator of
Lightning, and all things, had given me, a relative nobody without much of an education and an
imperfect person morally, spiritually and in every other way - a vital mission to fulfill: I was to testify
to all people, everywhere, as long as I lived, the message that God gave me. At first it was about the
Viet Nam war, and all wars in general, and all fighting and killing and maiming and torturing. Just a
few years previous to the Lightning strike one of my greatest daily dreams was to go to college or
university, graduate, become an officer in the Navy, become a pilot, and wage battle in the sky against
our nation's enemies. But after the lightning strike I was a preaching pacifist. Almost in the twinkling of
an eye. But I was such an imperfect person that it was often like walking around in shoes that were two
sizes too tight. And it did not get easier with each passing year as one might expect. Each year found
me wiser and more aware of how deficient and imperfect my character was. I would get so angry
sometimes, I wanted to think of some people being punished painfully. It was only then when I foresaw
my own shortcomings that I was forced to feel pity for them. So that explains to me why God allowed
someone with as many character flaws as myself to be given such a mindboggling task. There is
another concept that quite frequently gives me pause to ponder. That is Christ suffering on the cross,
beseaching God the Father "Why hast thou forsaken me?" --A question nearly identical to ones I find
myself regularly asking God in utter consternation. And then I realize that if Jesus Himself believed He
had committed some mistake that had soured God against even him, then what hope is there for any of
us? But then like finding a key that unlocks a locked door, I instantly understand that all the terrible
misfortunes that come my way only SEEM to be punishments coming from God, a mistake easily made
by ANYONE, just as Jesus saw them to be punishments for His own supposed misdeeds. No. In those
moments, our suffering is a far deeper machination of God, a veritable secret of the Kingdom of heaven
that is given to some people to understand, but not to others. Because they are not ready for it yet. Or
maybe never will be ready, for all I know. Some will be capable of understanding, and some will not.
Maybe it all comes down to whoever prays for understanding -- and those who never pray for
understanding, never get it. The Scriptures do say we do have to pray for it. So this matter has to be as
a secret to those who never pray for understanding since they will never have the understanding to
understand it. Jesus asks the Father why he has forsaken Him? He had thought that He was so loved by
God that no terrible suffering could ever happen to Him. So why was he suffering? Why was God
allowing this to happen to him? Only those who are capable of understanding it, ever will. Which of
course always brings me down to the question I live and breath every day of my life, and I suppose my
wife Ellie does too. And that is: Why did God allow our children to be taken away from us? And the
result is that I understand that God loves us and beyond measure for the path he gave us to walk that we
did walk. So we understand why. But that does not change the fact that the wolves were allowed to
desecrate our family, to take our daughters away from us, and in some instances place some of them in
24
unsafe and unkind environments. Which often makes me pray that the wolves be entrapped and stopped
from ever doing such a thing to any other family ever again. So, the next question has to be: Do our
daughters or anyone else in our family ever actually understand the rather complex theological reason
God allowed our three daughters to be taken away from us? OR NOT? Sometimes I even have to
wonder if Ellie understands. Most psychiatrists would surely say it is simply proof I have a severe
mental disorder. I have had to deal with that particular problem terribly often. Naturally I get quite
angry at times. But the way the taking of her children has affected Ellie's heart and mind grieves me
even more than myself. I sometimes pray to God that the day will come, beyond this life, when I will
be allowed to witness God's punishment of the ones who have done this to her. This seems to me to be
a fair request.
So, our hearts need so much healing! Ellie and I have two large snow white cockatoo parrots, about
twenty years old each. They live to be ninety. The male is named Igor. The female is Oui-Oui. They
totally love each other. Their cage is in our bedroom beside our bed. Their cage door is always open.
They come and go as they please. But 99.99% of the time they prefer to sit side by side each other near
the top of their cage, preening each other tenderly, nestling, looking fondly at each other with
incredibly loving eyes. We also have nine adorable cockatiels. The number fluctuates regularly because
there is a mating pair among them that gives birth rather regularly about twice a year. We give the
hand-fed babies away to friends in pairs every once in a while. Their cage doors are always open too.
They fly all over our home, sometimes the babies think it is terribly funny to dive bomb me, two or
three at a time, when I am obvioiusly deep in thought or intensely involved typing on my laptop. What
little dickens they are! They are the children we never got to play with. God's substitute beauties. We
also have a pair of cockatiels who remind me of us. The male is Mr Fluffy, and the female is Lisa. They
are yellow cockatiels and very beautiful. They love each other very much, and Lisa lays eggs regularly
and they both take turns sitting on them. Usually eggs hatch in a month if they are going to hatch. But
these two birds sit on their eggs for months, without fail, without ever leaving them parentless for any
time at all. They are so diligent. But none of their eggs ever hatch. Finally after several months the eggs
get discoloured and cracked and we have to throw them away. And right away Lisa starts laying more.
They want babies so bad! But they will never have them. I pray and ask God about it. God tells me that
they will find all their children in heaven, and their eternal happiness. So it is a gift to me to know now
that there are beautiful birds in heaven. I had never heard of that before, or even considered it. Our
birds bring happiness into our lives, and much healing.
And God is not done with us yet. We found Sheba Rose last week. Or rather she found us: The last of
our three daughters to reconnect. She is 29 years old now. She has a two month old son of her own. She
sent me a letter out of the blue. Over the next three days I sent her five long letters. I haven't heard a
word from her since. I am so anxious.... I telephoned LaughingRiver. She lives in Hollywood, where
she works hard at trying to become an actress. She gets tiny parts, but her heart is full. She believes in
God with all her heart and prays strongly and bravely. What a beautiful wonderful young woman she is.
LaughingRiver urged me not to worry, because Sheba Rose simply has her hands full with a whole
newly rediscovered family to get to know, besides her own two month old baby to take care of. Plus
she is reading COMPORTING ROADWISE. So everything is working out. COMPORTING
ROADWISE held a wonderful immediate reward for me several years ago when I sent copy machine
copies to all the members of my family and there was one wonderful response in particular. My son TR
had never had a chance to get to know me, and naturally, the way these things usually go for most
American families, when Honey remarried they never told TR much about his real father. Just barebones facts and pretty slanted information of course. So if things had gone on the way they were
headed he and I would never have known each other. But he read COMPORTING ROADWISE. When
25
he was finished he called me up excitedly. He wanted to meet me in person. So we got together and had
a wonderful visit. We have been close ever since. The same sort of thing happened for my dad. He went
his way and I went mine. We hadn't been anywhere near each other in years. He really knew nothing
about me anymore. Then he read COMPORTING ROADWISE. "Twice," He told me beaming ear to
ear. Thereafter it was a whole new ball game for he and I too. Unfortunately there was a thousand miles
between us and no way Ellie and I could afford to go to Southern California or to stay there for any
length of time and visit. And then he got Alysheimers and not too much later he died. But at least he
smiled at me from his heart before the end. I love my dad. And my dad loved me. Good stuff. We gave
copies of the book to Ellie's family too, but we never found out what, if anything came of that. I
couldn't afford to have it translated into French. And none of them could speak or read English much.
Only Ellie's brother Gilles kept any communication going with us over the years. When Ellie's mother
died a few years ago there was nothing we could do. We could not cross the border. Same old, same
old. Oh, gosh, it is quarter to six AM, and I just realized that I wrote this whole thing calling her by the
name I really know her as, Ellie, instead of Owl, which is what I call her in this entire book. Originally,
back thirty years ago when I began writing COMPORTING ROADWISE I thought we had to keep our
identities secret. Oh well, I think I will leave her name as it is instead of making all the changes. It will
help some family members understand better. Enough prelude. As we turn the page and start at chapter
one we actually flash from my mind writing in February 2010 to my mind writing somewhere in 1989.
I wonder how detectable the difference will be to you.
Thanks,
I am Ross to my family, brother and sisters, mom and dad, etc,
I am Pan to my brothers and sisters at Thompson's Ranch commune and those who were on the bus
with me when the lightning struck...
I am RomTom to most of my good close friends of the last two decades, occasionally "Rom"...
I am Tom to most of my trailer park neighbors and to any authority type person or church folk...
Does that sound like multiple personalities? Oh well, A Rose by any other name and all that...
And overall,
I'm just me,
The author of COMPORTING ROADWISE, and a bunch of other unpublished books that I wrote and
never could get published so I just put them all on the internet where they are free to anyone to read
who wants to...
Now.....
Onward to Chapter One of COMPORTING ROADWISE:
26
PROLOGUE
The Reason for the Song
There once was a man who when he spoke he always said the wrong thing
Whether about politics or about the price of milk
But when he sang his words were true.
There was a woman too who kept her silence
Out of wisdom hard earned
She was usually misunderstood
And even not believed
Which was difficult to endure
But when she sang, it was between her and the birds of the sky
And the children of her heart.
And once there was a dog that could not talk at all
So should have had no problems with any of this
But everyone who saw his eyes presumed he was a bad dog
But he wasn’t.
He loved a kitten.
As complex as life is
What a wonder that we even try to make sense of it…
An interwoven puzzle the size of the earth,
Oh, of the vast universe itself…
What will we speak of absolutely in such a maze?
We are fortunate if we can sing;
Song contains harmonies and hidden aums;
Song contains rhythms of vast beginningless dynamics;
And the words that fit will ring true.
27
Goddess bless the kitten and the dog;
Goddess bless the woman and the man;
Goddess bless the children of their memories,
And the birds of the sky…
28
CHAPTER ONE
FALLING STARS
Mary Morningdove was conceived in the desert while her mother and I were wanderers, hippie
gypsies of the highways. Our own personal convoluted trail had brought us to the warm weather of the
painted deserts, answering the call of Indian drums, thumping in our dreams and an eight track Maria
Mauldaur tape of Midnight at the Oasis playing over and over from our dashboard.
We had other Spirit mates: The Moody Blues sent us searching for the Lost Chord; a little Bob
Marley gave us the extra strength to get out and pushstart the jalopy; Crosby, Stills, and Nash, gave us
our code of the road that we did try to live by; Jerry Garcia made us all part of Uncle John's Band, and
Joni Mitchell raked our souls with fire.
Silent and snug in Owl's womb, Mary Morningdove's earliest world undulated with mythopoetic
choruses -- the crackling warmth of stone circle-atavistic fires rubescent and shadowy through taut
flesh, the peripatical rhythms of timeless beyond reckoning migratory searchings. Our one blood
coursed with the same sweet, crisp desert oxygen, and together we precipitated wildish and innocent
into that secret realm beyond the boundaries of confusion that modern man has made. And there were
many others who shared this sacred dream with us. On our journey we drifted among them, a world of
Brothers and Sisters.
So we were traveling on spirit, on dulcet winds, on melodies that coaxed our hearts to follow the
drinking gourd; beats and measures of nature de profundus that bound our rapt hearts to see within the
morning mists: the spirit drummer, cliff shaper, lark inspirer.
We just knew there was a life out there, somewhere, waiting for us. We sought winds to mold us like
they had molded these vermilion mesas.
We watched tumbleweeds coast across inexorable sands and felt just like them. We saw birds flying
south. We followed them.
***
During the past two years, Owl and I had come a long way together, wandering thousands of miles
from Pacific to Atlantic. We'd met in May of 1975 on Wreck Beach, the biggest nude beach in North
America, located on the seashore campus of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver -- and
had never willingly parted since that first moment. In our beautiful driftwood shack, with a pretty little
canoe we named Loveislikealittleboatuponthesea and two crab pots we ate like royalty -- oysters and
crab and salmon. Pure sea air purged our lungs, purged our lives. We danced upon the logs in warm
summer rain, happy. We slept deeply on soft, soft sand and merged our lush liberated passions with the
heat lightning; our heartbeats with the waves upon the shore, slept as sacredly as two people ever have
since the first couple slept the exact same way.
Our days were full. We made wine. We fished. We sewed our unique leather garments. We built a
beautiful driftwood home with a large canopy to keep off the rain and snow. We made love constantly.
We wintered there beneath the four hundred-foot cliffs. It was the most wonderful year of our lives.
By the time that first year was past I was so in love with Owl that I was swimming in love, and nothing
29
else mattered except that love. We were two lovebirds on that coast. Our hearts were flying strong in
the seawinds. Ah, my Owl was so pretty... My heart leapt with soul-wrenching joy every time I looked
at her.
In the spring, we wandered from the idyllic nudist Eden, hitching east through the provinces to join
the MFF community of Vermont, where I had lived two years before with good friends.
But at the border dividing New York from Quebec, the Customs station detained us with two hours
of interrogation -- finally refusing to admit Owl into the United States. Then the Canadians also refused
to allow me to reenter Canada. I pled with the officers but they were adamant, acrimonious, thickskulled -- dissolute of any moral consideration as to the safety of the fragile Canadienne who stood
now in the dark, in the wind, on the Canadian side of the border -- alone!
Fending for herself, she would have to hitchhike the hundred miles to Montreal, and another
hundred miles southeast to a different border crossing, following the map I'd given her. There she
would have to find some way to cross the border and meet me at the communal land known as MFF.
The border guards had given us no time to come up with a better plan as we whispered together
frantically just out of their earshot. Then they coldly sent us each in opposite directions. As far as they
were concerned they'd separated us forever and they seemed content in the belief that they had
accomplished that. They'd done their job.
On the upstate New York side of the border, I ran madly into the night, breathless, flagged down a
car -- talked the good hearted fellow into driving me out of his way a hundred miles(!!!!), to arrive
before morning on the six-hundred acres of communal forest encampment, MFF. Hoping Owl would
arrive soon, I agonized there for three days and when she did not show up I feared that something had
happened to her. Easily crossing into Canada I made my way to Owl's sister's Montreal home -- but
Owl wasn't there. So I retraced my steps southward again and reentered Vermont, returned to MFF. But
Owl still hadn't shown up there. Feverish with worry and despair, I rushed once more back up to
Montreal.
We must have crossed paths unseeing for while I was running feverishly back and forth Owl
managed to find a way across the border and into MFF, having enlisted the help of "French Partisans"
on the Quebec side, to spirit her to our rendezvous. The only thing missing was me. I was in Montreal,
looking for her in the endless waterfronts, and parks, and subways, and wherever groups gathered
around street musicians.
So a hundred miles south of my rat-race search, Owl met MFF's good old boys. My so-called
friends... "Brothers". As far as they were concerned it was party time: A pretty young girl walking alone
into their wolfpack den of love. Who will score first? Who has the best line for this French sweetie?
Owl was exhausted, frightened, hungry, worried, fragile, all but lost; but these were my friends. I had
told her she would be safe among them! (I'd believed it!) And she had trusted my wisdom. How naive
we were in those semi-sweet days!
Pretty as she was, not to mention alone and vulnerable, my "brothers" forgot I had ever mentioned
to them that I was expecting her. Heck, they forgot I even existed. They gave her some powerful drugs,
who knows what? Perhaps PCP or pot cured in smack... Someone produced a car. Someone drove.
Someone sat in the back with Owl. They went on "a run to the store". They parked in the boonies.
While the driver kept lookout for unexpected company, the fellow in the back had his way with Owl.
When I arrived from Montreal, I found her standing silently in the woods, in the dark, a little way
30
from a fire circle of several MFF people. But Owl stood indifferent and immune to any fraternity, cold
and alone in the night-black trees and shrubs. Her eyes were glazed, vacant. She didn't even recognize
me. She couldn't tell me what was wrong. I led her to my plastic covered teepee, holding her hand. She
stumbled along dumbly; she bumped into things, walked straight into trees without seeing them. She
wasn't focusing on the world. Half an hour passed before she realized who I was. She made guttural
sounds and moans. And when she spoke at all her speech was rambling, nonsensical.
No one would tell me why she was like this, at least not instantly. But everything came out
piecemeal over the months that followed.
I put Owl to bed and tended her like a sick child. Which is what she truly was. Only seventeen years
old... Her condition slowly improved over the weeks that followed but she still remained distant and
strange. I felt like myself and everyone else in the world had failed her.
In her young life, she had always pictured the world to be a kinder place. Young girls were treated
like delicate and precious flowers in French Quebec. She was shocked to become a victim of
inhumanity in our alien country, especially from longhaired people, for previously she'd only associated
such people with gentleness and sensitivity.
Now as far as she was concerned everything had toppled to the dark side. The Universe could no
longer be trusted. She turned us off. Her confused and catatonic condition made everyone
uncomfortable. Maybe that's the way she wanted them to feel...
I loved her, and I wanted my old Owl back. If we were to have "good times" like we had on Wreck
Beach, Owl would have to start feeling better about herself and her surroundings. I felt I knew the
ingredients that would heal her; the fresh spring winds rushing through the forest, the songs of the
thousands of birds surrounding our transparent plastic wilderness teepee... We could watch the birds
and the swaying forest through the plastic skin as we lay around the central fire. And as soon as the
weather warmed surely other sensitive Rainbow sisters would arrive on the land and they would
become her friends. And there would be good food, and good music, and good wine and wonderful
nights of having fun. Owl loved good times, good friends. So, I felt I knew what it would take to cure
her.
I wasn't necessarily wrong. But the Vermont land we called MFF was a far cry from Wreck Beach in
every way. And during the years I had been gone it had changed much more than I could have realized.
And now Owl had been deeply hurt...
In those days we "brothers" were often like stupid puppies that shit diarrhea all over one's bed; we
thought with our little head instead of our big one. I was mad at myself for what they had done,
because, in past days, I had done dumb shit too. We all had to grow. We had to learn from our stupid
deeds. We had to go on living, and continue trying to put it all together. Supposedly we would become
better human beings if we learned to forgive and forget...
We stayed at MFF for about six months. During that time we planted a small garden and some fruit
trees. We picked blackberries and apples and made juice. I played my guitar in the evenings beside the
fire while Owl knitted us wonderful sweaters of natural wool. We endlessly sewed and resewed leather
patches on our patch pants and sheepskin vests. A Vancouver coat-maker had given us huge bags of
sheepskin scraps which we had sewn together to make the vests. When combined with Owl's natural
wool sweaters we could laugh at any snowstorm. We made the most beautiful and warmest cold
weather outfits in the hippie world.
31
I bought a horse for Owl. We tethered him on a long rope in a field of flowers near our translucent
teepee. We named the little Mustang Morning Grass. He was too young too ride but we walked him
around the land with us. He had wise eyes and he was our friend.
In spite of the arboreal tranquility and our many fascinating projects Owl continued to suffer. Other
Rainbow sisters did not materialize on the land that summer as I had hoped. A few passed through
quickly but none stayed. The drunkenness and rowdiness scared them away. So I was Owl's only
constructive influence. Sisters heal sisters. If I wanted her to have any such healing we would have to
go elsewhere to find it.
But I didn't want to leave MFF. This land had healed me in 1973. I spent eighteen months in Federal
Prison between July 1971 and October 1972, mostly in solitary confinement, for resisting the war in
Viet-Nam. When I was released I was a basket case. Fortunately I managed to hitchhike to MFF in
Vermont where the blessed wilderness land together with the brotherhood and sisterhood that
permeated the land, had eventually healed me. So, that's why I regarded MFF as a sacred place. It was
one of the few places I knew of where someone like me could have peace of mind without constantly
having to look over my shoulder. It was a place where people grew wonderful pot and buds were
always free. MFF had a magical hobbit quality about it. I could fulfill my dream of being an artist
there. I could practice on my guitar for ten hours a day if I wanted. The forest and creeks were so
beautiful that any artist would love to linger. It was a wonderful place to write poetry, or to read books.
Or to make love!
If you love to make love beside rushing streams, or in forests of cherry trees, or beneath wild apple
trees, or in fields of flowers, you know what I mean. That's how I had healed in 1973, making love with
many wonderful Rainbow sisters. What sacred beauty and freedom! What a place for the spirit to soar!
I loved MFF and I did not want to leave it ever again.
But I finally had to face the fact that many things had changed, and the land that had been so healing
for me in 1973 was quite a different thing for Owl in 1976. I realized that she would not be able to heal
in the continuing proximity of the "brothers" who had abused her. And I had to reevaluate my whole
inner concept of what exactly it meant to be a "brother". Those fellows that had hurt Owl were a
particularly nihilistic element that had recently occupied MFF. This land had not been created for their
kind of energy. I couldn't understand what was going on with them. They were always drunk.
Drunkenness goes together with love about as well as dogshit goes together with oatmeal. They really
didn't care if they hurt anyone...
The more I thought about it, the more I realized I sure didn't relish wintering with them in that
isolated situation. Owl wouldn't be safe. So I knew we had to leave. It hurt to leave the beautiful land...
But I reasoned that those strange violent men would not last. And sooner or later the real brothers who
had originally formed MFF would come back to reclaim it. And if necessary they would get rid of the
bad energy so that sisters like Owl could live there without fear. Owl and I would go away for a year or
two and when we returned we would surely find that MFF had returned to normal. And perhaps we
could live there then, and make babies, and build a home...
We bought an International Scout four-wheel drive flatbed rustbucket for $225 from a nearby
commune. They'd been using it for a plow in place of a tractor -- and it took a mess of work to get the
beasty road-worthy again. We had to scrounge up a door but the little engine ran good. We had wheels!
The truck was so old that the doors were actually rusted through and falling off. They required
32
regular welding to be usable. When Owl was especially spaced-out she occasionally forgot to close the
door carefully enough and several times she flew out as we made a left hand turn and skidded along the
pavement on her butt. We were fortunate this never resulted in a serious injury. The rustbucket
definitely took some getting used to.
One of the last things I had to wait for before we could leave was a good sized order of jewelry
supplies sent to us from a place in Illinois. When it arrived I rigged a twelve-volt motor to a hundred
grit grinding wheel on the back of the truck. The little motor would also spin a set of maplewood laps
impregnated with various grits of diamond compound. With this apparatus I could form and polish
gemstones which I hoped to sell along the way. If everything worked out as I planned I would also
eventually pick up silver-working equipment so I could make entire rings and pendants. The small
package also contained an assortment of rough stones: India star rubies, Australian Opals and blue star
sapphires, turquoise pieces, and a small chunk of fine apple green jade.
While I was practicing cutting stones several staggering neighbors came by to watch and ask
questions. Their speech was cunning, their eyes calculating... My intuition told me they were
considering stealing the whole shebang. I didn't take any chances and never left anything in the truck
which was always out in the open. But I didn't have any way to really lock things up so it wasn't easy.
We never told them we were leaving MFF. It made more sense to let them believe we planned to
stay the winter. But they must have sensed it because they started making moves. I was asleep in the
teepee when I heard the Scout's little engine fire up. By the time I got out to the field it was gone. I
couldn't chase them on foot. I let it be known that I would go to the police if it didn't get back in one
piece fast. And a couple hours later it did come rolling in with nothing lost. The rogue sheepishly
apologized that he had just wanted to try it out on a trip to the store. They were pushing my buttons,
seeing what they could get away with.
We knew it was time to go. We packed fast and were ready by nightfall... We had grown a sizable
crop. I gave it away to whoever wanted it and asked them to care for Morning Grass for us until we
returned. Then we proceeded southwest to spend a winter in the sun. It was quite a relief to put MFF
behind us.
There was one last thing I needed to do. I had looked at some new sheepskins in a store in Newport
a few days previous to our departure. They were only $20 each and they were the most beautiful golden
sheepskins I had ever seen. Although it cramped our finances bad I could not leave without buying four
of them so that we could have new vests. Winter was coming on strong...
And so we began our journey to the southwest. The cab of the Scout was too small for sleeping. We
had a little pop-up tent that we put up each night.
We did a lot of healing as we rolled along. I was dreaming about starting our jewelry business,
maybe in New Mexico... New Mexico was big on that sort of thing and I had stayed at various
communes in Taos between 1969 and 1974. I had an idea forming in my mind that Owl and I might
become part of one of those communes where there would be the sort of sister-energy which might
work some healing magic for her.
Our souls seemed to be having a rough go of it as the little Scout rolled towards the southwest. We
loved each other... But what was love? And what did love mean to us? What did love owe us and what
would we have to do for love? And was love really necessary? And if so, why was love necessary? And
was this love we thought we had even real? Or was it a superfluous and vain invention, a distraction, a
33
senseless preoccupation? And who was this strange young French woman who kept falling out of the
door of my truck, sliding along the pavement on her butt when I went around corners? Perhaps she too
wondered who the strange English-speaker was, who insisted on dragging her along with him on
travels that encompassed such long miles... So many places we had been... Where were we going now?
Why?
Such questions don't always form themselves into words. Sometimes they are vast timeless heavy
clouds of emotion barely floating in one's heart -- dark clouds with flashes of lightning that mark
prominent feelings and ideas, and rare answers.
When Owl and I reached Santa Fe we argued and she stormed off and disappeared like she does
sometimes. I looked for her for three days. I had almost given up before I finally hunkered down and
mustered up the nerve to pray about it and wham! Light seemed to fill me, and a few minutes later I
found her beside the Santa Fe fountain.
We drove north to Taos to visit a couple of the old communes: Llama Foundation and New Buffalo.
New Buffalo had changed so much they wouldn't even let us in the gate. Llama Foundation also turned
out to be a dead-end street. People there told us the place had too many wandering hippies hanging
around as it was and they were actively trying to get rid of them. So those healing dreams disintegrated.
In Taos she disappeared again. I was into giving her ultimatums... Behave a certain way or else...
Think a certain way or else... So she or-elsed. A person can't be made to think the way you tell them to.
They have to think the way they think... The way God or Goddess makes them think... Owl was the
instrument of my own realization. She was causing me to understand such things. Whenever she
disappeared it was like lightning bolts in my brain clearing up all kinds of fuzzy nonsense, causing me
to know I loved her and needed her.
The Scout was having starter problems so I was forced to park it and look for her on foot. I carried a
backpack as I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off. I went out to the Pueblos. I wandered up
and down streets. I was sick with worry and fatigue when I came to the park in the center of town and
set my pack down under a tree and took a breather. An angry cop suddenly rushed up to me and said he
was going to arrest me! "Loitering" in the park was prohibited! (Unless you were a wealthy tourist in
town buying native art and staying in expensive accommodations.) It was the same old thing: the cop
was convinced I was someone he had once warned never to come back to that park. He wouldn't
believe me when I told him I had just arrived in town. And when he saw my Vermont drivers license he
said it was fake because that wasn't my name. He was determined to arrest me! And if I was detained in
the Taos jail for several days I might totally lose Owl...
I was desperate. I ran for it and the cop chased me. Somehow I lost him. I don't know how. But I
still had to stick around town until I found Owl. So I changed my clothes and made myself look as
different as I could and I kept my eyes open and avoided the cops as I searched for her. There were
many bearded hippies in Taos; I might get away with it...
Finally I made up some signs to put up. When I asked a lady in a bakery if I could put a sign in her
window she looked at it and told me that she thought the person I was looking for had just been in the
store a few minutes before and must still be nearby. So that's how I found her.
` We barely had time to make up... We were in danger. I could feel it in my bones. We had to get out
of Taos -- fast. We headed for the Scout.
As we walked down the road a police car drove by slowly and the cop looked at me sharp. It was the
same one. I knew he was going to turn around. And sure enough, about a block and a half up the road I
34
saw his wheels spin in a u-ey. We instantly ducked through yards and furtively made our way to the old
green Scout and push-started it and sped out of Taos as fast as we could.
We drove to the San Francisco hotsprings in western New Mexico and let our problems melt away
as we soaked in the canyon's natural pools. We met some new friends, beautiful people in a beautiful
place... What colors! The red sand of the canyon, the blue green of the river, the lushness of the grass
and trees and flowers...
But the paradise was suddenly shattered by the arrival of several violent cursing cowboy/rednecks
on horseback with whips and guns. They drove everyone running from the springs like cattle. They told
us the springs were on their land and they didn't like visitors, especially hippies. Then police came to
make sure everyone cleared out of the parking lot too. It was a real mess. To make matters worse the
Scout threw the rear driveline and I couldn't negotiate the steep road using only the front driveline and
the cops were closing in... Just in time a brother came along in an old stationwagon and hitched up a
tow-chain and pulled us to the top and we scadaddled down the road and out of the state. New Mexico
was way too harsh for us despite its phenomenal beauty.
People must be very determined if they are to succeed in making sorry states of affairs turn out well.
Owl sat close beside me as we drove along with my arm around her shoulders, and that’s how the miles
passed under the wheels of the old truck as our souls journeyed west together into one brilliant sunset
after another.
We had good things going for us. The Universe was watching over us, permeating our beings with
every living atom, recreating us into the image of what we were always meant to be.
***
Ah, Arizona! At night the desert air is rich with sage and oleander; even the hard-packed mesa sands
are fragrant. Animals follow their nose to water, or perhaps to the lush vegetation exploding profusely.
We too, catch the sweet scent of oasis from far away! A bit of water gently flowing through a
canyon blooms the earth lushly; gentle, warm winds fling the essence into our journeying souls
unexpectedly -- sweet rapture entwines, embraces our olfactory senses. What surprise! What treasure!
So as ever, we must follow our hearts and sometimes our nose! A whim, a whiff, a wonder, a wish! We
must discover the whispering waters of our own beings.
We meet many poets out here beyond the vales of man's tumultuous handiwork. Desert people
almost always run deep with these fantastic silver sinews of spirit-mind. They are both ancient and
freshly reborn in one breath; their hearts: an oasis in a desolate world.
When the day's exertions have sapped all but passion, we lay our bedrolls beside trickling desert
creeks.
Oh! cool eternal silver waters, mercurial reflection of the Universe above -- You wander just like us!
Whisper soothing stories into our dreams! Sing to us all night long!
35
As long as the weather was dry enough and warm enough, we'd leave the tent-flap open to breath all
night the crisp, dry, elixir. In each other's arms we watched the cloudless starry eternalness, oohing and
aahing with each falling star; and sometimes dreaming of our own future which had to hold a
wonderful promise -- because this night sky was giving us, special and chosen, her own beautiful song,
communicating directly with us from the primal source of all things good.
Locked vacuously inside their ticky-tacky cubicles, civilized humanity ignores these Heavens -separates themselves from the eternal with walls and ceilings. They don't seem to know that if a person
sleeps with the Heavens, the millions of tiny fires cannot help but become as viable as any living thing.
And like a lover, they fill the person with illumination. And beneath the immense living Universe, he or
she becomes a bigger person.
Oh! A lover bathed in starlight is a heavenly sacrament!
The crackle of stone circle flames, the rush of crisp desert winds, the caressing whisper of moving
crystal waters -- scintillant ambience encloses us like the visceral muscles of the Great Mother. How
solemn are these desert nights! And inside Owl's lithesome womb a tiny child dreams, too!
We lived half our lives under the stars. Our living-room ceiling was high as high could be.
So, the house of our lives was the ancient one.
36
TWO
WHERE ALL THE FLOWERS WENT
Tucson was one town warm enough for folks to comfortably live out of sleeping bags and tents all
winter if necessary. And housing had always seemed affordable. I mean -- you take a pleasant $300 a
month house and move in six hippies: that means $50 rent each. Not bad! Low rent houses and
apartments of old Spanish architecture swarmed with hippies. Drop-in centers and health food co-ops
and hospitable cafes were abundant, and some real down-home bars -- good dancing, good pot, good
LSD. Good times. Happy Times.
At least that's how I remembered Tucson from '69 and '70...
By 1976 I seemed to be outgrowing some of that stuff though. Psychedelics didn't much interest me
anymore. (The old Belladonna experience in this town back in '70 had about cured me) And I really
didn't want to plop us down into a house of drug users. Yeah, "outgrown" is the right word. But I
remembered the community fondly -- an ebullient carnival of velvet artists and silk sensualists and
cordoba hikers; resplendent with mixtures of colorful, flowing East-Indian scarves and blouses and
robes -- and native American leather garments and fancy beadwork, gaudy with silver and turquoise,
coral and jade; wonderful perfumes: sandalwood, jasmine, patchouli; and the area was exotic in the
plethora of New Age religions and philosophies: Sikhs, Hindus, Krishnas, Cabala and Tarot
metaphysicians, astrologers, herbalists; all gathering out in the luxurious weather in beautiful parks,
watching the sunset -- fifty of us -- from the top of Mt Lemon; skinny-dipping in the luscious pools of
Sabina canyon, making love there... Tucson was always an exciting destination for road people.
Owl and I camped along the Rio Grande awhile before running short of supplies and heading the
rustbucket into that happening piece of civilization. We didn't expect to stay long -- cities weren't our
preferred habitat. I was kind of looking forward to introducing my French princess, Owl, to some old
friends in Tucson.
But the wonderful things I remembered had changed. There'd been crackdowns by authorities in the
years between 1970 and 1976. Many far out hippie businesses had been forced to close their doors.
Many colorful, sensual people had been driven off by police harassment. Most of those that remained
stayed off the streets, away from the parks -- where police patrolled with nightsticks and really enjoyed
beating the holy shit out of people with them.
It's sad how places changed so fast in those few short years. When we putted into town in our
International Scout in November of 1976 I could hardly recognize anything. It wasn't 1969 anymore!
The beauties of a bygone age had stayed fresh in my memories -- but they were just a mirage. I guess
we can't stay twenty-one forever -- and the joys of our youth fly like summer clouds -- but I wasn't
ready for the changes that had ransacked Tucson. Not at all. I was sure all that pure, joyous, mystical,
sensual, cosmic energy was hiding nearby, struggling to hold back its passion and laughter and
camaraderie, so that it could pounce on us, surprise the dickens out of us and sagely, portentously,
astonish and admonish us. How absurd I was to think those good times I'd thought to be eternal could
actually stand still forever. They were plum gone.
But before we had a chance for these disappointments to really hit us, a bigger one clobbered us. As
we arrived in town in our funny little forest-green rattletrap, with the doors falling off -- a policeman
promptly pulled us over and discovered I had an unpaid traffic ticket in his computer that had gone to
warrant. (For going through a red light on a bicycle seven years earlier!)
He handcuffed me and took me, much distressed and protesting, off to jail -- leaving Owl standing
37
bewildered, beside a car she didn't know how to drive, in a city whose name she'd never heard of before
that day, amongst a people whose language she could only brokenly speak, and with a mental condition
of profound proportions.
In the months since the abuse in Vermont, she'd remained languorous, disconnected from the world
around her, usually totally disinterested in it. But as long as I was close, she seemed to be slowly
coming back to her normal self. But she wasn't back to square one yet. I believed Love would heal all
wounds and I could see regular improvement in my best friend, Owly. But without me by her side -she was a lamb among wolves. I begged the cop not to take me to jail. I told him about Owl's situation.
He ignored my words and treated me like I was dirt under his feet.
Alone in Tucson, Owl became lost. Picked up by people and dropped off she knew not where she
found her way somehow to the YWCA. I, of course, knew nothing of this, locked away in a jail cell as I
was.
None of the police showed any compassion. They would not listen or help. I spent two days in jail
and then they dragged me into court on a Sunday morning! Who ever heard of such a thing? I was
released after paying a fifty-dollar fine. Actually, I didn't pay the fine. A doctor did. The father of a
young man who had been my cellmate in 1972, the same one who had taught me to play the guitar. He
lived in Tucson with his family now. I didn't have $50. The judge would have made me stay in jail for a
week. But I managed to get a phone call through to them and the doctor himself came to the jail with
the $50. I was very grateful as I shook his hand.
I hurried out to find Owl but the world had swallowed her up; I could not find her anywhere. I called
police and hospitals. They had no news for me. I retrieved my truck from the police impound and drove
around looking for her. Up and down streets I searched, stopping street people here and there to ask
them if they had seen her. There wasn't a clue. She seemed to have vanished.
One day I put up a large sign in the health food co-op that read: "Dear Brothers and Sisters, Please
Help Me Find Owl" and went into the particulars. More days passed, more calls to the police -- still
nothing. Then like a lightning bolt out of the blue there came a breakthrough. A man who delivered
yogurt to a mental hospital for the co-op contacted me to let me know that a woman who matched the
description I had written on the notice was in one of the hospital wards. The story was that she had
been hanging around the YWCA, where no one could understand her. She had seemed disoriented. The
staff had called the police who took her to the mental unit of the hospital.
I bristled to think how many times I had telephoned the police, explained the situation and given a
complete description of her, only to be told:
"Sorry, we've no information on that person."
But in fact they had known her whereabouts all along. It was no concern of theirs whether or not we
ever found each other again. What reptilian thought processes! So cold-blooded! I'd been so worried!
And what must Owl have been going through?
Like the wind, I went and found her -- heavily medicated, shuffling rigidly, a repulsive expression
on her face -- taut as a drum, extremely sad, strained, and perplexed. She was locked behind a metal
door which had a tiny window embedded with wire mesh. I knocked on the glass. She heard and looked
up blankly. When she saw me a quiet, urgent look kindled. She slowly came to the glass and peered at
me for a long time. Then she lay her cheek against the pane and closed her eyes. One tear rolled down.
The doctor invited me into his office. At first we discussed Owl rationally. He asked me questions
38
and I answered them. Then he looked at me from across his desk with a lordly air and told me firmly
that since we weren't technically married we weren't actually related, and that only relatives were
allowed to visit patients -- so I would have to leave. He looked like he thought the meeting was over. I
spoke slowly. I told him although it was true that we weren't married with legal papers we were still
married according to the common law, and that we loved each other very much. I told him that we had
been together since May of 1975, about a year and a half, and that we had lived on the seashore in a
driftwood house I had built myself, and in a teepee in the woods of Vermont, and that during that year
and a half we had traveled six thousand miles together. I told him I knew Owl's mother and her sisters
and her brother, and that I KNEW that they expected me to take good care of her. She was my
responsibility. It was common law and it was common sense.
He sat there looking at me harshly, but thoughtful. I asked him when he planned to release her. He
said he did not know but that it might not be for many months; they were running some tests and they
were awaiting results. I reminded him I wanted to talk with Owl. He said it still wasn't possible since I
was not a relative.
"Then," I said, "I will sit in the waiting room where we can see each other through the window."
And that's what I did. I sat there all day long. Every once in a while he would pass by and our eyes
would meet. Towards the end of the day he came and told me he would bend the rules; he brought Owl
out.
Owl hugged me limply. She shuffled her feet when she walked. Her eyes couldn't follow things very
fast. She sat staring. She had a hard time comprehending anything I said to her. She was drugged so bad
it was frightening. But at least we were together. She seemed tired. We had about fifteen minutes
together and then they led her back into the locked ward.
The doctor came and sat down beside me and asked me if I could see now why they had to keep her
locked in the hospital? What an incredible question! NO! I certainly did not see any such thing! What
was he talking about?! It was his turn to look incredulous.
"Why, in her condition you don't think she should be out in the streets do you?"
"Her condition is DRUGGED! And YOU drugged her! As soon as I get her out of here, and away
from you, and get those drugs out of her system, she'll return to normal!"
With that I left, but the next morning I was back again. He told me that he couldn't guarantee that he
would be able to let me see her again that day because they were very busy. I told him that I would wait
anyway, and I sat down. A while later he came out and asked me a few more questions about Owl. He
asked me her mother's name and address and said he planned to call her. I asked him if he spoke
French? He answered not much but he said he might find someone who could. We were being civil.
Hours passed. I read magazines, wandered around the hospital, returned. Sometimes Owl and I
stood facing each other through the little glass window with the wire mesh; we put our fingers against it
on either side. Sometimes I couldn't see her in the room. I didn't know where she was. The staff asked
me to stay away from the window because it bothered the patients.
Late in the afternoon the doctor walked through the waiting room with his coat and valise heading
for the door. I rose and asked him if I could have a few minutes with Owl. He said he was sorry but he
didn't have time. He did say that he had managed to speak with Owl's mother on the telephone, but that
she had not been very helpful. I told him Owl was not her mother's responsibility anymore; she was
mine. The doctor harrumphed and left.
39
The next morning I was there again as soon as the hospital opened its doors. I had brought Owl a
small bouquet of flowers. A nurse thought the flowers were pretty and made a lot out of it. She offered
to give them to Owl; but I told her I would rather wait and give them to her myself. She was nice.
The doctor came to talk to me. He said Owl was doing about the same and he doubted she would
make any improvement soon. He suggested I more or less forget about Owl and go on with my life.
How incredible! This man had apparently gotten nothing out of what I had told him the other day. He
thought Owl and I had nothing but a frivolous meaningless involvement with each other. He thought
we could just walk away from each other and never look back! I started from the beginning, slowly,
and to the best of my ability I tried to tell him what we meant to each other and how deeply we had
been involved for the past year and a half. He appeared slightly agitated as I spoke. He looked like he
was scheming... I didn't trust him a bit.
He raised his eyes calculatingly and said, "Mr. Ollamh, We have a strong suspicion that Owl may
have a tumor in her brain."
I was knocked for a loop. "No way" I said.
"Yes. We are running tests."
I've known some good doctors in my life. But I did not trust this man. He had not had the soul to
believe me when I had opened up my heart to him and told him so much about us. He had been trying
hard to separate us from the beginning. It felt to me like there was something very wrong in his crazy
little world and it had nothing to do with Owl.
"I'm sorry but I don't believe you." I told him matter-of-factly. "I know why she behaves the way she
does. About six months ago she was raped in Vermont and afterwards she was catatonic for three days,
and she has still not quite recovered from it. She even forgets to close her car door completely
sometimes and has fallen out when we went around a corner. Her mental problems have nothing at all
to do with a 'brain tumor', they are simply an emotional disability which is healing slowly."
I was sorry to be telling a doctor his job. I know it doesn't usually make sense to do such a thing.
But in this case I felt I was one hundred percent correct and he was one hundred percent wrong. He
didn't say much in reply, asked a few small questions and that was it. He let me be with Owl for half an
hour.
The next day I was at the ward bright and early again. The doctor was angry and obviously intended
to intimidate me. He called me into his office and asked me what it was all about, why was I spending
all day long in his waiting room? I told him I had no phone and no way for him to contact me when
they released Owl which would mean she would walk out alone into strange streets and we would be
lost from each other again: so I had no choice but to wait there every minute. I asked him again when
he intended to release her? He told me he did not know. But he said my clothes were not clean enough
for me to be sitting around that hospital all day long and he said that my disorderly appearance was
scaring people. I told him I would make it a point to spruce up, but at any rate I would be there every
day until Owl was released. He said if necessary he would have me forcibly removed from the hospital.
I knew he had the power to do that. So I tried to reason with him again. The end result was that I might
wait in the large hospital waiting room instead of the small ward waiting room, or I might wait in my
vehicle parked in the street. He let me visit with Owl again for another half-hour. Afterwards I spoke
with him, asked him about the tests. He said the results still weren't in. I told him again that I knew she
did not have a tumor, that she was in fact very healthy. Because we ate good vegetarian food and we
lived outside in the clear oxygen of the sea and the forest and the desert. I was getting angry. I told him
40
I really thought he should release her quickly so I could get her away from that institution because it
could only do her harm being locked up in such a place with people around her she didn't know, people
who didn't love her. She was in a fragile condition and the only person who could help her was me. I
was a little hot under the collar...
We didn't part on good terms. We were both angry. And I know he telephoned hospital security
when I left because I had to dodge them on my way out.
The next day I was there at the ward again early in the morning. As soon as I entered the room I saw
a nurse look at me and immediately pick up a telephone. Instinct caused me to leave. I took a
roundabout route and from a safe vantagepoint observed security guards scurrying down a corridor in
the direction of the ward. I left the hospital and went to a phone and called the doctor. I asked him
when I could see Owl? He made an appointment for that afternoon. They couldn't bust me if I had an
appointment.
After I saw Owl I spoke with the doctor again. It was clear as a bell to me now that he had some sort
of screwy idea in his head regarding Owl: like she was his exotic French zoo exhibit -- and he didn't
want to part with her. I stressed again to him that he really needed to let Owl out so we could get on
with our lives. The air was tense. I guess I wore him out. He reluctantly agreed to let her go.
We hurried away from that would-be tomb.
***
We were having brake problems with the old rustbucket Scout. In the first place the little brake
shoes at best weren't the safest in the world -- and they were well worn. Plus the Scout didn't have a
modern double-chamber master cylinder which guarantees that a vehicle always has brakes enough to
stop even if a leak develops. If the rear brakes develop a leak the front ones still work and vice-versa.
We didn't have that feature. So if we lost our brake fluid we simply had no brakes. And we’d had an
ongoing problem with leaky brake cylinders. I was trying to learn to fix them. I'd tear it apart and
replace this part and that part and put it together and it would work for awhile and then a different
wheel would start leaking and we'd have to do it again. We lost our brakes several times but always
managed to glide safely over to the side of the road.
But doing repairs always depended on whether we had enough money at the time and whether there
was a handy place to tear it apart. And sometimes there wasn't any money or any place. There were a
couple times when we had to drive slowly and carefully through the city depending solely on the
emergency brake. It could be real scary.
We met a mechanic who had a hole-in-the-wall shop out in the boondoggles of Tucson who allowed
me to tear apart the Scout's brakes on his lot. He turned out to be a manipulative and nasty individual
and his real motive in allowing me to tear it all apart on his property was that he wanted to get Owl into
a vulnerable position. She was undoubtedly the prettiest thing in Tucson, French accent and all, and she
was still feeling the effects of all the medication they had given her in the hospital.
He was a large individual and it was clear that any contest between us would be unfair. He made his
move sudden-like and it was plain to see we might have to flee on foot and leave the Scout
incapacitated in his possession with all our belongings. I suspected he had planned that very situation
from the beginning. We managed to thwart his scheme. I told Owl to start walking down the road and I
41
would pick her up in a few minutes. Then in spite of him standing a few feet from me menacing me
with vile words and threats I persevered in jerry-rigging my brakes back together and getting the wheel
back on the Scout in record time and I rolled out of his yard. I picked up Owl and then we endeavored
to get as far away from him as possible.
We made it to the main part of town and were approaching a busy two-lane thoroughfare which was
plum full of traffic. I pressed on the brake pedal and felt it go all the way to the floor with no effect. We
were twenty feet from the busy cross street going thirty miles an hour. I pulled the emergency brake
hard -- and the whole thing came out in my hands, cable and all. There was no way to stop the Scout.
In the flash of an eye I looked and knew there was no one on the sidewalk and in almost the same
instant I turned the Scout sharp right and the little vehicle went up on two wheels and over the curb and
rolled down the sidewalk until it came to a stop. Cars and trucks were blasting their horns and swerving
all over the place. But there was no damage done. It was close though. Terribly close...
The near accident etched deep into my mind. I desperately needed to fix the brakes right. And we
needed money to do that. We needed money for a lot of things.
***
Looking back so many years I wish I could say I was a prince and a knight when it came to Owl. In
my heart I thought I was. But in actuality I was just a stumbling rascal who happened to be in love with
her. The Creator of the Universe is the first giver of Love and therefore any love we possess in our lives
is only a manifestation of the blessed Creator. When the Creator gives love to us it must be rather like
he is giving us precious ore to carry so that we may separate the dross from the gold. So the rough
terrain is rough for a reason and the obstacles exist for a purpose. Everything that happens is a part of
the heart of God. Every word spoken is heard. Every thought is understood. Maybe we are all rascals
before God.
There is a stretch of road in Tucson known as the Miracle Mile. Owl and I were in the Scout heading
out that road one evening. We were broke and we had less than a gallon of gas in the tank. The main
part of town was behind us and now there were empty areas with no buildings. A stop sign was coming
up and there was a store on the corner.
I parked the Scout and left Owl there while I went and stood on the corner and tried to spare change.
There was hardly anyone out walking but people had to stop their cars at the stop sign and a few of
them were receptive to my entreaties. Before long I managed to get a dollar or two together. It was
enough for a gallon or two of gas or maybe something to eat. I bought bread and cheese and brought it
back to the truck and we sat inside and ate.
I didn't like spare changing. Sometimes people said very rude things. Sometimes people gave me
scathing looks that shriveled me up inside. Sometimes they laughed at me. I was too vulnerable, too
cold, too hungry, too tired. It was too hard to always be resilient, carefree, unaffected by such things.
We needed more gas money and I didn't want to do it again. I had known several road couples who
spare changed regularly and did well at it. The girl always did much better than the guy. I urged Owl to
try. So she went out there and stood there rather sadly, afraid to say anything to anyone. I watched her.
42
After awhile she came back with nothing. I got mad at her and said some angry things. It was partly
because I was hurting inside from my own experience out there and I was a little raw. And it was partly
because I believed that Owl needed me to have a stern manner with her at times to help her break out of
the shell she had formed around herself. Anyway, no matter what my reasons were, it was not the right
thing to do because we were one person in our hearts and she was going through as much if not more
pain as myself and she didn't need the one she loved to be rude to her. And all she could think of doing
was running away and that's what she did. Suddenly she was gone into the dark of the night and I sat
there in the Scout and let her go. I was angry and hard and mean.
Not much time passed, maybe five minutes, and I was a wildman, full of worry and remorse. Where
was Owl? Where was Owl? I looked and looked for her but she was nowhere to be found. All night
long I waited. She did not come back. I drove the truck around looking for her but didn't find her. I
drove into town and searched. The following day I checked the health food store. And I telephoned the
hospital. Nothing. Always I returned to the corner where I had last seen her. Basically I waited there
three days.
On the third day the storeowner noticed me and told me he was going to call the police unless I
found some other corner to stand on. If the police put me in jail I might never find Owl. I parked the
truck in an invisible place and returned to stand nearby in hidden shadows. I watched for her on
sidewalks; I looked through the windshields of passing cars. I talked to myself a lot. Finally I prayed to
God to please bring her back to me. I was standing near the stop sign again. The storeowner would be
upset. But something moved me there...
A car pulled up and stopped. I looked inside -- and there was Owl! I stepped up to the car calling her
name. She looked at me and smiled wanly and said something to the man and then she opened the door
and came out. He drove away.
So Owl and I were together again.
This was not the first time she had done this thing to me, nor would it be the last. It always hurt. It
always drove me nuts. And it always made me a little saner, a little wiser, and a little less stupid.
There were girls who sold flowers to passing motorists on the street corners of Tucson. They got to
keep a percentage of their sales. Some girls did pretty well at it. Owl tried it twice. She stood outside all
day long the first time and made three dollars and twenty-eight cents. The next day she made nothing.
It was very cold. I stood off in the distance watching her try to sell the flowers. She just stood there and
stood there and stood there. It was quite cold. An icy rain began to fall. I drove the truck over and
picked her up. Her fingers were red and numb and she was crying. We took the flowers back. Never
again.
But I'll always remember how pretty she was standing there on the corner with all those flowers in
her arms.
43
THREE
TUMBLEWEEDS
It's never easy for a wanderer to earn money. We don't have references. Our clothes aren't clean, etc.
So I applied my mind to trying to earn a living in ways I knew how. I wasn't having any luck selling my
gemstones but I met a jeweler who had a store in Tucson who occasionally hired me use his modern
equipment to cut stones for him.
Between this and that we managed to have enough money to fix the brakes pretty well and to keep
ourselves supplied with gas and food. However accumulating enough moola to actually get into an
apartment eluded us.
We loved sleeping outdoors -- we preferred sleeping outdoors. But there was a problem: The city of
Tucson had made it a crime to camp out anywhere in the city limits and the police were regular hounds
at discovering folks hiding away in their bags in the bushes or behind billboards. So we were having a
real hard time finding anywhere to snatch some z’s. Often, the cops would catch campers sleeping in
the dry riverbed that runs through town and give them an abysmally hard time. I mean the vocabulary
the cops used would scorch the ears off the most decadent bum. You really had to hide good in order to
sleep safely -- or burn up a lot of gas each night driving far away. I didn't make money every day -- so I
didn't have gas every day. It was a scary situation. As though we could have checked into the Hilton
with nothing but our neat personalities! Yeah! Or paid for the room with a little soft-shoe!
It became a desperate situation at times. If they were to arrest us for sleeping-out under the stars, we
would be separated again! Owl might end up in that zombie factory again -- or another one who knows
where?! We had considerable providence in reuniting the last time but we just couldn't take a chance
like that again. I knew full well now the police would not ever tell me where they'd taken her. In Owl's
frail mental condition, jail was deadly poison. Jail was out of the question for either of us.
Yet all too often we seemed to find ourselves without enough gas to get out of town far enough to be
safe from the municipality's "final solution" to the problem of hippie couple's camping out-of-doors in
their city -- arrest them and separate them and don't give either one any information on what's been
done with the other. Man! How cold-hearted! It was painfully clear: Unless we found someplace safe to
spend our nights there was a very real possibility of Owl finding herself alone again and in extreme
danger.
Whenever we met local residential longhaired folks we'd ask them if they knew a safe place we
could roll out our bags -- like in their back yard, on their porch or in their living room. Seeking out the
magic crashpad was an everyday occupation for many of us wanderers. Some days we had no luck, and
found ourselves walking around late in the night feeling dead on our feet, vulnerable to the nth degree.
Often, we'd finally take a chance and try sleeping undetected in the dry river basin. One night the
police ferreted us out. They declined jailing us and gave us a coarse warning instead -- leaving us
shaking in our boots. A close call! We looked ever more urgently for a safer place from then on.
Late one such lousy night we walked around Tucson exhausted, trying to figure where to rest. The
Scout was parked on a side road. Cops checked it often to see if we were sleeping in the front seat. We
didn't dare go near it. Besides we were putting half a gallon at a time into the tank -- and sometimes
running out of gas twice in a single day. So as we walked we struggled to keep awake. We were so
desperate we were occasionally resorting to sitting in the park where we tried to perfect a stratagem -one of us would sleep for an hour while the other kept watch for police. There was no law against
"sitting". But that didn't work too well because Owl always seemed to fall asleep when she was
44
supposed to be on lookout. Once again the cops caught us and let us go with a few foul remarks. How
many close calls could we survive before the inevitable happened and we were separated? So we
walked. Poor Owl. This was very hard for her. She was so sleepy she stumbled along crying.
Sometimes her legs buckled.
It was then that we happened to meet this interesting fellow who was a janitor at the Montessori
school. We hit it off pretty good and he seemed to like our spirit. He appreciated our predicament and
offered us a solution to our problem! The Montessori school was letting him sleep in their garage on a
bed tightly squeezed in between stored desks and blackboards and chairs and boxes packed to the
rafters and overflowing. He worked nights and slept there during the days.
Provided that we only came in quite late at night, it was all right with him, he said, if we crashed-out
on the bed -- as long as we left early in the morning. He said he'd get in trouble if the Montessori
people ever found out he'd let strangers in among their stuff. He said we were welcome to make use of
the meager facilities whenever we wanted. Groovy. We were saved!
We slept there for a month or more, parking our truck just down the dirt road a ways. We never saw
him. Our paths never crossed. In late at night, sleep, wake up early; straighten the blankets and leave -a nice enough situation. We were grateful to our benefactor.
But we knew this couldn't go on forever. We met some folks who told us about a community living
out in the desert in a place called Redington Canyon. They urged us to come join them. We went and
checked it out. What a beautiful place! Many other Hippies camped all over the area, either on top, or
down the steep cliffs beside the tiny trickling streamlet which was only a half inch wide and in the
summer dried up entirely leaving only stagnant pools.
We climbed down the steep sides of Redington Canyon with our gear. We found a soft sandy area
large enough for our tent and made it our home. The little stream of delicious cool water made a natural
pool right beside us, perfect for bathing or washing vegetables. We built a firepit of stones in front of
the flaps of our tent. What a luscious place to live! What a beautiful blue sky above the canyon walls!
The colors of the rocks more beautiful than any painting. And there were wonderful interesting little
animals, rabbits and lizards. And just a few feet below our camp was another amazing sight -- a huge,
wide dry waterfall, a two hundred-foot drop! It was waterless except for our tiny streamlet that spewed
out and fell far far far down to land in a shallow pool that mirrored the sky.
I wondered how anyone could ever get down to the bottom? A little exploration led me to metal
pinions where climbers had attached ropes to make the hazardous descent. And during the days we
camped there I observed several climbers go up and down, some without any ropes at all. I don't know
how they could do such a thing.
One day we heard a lot of yelling and a guy came running past us screaming, asking if anyone had a
rope? A young blond woman had fallen to her death. She had been climbing without ropes with two
male friends when she slipped and fell. I remembered seeing them walk past our camp earlier in the
day. It's so strange to think of someone alive one minute and dead the next... I myself got dizzy just
looking over the edge. I wouldn't allow Owl to get anywhere near it.
We made occasional trips to Tucson for groceries. One day we discovered a produce company
which was throwing away three fifty gallon drums of ripe tomatoes and peppers. There didn't seem to
be anything wrong with any of them other than the fact that they were so ripe that they wouldn't last too
long on store shelves. Owl and I packed them into crates and tried to figure our something to do with
them. I took them to the Health Food Co-op and sold half of them to the produce manager! I didn't tell
45
him where I had gotten them until after he paid me. He was ticked off. He thought since I had gotten
them free I should have given them to him free! And after Owl and I had spent all morning cleaning
them and packing them neatly!
I was trying to learn to use my ingenuity to make money. Some people seemed to think there was
something wrong with that. Like the hippie silversmith who sometimes paid me to cut stones for him.
He was never happy. He always seemed to want me to work for free. Tucson was a city. And it was
basically full of city people who could be very nasty to each other, and to us. And we didn't really need
that. It always felt good to get out of Tucson.
The day we found all the tomatoes and peppers I gave many of them away to poor people. And at
the end of the day we returned to Redington Canyon and toted about forty pounds of them down to our
camp. We washed them in the pool and built a fire and tried to learn how to can. We packed them in
bell jars and ate spaghetti solid for a week. The tomatoes we canned didn't hold up very well, but it was
fun and we learned from the experience.
Redington Canyon was so beautiful! How long did we live there? A month? Two months? It's hard
to say, so wonderful were the days. Time passed sublimely: a book of verses, a glass of wine, a loaf of
bread, and each other: Paradise enough, as old Omar Khayyam said nine hundred years ago.
Our canyon camp in the soft sand above the ancient dry waterfall was one of the most beautiful
places we've ever called home.
But nothing lasts forever. There came a day when great black storm clouds gathered. The rains
began suddenly late one afternoon. We were relaxing in our tent and didn't give it much thought at first.
But after an hour I noticed that the little pool of water beside us had risen and was coming into our tent.
So I had a look and was astonished to see that the water was rising everywhere and very quickly. I got
Owl up and showed her the situation and together we hurriedly gathered our belongings and made
several trips to set them on a ledge fifteen feet up alongside the path which led to the top of the canyon
wall. Over the roar of the storm I could hear the distant voices of other anxious campers who were
making similar moves.
Already the trickling stream we had loved so much had turned into a fast moving river impossible to
cross in most places. I looked for Owl and could see that she was standing with some belongings in her
hands on the wrong side of rushing water. I yelled to get her attention. So loud was nature roaring
around us that she could barely hear me although she was only thirty feet away. I pointed upstream and
together we made our way, her on one side, me on the other, looking for a safe place for her to cross.
There was none. The only possible place was a dangerous slippery piece of rock that stretched to within
five feet of the other side. Crossing there would require getting our feet into the torrent in a place that
was more than a foot deep and rising fast.
On my signal Owl jumped and I caught her hand. Both of us were in the water up to our knees now,
our feet were slipping, but we were catching and holding each other in place and helping each other
climb out of the rushing stream and up the sides of the wet rocks.
In the turmoil we scarcely noticed that the darkness of the storm was turning into a pitch-black night
where we soon would not be able to see our hands in front of our faces. And we had no flashlight. And
we still had to climb the steep path up the canyon wall.
In the daylight and in dry weather the path had been easy as cake. But in the pouring rain the sides
of the canyon turned into slippery mud two inches thick. Bushes were our handholds and we had to be
careful because their roots were not always deep and could pull out suddenly. And each foothold had to
46
be tried carefully. I tied Owl to myself with a short section of rope and we ascended a few inches at a
time. We probably should have left our tent and sleeping bags behind but we didn't. They were wet and
heavy and difficult to manage but we carried them up with us. It was a good three hundred feet up to
the parking area. Our hearts were in our throats all the way.
Below us the whole world had gone insane. What had been a streamlet one inch deep and wide was
now a gouging river carrying with it boulders the size of cars -- all roaring towards the two hundred
foot drop of the waterfall. We could hear its roar now above the screaming storm as boulders and river
plunged over the edge into the crashing, plunging abyss of certain death, which would have been our
fate if one foot or hand had slipped as we struggled upwards on that steeply slanted slippery, muddy
path.
The night was so dark! We couldn't even see each other or the path or anything -- except when the
flashes of lightning split the sky and lit the rain-soaked walls with searing light as bright as day. Often
we had to totally stop and just hang there waiting for the next flash to see where we were going. Once
in the darkness we got totally off the right path and were on the verge of a hideous crevasse when
lightening split the sky and revealed the error. We had to carefully turn around and backtrack thirty feet.
An angel of Providence must have guided our slipping fingers and feet because otherwise I don't
know how we finally reached the top of the cliff. I was praying all the way...
We set down our bags and turned and looked down into oblivion. Standing safely amidst the sweetsmelling rain-soaked sagebrush in the flashes of lightning we could see what appeared to be the gaping
maw of Hell. My eyes will never forget the nightmare vision, a hideous raging river over a hundred feet
wide and probably thirty feet deep or more, plunging, roaring -- an awesome vision of apocalypse...
I've never before or since heard a roar so loud.
What a dumb thing we'd done -- camping beside that little mountain stream in flash-flood season!
Our inch by inch ascent to the top of Redington Canyon that night during the flashflood surely ranks as
one of our most harrowing experiences.
***
Now it rained and rained. We returned to Tucson and having no other dry place to go we sought out
the kind bed in the garage of the Montessori School. There simply was no place else. Well, he'd told us
we could make use of it whenever we needed. So we did.
This could have gone on for a long time more. We left the place neat as a pin each morning, went
out into Tucson to do our thing. We returned each evening.
So those are the drastic, chaotic, and weird circumstances that led us innocently into a kind of funny
predicament -- though it sure didn't seem so funny at the time. What we did not know -- is that this
"kind Montessori janitor" had totally forgotten we existed. He thought we had taken him up on his offer
for a few days and gone off somewhere forever. We straightened up so well that he never had any idea
that we were still sleeping in there nightly -- months after he had given us permission.
The situation eventually exploded one day when I got a little ill and I wondered if he'd mind terribly
if we slept in a little -- just this one morning. I figured he was so nice to have given us this
arrangement, that with his big heart, (probably grown pure by working for such an enlightened school),
47
he might even fix us coffee and have a laugh with us this morning before we left. In fact I had been
worrying that he might be considering us rude for using his hospitality and completely ignoring him. At
least we should say "Hi" to him once in a while.
So, we slept in.
A beam of light woke us. The large garage door was slowly swinging up, opening. People were
talking outside. I had expected only him. I started to look for my clothes but the door was already half
open, so I stopped and just sat there and waited. Well, I figured I may as well not be flustered. Be civil.
Be charming! I called out, "Hello!"
The door stopped opening. The voices suddenly sounded alarmed.
"There's someone in there!"
"It must be a thief!"
"You hold him. I'll call the police!"
"Wait! There's no way of knowing how big he is! You better stay!"
"Wait!" I hollered out, "It's just me and Owl!" The door opened all the way. Men were looking in.
"Who?" one asked. The other said quite surprised. "He's got a woman in there!"
"Where?"
"There! See? Sitting beside him on the bed! Golly!"
"Hey you guys! It's just us! I was sick. We slept a little late is all!" They came in a little. "Just a
minute. We'll put on our clothes and come outside!"
"No. You stay right there till we get the police. I'm warning you."
"No way! Here we come!" And we stepped out. "Hi!" I offered friendily. "Good to see you. Hope I
didn't inconvenience you by sleeping late!"
"I remember this guy! I've seen him before! Months ago. What are you up to man?" He looked
mean.
I backtracked. "Hey! You said we could sleep in there while you worked. That's what you told us!
You're the one said we could!"
Astonished: "That was months ago. For a couple nights! You mean you been here every night since
then?"
"Yeah, just about. Heck. We straightened it up afterwards. But it never occurred to me you didn't
know we were here..."
"That's crazy. Well it's over! Get out of here and don't ever come back."
They looked over our rig, more amazed than ever, checking it thoroughly to make sure we hadn't
thieved anything from the garage.
I bid 'em goodbye. As we drove off they were looking extremely ornery and ruffled.
And here I'd been thinking them Montessori people were so dang enlightened!
48
***
We realized it was about time we split town totally. There was no telling how the Montessori
problem might sound to the police if someone decided to report the incident. Anyway, I'd finally
realized that we'd been remaining in Tucson seeking something that just wasn't there any more. My old
friends had gone to the mountains or they'd gone to hot spring communes or they'd gone to smaller
desert towns.
The name of Bisbee, Arizona came up often as a magic place, a place to be. I thought, maybe that's
where the people went. So in March of 1977, we filled the tank with gas and went to visit one of the
biggest holes man has ever made -- literally. You've got to see that huge old open pit copper mine to
believe it.
We putted into South Bisbee -- gravel roads and a few sleepy desert trees beside old wooden homes
left from the days when the huge mine boomed. Now in the general depression of things, they were
rented mostly by hippies who searched the tailings for precious turquoise and malachite for making
jewelry. And there were other peripheral people, people on the edge -- not quite city people, not quite
country people.
Rather than the froufrou of traffic, the only noises one might hear: birdsong from atop a cactus,
aspen leaves tinkling in a high rushing breeze, a bunny running off through the sage, tumbleweeds
slowly rolling into eternity.
A child watched from her yard and laughed and pulled her mama's skirts.
We stayed in a dirt rut alley behind some Hippie lady's house who we rarely met and only vaguely
got to know.
Owl was so young and pretty, just eighteen years old, and very French... Sometimes men plague
beautiful women. Constantly they'd try to cut her from the herd. There always seemed to be someone
arranging some perfidious ploy, some dorky device -- tripping us up, setting us up, and trying to knock
us over, so they could appear to "rescue" her.
If Owl and I had the slightest disagreement some bleary-eyed whiskey-breathed galoot was sure to
defend the down-trodden young woman, assuring her she didn't have to listen to me or even be near me
-- and in the same beery breath he'd ask her if she wanted him to take her someplace. The town reeked
of these slobbery, drunken "saviors" and they always backed each other up and split the spoils. These
Bisbee buddies were as dangerous in their own way to us as the doctors and police of Tucson -- and
more heartless if that's possible.
So we kept to ourselves off in the local countryside and made up our minds to clear out of that town
as soon as we could scrape together enough money.
For Owl, a cruel maestro of fate ever and again pointed a finger and moiled danger round her tender
life. These situations continually gathered upon us suddenly just like desert thunderstorms -- black
clouds forming quickly out of nowhere, leaving us soaked and trembling in our little tent; lightning
flashing long spider-fingers across the night, cracking like gun-shots. Often, we left predicaments
quickly in the middle of the night, never to return again.
I found the prettiest turquoise I'd ever seen in Bisbee. I whiled away many days grinding cabochons
49
with my homemade twelve-volt equipment.
In the spring I sold some of those gems and hocked my chainsaw. This gave us gas money enough to
leave Arizona and head for British Columbia. We wanted to get back where we'd started from. When I
recalled all the bullshit we'd been through over the past year, it all seemed such a waste. If we'd simply
stayed in British Columbia, we'd probably be homesteading in the mountains there by now -- maybe
with a baby in our arms. Why had we ever left? I couldn't figure it out.
Poor Owl. She'd sure been raked over the coals... What a relief it would be to get her away from
Arizona's psychiatric Frankenstein doctors and drunken cowboys. They all seemed to want to drool all
over her.
We left Bisbee with all that trouble rumbling like thunder behind us. But we left towing a little red,
white, and blue U.S. Mail truck that I bought for thirty dollars from Rainbow folks there. Its engine was
kaput and the tranny was automatic. But it was a Jeep, a thoroughbred of the wilderness, and to my
heart wilderness was home.
If everything worked out this boxy Jeep would become our wandering palace in which we might
seek our homestead over freeways or rutty mountain forest roads, with locks on the doors... to keep out
the thunder and lightning...
50
FOUR
CHOO-CHOO
Four little cylinders huff and puff on the winding black snake road, beneath a jeweled sky embossed
on a blackleather Universe tinted in myriad shades of silver by an ancient Indian Spirit craftsman
whose chanted sacred songs are not unlike the rhythmical chugging of our little engine.
Invading the darkness, The Scout's headlights, generally heading north, wind down, down, the south
wall of the Grand Canyon and up, up, the north wall, slow as a turtle. Four little cylinders, pulling a
second vehicle behind, a red, white and blue Jeep mail-box, up the steep canyon wall, in compound low
gears, sometimes only five miles per hour -- not very safe on a narrow winding road at night. Truckers
brake hard when they come upon us unexpectedly in the dark, their CBS warning most of them about
our dangerously slow moving rig. But late night sedans have no warning system and so we had a
couple of close calls.
In Tucson I'd learned how to rebuild the transmission, but I still hadn't figured out how to do it quite
right. I had not tightened the impeller shaft nut to 150-lbs. torque -- in fact it was only finger tight! So
on the grades, it popped out of first gear constantly; and the steeper the grade the more often it popped
out -- and the more violently. Sometimes Owly and I both had to hold the gearshift lever in gear with
all our might, to get up an especially steep grade.
Even worse, we were afraid we'd pop a wheel cylinder or the master cylinder, as had already
happened a couple times over the past winter with the old truck -- leaving us with no brakes at all. So
far this had always occurred on flat surfaces and at slow speeds... Lucky, lucky...
So every steep downgrade was like a potential horror movie. I went over with Owl time after time
that if I ever yelled at her to jump, she had better do it. Better to jump out at sixty miles per hour than to
ride the truck off a cliff.
The radiator inevitably boiled over on very upgrade, boiling water and billowing steam erupting like
a volcano, obscuring the windshield. So we carried extra water. There wasn't always a spot to pull over
either and we often ended up running the radiator rather dry before we could find somewhere safe to
pull over and crack the cap to cool the Beasty down. Getting scalded was a regular occurrence.
The flatbed was full of gear -- extra carburetors, extra starters, extra solenoids, extra gas. Before we
left we'd found a hundred pounds of well wrapped out-of-date cheese and several cases of unopened
quart containers of yogurt in a grocery-store dumpster. Delicious. We kept that stuff in a cool place
under a tarp. A prize possession was a beautiful moon hubcap, huge and antique, from some car of
thirties vintage, found in the desert near Bisbee and now serving as our special serving tray and seed
cleaner.
On top of everything was a silly little gray baby billygoat we'd bought for another thirty dollars -the start of our dream-farm, our first livestock. We had high hopes.
"Goaty" was sure he was smarter than either of us. He chewed his straw with aplomb atop our load
while watching the world fly by. I'm sure, from his attitude, he figured that in some way it was HE who
was actually making this weird metal hill move through the desert.
When all the traveling finally wore us out, we'd pull over at a safe open place and sleep beneath the
stars. Sometimes life is so scary one lays awake worrying until exhaustion conquers. Sleep heals, and
in the brave morning we are exhilarated at the prospect of a cup of java in a pretty little tiny town cafe.
The motor roars to life and slowly we join the great noisy herd of metal highway beasts moving north
51
and all probably looking for coffee.
Life would be so easy without that Jeep mailbox we were pulling! Without that we could scoot right
along, getting good gas mileage and we'd probably never pop out of gear, I'd think. But the mailbox is
warm, and closes tight to keep out the winter chill. Its windows are huge and so the inside stays sunny
and bright! Once we managed to get the motor rebuilt, the boxy Jeep would become a wonder-filled
magic carpet to fly us to thousands of beautiful rendezvous -- the amazing Gypsy dream. So it seemed
like pulling it behind us now would eventually be worth the extra hardships -- we hoped.
We wanted to go home. What a magical word: home. It's not a place -- it's a feeling. A driftwood
shack on a windswept beach in Vancouver, British Columbia seemed to have once been that home to
us. Our hearts were there. Of course the illegal shack wasn't what most people would call a home. But
we were different from most people in a lot of ways. What constituted a home to us maybe couldn't
help but be a different sort of thing. The most important criteria seemed to be happiness. Many people
live in million dollar houses -- and still feel wasted, lonely, desperate. Did their million-dollar house
constitute a "home"? Somehow in my way of seeing things, no, it would not. But despite my opinions,
wherever we'd finally settle would depend as much on Owl's vision too. I needed her input and that was
in short supply -- though she'd voiced happiness about returning to B.C.. She had been happy there.
So British Columbia was our destination in our search for home and happiness. Opportunities
seemed more abundant there. Our dreams had been born there. We had friends there. People seemed to
accept us and respect us there.
The United States had not been very kind or understanding to Owl (or to me either for that matter).
We'd felt pretty short changed lately. Experiences in Vermont and in Tucson and Bisbee had soured us,
exasperated us. It was time to go home. If everything worked out -- we'd be spending another amazing
summer on Wreck Beach again. Now that was an exciting prospect...
We skipped California. The last thing we needed now was the kind of welcome California loves to
give people like us. Owl didn't understand. She'd never been to Cal. It was a little complicated to
explain it to her. Like most people, she'd heard so many wonderful things about California; she was
kind of interested in checking it out. I just asked her to take my word for it. Scraggly low-income folks
are considered to be such a plague there that they'd surely lock us up and separate us with less
compassion than they'd show to a flea thrown in the fire. We would not so much as set a foot on
California soil. No way.
So, we went due North, through Utah and Nevada. In Ely, Nevada we got off the main highway and
took a sixty mile dirt road short-cut westward. There were no towns and no homes and practically no
ranches.
What there were, were thousands of Bristle Cone Pines, the oldest trees in the world, some of them
over two thousand years old! At the time we didn't know what they were or that they were protected;
we only knew the desert nights were cold this time of the year. When the axle broke in the middle of
nowhere, we only saw those relics of antiquity as a viable source of firewood. My little handsaw ate
them up like candy; they burned fast and hot in the cool desert night.
For millennia they had contemplated the eternal desert, awaiting the hour they would warm us.
Absorbed in the dancing flames beneath the splendorous Milky Way, we saw requited, their prehistoric
passions; and we fell asleep sitting up, leaning against each other, wrapped in an old Indian blanket,
beside their glowing embers. Goaty lay down next to us and gazed knowingly into the pyre of ancient
52
life.
And in Owl's warm womb another pair of eyes watched the sacred writhings of the Bristlecone
Pines, felt their heat as they rejoined the cores of stars, the atomic energy eternal; glimpsed their
passing imaginations, heard their final earthly sighs.
Only one car passed in twenty-four hours. It didn't stop. The next one did though, and took me into
the nearest town where I ordered a new axle and hitched back to Owl who I'd perhaps rashly left with
the truck. I became anxious for her safety and a young fellow in a '57 Chevy was kind enough to take
me all the way out there though he wasn't going that way.
Two days later I had equal good luck hitching in to pick up the replacement part and getting back
quickly. The axle wasn't hard to replace and soon we were on our way again -- only to have a blowout
and have to put on the spare. We were always short on money. Now we'd have to somehow dig up
another tire. You just can't wander around like this without a spare.
The old gravel road led us alongside farms that had gone belly-up decades ago. Weathered hulks and
shells of hundred years old plus farm buildings, grown over with sagebrush and piles of sand. And piles
of twisted, rusted useless junk. Lonely things.
Then I saw, way off in the distance, tires. Old tires. Not many, just maybe twenty -- but just one
would do me. I ran out across the mesa, keeping one eye open for rattlers. Sure enough. I found a goodenough tire.
There was more to see. Beautiful things. Parts of an old Model T. Look at that seat! An old solid
metal contour front seat! A work of art in itself. A love seat for me and Owl to sit in around our
campfire beneath the stars. I bet we'd not be the first lovers to share it.
I carried the old love seat back to the Scout and set it up nicely on the flatbed facing to the rear. Owl
was already calling it pretty and clapping her hands. We got out an old patch quilt and folded it into a
comfortable pillow. Yummy! The baby goat eyed the new addition with interest and promptly hunkered
himself right down, looked straight at us and seemed to say, "Thanks! It fits me fine! Drive on!"
A gravel road can be hard on an old car. You never know what will shake loose next. Heck! It's all
shaking loose! It's a big bucket of bolts and the racket shatters any confidence one may have had when
the trip began. We were very glad when we finally saw the last of the clouds of sand and flying stones
and found ourselves in southeast Oregon, heading west on genuine asphalt.
Oregon!
Driving an old dilapidated truck long highway miles on a shoestring is always a "hold your breath"
ordeal. The contingent calamities: wrecks, breakdowns, expensive and jerry-rigged repairs, rednecks,
nazis, destitution, illness, ad infinitum -- one lives knowing that at any moment one might be stripped
of every possession, left hitchhiking on the windy highway, more vulnerable than ever.
The past year had taken its toll on our nerves. Oil-painted seascapes haunted our minds. The sea!
The sea! The ends of the earth. The end of journeys. "All the rivers flow into the sea..." Our lives were
aching, winding rivers. We were running to the sea!
We became feverish to tell our hearts to the sea, to wash off the nausea caused by the callous world
that had dirtied us. The sea was calling us, to heal us, as it had so often on Wreck Beach.
Owl's silence was gnawing on me. Where once we had struggled to understand each other, I with a
bit of broken French, she with her much better English, and with gestures and loving eye contact, with
53
untiring diligence, enough to fill our lives with meaning -- now we seemed to have worn thin upon
each other, like frayed garments. Long silences weighed heavily, rarely interspersed with comment. Too
rarely. Unless we could communicate more, there would be large spaces left blank, beautiful moments
unexplored and unshared, questions unanswered. A strong faith impelled us to believe we deeply loved
each other but it was plain to see we were hurting. We could not talk together and we missed each other
desperately though we sat side by side, on this life-journey. Our hearts cried to find the secret path back
into our blithesome spirit and we feared we would become forever lost from each other -- unless
something -- something -- unless we could stand in the sea again and let the Ocean Spirit come into us
and wash the useless crud from our souls. Once we had been children together on the Golden Sands.
"Oh Great Sea! Rid us of these jejune ages! This tiresome false garb covering our True Hearts. We
are so weary on this journey and we ache through and through. Never did we hurt in those days
dancing and loving in your spray. Why did we ever leave? Be that as it may; now at last we'll come
home and stay forever."
"Let's go straight to the ocean!" I exuberated.
Owl caught the fire, and echoed, "We weel go rhite now to the ocean, RobeenTom? I whant to
sweem!"
We looked on the map. There was no road across the bottom of the state to the sea unless we went
south into California to Crescent City. But I wouldn't do that. Not California. Not even for a few miles.
So how do we get to the sea when there is no road to the sea?
In a little gas station a young man told us there actually was logging roads over to Gold Beach. But
they weren't shown on maps because the roads were too rough. "Point me the way", says I. "I think
we'll mend our hearts on that shore tonight."
Owl slid next to me and lay her head on my shoulder melting me with her whispered words. "I weel
cuke supaire hon the sanns and I weel wush mhy hhair in the oshean Rom. We weel sleep on the sanns
tonite! It weel be so good!"
Owl's voice kindled my fever. To hear her voice! To be so assured that our hearts were feeling the
same tugs, sharing the same visions! The sea! Our happiness would be restored in just a few more
miles!
Yes. We were rushing to the sea now. Our dreams were dancing on the sands already. We must hurry
and catch them before they fade into the mist.
But too fast. We had no prudence, no caution. We should have looked closer at the map. We should
have asked the opinions of some locals. We shouldn't have allowed our hearts to yank us out of our
shoes.
I've done foolish things in my life but the one that follows could win the golden dum-dum.
54
FIVE
CLIFF HANGER
The country was pretty at first, Oregon lush greenery, pastel homes with large yards of shade trees.
Then the land rose into the clear-cut scalp of raped earth. The terrible gravel grade climbed through the
swath of baking shadeless waste, barren detritus tumbling upon itself left from carving the cut-backs of
the steep logging-road into the mountains; becoming so steep they seemed preposterous.
If I hadn't seen the logging trucks using this glut-cut for an Indy 500 I'd not have believed such high
speeds on such narrow steep roads possible. Inexperienced at sharing the road with such as these, I
somehow thought my little choo-choo train wouldn't be in their way as I putted ever upward into the
clear morning sky, at two MPH on the steepest grades. And when the log trucks passed us either way at
forty or fifty MPH on this narrow road, it was like being in a tornado.
Somehow I had the mistaken idea that we were so close to the sea that we merely had to accomplish
one grade up and it would all be downhill and easy-going from thereon. I was slowly to realize that this
Hell was one treacherous grade after another for maybe seventy miles. The Nevada gravel road had
been a romp in the park compared to what we had here.
Inch by inch a mile or two passed. Atop one grade we looked upon an untamed river, thundering
55
white-water tumbling to the sea: the Rogue. Here, high above, the road followed the river awhile.
Always there was the terrifying drop-off beside us, usually with no visible bottom. Of course there was
no railing and too, the road edge was ever crumbling in various stages of decay.
With a deafening roar two logging trucks passed each other at sixty miles per hour and veered
around us, spraying gravel all over our rigs like a thousand simultaneous gunshots. What a commotion!
There was just barely room enough for two trucks to pass in opposite directions -- but clearly, there was
no room for three. This was Russian Roulette. Our hearts were choking in our throats.
The road began to split into many unmarked roads; we chose them by guess. After two hours we
were quite lost.
Here we are a little four-cylinder truck towing a larger four-cylinder van. We are in compound low.
We are creeping along up steep winding slopes, alternating between first and second gears. We
continually pop out of first and with this weight and this degree of incline, it explodes out of gear,
shaking both cars and us, time after time. Steam from the screaming radiator is obliterating our vision.
Windshield wipers are slapping like mad.
When we finally reach the top, the downhill grade begins, all this weight is being stopped from
hurtling us like cannonballs into the abyss by four little antiquated nine-inch brakes and a brake fluid
system that has failed often in the past months. Inevitably, on the trip down the brakes fade; soon I am
standing on the pedal. Smoke pours from the linings; and we know we are losing control. Gears
scream. The only thing good is that the downhill speed is cooling the radiator.
Time after time, by pressing on the foot brake with all the pressure I can muster and with Owl
pulling on the emergency brake lever with all her strength -- we barely manage to slow the runaway
rigs. Several times we bring them to total stops in wider places at the top of grades and let the brakes
cool off and fill the radiator.
Then there came the time when we had no choice but to stop in the middle of a bad downhill
section. We had to rest the machine or we'd never get up the next grade. Stinky smoke poured out of the
brake shoes -- and the brakes did not want to hold! I pumped and pumped for maximum pedal till it
was rock hard -- but still the trucks crept forward. We needed a rock or two under a wheel. I literally
stood on the brake. Owl jumped out and jabbed her shoulder into the grill, her hands grabbed the
fender, her heels dug into the road -- skidding along. The rigs stopped. I yelled for Owl to put a rock
under the front wheels. She moved as fast as she could to find a good large rock and stuff it in place.
But because her mental condition must have had a weird tinge of dyslexia (when pressed, she could get
very confused) she put the rock against the backside of the wheel, instead of the front -- and as I eased
off on the brakes, the spent emergency brake just held for a moment until I was out the door -- and the
trucks suddenly plummeted down the road! I tried to hold the car with my shoulder and Owl pulled
back on the rear bumper -- Then I let loose to quickly open the door -- but the door was jammed shut
and the driverless rigs were really rolling now! I jumped through the window with one hand on the
steering wheel of the Scout -- which was moving faster and faster down the road -- scarce inches from
the sheer bottomless edge. Standing on the brake pedal again I slowly brought the rigs to a stop. Owl,
left far behind, had to run a long way to catch up with the rigs. I was screaming at her to hurry at the
top of my lungs. I screamed till I was hoarse. Frazzled and silent she found rocks and put them in front
of the wheels, the right way.
We were bug-eyed with fear as we stood catching our breath; recoiling nervously from our close
brush with death and our harsh words at each other. Owl was biting her lip. I knew she was thinking
about that dumb rock placement. I hoped she was.
56
During all this turmoil the terrified goatbaby bleated his heart out and strained against his tether
twisting round and round. His remorse gnawed at us and he only calmed when we held him. Then he
hid his head under our arms. Such a baby!
We rested for a half-hour or forty-five minutes and got on our way again. Up and down, up and
down the ridge roads, sliding on gravel, loose metal body parts made tumultuous clanking and grating
noises. Inching along for half an hour up a winding narrow strip of bull-dozed road beside the hideous
chasm -- then careening for three minutes down an equally absurd horror -- followed by another
upward crawl for fifteen more agonizing minutes in compound low and -- dropping again like a four
ton roller coaster, faster and faster, afraid to use the scrawny brakes too much -- and careening log
trucks throwing up so much dust that our visibility was often totally nil... A feeling of utter stupidity
was dawning on me. "What are we doing here? Dying?"
Goaty gnashed his teeth. His frantic eyes bulged. He gaped terror-stricken through the windshield.
Every time I glanced over at him I flashed on medieval drawings of goat heads leering in ancient
images of death and the underworld. "So that's what you're doing here!" I thought morbidly to myself. I
prayed aloud.
We were approaching the bottom of a long descent and towards the last stretch I let the speed gather
to get a run on the steep upward climb; fourth gear, third gear, second gear, first -- but it kept popping
out of first and absolutely would not stay in. So we went to second but the grade was too steep for
second and the motor tried to die so we feathered the clutch on the steep grade, sacrificing it to get
rolling a little, to keep up momentum... The clutch began to smoke and stink worse than the brakes. We
were out of water for the radiator. The motor was hot. It died. The brakes were almost too faded to
hold. The rigs were jerking, sliding back inches at a time. Total brake-loss was immanent. Nobody in
the world can control the steering of a truck and trailer backing downhill without brakes. Again the
hellacious mental images of everything going backwards over the cliff.
"Hold it back, Owly!!” I screamed.
She vaulted over the side and wedged her back into the rear bumper and her heels into the road and
yelled, "I Hhold! I Hhold! My Ghod Rhom! Stop de truk! It weel gho ovair, RHOM!"
Both my feet pressed hard on the brake with my hands pulled up under the seat to put more brake
leverage downward. The vehicles still slipped back two inches! "Harder!" I screamed to Owl. She dug
in harder, silent now -- straining every fiber in her effort. The trucks backed another inch angling closer
to the chasm -- and then -- and then -- seemed to hold...
I jumped out and put my back to the rear bumper, but in that moment the trucks rolled back six more
inches though Owl strained desperately. With my back-muscles added beside Owl's to the rear bumper
the rigs stopped again. I told Owl to let go and put a rock behind the wheel as fast as she could while I
struggled alone to hold back the trucks from the precipice. Quickly she scrambled to the task, stooping
and grabbing a nearby rock and lodging it behind the wheel. Whew! I carefully slacked off my shoulder
and breathed a sigh of relief and stepped around the back -- when suddenly the trucks lurched
backwards right over the rock!! And I vaulted through the window again and jammed my feet into the
brake pedal and once again Owl forced every fiber of her being though her shoulders against the truck's
rear. Once again we stopped the rigs. Once again Owl blocked the wheel with a rock. A bigger rock.
Then she also blocked two more wheels. I slowly released the brake pedal and waited until I was
satisfied nothing could possibly move backward. I got out.
We had missed death by inches. The right rear wheel of the Jeep mail truck was over the edge -- But
57
the rigs were stopped. Had they backed any further the weight would have shifted, tipped, and
everything would have vanished in a cloud of dust.
We rested a long time. The motor cooled off. The brakes cooled off. The clutch cooled off. We
decided to turn around.
Over and over in my mind's eye I convulsed with visions of the vehicles going over the edge and
tumbling into the abyss, the little tethered goat bleating desperately into eternity as his voice
disappeared down, down, down, into oblivion. But it was a hallucination. We were safe. It had almost
happened. But it had not happened. On the other hand -- it might happen momentarily -- in the wink of
an eye. And with that, my mind convulsed the vision -- again -- and again. There was no doubt about it
-- we were having a bad day.
We weren't out of the mountains yet. I disconnected the detachable hardtop of the Scout and set it on
the flatbed -- to make getting in and out faster in emergencies. I also untethered the baby, so that just in
case, he might jump free. At least he'd have a chance. He climbed right into Owl's lap and tucked his
head under her armpit, covering his eyes. Good idea Goaty. Maybe I'll use the other side.
I looked at Owl and had an edifying feeling. Her life was here. She had strained every muscle
saving these rigs. Once again, she'd shown me her strength.
We weren't out of danger yet. We still had to go back. But first we had to turn two rigs around in a
narrow gravel road, between curves and hills where log trucks whizzed by like freight trains; in the
silence, we could hear them coming a half mile away -- louder and louder until they were upon us. I
decided we'd have to separate our two trucks and turn them around one at a time and reconnect them
facing the other way; and we must keep our ears open for those trucks because in order to accomplish
this dangerous maneuver we'd be blocking the whole road at times.
We waited nearly an hour until the brakes and clutch and radiator had all cooled off. Dealing with
the dangling Jeep was the scariest. We pulled the Jeep's rear wheel back up unto the road with the Scout
and straightened it out. Then after separating the two rigs and turning the Scout around, we slowly
moved the Jeep backwards. I sat at the wheel and backed downhill and in towards the mountain; then
by cranking the wheels first this way and then that way, and by pushing and pulling, we finally coasted
the Jeep down behind the Scout and reconnected the hitch. Only one log truck passed during these
perilous moments, and he passed safely.
Now we were ready to start back. We knew the same problems would repeat themselves on the way
back, with some exceptions. The clutch would never be the same. Owl now rode in the Jeep behind me
so that on the downgrades at a handsignal from me she could apply the brakes of that rig to slow our
descent. Although Owl didn't know how to drive, this one thing she should be able to do -- if she could
only remember which pedal was the brake. The baby goat pushed his head between my back and the
seat so he didn't have to look. Poor thing.
Owl couldn't seem to get the hang of using the brake. The problem may have been that she hadn't
caught the part about the hand signal, or maybe she was pressing the wrong pedal, or maybe she was
too preoccupied, frazzled or petrified to see my signal. I don't know. But she often didn't apply the
brakes no matter how frantically I waved and screamed. Finally though, she would push the brake
pedal and the careening rigs would slow down. The Jeep had good ten-inch brakes that never failed. If
applied. She sure didn't like me to yell at her. I kept wondering if she was just getting even with me for
that? If so, she'd never say. Or maybe she was trying to make me crazy. I don't know. Owl's reasons for
doing things were inscrutable. Yikes! If only she could put that noise in her head aside and just learn to
58
use those brakes!
Up and down we went; mostly down. At last we climbed the last range and from the top we clearly
could see that we had one last downward stretch of maybe eight miles ahead of us with some seven or
eight percent switchbacks and tight curves. We parked the rigs and rested and had a bite to eat before
starting down. Owl was doing the brakes on my signal fairly well and things were going much
smoother -- at first. But then I guess she spaced out. I knew something was wrong because it was
obvious to me that my Scout was the only vehicle doing any braking for a long while. The linings were
starting to burn again. They were smoking and fading fast.
Way ahead and far below us, we could see what was probably the bottom. Between here and there
the curves were fewer, gentler, and less steep. Our two trucks were not responding at all well to my
brakes and unless I shifted the gears up the engine would rev too high and blow up.
Owl seemed not to see my frantic arm signal as we sped along faster and faster -- and a half-mile
ahead of us now I could see a logging truck. We were bearing down upon this truck about five miles
per hour faster than he was moving. He did not seem to notice us. I could not slow down. I was
standing on the foot brake again, pulling the emergency lever with my right hand with all my might.
Pretty soon I could see every detail of that truck very clear. The logs extended far out the rear,
flagged with a red cloth. He was driving the center of the road. So, there was no inside lane and no
outside lane either, no way for us to go around him. I could plainly see that the only thing that would
slow us down were those huge logs sticking out the rear of his truck because in a few moments they
would surely shatter my windshield and impale our lives and our dreams like butterflies speared with
toothpicks. And although I tromped upon the brake pedal with every ounce of my strength we were
soon near enough for me to clearly see the rings on the ends of the logs. Thirty feet. Twenty feet. Ten
feet. An arms length. I could put out my hand and touch the red cloth...... nothing. Then the logs
remained where they were. Then they were pulling away. We were slowing down! Owly was finally
pressing her brake.
The log truck pulled far ahead. Now we descended slowly. We were rolling through the pretty
countryside again. Farm houses, hedges, a gas station. People going to town. We found a grassy place
to stop and cool off. The baby got out on wobbly legs and seemed at least as relieved as we were to
have this day behind us.
We had all learned valuable lessons from the terrifying ordeal. Most importantly, Owl and I had
learned to trust each other a little more.
And Goaty had learned to keep an eye open for the first opportunity to get the Hell off this meat
wagon.
59
SIX
ASUNDER
We made the coast, ran through the surf, basked in the sand, cooked our nightly casserole over
driftwood fire, ate supper watching the sun set pink and red and pearl upon the far blue sea. The
forgiving sands absorbed our aches and sorrows. We slept warmly, softly entwined in each other's arms
beneath the stars; commingled with brine-scent and cliffwinds and whispering waves, enraptured. The
sea's wonder-filled majesty soothed life's debilitating harrows and pretensions, accentuating just
eternalness shared by all connecting energies -- assimilating our hearts and dreams.
Such is the ancient, magic prescription meant to heal diseases like chaos, shallowness, vagueness,
pessimism, foreboding, dullness, selfishness, smallness, uncreativeness, loneliness, confusion, fear of
dying, emotionlessness -- and maybe even poverty.
Poverty. The old rig was a death trap. So was the alternative -- hitchhiking. No, bad as the Scout
was, with a little effort and money, I could make her safe. This, I absolutely knew I would accomplish
-- soon. Before we'd had a vehicle, we'd been possible prey to every predator that spotted us. Without a
vehicle to escape fast and far, road couples are vulnerable as turtles without shells.
A truck can be a tool to make a living, a way to carry other moneymaking tools, a way to get to a
job. A truck is a home, a place for my Owl to sit and do beadwork or knitting or reading or cooking,
while I am at a job. It contains the rudiments of everything we will need in every home we will share.
And the truck will carry us to the places in which we may search for a home.
Lose our truck and we are back to square one, back to hitchhiking, back to depending on other
people's trucks to tote us, back to counting on their no-strings-attached kindheartedness, back to
vulturemen circling to get a better look at Owl, back to townsfolk wondering when we had our last
bath, plotting ugly confrontations with us to satisfy their warped egos, back to policemen sitting in their
cars, eyeing us, wondering if they've seen our face on a wanted poster, wondering what we're running
from -- maybe fantasizing what my pretty woman would do in this strange town if he locked me up for
vagrancy... sometimes wondering if he could just lock her up -- just for a few days...
No, somehow we'd find a way to keep our truck running. It felt like life or death.
But the Scout was rusting away. In Lincoln City on a steep grade of highway 101, in heavy traffic,
we almost lost our trailer-hitch -- and the Jeep. That we didn't was either sheer luck or pure Providence.
I felt hairs stiffening on the back of my neck. I pulled over and stopped the rigs. While Owl held the
brake with her foot I jumped out to check the trailer hitch and discovered the Jeep and hitch hung to the
Scout by one single solitary unnutted bolt. A weld had broke. Had I not noticed this, the Jeep would
have broken loose and careened through city traffic. That's all we'd need -- one more good nightmare!
We had the weld repaired and installed a thick safety chain.
But not all our luck was good. When we stopped for groceries, I somehow didn't realize the gradual
incline of the parking area and neglected to set the emergency brake. In our absence our untended rigs
slowly rolled into the side of a new Chrysler owned by an elderly couple. The police gave me a ticket.
I got the address of the couple and agreed to pay for the damages as soon as I got a job. I didn't
figure they'd amount to much -- it was only a small crease. I was angry with myself though for making
the stupid mistake. I didn't have any room in my life for stupid mistakes. We were indeed fortunate the
error hadn't cost us our rigs.
Then we were northward bound again. We are heading home to Vancouver -- and getting close!
60
Towns rolled by Tillamook, Rockaway, Manzanita. The seaside towns of Oregon coast remind me of
my high school days in Huntington Beach back in the sixties. The mainstreets are similar. Surfers in
wet suits. Nebraska tourists having a picnic, kicking sand out of their argyle socks and loafers. Second
hand stores and foggy early morning gas stations. Late night bars near the beach seem the same
everywhere. Driftwood art. Oil painters. Acrylics. Watercolors. Poets on logs. Dancers in moonlight on
the sand. Neon motel signs burning in the mist. Country. Cliffs. Pinnacles rising from the sea. Wealth in
old Spanish stucco. Opulence in nature.
South of Cannon Beach we found a beautiful park and lingered in the area, parking our rigs there to
sleep. I was hoping to find some day-work in Cannon Beach to get gas and food money. Maybe sell a
gem or two. Short of that we'd resort to panhandling. Oh God! I hoped we wouldn't have to do that. It
always made me feel so lousy about myself!
But the first priority was to conk out for a while. We'd been making mistakes and that was a sure
sign we needed rest. We were so exhausted we didn't even get out of our bed in the Jeep for forty-eight
hours except to stagger to the outhouse. We presumed the roadside park was free -- which would have
fit neatly into our scheme of things because we were about broke. We didn't see the little sign nailed to
the tree. Neither did we notice the caretaker's cabin hidden in the trees. When we finally did notice
those things we left the area quickly but while trying to make some money in the nearby communities
we returned to the park to spend nights anyway, coming in after dark and leaving early in the morning
before any police cars spotted us. There were rarely any other cars. The beauty and solitude of the large
grove of mossy trees and the waves pounding nearby on warm sands was very healing.
We were numb. This happens to us every so often. We accumulate so much chaotic-frenetic energy
that we get to a point where we have to just rest for a few days until our nervous systems get back to
normal. This was one of those times.
Well, one early morning the caretaker came by and told us he expected us to pay him six dollars per
night. I told him we were broke and didn't have six dollars. I explained we were nearly out of gas and
were looking for work. I offered to work for him. He listened patiently while I spilt my guts and then,
looking me straight in the eye, he calmly told me it was no concern of his what our problems were. If
we stayed in his park over night he expected six dollars. Angrily I told him I had two dollars to my
name and we needed that two dollars for my gas tank. He told me I was not to leave until he had his six
dollars. I thrust the two dollars at him.
"Take it. That's all I got!"
Owl and I hurriedly gathered everything together. He stood by looking evil. I got the Scout running
and we rushed out and rolled down the highway.
Somewhere around Cannon Beach we noticed Goaty was missing. Where in the heck had he
disappeared? I distinctly remembered putting him on the back of the truck. We turned around to retrace
our steps -- and the Scout sputtered and coughed and ran out of gas. We got it over to the side of the
road. This was crazy.
I was worried to leave Owl in the rig beside the highway. After all, the caretaker might have the
cops out looking for us. But I hurriedly walked into Cannon Beach, hopefully to panhandle some gas
money fast. I was worrying about Goaty and worrying about the rigs -- but most of all about Owl.
I walked up to the first longhaired fellow I saw: a "brother". That he was. I blurted out the facts of
our predicament while he looked on surprised. I told him about Owl left waiting in the rigs alone on the
highway, about Goaty jumping ship, about the caretaker -- the possibility of police. I asked him if he
61
could help me get some gas money. Silently he dug in his pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill,
smiled and handed it to me. I could have turned somersaults. What a guy!!
So, I got gas back to the Scout, got the engine running, and proceeded back along the road towards
the camping area. We drove by the place slowly -- and were startled to see two cop cars parked there.
The officers were talking to the caretaker. We hurried by, hoping we weren't noticed. No sign of Goaty.
We drove down the road and parked on the side and waited a while. An hour later we drove by the
park slowly, calling his name. No response. Maybe he was hiding in a blackberry patch watching us.
But he never gave up a trace. He sure picked a beautiful place for his new home.
We began to retrace our steps slowly, north to Cannon Beach. Sputter. Cough. Out of gas again. That
gallon hadn't gone quite far enough. I got out the gas can and started walking.
A man in a Mercedes picked me up. He took me into town for the gas and drove me back. We
talked. He was OK. I told him how broke we were and about my opals and star rubies. He asked to see
them, thought they were pretty nice. He was interested. I told him I needed money so I'd give him my
nicest opal which I figured was worth an easy $125 -- for only fifty bucks. Sold.
Once again Owl and I were putting along -- not exactly rolling in dinero, but surviving. Northward
bound.
Goodbye Goaty. You deserter!
Over the next few days, between panhandling and selling a few more stones, we were no longer
broke. In fact, we were doing all right. I felt real optimistic.
The Astoria bridge over the Columbia River is eight miles long. We drove across and entered the
State of Washington. Highway 101 brought us into Aberdeen on a foggy morning. Very foggy.
I was turning wide into a supermarket parking lot, going quite slow when a little car, cutting through
morning traffic, came scooting around me -- and plowed into my door and the left-front fender as I
made my wide turn -- and pushed my Scout up onto the hood of a parked old Chevy sedan.
No one was hurt. The woman claimed I hadn't signaled. I thought I had. I usually do. Honestly, I
couldn't remember for sure. Anyway I figured that the person who runs into someone from behind is
usually in the wrong. My door, hood and left front fender were crumpled. Her right front fender was
damaged. The old Chevy at least needed a new hood.
The police preferred to believe the fault was mine and wrote me a ticket for not signaling. They
figured inasmuch as I was a transient, the only way to guarantee my court appearance was to lock me
up. They led me off handcuffed, pleading with them to realize that Owl would be in danger all alone in
a strange place. It was only too pathetically obvious that they could care less about Owl or me.
Reptilian eyes just stared coldly at us as they went about the motions of handcuffing me and putting me
in the back of their car. And so they hauled me away and left Owl in the parking lot standing silent
beside the crunched fender of the Scout.
Behind bars I was frantic. A minister came along cell by cell. Providence? I told him Owl was alone
in a parking lot somewhere with nowhere to go. He promised me he would try to find her and get her to
safety. And I breathed freer until the next day when he said he hadn't found her.
In a couple days I was released by the Judge with "time served" on condition that I leave the state of
Washington immediately. I hurried to the parking lot, crazy with worry. I couldn't control myself,
62
couldn't keep myself from yelling out, "Owly! Owly! Where are you?" although I knew that after two
days she could be anywhere. I stared across the field of cars feeling like a bomb had exploded in my
heart. What should I do? The cops had told me if I wasn't out of the city in one hour they were going to
arrest me again. It was a condition of my release... What an empty world was that parking lot! I
staggered around in a slow circle staring blankly at the pain of life itself. I said a prayer to God to
please bring my Owl back to me. I knew I wouldn't leave the city without her. That meant I was surely
bound for jail again and soon. A police car drove into the lot and stopped in front of me. He asked me
the routine questions. He seemed unaware that I had just been released from the jail. He'd find out soon
enough. He asked to see my I.D. I silently handed it to him. As he checked me out I tried to explain to
him that I was looking for Owl, that we'd gotten separated. He wasn't much interested. He handed back
my driver's license and told me not to hang around the parking lot or he'd have to run me in. He said I
was scaring the shop owners. I told him this was the place I had last seen Owl, that it was the only
place she might return to find me... He didn't care about that. It didn't matter to him if two people like
us got lost from each other. His job was protecting the merchants from their phobias. And I was one of
their phobias. So his job was to get rid of me, one way or the other. He told me to get a move on.
I left the lot and walked up one street and down another. I had no idea where I was going. I was all
choked up inside. I wondered if Owl was gone forever. I prayed again desperately. I returned to the
parking lot and walked through it and out the other side and down more streets. I was walking in a bad
dream. I returned again to the parking lot. I had to be there if she returned. It was the only place. I
watched for cop cars as I walked through. My eyes scoured every inch of the place.
And then I saw her. My Owl. There she was, walking towards me. Oh man, did we ever clasp each
other tightly! We were crying. But we had to hurry; we had to get out of there, out of that terrible
town...
We hitched a ride to the impound yard and got the trucks released, agreeing to send the larger
portion of the tow bill in a month. They took nearly all of our money. We had about fifteen dollars left.
The cops gave us a three patrol car escort to the edge of the city limits. They wanted to be sure we left
town.
It felt like cosmic ghouls had done their best to destroy us -- but our faith in each other and God's
precious providence had thwarted their schemes. We were safe, but wounded.
The Scout was drivable though it looked pretty totaled. That night as we camped I banged out what
dents I could but the Scout plainly needed a new fender and hood.
Olympia, Tacoma, Seattle, north on number 5 to Canada. We drove straight in to the Canadian
Customs station.
Some people have no trouble crossing over this border. The wealthier they appear the easier it is; the
poorer they appear -- the harder it is. Canada won't tolerate Americans on its welfare rolls is the way
they explain their reasoning. Show sufficient money to support your stay or turn your rattletrap around.
But first they gave us two hours of computer noted interrogation. I told them we were planning on
getting married on Wreck Beach as soon as we arrived in Vancouver. They answered that if we were
married already they might let me into Canada, but unmarried as we were they could not let me in.
They suggested that we go get ourselves married in the states and then come back. Then they turned us
around and sent us back south.
We had to pass through U.S. Customs to reenter the United States. But the American customs
officers didn't want to let Owl into the States unless she could prove she had enough money to support
63
herself there. We pled with them for fifteen minutes. Finally, the officer decided to give us a break
when we told him we were going immediately to a nearby town to get married so I could get into
Canada. So we got our rigs rolling again, south now towards Everett, Washington.
Getting married on Wreck Beach in Vancouver would have been the icing on our cake, a fairy tale
ending. But life can't always be like a fairy tale so we'd have to sacrifice a little dream to save the big
dream. Officer Lockhart was the fitting name of the Canadian Customs man who told us that if we
were married he would automatically let me into Canada. He seemed kinder than the others.
Sympathetic. Perhaps his heart was always locked on the truth of things. Surnames tend to do that.
In the city of Everett we parked our rigs near the courthouse and got a marriage license.
We'd also been told at Customs that the red, white, and blue U.S. mail truck had caused them to
scrutinize us more closely -- to see if it was stolen! (There were a couple bullet holes in the
windshield...) So we picked up two gallons of apple green house-paint and two brushes from a
hardware store and some newspapers to spread underneath -- and right there beside the Everett
courthouse we gave the Jeep a paint job!
The list of ministers provided at the Everett courthouse included a lady who lived on the nearby
Tulalip Indian reservation tucked between the little town of Marywood and the sea. We called her up
and she agreed to marry us right away. The sun was setting over the ocean as we all sat on a driftwood
log and pledged our troth in the words of the old familiar ceremony. Seagulls sang the hymns and the
ocean waves chorused.
We left out the words, "forsaking all others" from the ceremony, because we felt we were part of a
larger Marriage of the Spirit with many Soul-Mate brothers and sisters; though we pledged to be
partners and friends and love each other forever, and travel this road together.
Now, with a legal copy of our marriage certificate, we were ready to enter Canada, to put all the
hassles of the past year in the U.S. behind us. We went directly to the border again. Customs officers
took us into the same office again and after another hour of interrogation, they told us that officer
Lockhart had been wrong and that they did not have to let me into Canada, regardless of whether I was
married to a Canadian or not. I deeply suspected they had discovered that officer Lockhart had been
secretly working for the Sweet Light of Creation and now had him hanging from his thumbs in a damp
dungeon beneath the Customs station. Then after asking us darkly if our marriage was consummated
yet, they sent us embarrassed and worried back to the States!
We turned around and approached U.S. Customs. They told me Owl may be my wife but that doesn't
automatically entitle her to special entry rights! That's not what we'd been told before! It seemed like a
conspiracy! I instantly realized that they'd been on the phones to each other plotting cruel mischief for
our wedding night and laughing up their sleeves at our dilapidated rigs, our unkempt appearance, our
preposterous origins, and our shoestring lifestyle -- not to mention they just, plain, didn't like
"hippies"...
They applied an arbitrary rule, primarily meant to keep Gypsy folks from cross-pollinating. Unless
Owl showed them she had enough money to sustain herself in the States, she'd have to return to
Canada. I told them that's just how she got raped when Immigration officers had separated us in
Vermont. I couldn't let that happen again! Once again, I was pleading. I seemed to be doing that a lot
lately.
The officers seemed to find me amusing but boring. However, they were plainly getting a kick out
of watching us wiggle on their hook. It was all very sick. They were obviously getting some sadistic
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pleasure out of separating two newlyweds on their wedding night.
Among themselves, they'd have no trouble justifying what they'd done. We were "anti-establishment
degenerates", or maybe they were trying to save a beautiful young Canadienne from a letch eleven
years older than her. Who knows? They'll never tell the real reason; they would just give us that blank
stare as they told us rules are rules -- and that they are "sorry". But there was no disguising the fact that
they weren't. Not a bit.
Now with considerable trepidation we found ourselves turning around again and returning to
Canadian Customs.
They were ready for us. Sourer pusses ne're existed. They told me I would be arrested immediately
unless I turned right around and went back into the States. I felt like I was about to sound hysterical in a
moment. My mind was foaming with visions of what might happen to Owl over the next few days if
she were stranded alone on the other side. I tried to tell the Canadian Custom's officers what may
happen if they separate us -- about Owl's emotional disorder -- about the past two years during which
we'd been inseparable -- about what had happened to her the last time Custom's had separated us... But
they weren't listening. It was a conspiracy. They admitted they'd been on the phone, talking about us to
the United States Customs officers who had just turned us away. Behind their bland officious eyes there
was the trace of a smirk. It was only too obvious what a kick they were getting out of sticking it to us...
The officer picked up a phone and said to someone that he would need some assistance. Arrest was
surely immanent. My mind zoomed. OK. If we absolutely had to separate -- we needed a good plan -fast.
"Hey! I'M GOING!" I said loudly to the uniformed oinks. Owl and I scurried out the doors.
This is one of the most dangerous things that can happen to two people in a strange land. There was
no time now for Owl to be spaced out -- no time for any mindgames.
Nose to nose, eye to eye -- watching to make sure she gets every word, I tell Owl:
"Listen carefully! Hitchhike into Vancouver and go immediately to the Oak Street clinic. I will
telephone there and ask them to help us. You remember the Oak Street Clinic?"
"Yes, RobeenTom. I remembair... You whant me to go thare? And you weel stay heer?" she looked
confused but determined to understand.
"Yes. I will drive back to the next town and telephone the Oak Street Clinic and see if someone there
will help us. You must go directly there! Be careful! Comprend a vous?"
--"Mais oui, Rom. I weel."
A family was stopped nearby straightening out some Customs paperwork, obviously returning to
their home in Vancouver. I went over to them and briefly explained that my wife was stuck here and I
must go back into the U.S. due to some dumb snafu. Would they be so kind as to see her safely to
Vancouver? They assured me they would. I quickly introduced Owl. I kissed her goodbye and she got
into their sedan. I watched it pull out and disappear into northbound traffic. She'd be safe with them. At
least she wouldn't have to be standing alone on the side of the highway hitchhiking. God! I had to get
my ass in gear and get this flimsy plan working or... Oh God!
Alone now, tearing my hair, I drove madly back into the States, to Ferndale, Washington where I
found a pay phone and called the Oak Street clinic and explained everything to a very kind,
understanding voice. I had made the right move. The voice said they'd help and that they'd keep in
65
touch as to how things were going on their end. So it was important that I stay by the phone.
Owl didn't show up in the clinic that day. I spent the night there in the front seat of the truck parked
beside the phone booth.
The police ran a check on me in the morning. The gas station owner had told them my presence was
scaring his customers. (Saying that seemed to be a real popular method of harassing someone...) The
patrolman informed me I was not welcome in the town. Afterwards, he strutted over to confer with the
gas station owner.
The phone rang. Owl had finally been located. The kind voice told me that someone would soon be
bringing her down across the border to Ferndale. I told them that the cops were beginning to pressure
me to leave town! "So please, HURRY!"
The patrolman returned. I told him I'd just got the phone call that I'd been awaiting and that as soon
as my wife arrived I'd be leaving. He asked me when that would be? I answered that my wife should
arrive in half an hour or forty-five minutes at the latest. He said he still wanted me to leave
immediately. I told him that if I left my wife would have no way of knowing where I was. He told me
that was not his problem and that I had better leave -- NOW!!
I cannot leave. I fidget nervously beside my truck under the stares of the cop sitting in his vehicle
across the street.
I phoned the clinic an hour later. There'd been difficulty in getting started. But finally Owl and our
benefactors had just left five minutes previously.
The cop drove up and ordered me to leave or he would arrest me and impound my truck. I told him:
"I can't leave my wife there alone, knowing no one! How will she find me? If you must arrest me, I
guess you must; that's up to you. But I can't leave. My wife was raped once when we were separated. I
won't take a chance of that happening again. You wouldn't expect to be separated so heartlessly from
your wife in a strange country! How can you do this to us? Give me half an hour. Please!"
He had a face like a monster from bad dreams. He seemed to have no sympathy at all. But he
walked away to confer again on his car radio.
Half an hour passed. The officer sauntered over. Once more he threatened to arrest me.
"Fifteen more minutes, PLEASE!"
"I told you to leave! I'll give you one more chance!" he said angrily and returned to his car. He drove
off. Fifteen minutes passed. Two police cars, a sheriff's car, and a tow truck pulled in. They all got out
and stood in a tight group speaking together while looking repeatedly over at me.
Suddenly a little Volkswagen bug squealed around the corner and stopped beside me. Owl got out.
Hugs and kisses.
Thank you's for our volunteer saviors.
Our hurried departure. Another police escort. I think it's called "sweating bullets"...
And then we were alone in our rigs running south on Interstate 5. Fearing the police had contacted
Immigration we stopped for nothing but to fill our tank and get on the road again.
Washington State police radios could have been looking for us already. More likely, if they decided
it was worth the effort and expenditure of public money, they'd need two days for paperwork. In any
66
case -- there was no time to frolic in the Washington drizzle.
We don't breath easy till almost three hundred miles later we leave that state entirely behind us and
drive across the Columbia River Bridge into Oregon.
67
SEVEN
PRIMORDIAL GENES
I've heard it so many times. In fact, from time to time, I've thought it into the ground: You can never
return anywhere and find things unchanged. You can't go backwards. Yesterday is gone. You can't
return to the beauty which was lost. Or as Thomas Wolf so aptly wrote: --"You can't go home again".
I'd never been able to return to southern California. I was simply too different. And it seemed like
Owl couldn't go home to Quebec. At least not with me along. Now, Owl and I didn't seem to be able to
return to the place that had been our first home, Wreck Beach... Maybe eventually all things would
become possible, but for the time being we had no home except the open road -- and at that, we felt we
were running for our lives.
We found ourselves rolling through the ocean communities again looking for some sign of the
Universe Spirit to bring us in for a landing, somewhere long-haired people were creating the new world
-- a place for holy familiness, intelligence, consideration of children. Because, amidst all this threat and
turmoil, joy was burgeoning in our hearts -- we had finally figured out that Owl was pregnant.
"May the circle be unbroken, by and by Lord, by and by. There's a better home awaitin', in the sky
Lord, in the sky"
A natural fact is that circle, eternally awaiting our joining. God doesn't blithely
give a child, for as sure as every hair is numbered, and every sparrow is known to Him, there would be
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a circle to accept this new family in peace and harmony and prosperity. I s'pose with every first child is
also born some pretty lofty dreams. We sure had ours. However some ever-present realities put our
dreams to scorn.
We were accepted nowhere. We could manage to get together about $300 per month and I liked to
think that after we got settled my lapidary-jewelry business might grow into silver and gold and propel
us right into the mainstream; and be our ticket to all the things even a wandering family needs to be
self-sufficient and tuned-in. But I couldn't do jewelry yet, as I still lacked gas torches and other silverworking tools.
People who grind the stones for settings, make peanuts compared to those who make and sell the
finished ring or bracelet or pendant. Back in Tucson, the successful "hippie" jeweler had offered to pay
me minimum wage, $2.50 per hour, for grinding gemstones for him to set and sell in his shop. He'd
provide the stones and the lapidary gear. If I turned out ten per hour, my skills earned me twenty-five
cents per stone. He'd put the stone in a simple silver setting and sell the ring for anywhere from $38 to
a hundred dollars -- or more. We were bound to starve while making him his pile. Obviously, our own
enterprise would not fly until we had silver tools, too.
Fortunately, we were not soley dependent on the crumbs that fell from tables -- I had a small
personal regular income, a life-saving stipend aside from all this pecuniary misadventure. We wouldn't
have survived without it. It got us out of jams, paid small fines, moved us miles away from dangerous
situations fast. Unfortunately though, the amount was too small to establish us in anything that would
constitute a normal life in one of these beach-city communities. It wasn't even enough to pay monthly
rent in the cheapest digs. Small as it was, it always disappeared fast and left us grubbing. So, all our
hopes hung heavily on establishing ourselves in a jewelry business.
There'd be big difficulties fitting ourselves into one of these communities. It was hard to accept the
cold distant worlds the folks of the "real world" have made for themselves. They're all business.
Everything is money, money, money. So many of them aren't even kind unless there's something in it
for them. They aren't sincere in their relationships. They don't know their neighbors. They don't even
know their children.
They didn't like the looks of us either. To them, we were unsavory Road Hippies, certainly not
respectable and probably dishonest. And of course -- I was a "dirty old bearded pervert" debauching an
innocent teenage French girl -- and getting away with it!
Their superficial view of Owl provided endless misunderstandings. Owl had developed an
emotional disorder that was startling to some people. (especially to those who would have probably
preferred to have us pass unobserved! Who knows but that Owl wasn't just doing some sort of street
mime for their edification? I've been told it's a venerable French tradition, albeit much unappreciated...)
Alas, the so-called free world hasn't evolved to understand Gypsies, or Indians or Wanderers, or
emotionally troubled people, or distraught young women who've developed odd systems of social
communication.
Sometimes people with no decent manners themselves openly gawked at Owl and spoke mighty
rudely. Her despondency, stemming largely from her travail in Vermont, sometimes seemed quite
schizophrenic to the average person when Owl appeared to be arguing with herself, alone in a
restaurant booth or in a town park. Sometimes strangers around us thought she was talking to them -and this all too frequently resulted in confusion and occasionally angry confrontations.
Usually it would go something like this: Owl saw her MFF antagonists in murky flashbacks and
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would say aloud:
"I ham going to call the polees and they weel come and pute hyou in jale forhevair. I see what you
air dohing! I weel tell dem! The polees weel come get you and take hyou awhay!"
Needless to say, her extemporaneous expressions did not go over big in the reefer madness
communities where we were searching for a home. It actually happened a couple times that someone
thought she was referring to their weed... Yikes!
And so from time to time I was called upon to explain Owl's bizarre ultimatums, directed at total
strangers or barely-met friends, to save her or myself from being quite bruised-up as a result of one of
her all-too frequent outbursts.
Her idealistic French concept of police or "gendarmes" as a gentle arm for a young woman in
distress, especially confounded every one. Generally speaking, our pot-smoking peer-group had no
intention of seeing cops in that light. And police weren't especially given to consider the human rights
of hippie people of either sex, not even lovers for the sake of love. Nits make Lice. Imprison 'em before
they propagate seemed to be their plan, like the way the old cavalry used to look at the plains Indians.
Owl's romantic French id was due to enter the real world eventually and realize there were very few
"gendarmes" in the United States.
My own uniqueness caused it's own share of problems. Hippie "bums" were everywhere on the road
in those days with their backpacks and scraggly beards and long hair and old torn, unwashed clothes -often dealing drugs, talking to themselves aloud, saying outrageous things. I looked like almost any one
of them.
But they didn't have a beautiful young French girl traveling with them. This difference often turned
the occupants of a cafe or a police station, or a bar, for a loop -- turned their psyches inside-out and
made them look square at me as if I were a man from Mars.
Since I'm eleven years older than Owly, they were always trying to rescue the ingenue from "the old
pervert". So Owl's peculiar beauty was a central problem; something they would like to relate to. And
the troll that came with her was baggage they could do without. Frequently their turpitude caused them
to wonder aloud how this beautiful young Frenchwoman could continue with this beatnik-hobo after
meeting them!
Once, a cop questioned me while Owl was inside a store. When I mentioned "my wife", he
exhorted, "Your WIFE? Who in the Hell would ever marry YOU?" Whereupon beautiful young Owl
waltzed up to me from the store and I introduced her and he looked like he would faint away dead.
Some male egos are incredible.
So, finding a home was not turning out to be an easy task. A further dimension of difficulty would
be the secret our selected community must help us keep. Whatever community accepted us would have
to unanimously use appropriate discretion regarding Owl's resident status in the United States at least
long enough for us to straighten everything out with the proper authorities (which might take some
time.) We certainly couldn't keep this secret from every one of them -- not considering Owl's thick
French accent.
So, we were looking for a village of saints, but among the salty dogs of Oregon's beautiful coastal
cities and towns we found no such creatures -- and no safe haven. What we found were workaholics in
a maze of alcohol and bureaucracy, steep rents and severe attitude problems. Real Estate was God.
Insurance salesmen were saviors. We came to feel we were "blinded by the light" and so we closed our
70
eyes and searched. Where would we find a place for us?
It occurred to us that the West Coast's nudist hotsprings communities might be as free and easy as
Wreck Beach had been, perhaps as nurturing. We bought a book showing their locations.
Highway 126 brought us to Eugene, Oregon, a very interesting small city, and further up the road to
tiny towns like "Finn Rock" and "Rainbow". What magical names! Our child would be born into a
huckleberry world at the end of a rainbow!
And so that's how we came to Cougar Hot Springs...
At that time, 1977, Cougar was an exerting hike over giant old-growth logs felled by natural causes
long ago which now provided zigzagging paths over the thick underbrush for we squirrel-people who
gathered to skinny-dip in the volcanic waters.
Camping near the pools was still allowed. The
Rangers tried to enforce a ten-day limit but many sly foxes managed to stay for months at a time. The
trick was to have a camp hidden good enough to remain undiscovered. We all had varying degrees of
success in keeping out of hot water with the Rangers so we could remain in the hot water of our
choosing.
The serenity was such that one would never want to leave. The community seemed celestial. Almost
everyone was vegetarian. There was an infinite supply of relatively free pot. Mushrooms were as
common as beer. Free Love created a sexual energy level that most human beings would allocate to
sheer phantasy worlds, not possible on this Earth. Most of us figured we must have found Heaven.
Amidst all this, a Ranger would sometimes walk up to someone and tell them their time was up.
That person would have to pack up and go immediately. A Nasty Bring-down! So he or she would go
into Eugene for a few days after which they could legally return.
For Owl and me, this was our opportunity to wash our souls and prepare ourselves for the
enlargement of our family. We lay immersed in all-permeating warmth, flute music, children's play,
intelligent conversations buffeting our ears, and that wonderful nudist presence that evokes million year
old DNA dreams and attitudes, rhythms and spirit. We began to feel our hearts opening up like the
proverbial many-petaled lotus.
There were many hippie communities in those days, but very few had a magical nudist hotsprings in
which to gather during any hour of any day, any season of the year. We were the eternal druids of Bath,
arisen through the mists of Time and Space, and our hearts were full with awe for what we had.
When the Rangers moved us on after about a month, we went to the nearby city of Eugene and
checked out what was available there in the way of Salvation Army, Goodwill, Free Clinic, dumpsterdiving, day work, craftwork and midwives. We found many people living on the streets, camping at
night among the trees by the river or parking their vehicles in hippie neighborhoods.
Two of the street people we met those days both at the springs and in Eugene were known simply as
"Moon" and "Mountain". Moon in particular became a close friend, visiting us often and chatting with
Owl about baby stuff. She was a transplanted Florida girl, a knowledgeable vegetarian, and was trying
hard to support herself with beadwork.
In those days a lot of vegetarians worked with leather, at least to patch their clothes. Kind of an
anomaly -- but true. The wanderers who usually had no roofs over their heads discovered that leather
keeps wind and rain and snow out and keeps body heat in.
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So, it was the thing to do, to get leather scraps from a leather business and sew them on a pair of
Levi jeans. The cuffs were first widened with fabric to form them into bellbottoms that served a
functional purpose -- they fit over large hiking-boots. The patches were sewn tightly one to another
until the pants were completely covered with the multi-colored, every-shaped scraps.
They were heavy but, Oh! Were they warm! And weather-resistant! Owly and I had worn patch
leathers since the winter on Wreck Beach where they had well proven their value in the wind, rain,
snow, and surf.
Owners of patch pants had the never-ending task of resewing every seam when old thread rotted.
They could constantly be found sitting at some wayside, pantsless, wax thread and needle in hand,
studiously bent over their work. "Any excuse to get your pants off", we used to say.
Each pair of patch leather jeans was a personal work of art and there were no two alike. Like Owl
and myself, Moon and Mountain were both patch pants people. We got along great.
Sometimes we went to McCredie Hot Springs near Oakridge on Highway 58. This place was less
inhabited and since the springs were only a stone's throw from the road, it was easy to keep a protective
eye on our vehicles or to quickly obtain the ingredients for a sandwich from our kitchens. Camping
beside our trucks at McCredie gave us the best of two worlds: grass, trees, and river on one hand, the
warmth of our Jeep at night, out of the wind and out of sight.
But an unfortunate thing about McCredie springs was that any drunk could stumble from his car
down the short path and into the springs, set his obnoxious self down, and proceed to ruin everyone's
day. At least at Cougar Hotsprings the half-mile long hike over many giant fallen trees was next to
impossible to anyone unless they were sober. (Even some unathletic sober people took one look and
turned back!) For the same reason, at Cougar one seldom found himself (or herself) being stared at by
curious octogenarians.
"My God, Harold! Those people haven't any clothes on!".
Consequently, Cougar tended to be a free spirit place, safe for midwives and meditation and lovefeasts and all around well-being and tranquility, while McCredie developed as a reserved atmosphere
where conversations and relationships were guarded and everyone was suspect. But occasionally
Cougar was drunken and full of bad vibes and sometimes McCredie had amazingly excellent good
times, the fluky way things go.
McCredie was a good place to camp if you needed to do a bunch of mechanical work to your truck.
You could be laid up for a week or two, easily hitching into town for food or parts, always finding it
easy to get the grease and dirt off after grunging yourself bad, and always there were wonderful friends
to spend evenings around a candle in your van or theirs.
I rebuilt my transmission again at McCredie. I was so happy to have a chance to finally get that bear
of a job done -- and done right. I bought a twenty-dollar torque wrench and a huge socket especially for
that lousy impeller shaft nut. What a stupid mistake I'd made in not torquing that nut correctly when I'd
rebuilt the tranny the last time! Popping out of first gear all the way here from Arizona! Man-oh-Man!
Well, those days of dumb mistakes were finally behind me. I torqued that son-of-a-gun tight with the
new wrench. Yeah!
After I had it all together again and I'd tightened the last bolt on the transmission cover I felt great
about a job well done. I started up the good old motor and we started driving down the mountain to
Oakridge. But pretty soon I started smelling smoke. Something somewhere seemed to be burning. Was
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it wires under the dash? No. It didn't smell exactly like wires... What was it then? I drove on, sniffing
madly and feeling all around blindly under the dashboard with one hand. Whoa! The metal floorboard
was sizzling hot.
I tried to get the tranny out of gear to shift down to third or second for the steep part of the grade.
The stick wouldn't budge. I banged on it. Finally I kicked it with my foot. It went into neutral but then
it wouldn't go back into any gear. We were coasting now down the steep grade of highway 58, out of
gear at fifty miles an hour.
Without the engine to slow us down, the brakes began to fade. I was soon standing on them. Faster
and faster; the tires squealed around the tight curves!! I tried and failed to stay on our own side of the
road. Thank God there was no oncoming traffic!
Curve after curve the Scout flung our lives insanely down the mountain. I don't know how we kept
it on the road. I yelled to Owl to brace herself and be ready to jump on a moment's notice. We must
have hit eighty miles per hour or more. Towards the end we came to the long downhill straightaway.
We were zoomin' but we were gonna make it for sure now. Just one last curve. Smoke was pouring out.
Flames were splaying under the gas tank. What if the gas tank catches? Oh-my-God!
We reached the bottom! Flames billowed from the floormat, and billows of smoke engulfed the
Scout as we stopped on the side of the road near the first gas station on the outskirts of the town of
Oakridge and bailed out. People come running.
I rip the tin floor out. Owl hands me tools. The tranny is red hot. It's crackling. It's burning inside.
The shifter top is loose now. Flames roar up out of the red-hot glowing inferno. Someone brings a fire
extinguisher...
Next time I rebuild a transmission I resolve to put oil in it before starting down any mountains. I
promise.
And of course we must rebuild the darn thing again, right away. Someone towed us back up to the
springs; a nice place to work on one's rig. Yes sir! (But don't get so stoned you forget things!)
As I turn the wrenches I notice that Owl is getting bigger and bigger. And prettier and prettier.
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EIGHT
WOMB
We floated through life blissfully in the soothing warmth. Often we overheard someone say to
another:
"Oh! Don't tell people about these springs! Too many people know already! It's only a matter of
time before some property pig finds a way to make our heaven into his own personal digs. Then it'll be
gone -- forever! So, be careful who you bring here!!"
I wondered if it were really possible a mere human could ever disturb this divine place, this magical
space that the Indians still considered sacred.
If the Ultimate Creator wanted to design the most perfect eternal ethereal abiding place for souls,
there could be no more fitting repose. And for Owl and I: What a mind-boggling Nirvana-nest for
contemplating our future!
Hidden here -- life's sacred Pearl! Here beyond the frenzied world! Beyond investitures of
compromise! Beyond the lucre and the lies! Here! The Pearls of paradise!
At least that's how things seemed to me...
And I had mondo problems to muddle through. Preparations must be made. For a couple to give
birth to a baby while living on the road! How scary that could be! To be unprepared -- to have no
forethought to the possibilities of what may lie ahead -- that would not do.
I found myself troubled by memories of Myrna, a hitchhiking road sister I'd known in the late
sixties. I'd first met her at Five Star Commune in Taos New Mexico back in 1969. There she became
enamored with a small copy of a book I'd written about God and the psychedelic experience -- and she
carried it tattered and dog-eared everywhere she went for years afterwards. She was one of those
hitchhikers who couldn't get off the road. She loved to wander. While living on the road she'd gotten
pregnant and had a baby. When her time had come, she'd hitchhiked to a hospital, had the baby there -and left surreptitiously with the infant under her coat the very next day -- before doctors or welfare
workers or anyone whatsoever had any chance of getting their hooks in her. Always thereafter, she'd
stayed out wandering the highways -- the baby hidden under her long coat almost all the time.
Miraculously, the years passed, and thanks to the mother's keen wits -- they had survived on those
roads unchanged and unscathed.
I met Myrna again in 1976 in Tucson, late at night, standing outside the Student Union Building
beneath the stars. Her girl-child was a little angel-ballerina dancing all around her. She told me life on
the road was tough. Scary sometimes... She looked scared too, but resolute and wise as a she-wolf. We
talked a while. She was really glad to see me again -- and she went on and on about that old book of
mine that I'd all but forgotten. Then some sound in the night seemed to frighten her. She gathered up
her darling under her coat and disappeared into a dark oleander-scented alley. I remember listening to
her footsteps fading away, hauntingly.
I think of her out there sometimes -- in drizzling rain with my book tucked somewhere in her back
pack, and her baby hidden under her great coat -- the Goddess and the fairy-nymph flitting through the
autumn shadows of America, running from black-berry briar to willow tree veils alongside country
roads, sleeping beneath piles of golden and auburn oak leaves: living poems of haunting feral
innocence.
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***
Floating in the hundred degree wilderness waters, Owl and I mulled on the blessing soon to
transform us.
Babies have vital needs: cleanliness, warmth, safety. Living on the road, we had been having a
difficult time providing for our own most basic needs. Having a baby with us would require some
dramatic restructuring. I did not doubt that we would be capable eventually of doing everything
necessary -- and with a style and flair in character with our own special idiosyncrasies. But what scarce
few months remained for us to accomplish the essential changes!
Would the rigs be made safe enough in time? Would the Jeep house have a sink with running water?
A wood stove? Insulation? Dual master cylinder and new brake lining? Doors that stayed closed when
shut? Floors without holes?
Would I deliver the baby? Would we have a midwife? Where would we find one? Would we have
enough money for all these things?
Would we rent a house or apartment? Could I stand living in a "normal" ticky-tacky town after so
many years of wandering?
In those Holy Waters of prehistoric humanity, I ruminated and planned and worried. There is no
finer place in the Creation to set things in order. As a Virgo, setting things in order is supposed to be my
forte.
As a Scorpio, Owl's forte was passion. Owl was becoming a mother. She was becoming more
sensuous and more thoughtful and softer. Her eyes were a mother's eyes now. A pride glowed in her
ample heart as she dreamed with her hands on her tummy.
One day she asked me, "Rhom! We weel have a houze in town for de bebe or we weel lif in de truk?
I want to know wat we do. Cause for de bebe we need some tings. You know?"
I answered her, "First we'll fix up the trucks so we will always have them to live in no matter what.
Meanwhile, whenever we are in Blue River or Eugene we'll look for a house or apartment we can
afford. Also I'll look into the work situation. We'll inquire about a midwife next time we go into town
too. Make a list of anything you think of that we'll need."
Owl seemed satisfied that our plans would all come together. The first item on her list was wool.
She began to knit baby clothes.
The previous year had batted us around pretty good. We were lucky to be alive, maybe because we
were in God's hands. How else could we explain surviving all those horrendous moments we'd been
through?
The hot springs enabled our minds to clear superbly. Now it seemed to me that we would be able to
figure everything out and do whatever we had to do. Our entire cosmology was undergoing a healing
process. What good feelings!
The first thing on my agenda was getting both rigs into safe condition, running, and functional as a
cozy world for the new baby. We made friends with a Christian family who leased the new gas station
in Blue River, near Cougar. They were evangelizing and we were receptive to every good word that
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came our way. (At least as receptive as any nudist hippies could be!) They often allowed us to park our
rigs behind their station overnight, sometimes for a week at a time or more, as we worked on one or the
other of them. The Jeep mailtruck spent most of its time parked behind their gas station as we slowly
rebuilt the motor.
But first, the Scout received the larger part of our finances and exertions. Weak leaf springs were
strengthened; the shackles were reversed, raising the truck up high. The homestead land of our dreams
would probably be out a long deeply rutted road which would require such an arrangement. I had my
heart set on doing some in-depth searching for our land as soon as possible. We bought a leaky
aluminum canoe for ten dollars, repaired it, and traded it to an auto wrecker for a set of extra wide
white spoked wheels. We replaced the crumpled fender and door. Most importantly, we installed a dual
master cylinder and all new brake lines and brake shoes so the Scout would never be a deathtrap again.
And it looked swell, really swell. Finally, we bought four new recap extra-wide off-road tires and we
were ready to go anywhere. The Scout was a whole new animal now, a veritable mule of wilderness
roads. Our basic homestead machine was finished. Now we turned our attention to our future house-onwheels, the Jeep mailtruck.
This was the first engine I ever tried to rebuild. I knew, as nuts and bolts go, you put them together
the exact reverse of how you take them apart. So the old cam and crank came out, and the new ones
went in: rings, rod bearings, mains, gaskets. Slowly, but surely, over the space of a couple months, I
labored behind that gas station assembling a key ingredient of our future: a mobile home. While I spun
the ratchets Owl knitted.
Once the engine was rebuilt and running the Jeephouse would become an amazing thing: A compact
little home on wheels that could be five hundred miles away from trouble the morning after the threat: a
fully equipped escape vehicle. That fact might save our lives; we knew it only too well. And practically
speaking as small as it was it would also be a cozy home that would stay warm and require very little
energy to heat. And its Jeep qualities meant it would be a mobile home that would be capable of
penetrating deep into rugged wilderness areas in search of that perfect inexpensive piece of primitive,
hard to reach land towards which our dreams were heading. And considering that the engine was just a
little four-cylinder thing, while we wandered the western highways searching for our dreams it would
be a housecar that actually got good gas mileage. And one last peculiar quality was that at only twelve
feet long and thirteen feet tall it would be a two-story housecar that would actually be easy to parallel
park. All in all, it was quite an inspiring project.
I bought excellent used tires and a spare. We made curtains for the windows. Eventually, there
would be running water, and a woodstove, and an oven, and cabinets and closets, and upstairs a
bedroom and workshop area, a special place for pillows and guitars and flutes and drums and wideeyed babies!
Hopes and Dreams! The turn of a wrench. Money across the counter. Dollars and Hours. Investment
in a Gypsy fantasy! A Gypsy reality.
Finally the work on the engine of the Jeep housecar was finished. Fire that greaseball up!
But the motor wouldn't start! It wouldn't even turn over. I tried pushing it. Crunch! Clatter!!
Our gypsy housecar dreams dissolved into the cold biting winds. Precious dollars had been wasted!
They may as well have fluttered out onto the nearby cold, rushing river.
What had I done wrong? I removed the oil pan and extracted one of the new main bearings and
looked at it. It was ruined! What had I done wrong? I asked the Christian gas station owner. He didn't
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know. I asked the parts store man. He didn't know either. No one knew. I had no more extra money to
spend on the damn Jeep mailbox -- so we'd just have to continue towing the darn thing. Maybe
someday I'd have the money and time and facilities to rebuild it again. Maybe someday...
The actual reason that we'd had such a difficulty was probably beneath the surface. I sensed it. It
stemmed from the fact that I didn't want to pay any of the local mechanics to rebuild the motor for us.
And they didn't like to give out free information to people who wanted to save money by doing repairs
themselves. Then when the repairs failed the people would learn a lesson from the experience and the
next time they would pay the mechanic to do it right. That philosophy may have been okay for average
people with ample resources to fall back on. But for us, skimming along on the bare bones of existence
and barely hanging on by our fingernails, it meant that our baby would be born without some basic
essentials. Having that Jeep housecar running meant that much to the success of our future plans.
Sometimes capitalism really sucks.
And their hard lesson didn't change us. We were busy learning how to survive. And one thing was
obvious: we had to learn to economize. We did not have the luxury of paying someone else to do
something we ought to learn how to do our selves.
For instance, store-bought leather cold weather gear would have cost hundreds of dollars retail. But
we learned to make our own, finer looking, and warmer than store-bought. And we didn't use sewing
machines. Every stitch was sewn and double sewn by hand.
And back when we lived on Wreck Beach when a winter storm caused an avalanche to crush our
canoe which we needed for crab fishing because it was our only way of making money to live, I didn't
go buy a new canoe and I didn't pay an expert to repair it. Ha! Everyone said repairing it was
impossible! No. I learned by doing: I fiberglassed it myself. I accomplished the impossible. Some of
the patches were more than five feet long. When it was done everyone who came by our camp
marveled at the repair job I had done to save that canoe.
Learning by doing was the only intelligent way for people like us to ever have anything. So I'd tried
to rebuild my first motor myself. But we were too politically incorrect to get away with it. Because I
couldn't do it without some occasional intelligent input from someone who knew the ropes. And my
counter culture status negated the willingness of any such assistance.
The local mechanical experts gave some meager advice when it meant I'd buy the parts from them.
But overall their attitude seemed to be that if they told everyone how to do everything, they'd soon be
out of a job. One of them even told me so. If I goofed up the motor, I would end up buying the same
parts from them again and as far as they were concerned that was good business. So it was money in
their pocket to help me as little as possible. Besides, helping a hippie do anything was like leaving a
door open for more of the hotspring skunks. At least, that's the way most of the Blue River folks felt.
No, they didn't like hotspring hippies much...
I didn't find out what I'd done wrong in assembling the engine till about two years later. What it
turned out to be was that I hadn't put any white grease on the bearings during the assembly. I
mistakenly thought that the oil in the crankcase automatically and instantly lubricated the new bearings.
No one told me to pregrease them during installation. And after the bearings and crank were ruined no
one told me what I had done wrong. I asked. But they all said they didn't know. Like I said, I didn't
discover the reason for two more years.
***
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Owly looked so pretty in the hotsprings with her big tummy. Preparations for the new baby were
causing her to spend less time allowing problems to overcome her; usually she seemed as normal as
anyone else. Plainly, she was healing quickly now with her body calling her to awareness and
responsibility.
We scoured second hand stores buying all the baby things we thought we'd need. We bought new
flannel and made three dozen diapers. No paper and tape for our kid!
We'd been waiting for the right time to start working on the four golden sheepskins we had bought
in Vermont. Now with needle and wax thread we sewed them into two new pullover vests. It was
exciting to see how beautiful they were. We made a tiny sheepskin vest and a pair of sheepskin booties
too. And Owl knit a little wool sweater for the baby exactly like our own even down to the hood and
earflaps.
In our two years of being together, we were living in much better conditions than we ever had thus
far. We'd evolved from a bedroll under a bush in 1975, to these two go-anywhere vehicles. Our future
surely held a log cabin homestead on at least ten acres of primitive land somewhere and towards that
end we had gathered most of the tools we'd need. We even had a log-peeler. We kept hearing tantalizing
stories about land for as little as $100 an acre in eastern Oregon and Washington. We were well on our
way.
After the baby was born and we would finally have finished the Jeephouse we'd have to save up two
thousand dollars for the land by doing leather or jewelry work. Maybe commercial fishing. Anyway, we
were only a hop, skip, and a jump from attaining our dream -- and optimism was coming out our ears.
Even the failure of the Jeep motor didn't severely squelch our fire.
When Owl was six months pregnant we went looking for a midwife in Eugene. But all the midwives
we met told us they wouldn't think of taking on any new mother-to-be unless they could start with her
no later than the fourth month. A well-known male midwife, an intelligent and kind black brother
named Benjamin, said he would deliver our baby if we would locate in town in time to arrange
everything.
The only problem with that was that so far we hadn't heard of a house we could afford. We'd even
inquired about some rooms in co-op houses and were usually told they wouldn't consider a couple -and absolutely not a couple with a child. Well, I guess I was smart in fixing up our rigs -- it sure looked
like we'd be needing them.
Benjamin came up to the springs to visit us. He brought us some of his special homemade
sourdough starter. I told him it looked like our baby was meant to be born in the hotsprings -- like an elf
born on a lily pad or like a Goddess born in a holy grotto -- like Venus from the sea. He said he thought
Owl looked strong and that he didn't expect there'd be any problems that I couldn't handle and he
encouraged me to go ahead and deliver the baby myself. But he said he'd come if I could get word to
him in time. But there wasn't any phone at the hotsprings and he lived a full hour's drive away in
Eugene... So Ben's presence didn't seem to be anything we could count on. It looked like I'd be the one
delivering our little Elf.
Oh! The hotsprings were like the Oracle at Delphi. Certainly this enchanted scene was just such an
oracle -- a grotto of mystery, and magic and holiness. Those things were here if they were anywhere. If
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I lay back in the hot waters and closed my eyes I could plainly see our celestial child dancing in the
eternal moment in the center of the lotus of the Universe.
As we sat in the springs I kept meeting other fathers who had delivered all their own children. They
all told me it happens as natural as blowing your nose. So I bought books on home birthing, and I read
them. But what if there was an emergency? The Springs were a long way from help!
In spite of my self-doubts I pretty much hyped myself up to deliver the baby in the springs. There
was a good chance our new friend Moon would be there to help. She and I had been swapping bodymassages in the springs and talking about child birthing. There were also several other Rainbow ladies
who always seemed to be around. I tried to feel we had the situation in hand.
Towards the end of September our finances were starting to ebb as they always did at the end of a
month. The expense of gas was too much for us to come and go to the springs constantly. So we were
pulling the Jeep everywhere we went because the Christian people didn't want it parked behind their
gas station anymore. Pulling the Jeep up and down the hotsprings road took a lot of gas. It came to pass
that we were sometimes too broke to go from Blue River to the hotsprings. When we parked on side
streets the sheriff came along and gave us a hard time. We sure didn't need that. But he never bothered
us when we were parked behind the gas station.
So more and more often we ended up quietly parked behind the gas station on the sly. We pulled in
late at night after they closed and left early before they opened up. It worked. Then we got braver and
sometimes we stayed parked there for a whole day or two without moving. Unless the owners walked
behind and looked, they probably usually didn't even know we were back there. As low on petrol and
finances as we were, we dreaded that anyone would force the issue at that time and run us off. Where
would we go? If we had any gas we'd sure rather be at the hotsprings than parked there. It was a matter
of necessity. So we tried to keep as low a profile as possible in the little town...
We listened to the new-age Christian radio station music serenely enveloping us from the radio. The
natural music was beautiful too: children playing in their yards, the river whispering from rocky banks
and dancing trees, leaves fluttering musically in the wind. The warm breezes were abundant with
songbirds come to feast on full-bloomed blackberries, hanging heavily from drooping bushes and
overwhelming our noses with end-of-summer fragrances that revealed all of nature turning into wine.
I really expected to have more time. Or maybe I thought that when the time came we'd just quietly
deliver the baby in the Jeephouse behind the gas station if it came to that. But when Owl's contractions
began and I realized that I had no counter-culture peer-group backup all of a sudden I felt stupid. What
did I know compared to a doctor? What if Owl or the baby were hurt because of my ignorance?
I could not do this delivery. Not in a truck behind a gas station. Maybe in the hot springs. But there
was no time to get there now.
I went to the phone and called the nearest hospital, Sacred Heart in Eugene. I explained we had no
money and no insurance and didn't know how we'd ever pay the bill. The lady said not to worry about
that; an ambulance was on its way fifty miles to Blue River.
A few local people now gathered near the van offering encouragement. It wasn't long before the
ambulance arrived and took us to the hospital.
I was allowed to watch the birth. The little girl was born in the wee hours of September 29th, 1977.
A pretty little Elf! What a blessing to see Owly so radiant; so smiling and proud, yet so innocently
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astonished by the beauty of the ruddy newborn child in her arms.
Then they put the baby in my arms and -- whoa! She grabbed my beard with both hands and pulled
herself completely up! Only the tiny pink heels of her feet remained in the palm of my hand! It was one
of the most astounding things I've ever seen! Ten minutes old and already she did a perfect pull-up!
"Are all babies so strong?" I asked the nurse. I don't remember her answer.
Owl and her baby spent two days in the hospital. Then we brought our child home to our camp in
the forest near Cougar hot springs.
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NINE
357 GARGOYLES
Far away in the frenzied cities and towns vibrant human spirit was still transmogrified, twisted,
vitiated, pillaged, exploited, sucked dry.
But that couldn't touch us. Here in the ancient hot springs those aberrations naturally dissolve from
the primordial human cosmology. Silenced deep down in the spirit are the murmuring rancorous
vituperations with which society has branded and raped and discarded. Turbid souls become clear here
in the mountain's hot pools of water breathing the evergreen-tinged oxygen. Rebirthed: our intrinsic
oneness with the Earth.
For thousands and perhaps millions of years for this reason hot springs have been sacred to Her
people. Now they were just as sacred for the same reasons to a colony of Rainbowites.
Like a desert our hearts needed these lambent waters, this oasis of friends: itinerate intransigent
psychosophers: kindred spirits. Brothers and sisters.
A Rainbow Gathering was coming to Oregon! Each year the Gathering is held in the primitive areas
of a different state. The tribal counsel of the '77 gathering in New Mexico had decided on Oregon for
'78. Immediately the wanderers had begun to migrate into the area from near and far, swarming all the
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Cougar Reservoir campsites near the hot springs.
Rainbow People are usually pretty anti-technology; they love the primitive ways. They are primarily
non-alcoholic, ecological, homeopathic, usually vegetarian and sympathetic to the animal's right to life.
Unfortunately, Rainbows are more commonly known for their prevalent use of the herb marijuana -and their proverbial fondness for the magic mushrooms that grow in the farmer's fields of the
Northwest. And if someone should bring them peyote cactus buttons from the deserts of the Southwest
they will always gladly throw them in a pot and boil up some medicine tea. Though these substances
are illegal, they actually have an abundance of good qualities (regardless of how politically incorrect
that truth might seem) and at least they are not as destructive to the human being or society as alcohol
or tobacco -- substances from which many Rainbow people entirely abstain. Also Rainbow folks are
closely oriented with Native American peoples who often use these so-called dangerous vegetations
during their sacred ceremonies and in homeopathic remedies. Rainbows, living among Indian peoples
have participated in their customs and brought them home. So Rainbows come by the usage of such
substances naturally -- and Rainbowland is permeated with medicine pouches, sweatlodges, drum
circles, herbal medicine, sacred smoke, and peyote rituals.
The Rainbow People are also known for their colorful dress, tie-died clothes adorned with feathers
and crystals, fantastic bracelets, rings, and necklaces made of rare earthen things. Their hair sometimes
is matted into clumps called dreads and wrapped in silken cords around precious stones, the oldest
hairstyle in the world. The old Scots called dreads elflocks.
Rainbow people often choose to live in ethnic aboriginal dwellings: tepees, caves, adobe huts or
yurts. Those who live on the road favor school buses that have been converted into nice homes or
sometimes merely an old station wagon decorated to taste. Many are hitchhikers and freight-hoppers.
And they are lovers of music. Wherever one finds Rainbows there will be drums and flutes and
guitars, and voices blent in harmony.
Wherever they travel they carry their craft industries with them to provide for their expenses. There
are drum makers, and bamboo flute makers, and silversmiths, and hemp jewelry artisans, and people
who make colorful velvet and corduroy garments, and tattooers, and cat-in-the-hat hat makers, and
tarot readers, and pipe makers, to name but a few of their wandering occupations.
Around twenty thousand of these people converge each year from mid-June to early August for their
annual Gathering of the Rainbow Tribes. (It officially lasts July 1st through 7th).
Owl and I considered ourselves to be "Rainbows".
Our camp was in the forest on a hillside only a couple hundred feet from the springs. We could hear
all the goings-on in the paths and pools. The sounds of friendship bubbled up to our ears all day and all
night, for the springs were never empty. Our new baby lent her lungs to the joyous music.
***
Mara is the oldest known form of Marie or Mary.
I loved Owl's full name, Marie Elaine, run together in French to sound almost as one, "MarieElan".
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If I were to choose between Marie and Mary, I'd choose Marie. I like the French sound and I wanted
her to feel at home whenever we would visit or live in Quebec.
But Mara sounded ancient like a city buried for countless aeons in desert sands, or perhaps, like a
woman who once trod those cobbles in antiquity.
The three of us lay in the steamy pool. I was tasting names on my lips. Mushmara... I thought:
Sounds Eskimo. Sounds like marshmello... Mushmara. Ha! A blue eyed, blond haired, Marcello Marie!
Friends we met in the springs chided us that we'd gone to a hospital to birth her. Now she'd have to
have a birth certificate. Many of these parents didn't want their children listed in any government
computer. The reasoning behind this was that if a boy weren’t in the computer, later on it'd be hard for
the government to even know of his existence let alone draft him. For a girlchild it was simply nice to
know she was your child, not the government's number. In those days, the Vietnam war was still a
recent memory and many of us felt we had reasons to fear the long tentacles of government.
Be that as it may, now Mushmara would have to have a birth certificate now. There would be no
getting around it. Well, I laughed to myself as I thought that it would not be any ordinary dull
document, for I had contrived a huge name for her. I forget it all now. It was about eleven names long.
Naninoninyoha Mushmara Morningdove Elven and Horsefeathers were part of it. Each name meant
some thing special. The first of the names was basically my musical interpretation of the name of the
most ancient, sacred Sumerian Mother Goddess, "Inanna" The other names just tickled my thoughts as
I ruminated in the idyllic waters.
In truth, I have to take the responsibility for giving her all those silly names. Owl always went along
with my nincompoopery. But she always called her darling either "Mushmara" or "Marie". Simple as
that.
As for me, sometimes I called her Mary Morningdove and other times it was Mushmara.
Occasionally, it was Merry Elf (with her pixie face!) -- and sometimes -- "Horsefeathers" -- just for
fun!
For the most part during these beautiful days and nights, our live's painful memories faded now into
the oblivion where they belonged. There was no place for them here. A genuine new world was
dawning. The proof was cradled in our arms.
We liked to sit in our truck with the Moody Blues crooning softly from our tape deck. "Listen to the
one who sings of Love, Follow our friend, Our Wandering friend, Listen to the one who sings of Love,
Everywhere, Love is all around, Hear the nations sing a minstrel's song, as he walks by in their lives..."
We ourselves were a couple of carrousel ponies and we loved carrying Mushmara over Rainbow
Bridge. And every sunbeam that pierced a cloud spoke to us. And every Salmon that jumped in the
McKenzie River was just popping up to wave its tail and say hello as we passed.
So, every love song we heard swept us further into our dreams -- as though they were especially
meant for our ears and hearts. In our brimming heart-cockles they churned the dark waters of life's
hazards and metamorphosed them -- the dark forces bowed to love and became sweet nectar. Oh! Fresh
sweet baby smells! And the dew that danced and shimmered in the beams of pure sunlight were our
sacred gold. And Mushmara's laugh was a music that entranced the entire forest. When she laughed the
squirrels in the trees chattered back to her. All of nature loved her. And I seemed to lose my senses and
took to dancing up and down the steep paths to our tent -- but Owl! Oh! Owl, with the tiny baby in her
arms, took the most dainty careful steps I'd never imagined possible. What grace! And Owl's face was
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transformed -- she glowed. The new child was wide-eyed, happy, tender as the moss on which she lay.
She gave to us a portion of her innocence and so, we shared in her birth.
Our campfire warmed us. Mornings and evenings could be cold. A coffeepot always percolated on
the hearth rocks. Heart rocks. Friends gathered here to visit the baby and the mother and father and
share some coffee and chatter back at the chipmunks and toss them pieces of bread.
The little squirrels came neighborly to visit. They'd sit on their hind legs and participate in whatever
conversation was taking place; their eyes as expressive as human eyes. They appeared often to take
special notice of the baby and I observed them nudge each other in wonder.
I kept a guitar in the camp and tried to put together appropriate chords. I wrote some poems and set
them to the chords and sang them: to Mushmara, to Owl, to the Creation.
Owl and Mara curled round me happily. The baby nary so much as mewed before the mother would
lovingly tend to her.
Owl talked to Mara Morningdove as though her baby could understand her perfectly -- whether
anyone else did or not. I found Owl's whispering to be the prettiest music I ever heard; sitting beside
the fire-pit stirring the coals for hours straining my ears to eavesdrop. Sometimes, when she thought no
one was listening, not even me, Owly would sing softly to the baby in her arms.
Owl was the gentlest, prettiest thing I ever knew. Our baby was extra-strong and beautiful. Our life
seemed blessed in every way.
At the end of a day, in our tent with the flap open, wrapped warmly in our blankets, we were fond of
watching the final pieces of wood burn away and crumble into glowing coals. We dreamed our dreams.
***
The graceful nude people everywhere roundabout were as other-worldishly beautiful as the nudes of
Michelangelo, except these were real. The shadows, the skin tones, the facial expressions, the soft light
filtering through the tree canopy -- the effect was a beatific Garden of Eden. I often thought of it as The
Eternal Gathering in the Center of All Universes. The concept is perfectly visualized in Matise's THE
DANCE OF LIFE.
Yes, the world's greatest artists had been surely inspired by dreams of nude humanity living together
in perfect joy. The visions permeate everything about our life in the hot springs. The beauty wove a
spell of love into our hearts and rapture settled into our lives. With mystical veneration and profound
awe we marveled as we experienced the unfolding of the ever-repeating Creation Story. This garden of
Eden in its completeness even had its element of evil...
Not that any of us believed we needed a serpent in our lives. But, unasked, a serpent or two did
arrive...
A lady in a suit came one morning to the springs from the Public Health Department, to examine and
treat staph infections, and to enroll people for receiving foodstamps or the WIC program. This activity
seemed to some of the more astute among us to be about as innocuous as a proverbial Indian agent
distributing blankets on a reservation. (blankets previously used in army typhus wards..) She wasn't a
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member of our counter culture and she told me she didn't like the hotsprings. I had a queasy feeling
about letting someone like her get too near us.
But I blindly refused to believe our paradise could sustain any culpable presence. I felt that any
malfeasant personality who stumbled into our Eden would become deeply effected by the sacred
energies -- and eventually molt and metamorphose and be reborn here in these magical springs as a
sweet-hearted child of the blessed Eternal Universe. Anyone.
Further, I saw no reason at this point in our lives to do without anything freely offered which would
help the baby grow. Babies need so much! My mind was sometimes boggled by our new
responsibilities!
I wished I could find some paying job that would have brought in enough money so we wouldn't
even have to think about receiving government orange juice. If anything turned up I could do the work.
But where would Owl and Mara be while I worked? Waiting in the truck on the side of the road? Alone
in a tent in the woods? They needed my protection. What if I was working when the Immigration came
and took Owl away? No, there just wasn't any way for me to work at any regular job at that time. So I
kept trying to think of ways to make money without leaving them alone anywhere. And that wasn't
easy. The great dearth of opportunities made me quite anxious at times and I knew that good nutrition
could not wait.
Good nutrition was on everyone's mind at the hotsprings. Contingently, grocery store dumpsters
were primary in feeding our hotsprings community. From dumpsters we acquired perfectly usable, well
packaged foods: Bruised apples, wilted lettuce, bags of potatoes thrown out for the sake of one bad one,
milk and cheese past the date stamped for retail sales, dented canned goods. Recycling was becoming a
new age art... There was some small personal glory in knowing that I possessed the truck which
embarked upon most of those sorties and brought home a large portion of that sustenance for everyone.
There are more important things than money. At that time in our lives, the hot springs were healing
Owl and I of some horrendous mental wounds. Yet it is true that we would have jumped at the chance
of getting an apartment of our own in town -- but if there was one that we could have gotten into with
our limited resources it never came to our attention.
There was one job that offered itself that I briefly considered. Short on gas for the Scout we had
hitchhiked into Eugene from the springs and got picked up by a logging boss who was looking for a
new crewmember. The job was clear-cutting a forest. I didn't want a job like that. But I listened as he
talked because it felt like things had come to the point where maybe I should set aside my personal
beliefs and accept any job at all and be grateful I had it.
He told us the land was steep and icy and that his crewmen were slipping and being injured by the
saws. That's why he needed new crewmembers. And the pay was bad for starting out. Barely above
minimum wage. And there was no hospitalization or insurance benefits. And last but not least: I would
have to go with the crew to the camp alone. Owl and the baby could not go along. They would have to
fend for themselves somewhere. Sure... Sure, sure, sure. Hysterically sure.
So, for the time being, we laid back in Cougar hotsprings and absorbed all the wonderful healing.
Truthfully, it felt to me that God, the Creator of the Universe, was telling me I didn't really need a
conventional home -- not when we had this rare paradise.
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And the springs seemed to be working wonders! Now that Owl had this incredible blessing in her
arms she seemed to be awakening from her laconic dreamworld. This was not the time to leave her
alone to go off fulfilling my social obligation drudging up a paltry existence at minimum wage. That
wasn't likely to improve our heartsong nearly so much as remaining where we were -- at least for the
time being -- even if it meant we had to do without many things. But man-oh-man the thought of that
WIC program's free orange juice and milk and cheese and cereal sure was appealing...
So, I spoke to the nurse and arranged for the free WIC foodboxes for Owl.
I kept Owl away from the nurse though because I didn't want any government person to wonder
about her resident status and bring Immigration down on us. What a heinous miscarriage that might
provoke! Imagine Owl being deported with her baby (or worse -- without her baby!) to Canada, to
stand emptily staring south into the vast reaches of this forbidden country!
Vaguely I remember hoping that the WIC program wasn't an undercover CIA plot to trap radicals (or
illegal immigrants) and scuttle their attempts at propagation. In these days there was much talk about
the military-industrial-financial-political consortiums establishing elaborate clandestine eugenics
systems under the guise of the Welfare departments -- to destroy our Lucy in the Sky generations. Nits
make lice. Kill the Hippie nits. Don't let them breed. We hoped this was just paranoia.
I explained to the nurse that Owl liked her privacy and took care of the paperwork myself. The nurse
seemed willing to keep at a distance, therefore I was somewhat relieved of my fears that she might be
involved in some deep dark nefarious subterfuge.
These were class trepidations -- we all had them. Many brothers and sisters vehemently declared
they knew with absolute certitude the government was sneaking around in the bushes spying and
setting snares for us.
But with our baby in my arms I found I needed to believe that the Creator would not create those
WIC people to be villains. The more I thought about it, temporarily accepting this assistance didn't
really seem to be a bad idea.
I'd have felt even better though, if I didn't just sense that there were Republicans out there hating me
for getting Owl and Mushmara this free Orange juice. Perhaps if they drank it fast and we hid the
containers....
The bottom line for both Owl and me is that we believed in the innate compassion of our species.
We were horrified occasionally to discover we'd been naive on this account but we continued,
nonetheless fairly much in the same vein.
To this end, I believe the WIC program should have been a good one were it not for a singular foible
of prejudice: The Public Health nurse had a predetermined notion that Adam and Eve's bower's (i.e.
Cougar hotsprings) were not a fit habitat in which to nurture an infant.
After I overheard her remarks to this effect I avoided her whenever possible. Owl was so wrapped
up in the baby, she never actually knew of the nurse's existence at all.
Until one day...
That was the day the nurse came, in her plain clothes, to see us in Blue River where we were parked
once again behind the gas station. Owl was alone in the Jeephouse with the baby. I was in the shop
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talking to Don, the leaser of the station. We heard a commotion going on coming from my vehicles,
loud voices.
As we began to respond, the Public Health nurse came storming around the corner and confronted
me.
"You better tell your wife she has to let me see the baby any time I want, or else!". Her mouth curled
with rage as she screamed at me. Her face went through all sorts of grotesque contortions as she
retched at me: "I am required by the State of Oregon to take a blood test from every baby's foot to test
for PKU! And YOU will not stop ME from making this test on that child!"
She finished, quite consumed with rage.
I rushed to Owl to hear her side of this altercation.
This is what had happened: The nurse -- wearing ordinary clothes and not looking like a nurse at all
-- had walked into our Jeephouse unannounced and eruditely mumbled some incomprehensible English
gobbledygook at Owl. Then she'd produced a hypodermic syringe and tried to stab it into our baby's
foot.
For all Owl knew this stranger might have been a weirdo shooting heroin into the little foot. Owl
didn't know her from Hitler and had no idea what she had yammered or why she was in our Jeephouse.
All Owl knew was that there was a strange woman in her home trying to stab her child with a needle.
High atop the three hundred year old Catholic churches of old Montreal are carved hideous gothic
faces: gargoyles. They exist to ever remind the simple people to regard evil. One doesn't forget them.
Owl knows them well.
Owl managed to throw the unholy gargoyle out of our Jeephouse, bodily; whereupon the skinny
creepy bat had come shouting up to me.
I tried to calm her down. I explained to her that Owl doesn't speak a lot of English and had no idea
that she was a nurse -- nor did Owl have the faintest inkling of whatever a PKU test was all about, nor
did she have any idea what the intentions were of this strange woman who was trying to poke a
hypodermic syringe into her baby without courtesy or warning. Hey! That must have been pretty scary
for Owl! Owl was just protecting her child. I assume any mother would have done the identical thing if
such a circumstance were to befall her in a foreign country. Imagine for instance any American woman
who happened to be in Iran with her month old baby and a Moslem woman wearing that long black
veiled garment comes up to her in the street and takes the mother's baby from her arms and tries to
poke it with a syringe. Would she react differently than Owl had? It's a universal absolute. I will never
see the incident any other way!
I was exasperated but calm. I wanted to help clear the mess up as fast as possible. I told the nurse
sincerely, simply that if she would come back the following day that would give me time to have a talk
with Owl and explain everything. And tomorrow she could return and make her test and we'd all be
friends and live happily ever after!
But the nurse exploded again.
"It isn't MY PROBLEM if Owl understands English or not! I can't be running back and forth to Blue
River from Eugene for every little test! YOU BETTER GO TALK TO YOUR WIFE... NOW!"
The nurse stalked off.
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I went to comfort Owl who was in a worrisome state but as I slowly explained what the nurse was
doing, Owl understood and went back to feeding the baby. Understandably, she was very much relieved
to learn the crazy lunatic female who had just tried to stab her baby was a nurse and not a killermaniac!
That's all right -- it was probably a common misconception...
Communicating with Owl is not as difficult for me as it is for others. But regardless of the difficulty,
personally, I would expect a Public Health nurse to be the sort of person who would be inspired enough
to take the time -- to at least try.
I could have forgotten the sorry matter from then on -- but just as the day was returning to its quiet,
the nurse returned with two huge policemen. The two officers each drew 357 magnum pistols from
their holsters and pointed them right at us. They ordered us out of the Jeephouse and told us to
approach them. Of course we complied -- terrified. Why-Oh-WHY were they pointing those terrible
revolvers at a tiny baby and its parents?
One officer spoke rancidly:
"The nurse says you've been giving her a hard time. She has a state job to do. If you interfere with
her, you'll go to jail. Now hand your baby over to her -- slowly."
Owl might have hesitated, so I took the baby from her and put Mara in the nurse's arms.
I was having heavy flashes of what it must be like for a family in a fascist or communist country to
be taken out by a death squad and shot coldly just like this. I felt like the police were imagining the
same thing. Fantasizing a little... "Hippies" weren't exactly their favorite item.
The nurse extracted the blood sample from the tiny foot and perfunctorily dumped Mushmara back
into Owl's anxious arms.
"I better have NO MORE trouble from you two!" she masticated threateningly. The nurse and the
two cops slowly sauntered away.
We felt raped and abused, ambushed and beaten. You could have knocked us over with a feather.
We should have left the area, even the state, then and there, and never looked back. But with the
cold season coming on, this was the only warm area we could winter in with the limited resources that
we had.
Where else could we go?
Back to Arizona? Whew! Wouldn't that Frankenstein doctor just love to sink his teeth into Owl
now? No, definitely not Arizona... California was certainly out. Any shit Oregon had, California had in
aces. Washington was no good. That state had wrecked our car and tried to separate us. They'd sure do
it again, given a chance.
Only Oregon remained at the moment. How could a state as beautiful as Oregon have such
demented citizens in power? They'd pointed their guns at us! How could they even do that? Were they
afraid Owl was gonna attack them with her knitting needles? Well give her a little credit -- She
probably would have! Man-oh-man! I'd have to stop a moment and figure those bad-news-boys out.
Then I knew why they were so rude. They weren't fooling me. I mean -- I used to live in Southern
California -- where authoritarian intimidation and duress glut society to the bloody hilt. People like that
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nurse and those cops have a basic code to live by: "If you don't own real estate -- you don't deserve any
humanity". Simple as that. Those kinds of people are money and power addicts -- as vile as any form of
addict anywhere: they dehumanize others and erode their own souls for the sake of their glut. But there
was no way around it -- we'd simply have to try to learn to get along with those real estate junkies.
We'd have to make some compromises for the sake of the baby. Heck, I really thought I had the skills to
do that. So, I decided we'd just have to stay in Oregon and make this thing work out. Mainly, we'd stay
out of their way -- and we'd keep our eyes open so we could see 'em coming from a long way off! And
when the warm weather returned we'd drive our refurbished rigs elsewhere, safely.
Yes. As long as we were very cautious, all in all, I felt reasonably confident we'd weather this storm.
***
But the storm became a monster and the monster awoke one night inside of ME... An Army sergeant
from the nearby Core of Engineers initiated the episode. He hulked coarsely, carelessly amidst the
hippie brothers and sisters, a drunken, angry, opinionated ruffian, a nude pig who caused our hearts to
hurt just to have to sit in the pools in his vicinity. There's no way he was one of us. What was he doing
there? Spying for the sheriff probably. If Cougar hotsprings was indeed paradise then this man
glowering in the lower pool was the devil. I wished he would have sat in the higher hotter pools
because the lower one was just right for our baby, The others were too hot. I really didn't want him
anywhere near us.
Late one night I sat in the pools with my friends. We had several candles lit. Not too far away the
sergeant sat in the dark guzzling his beer, leering at us. As the hours passed he became a festering sore
in my mind. Meanwhile Owl and Mara slept peacefully back in our little tent. Finally I made my way
to join them. But my heart burned with anger. The blighter in the pool had really gotten under my skin.
As I lay beside my lady and my child the bitter bile of gross indignation burned in my heart and I
glared into the darkness wide awake.
It wasn't just the sergeant; it was also the public health nurse and those two cops and the whole
stupid world that would allow people like them to have such violent power over people like us. And it
was that logging boss who offered me the only job that had come my way, and it depended upon me
leaving Owl and the baby alone, and how angry he had been with me that I couldn't do that! And it was
the memory of Owl's abuse in Vermont by people who were supposed to be our "brothers". And it was
the Arizona psychiatrist and the uncaring border guards -- and all the cold and heartless reptilian
humanoids who stood over us with their damn guns. Each one of these memories flashed before my
eyes and I heard their guns fire and felt their evil bullets pierce my soul and their clammy hands reach
out to grab me. I was possessed with terrible anger...
Mara awoke and began to cry. Owl stirred and silently put the baby to her breast but Mara preferred
to test her strong little lungs. She was about two months old and her voice cracked the silent night. I
knew its force would easily travel through the trees and reach the well-frequented paths and the
hotsprings themselves. It had already happened more than once that her crying had brought us
unexpected visitors, concerned people wondering how they could be hearing a baby crying deep in the
woods in the winter. Some of them had been quite outspoken as to what they believed to be the proper
situation for an infant -- and our lack of it. After such encounters we'd sometimes gathered together our
gear and left Cougar and gone to McCredie for a few days just in case the people had brought back the
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authorities. There was no way to talk to people like that who were so dependent upon the comforts of
normal society. They could never understand outdoors people like us.
So as Mara continued to cry I knew it was likely we would be discovered again. Perhaps this time
her crying would bring a passing Ranger or Sheriff. They occasionally checked the pools at night. I
urged Owl to keep trying to give Mara her breast. "Do something, Owl!" But nothing worked. Mara just
wanted to cry. In the anxious dark I awaited the inevitable prowling flashlights.
Finally, stupid me, in desperation I held Mara's mouth shut with my fingers to muffle her cries. Of
course that didn't work; it only made her more frightened. Stupid me -- I even held my hand tightly
over her mouth, shutting off her air for a moment. And of course that utterly terrified her. Released, she
gasped for breath and wailed in fear. Owl rose on one elbow and looked to see what was going on and
she grabbed Mara away from me angrily and shrieked at me:
"NO! NO! Don't do dat Rhom! Marie is MY bebe! YHOU CAN NOT DO DAT TO HER!!!"
Owl took Mara and turned on her side against the wall of the tent and shielded the baby from me
and whispered soothing lovethings to her.
I felt so foolish. And in the chaos of my emotions I blamed Owl and Mara both for my inadequacies.
Owl crawled down to the most distant corner of the tent away from me and huddled there with Mara
still mewling pathetically. Owl rocked her and whispered her dear words. Usually Owl would have thus
succeeded in calming Mara but not this night. The child was too shook up. After awhile I asked Owl to
let me try again. I promised to be gentle. Owl refused, and refused again; but eventually, reluctantly,
she released the baby to me. And so I rocked and whispered and pleaded with the tiny child but my
entreaties were ignored. And my lousy anger had not entirely abated -- and returned with a vigor. Again
I went to silence Mara's cries with my hand -- and Owl leaped upon me like a mother cat and clawed at
me to retrieve her "bebee". But I turned my back to her and kept the child in my possession. Owl's
angry cries became louder than Mara's! And I added my own voice to the chaos, a terrible chaos in the
dark wilderness beneath the stars. My heart raced like a swollen flood. I was incredibly inadequate! I
lacked wisdom, understanding, experience... I lacked ten thousand necessary things... And in the throws
of this personal crisis I swatted my infant daughter's butt with open fingers "to get her attention"--as
though she would "snap to" then and cease crying. And I was even thinking on some weird level that I
could thusly instill in her a fear of further punishment unless she immediately learned to silence her
cries whenever I so ordered; and she only two months old... Stupid me! And as I swatted her once more
a wild-hearted Owl screamed into my ear and got my attention and she tore her child from my grasp
and zipped open the tent flap and raced out into the night where she sat beside the still-glowing embers
of our fire, her lips against her baby's face, murmuring, murmuring, murmuring...
Alone in the tent I gaped at the scene through the opening, breathing hard, and crying myself. We
were all crying, me, Owl, and Mara; all crying... I tried to tell Owl I was sorry but she wouldn't listen to
me. Sometimes Owl's eyes pierced the night, glaring at me in the light of the flickering flames as she
threw on another piece of wood.
I lay back and stared at the ceiling of the tent for long moments. When I arose again to look out at
the scene around the campfire Owl and Mara were gone.
I waited an hour for Owl to return. But she did not. I went down to the springs but she wasn't there. I
walked out to the Scout. She wasn't there either. I returned to the tent and lay awake until morning
waiting for them to return.
In the first light of morning she silently came and began to gather her things with one free hand. She
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would not set the baby down to do it. She said she was taking Mara and leaving me. She said she
wanted to return to Canada. I was so SORRY! I pleaded with her not to go. All of a sudden we were
both crying buckets and talking things out from deep within ourselves. She was very tired. She had
probably spent the night sitting under some tree deep in the forest with her baby in her arms. We all
were tired. We finally nestled together and she forgave me, if tentatively, and we went to sleep.
In the days that followed I had to constantly work at regaining her trust. I also had to give myself
proof that I could resist the temptation of brutish behavior. I fasted for a day and a half. I also spoke
with some other hippie parents who came to the springs. They counseled me kindly and I listened to
their advice.
So this, the most unpleasant incident of my life, passed behind us. Owl watched my chagrined and
resurrected performance day after day and gradually became convinced that I was safe to entrust with
the treasure of her soul. I thanked her for bearing with me.
There are some awful contortions of the human spirit loosed upon the world. They inflict terrible
harm upon innocents. After witnessing my own base nature turn against my own tender child and my
wife in that dark poignant wilderness I came to stare at myself sometimes as if I were a stranger that I
did not know; someone whom I must observe closely until I would know him well enough to feel safe
again. I also felt that in gaining insight into myself in this way I would better understand the
manifestations of the same insipid forces afflicting everyone everywhere. I know we must earn our
self-respect and that of our loved ones, and that of our brothers and sisters.
Owl was such a natural mother and wife... Some moments I became vibrantly aware of how her
sacred form of natural intelligence surely surpassed my own meaner mentality. Yet other people
sometimes observed her as she struggled to find the correct English words necessary to express
something that was on her mind, and how she sometimes just gave up in mid-sentence, and they
sometimes came to the erroneous perception that Owl lacked wits. Even I sometimes succumbed to
such poisonous misunderstanding. But Owl's celestial mother wisdom always eventually burned
through my fog and set me straight. Her true heart lit my path for me. Without her I was nothing; but
with her in my life I was a father and a husband -- and my own wounded life was healing, and I prayed
to God for strength. I prayed that the lousiness of that night would never reoccur. And I prayed that I
would become a good father and husband.
With renewed energy I set about seeking a good life for us, some work that would finance the
improvements we needed and better access to wise parenting skills.
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TEN
CARROTS UP THE YIN-YANG
Every two weeks we went into Springfield (Eugene's sister city) for a WIC appointment where a
medical technician weighed and measured Mara.
We usually stayed in town at least a couple days each time and looked for winter situations. Maybe
we'd split rent with Moon and Mountain on an apartment. Maybe we'd discover a friendly inexpensive
trailer court with showers and laundry room that would accommodate our old rigs. Maybe we'd meet
somebody with forty acres in the country outside Eugene who'd let us live in our Jeephouse in a pretty
spot beside a tumbling creek. There is a God after all. So a new family should have a right to hope...
On one such trip into Eugene I ran into a lady with a litter of Afghan puppies in a cardboard box. She
was selling them for fifty dollars each. I talked with Owly about getting one to grow up with
Mushmara. Sure seemed like a natural combination, a little girl and a dog; so, I went back and gave the
lady fifty precious dollars and brought the rascal home.
Perhaps people who don't believe in God don't think about God... And people who do, do. I have
always thought about God a lot. There are times when I perceive God more as a Mother than as a
Father. Organized Christian religion doesn't approve of such notions. But the world is changing. And
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mankind's vision of the universe is rising to a new awareness. And we are becoming aware that
mankind's patriarchal societies and religions have a history of senseless inhumanities that no Motherwisdom would condone if it were empowered. It would make more sense if God were the Mother of
Creation... I have read most of the books written by Professor Marija Gimbutas...
For untold milleniums the human race worshipped the Great Mother. The oldest art that
archeologists have uncovered is a pair of breasts carved from flint that has been proven through carbon
dating to be over half a million years old. Ancient human beings knew they were part of a matristic
totality, full of harmony and purpose. The fertility of the Earth was Her provenance. Humanity's first
religion was based on life's essential needs -- planting and harvest, heavenly seed and divine uterus, the
fruits of the earth's womb, the nurturing of the children of the earth from Her loving breasts -- and all
things aligned accordingly. But the precious wisdom has passed away. Sacred grottos have been paved
over with parking lots. Ancient forests have been cut down. The sacred oak is just another tree standing
in the way of so-called progress. The poetry of Truth died with the druid priestesses. Humanity has
been left to run blind and mindless for we have lost our first-wisdom, the nurturing source of our
being...
With the birth of our child we felt like we wanted to blend our lives closer to the Mother earth...
Agricultural workers remain close to the earth throughout their lives. Often I had admired Mexican
families working together in the fields -- doing their valuable work so we all could have good
vegetables and fruits on our tables -- and not being paid well or given much respect for all their labors
either. Despite some efforts to improve their lifestyles, life remains hard for them. But I envied and
admired them. They know the love of family. And they love the Earth.
Owl and I had already tried to do agricultural work. We picked apples in the Okanogen of B.C., and
lemons in Arizona. The pickers were so kind-hearted! It was sure good to be near them. But we couldn't
keep up with those hard working people who'd done that kind of labor all their lives. We'd had it so
soft! We were unprepared for the rigors -- the back bending, the hot sun, the twelve-hour workdays.
Among those folks I felt sheepish to lack such natural skills. Still I found myself wanting to work with
my hands deep in the sweet-smelling black dirt that fed the people of the Earth, the womb of life.
A co-op carrot farm in Santa Clara, a couple miles west of Eugene, had hired Moon and Mountain to
pick carrots for two dollars per hour. They hired us too.
Early mornings the dark green Scout flatbed towing the pastel-green Jeephouse, slowly rolled across
the verdant farmscapes. Finding a parking space along the field, we'd stop and prepare our breakfast in
our propane-heated, toasty-warm kitchen/bedroom.
Owl would feed and change Mushmara. We always luxuriated in this first hour or two of the day to
cuddle and play with our beautiful tiny darling. Owl was so tender with her! Seeing them made my
heart swell with pride and wonder. The puppy would put his head on my knee and watch them too. We
were all warm and well fed. The puppy always made sure our faces were clean. Our hearts were full to
the brim and overflowing. Our work in the fresh-air was conscientious and community serving. Other
than a little more permanent living situation, we lacked nothing. We were happy.
Sometimes Moon would come over and spend an early morning hour with us, share a breakfast, chat
with Owl, hold the baby. Finally we would dress Mara in several layers of warm clothes and wrap her
in blankets and with pillow-feathers still tangled in our hair, we'd trudge out across the dew-laden tall
grasses to the fields.
All day long we pulled up carrots and laid them between the rows to be washed and bagged later. As
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we moved along the rows together we moved Mushmara in her blankets with us. It really was a joy.
Farm workers have nursed their children like this since the dawn of time and they are the healthiest of
peoples.
A family is closer together sharing their hearthsong moments: sowing and reaping, playing and
learning, endlessly knitting together family as garment, tenderly darning and redarning every frayed
elbow or knee or toe -- and personal problems as well -- never wanting to be apart for anything.
Modern families who confine kids to nurseries long hours rationalize this unnatural solitude by
saying children need their space -- when the truth is that ours is a selfish, winner-take-all world, where
anyone who does not apply himself or herself to long hours away from their family, hocking the hours
of their lives (and their children's lives) making money, will lose out to those who do. We've created
work situations that relegate family life to a begrudged hour-a-day function when a meal is shared
together. Some don't even have that.
Rare are the ones who are jealous of anything that keeps them from one another; the true oldfashioned family, the one that plowed together, and gathered together, and played and prayed together.
People accept the sorry way the family has deteriorated as necessary to modern life. Like chainsmokers who refuse to see their habit as unhealthy and unnatural, we entertain the proclivity to remain
blind to the lonely, alienated worlds we give our children. Oh! This sorry world needs help! Children
should never suffer from neglect or abuse. God is Love. Love should have a way to assist unfortunates.
And sometimes government social workers are the only help who may reach them.
Many women involved in social work are the living, breathing picture of kindness in action. Loyal
to husband and children and all the troubled families of their assignments -- these gentle hearts are
beyond the pale of derogation. They may be stern. They may become angry at times. They may strike
blows for children and family's sake. We love these women. Thank God for them.
And many single-parent mothers love children and labor unceasingly and under innumerable
disadvantages to acquire the education necessary to obtain employment in a field where they can work
with children -- to support their family at home while doing work that also satisfies their spirit and fills
their hearts. These bountiful mothers manage as well as possible the difficult task of working
conscientiously for children's welfare eight hours per day and more -- while balancing their home
situations and their case-loads with a deftness, agility and compassionate wisdom that can only be
inspired from the cornucopia source in a mother's soul. Oh! This blessed woman's life isn't easy! And
may God continue to help all such devoted women. And God forbid that I ever disparage them!
But Socrates said he was a Gadfly sent to sting society back to its senses, even though society in all
its dreadful power condemned him; and even so, I too am a living, breathing gadfly; and I too have a
difficult task -- to separate wheat from chaff -- to tell from my heart some things that are true which
society will not want to hear. And one of those things is that I know there is another variety of
womankind involved in social work -- one that is not so benevolent -- one that drains the good
intentions and conscientious services of those other backbones of humanity. So many modern women
want careers -- not children. Money. Clothes. Cars. Many of them go into Social Work too -- because it
seems easy to slide by doing little, and yet it seems so powerful and even glamorous in some way. How
ironic! Often this type of woman doesn't want a family because it would get in the way of her hoopla
career in social work -- yet she ends up working with families, helping those families make “right”
decisions, giving advice from her “ample” reserves -- and sometimes -- yes, sometimes -- she even gets
to see her powerful directives enforced by men with guns! Excitement! Social Welfare. A real 007 sort
of job! She is a matriarchal menace...
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We had some such childless wonders on the prowl looking for us.
***
Some days it rained. Our sheepskin leather vests and bulky natural-oil sweaters protected us. Even
the baby had hers. Plus we wrapped her well in rainproof gear. We were rarely even uncomfortable.
When it poured cats and dogs we ran for cover in the near-by Jeephouse and spent the day warmly,
cooking and reading and snuggling and tickling and listening to the radio.
We were so warm in our homemade leathers and hooded sweaters which Owl had knit from
homespun wool with all the unremoved water resistant lanolin oils still permeating the fibers! So
warm!
And people we'd never met were always bringing over boxes of clothes their kids had outgrown.
Some people are like that. In fact, we soon had so many clothes and blankets folded in piles around our
bed, (which was always made up as a bed so that Owl could easily nurse the baby or so they could take
naps) that the inside of the Jeephouse looked like a brightly colored bird nest.
One of the little "birds" there had floppy ears and a long tail, and had a habit of burrowing under
blankets and chewing on our toes. (Not Mushmara. Fido.)
We needed money bad. So we worked outside picking carrots through November and December.
Truly, outdoors work is invigorating. I've seen some office workers get wimpy and grouch at a morning
mist. They don't know what they're missing. Each day when our work was done we dove into our nest
and came up laughing. We were healthy as horses and happy as the songbirds that sang to us from the
trees. People who are addicted to centrally heated offices and homes could not hope to understand such
healthiness and happiness.
The carrot patch owners looked out the pretty windows of their three-generation farmhouse and
wondered about us. They'd also just been blessed with the birth of a lovely child. I'm sure the fine
nursery in that warm house full of new toys and new clothes and baby blankets made a sharp contrast
in their minds when they looked out their window and saw us in their fields with our baby.
There was also a house on the co-op land that was communal. Moon told us she'd heard a member
had left and that they were looking for a new member to fill the vacant room. She was excited. She
wanted us to get that room.
I'd lived in communes. I believed in that spirit. And so I thought:
--"Man! How perfect! What a blessing of Providence! Just when we need it most! We'll live in a
sweet country commune! We'll only need the one room. Our baby will have a very nice element for
starting her life, mentally nourished in her most formative years by conscientious and intelligent
counter-culture brothers and sisters! Wow! We'll pick carrots and be close to the earth and we will
have a room in a comfortable warm house right next to the fields with bros and sisters! Just what Owl
has needed for so long too. She will finally be able to have dear friends totally near her to help heal
her deep wounds. Thank you God!"
But after sourly scrutinizing us, they decided we weren't right for their group.
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"Yes, the warmth and electricity would surely be nice for your baby... But, no... We've discussed you
and the consensus is that we want an individual, not a couple, to have the room."
They didn't want us! What a let down!
"Hey! That little room must be at least two or three times the size of the van we're in now. We'd have
space we wouldn't know what to do with! Maybe we could just try it for the month of December, just to
see if it would work out? And I could use that month to look for a different place somewhere else just in
case it didn't. Hey brother, let us just try it for one month, okay?... Maybe the other women in the
commune would like to have a baby around. Maybe it would be great for everyone... Just one month to
see..."
I asked him reasonably, hopefully.
"No, I don't think so...", he answered absently, as if his mind were on more important things. He
turned abruptly and walked up the stairs and went inside the neat old house where the other enlightened
communal members lived.
I'll admit what I thought then:
"Hmm. We're good enough to slave for them picking their carrots -- but we're not good enough to
live with them!"
Well, that's just a small portion of what I was thinking about him and his commune. But the rest of it
went along similar lines.
There just wasn't anyplace available that we could afford to rent. One might expect a room in a
commune to be the cheapest arrangement. After that fell through there was nothing else. We were very
very lucky that we had our Scout and the Jeephouse...
How prudent I'd been to fix up our rigs to be so livable and so dependable. The trucks enabled us to
surmount this sort of obstacle so our little family could still basically survive -- thanks to our ingenuity!
No matter how cold-hearted the world might seem -- we could always move on and find a better place.
Where would we have been without those trucks?
More nasty developments were brewing though. That other baby's grandparents lived near the carrot
patch too, and they became curious about how our baby was doing. They never came to visit us. They
never actually talked to us at all in order to get an answer to any of their quandaries about our well
being. They just sort of peeked at us through their window curtains -- and wondered.
The folks in the commune never came to visit, either. Not that we missed them. We were too busy to
notice. After all, we didn't need them. We were snug enough! Our lantern and candles were prettier than
their electric bulbs. We were doing fine.
The end of carrot picking season was approaching. In a couple weeks there'd be none left to pick.
The December weather was finally getting a little nippy. The rain drizzled.
The morning radio told us the temperature was forty-six degrees above zero on the damn day I'll
never forget.
Owl was raised in Quebec. People are out and about there when the temperature is forty below zero.
And I was raised in Minnesota where the exact same thing is true. So a temperature of forty-six degrees
above zero does not exactly amount to a national emergency in our lives. No football game would be
called off in Minnesota if the temperature dropped to forty-six degrees above zero. No schools would
be closed in Montreal Quebec if the temperature fell to forty-six degrees above zero so that children
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would not have to walk home in that temperature. Few Quebec mothers would cancel a walk through a
park with their bundled up baby because the temperature was forty-six degrees above zero. In the lands
where Owl and I were born and raised a temperature of forty-six degrees above zero would barely
warrant a comment in passing, and no day would be changed an iota.
But in Oregon some people live ridiculously sheltered lives! To them having a baby outside when
the temperature drops to forty-six degrees above zero was anathema. They could never understand that
we were different from them in many ways and that we could be affected differently...
They don't wander on whims and crave the soaring flames of hippie/gypsy campfires and
friendships. They don't fly to dark hotspring groves to beat taut goatskins in frenzied drum-circles and
philosophize for eternal star-clad hours with naked "brothers and sisters" in mid-winter in the hundred
degree waters. Those church-going Oregon grandparent's lives were so different from ours... They
couldn't understand us at all... They could not see and they could not know the ancient matristic
wholeness and healthiness and holiness that pulled and pushed us and called to us and made us so
different from them.
It was the forty-six degree above zero temperature that brought the social waters to a boil with all
the complex ingredients. Some Oregon folks are so pampered and lazy that they don't feel it's even
healthy for adults to be outside in weather below sixty degrees. They stay inside with a heater on full
blast. I suppose that sort of person exists everywhere. They prefer to lounge around watching soap
operas and gorging themselves on junk food until they can barely get off their sofas. And they chainsmoke to dull their loneliness and boredom, and to fuel their nefarious manipulations of their neighbors
(which they learn how to do from soap operas. Viscous circle.)
No. These are not the kind of people who long to run barefooted through autumn leaves. No. They
never fly enraptured from one sunbeam to the next. No. They don't dance in the snow with their
children bubbling with laughter in their arms, eyes heavy laden with God's snowflakes. No.
But there is one exercise they don't neglect -- the finger twirl. It's done inside a nifty warm house
with the scent of freshly baked bread, with sweet sheet music hymns on the old piano -- while peeking
through a window curtain at people they don't even know... The strenuous finger twirl is awesome to
behold. Stick that evil little digit in a phone dial and twirl away, twirl away, twirl away. And twist the
world into any shape you like.
We had barely settled-in picking carrots when the Children's Protective Service women came, the
first one was followed by two more. They pressed their faces against the windows of the Jeephouse to
look inside, smudging their caked makeup on the glass. It made them mad. They took photos through
the Jeephouse windows. They plodded through the mud, round and round the vehicle in their nylons
and one inch heals. And the mud soaked into their shoes and they felt it ooze between their toes, and
they got madder. A gentle wind was blowing and their hairdos were soon badly askew. There were
flecks of mud on their dresses and coats. They knew they would smell like a barnyard when they got
back to their office. They were pissed.
The leader of the little group was a young acne-faced CPS worker. She was unmarried and had no
children. This was her first job. One of the first questions she asked us after she finally found us was:
"Why does Owl breastfeed the baby? Don't you know it's old fashioned and not as good as bottle
feeding?"
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I'll never forget that.
She didn't listen to our answer. She already knew everything -- and it was plain our info didn't match
hers. Oh sure! We just liked her right off! Just fine. She told us she'd just gotten out of High School. It
figured. (We thought: "How nice of them to graduate her!")
But unfortunate for us, we'd made an error ourselves that day which did not present us well.
The early morning had been clear and nice. So when the weather turned colder we'd gone to the
warm Jeephouse at the edge of the carrot patch to change Mara Morningdove's diaper and cook up a
hot lunch. The little Jeephouse could get stifling hot when we cooked with the propane stove and we
would have to discard our winter clothes while inside. We snuggled for over an hour. The baby was
wrapped in her blanket. When we were ready to return to the fields we had picked her up and wrapped
her further in a rainproof tarp and taken her out without realizing we'd forgotten to dress her back up
again in her warm clothes. It was one of those mornings when we could have stayed in bed all day and
we were a little sleepy-brained and half-awake.
I should have double-checked on Mushmara's garments but I'd relied on Owl -- and she had relied
on me. In fact, each of us had presumed that the other had finished dressing her. Neither had. We'd
wrapped the rainproof tarp around her blanket and returned to the fields. As constant as we were with
our baby, and inasmuch as she never left our side, we surely would have noticed as soon as Owl fed
her, (which was frequently) that she was still in need of a sweater and flannel pants.
So admittedly, Mushmara wasn't dressed warmly enough. We were chagrined to discover it with
those three women present. We rectified the situation immediately of course. But the damage was done.
It was too late.
We had stacks and stacks of thick clean wool clothes for the baby. And usually she was thickly
dressed and even wearing the sheepskin top we had made for her: always warm... Never sick... Anyone
could have verified that. Moon and Mountain. Other carrot pickers...
Wouldn't you know they would just have to come on the one occasion where we had slipped up? We
were plenty embarrassed to appear so neglectful to those officious women. Murphy’s law, number 86:
They'll always come when you're least prepared.
So, why had they come in the first place? Because certain people had made complaints and inquiries
concerning a "hippie couple" with a new-born baby living in a truck and picking carrots out in the
December weather. So that's why they'd come -- to check us out.
The puppy had scratched the cheek of Mara's face slightly a couple days previous. We had been
more careful after that. I explained it to the social workers. They were aghast that we would allow a
puppy near such a tiny baby. Their concern on that point was well taken -- but we'd learned from it and
I assured them it wasn't likely to happen again. They were very uptight...
At first they asked us questions together. Then they tried to talk to Owl alone. Owl didn't trust them
after what the Public Health nurse had put us through in Blue River and she wouldn't respond
adequately.
Besides, most of their questions were insipid. I was willing to answer them as well as I could -- but
how does anyone answer a pointed barb like:
--"You don't really want this baby, do you?"
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I sure didn't expect poor Owl to answer that crap either. It was the sort of jab an ignorant little brat
would make, not a mature woman doing a delicate and important job that involved families of many
cultural differences..
I wanted to get Owl away from their polluted mouths and junk-food, caked make-up mentalities as
fast as possible.
We'd probably never have had this difficulty if they'd been experienced mothers. But they were
young unmarried girls. One of them even admitted to me that she was fresh out of high school. I don't
understand how she even got such a job with so little education! But I know one thing: casting
aspersions on people who are different is a High School art form among young girls. And they were
obviously having a field day. Plainly speaking, they were little sharks and this "dumb hippie family"
was their lunch.
So, they wanted to take Mushmara to a hospital for a check-up -- for the weekend.
"No way!" I told them with natural vehemence. "Our baby is just fine with us. She has never even
had the sniffles in her three months. She's obviously strong and healthy! Furthermore she's had
medical check-ups every two weeks!"
They were snotty and aloof. They said they'd have to consult with their superior and walked back to
their car.
I thought to myself: "Good Riddance! Don't come back till you grow up!"
After they'd finally gone, we left too. The day was shot now anyway. We were sure glad to be rid of
them. I presumed they'd worn out their prank and were gone forever.
After we were paid we cleaned up and put on our good leathers, thinking we would splurge and have
a night out at a movie and afterwards eat dinner in a restaurant, to clear the air and get a new
perspective on everything.
But once we were out on the highway I noticed one of those girls following us in a compact car. I'd
had my fill of them for one day, so I pulled into a market -- thinking they'd give up on trying to talk
further to us if they had to wait while we shopped for groceries.
When we walked out of the store, the girl was there with two policemen. Once again, the police had
large caliber pistols drawn and pointed right at us. They were ready for action. The look on their faces
said: "Scum doesn't stand a chance."
They told us tersely to hand Mara over to the young woman. We answered with tears and pleading.
They silenced us with:
"We're not going to tell you again. We'll use force if we have to!"
I knew violence would only be held against us, that it would be futile, that Owl would go to jail and
be deported -- without her baby or me. Maybe we could arbitrate this. I took Mara from Owl and
handed her over to the acne-faced young brat.
Now the police backed off. They told us we'd have to contact Children's Protective Services for
further information about the whereabouts of our daughter. Then they all drove off leaving us standing
there in our spiffy leathers and golden sheepskin vests, choking with grief.
A crowd had formed and now stood around googling and mumbling like the undead risen from their
crypts. Slowly they drifted away into the Oregon vapors.
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Owl snapped me out of my paralysis. She was asking me:
"Tom! When dey bring Marie bak? RobeenTom! whar is ma bebe? Tom! Tom! Tom! whar hab de tak
uhur?"
Dizzily, I looked at my poor little Owly and realized though I understood little enough about what
had happened -- Owl understood virtually nothing. The English had been too crazy and harsh for her to
translate in her head into her native French.
"Dey can note take ma bebe, Tom?"
She looked at me. Tears were welling up in her beautiful brown eyes, those eyes I loved with all my
heart. Her lower lip was quivering uncontrollably. A silent kind of screaming was going on deep in her
mind.
I was listening to my own silent chaos. My heart was pounding heavily in my chest. All I could see
was Owly. Her empty arms hung uselessly; she clutched a baby blanket nervously in her fingers. Owly
was looking up at me for clarification. Reassurance.
"Don't worry, Owly."
I took her hand. She clutched mine. My voice sounded too loud and a little hysterical to my own
ears. Then extemporaneous human hope burst forth:
"They'll just check her in the hospital and get her back to us in an hour. Let's find a phone and call
up that agency to see if we're supposed to stay in this parking lot and wait for the doctor to examine
her before they bring her back here or if we should return to the carrot patch and wait there -- and
exactly how long this examination will take."
Mushmara was so healthy. Surely any doctor would see that in an instant. And then they would
realize they had made a mistake and bring our baby back. It was the most logical thing...
Owly hurried along beside me as I looked for a phone. We called C.P.S. but it was now after 5:00
PM on a Friday and only a recording answered. It gave us an emergency-after-five and weekend
number. We called that. The girl who answered knew absolutely nothing about the circumstances of
Mushmara and was not inclined to ruffle herself to inquire of anyone.
"They've all gone home!" She sounded exasperated. All she could suggest was to call back Monday
morning.
We were to be kept in the dark over the weekend. Pretty heartless. God damn Machiavellian...
Somewhere you could be sure, those young girls were drinking coffee or sipping beer and laughing
together and saying smugly:
"Did you see the look on their faces?" and "I wish the cops would have shot them stupid hippies!"
The next day was Saturday and then Sunday. We spent those days standing outside our Jeephouse in
the rain, from early in the morning until after dark, straining our eyes on the distance,
waiting for the sight of the compact car and the young girl to drive up and give Mushmara
Morningdove back to us.
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In vain.
She never came, not even with a word of information. People like that don't work on Saturdays or
Sundays. You can bet it's only a matter of time before people like that don't work Mondays either.
Sunday evening a car ran over the new puppy and didn't stop. Owl carried the limp and bloody thing
back to the Jeephouse and I buried him in the field.
*
*
*
...a small tragedy on top of a huge one. It is all too easy for anyone hearing about this to feel that if
we couldn't care for a dog we probably couldn't care for a baby. Too easy. And so superficial... What I
want to say here is that there was a deeper dimension happening, something that at the time seemed
ponderously uncanny. All these years later it still feels the same.
We were parked deep in the Santa Clara countryside on a backroad that was so untraveled that a
whole day might pass without a single car driving by. The car that hit the puppy was in fact the only car
to pass by on the road during that day. And we know that for a fact because we stood outside that entire
day agonizing as we watched for the car that we hoped would be bringing our baby back. Considering
the lack of traffic I hope it is understandable that we allowed the puppy to have a little freedom to run
loose in the fields that late afternoon. But he was fast as lightning, the rascal, and when the speeding
vehicle came round the bend he heard that engine coming closer and closer and he suddenly darted
towards that car like a moth to a flame, a mercury dog hurtling towards a cosmic magnet. That's what it
was exactly. And we had our eyes riveted to the car too, in hopes that it contained our child.
Horrifically, in the marrow of my bones I felt the dark force manipulating our energies; I saw the
gargoyles leering, grinning. I felt the sad angels battling for us against the dark forces too; I swear I
heard their voices in the thick of the heaviest moments, as they were overwhelmed, like a clear-cut
ancient forest... It was the same thing... It was the same angels... It was the same macabre energies
cutting them down, and us... It was the same. It was the same. IT WAS THE SAME. It was as clear to
me as the blackest thunderhead in the bluest sky: the dark forces had been watching us, plotting and
scheming to do this damage, to whip us, and wound us with deadly blows. They had to destroy us
because we had been gifted with strange powers of freedom and love which blocked their purposes.
The paths of my deepest reality had been locked in this obscure struggle for a long time... It is a
metaphysical truth so difficult to express that I have long debated whether or not I should even discuss
it. But it is so foundational to all these events that the truth will not be visualized without it.
On November 11th, 1968 the heart of God opened to me in the major cathartic experience of my life
and set me on the path which I must travel all my life and that path is sometimes very difficult. That
path caused me to take my stand against the Vietnam war, to go to prison for that cause, and to go
through every difficult situation that I have been through, on ten thousand highways: highways that
bond people together, people seeking answers to life's hardest questions, people wondering with all
their heart if any one heart can make a difference. I have been on a strange and wondrous path to walk
through so many worlds, through so many lives... Committing myself to that path meant that time after
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time I would be flying in the face of the world's dark enslaving powers. I prayed on a mountain for that
path. I fasted five days without food or water for that path. I swam out into a starless midnight sea of
towering waves to be shown the truth of that path. That path was my cross to bear, my cup to drink. I
KNOW THIS.
Now the darkness had taken our baby, broken our hearts, and finally, even killed our little puppy to
put the final twist of the knife into our agony. Not even prayers could mitigate the pain. Because pain
was the payment I had to make. And witnessing Owl's terrible grief caused my own grief to multiply a
thousand times. Now everything that was sacred to me was weighing in the balance as I reevaluated
every decision of my life which had brought me to this heartache. What good was a Path which took
away everything that made life dear? To realize that we were locked in the grips of powers that could
so totally destroy us made me feel desperate and lost.
It's like gazing upon the emptiness of a clear-cut where once stood an ancient forest of giant
redwoods. How much hope exists in that moment? How much hope for humanity, for divine spirit, for
the dominion of Truth upon the Earth, for the basic respect of life? Think of all the children who were
victims of all the useless wars of this century, think of all the imprisoned innocents rotting so uselessly,
so painfully... The Dark Forces rape the Earth and there is nothing much anyone can do to stop it. And
anyone who tries to stop it eventually becomes a target of those Dark Forces. The Path of Truth is not
easy, not bloodless.
My own spirit is normally strong -- but it was utterly crushed by the taking of my daughter. So
bleak, so bleak, seemed the entire Universe then, that even all things sacred were wounded and dying. I
doubted everything then, everything I had ever believed in, every realization I had ever experienced,
doubted it all -- doubted everything but my love for Owl and Mushmara. I doubted everything but that.
So that's what brought my head above water again. Because love is sacred truth that holds up all Truth,
for love is the fiber and the light of all things true.
It may be that most people will never be able to understand how I could justify having an infant
child with us while we lived in a vehicle on the side of the road, and it may be that most people will
never agree that my being is fixed on a path which spurs me through political and moral scenarios
where my life provides human confrontation which tests so many hearts and realigns them on new
sacred paths of their own. What is so clear to me may never be understood by everyone. But some do.
Truths are not of my making. No mortal can create Truth. Truth is before him and after him. Before
her and after her. He and she must walk the path in the Light closely from beginning to end. They must
live that Path wherever it goes.
Perhaps it would have been easier to write what happened without trying to describe this innermost
dimension. Easy ways are well traveled ruts, habit-forming in their clear-cut entropy; but deep Truth is
unbroken rocky ground; it is a natural forest so thick that one must travel very slowly and be aware of
everything; it is a huge and mighty oak that stretches forth it's great arms into the sky -- that is ignored
for all its size and beauty, by such youths as those who took our child..
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ELEVEN
WILDING HEARTS
An unholy committee of detractors now rose like uncoiling vipers from holes where they'd lain
hidden. With malignant devices they closed in upon us, with contumely fangs they sought our wilding
hearts.
We had been thinking that the WIC medical technician was in our corner. How wrong we were! We'd
expected him to vouch that we had brought a healthy Mara to him regularly for check-ups. Instead he
testified that he'd contrived bogus reasons to manipulate us into bringing Mushmara more often than
was necessary -- because he doubted our parenting abilities and wanted to keep a close watch on the
infant "for her safety". But he admitted Mara had always appeared healthy and had never had a cold or
been sick in any way when he had examined her. There was something fishy going on. If Mara had
always been healthy how did he have cause to spy on us?
He elaborated for the courtroom how he had, with some considerable cunning, misled us as to his
true intentions by making small talk and by seeming friendly, sympathetic, and interested in our lives.
That was him to a "T": fabricated humanity...
But the child remained healthy and there was not anything otherwise to report. Then in early
December he discovered that Mushmara hadn't gained any weight since her check-up two weeks
before. Of course, the more important factor might have been that she hadn't LOST any weight either.
She just hadn't gained any. A two week period of no weight gain is not uncommon at all for infants. It
occurs to many well-fed babies in winter; but it was all the technician needed to have a reason to make
trouble for us, which is exactly what he had been waiting for. He told us it indicated to him that Mara
wasn't getting enough nourishment.
I didn't agree. There was one thing I knew for sure and that was that Owl had plenty of healthy milk.
It leaked everywhere. Her breasts were swollen. She nursed her baby constantly. I did not regard Mara's
two week lapse of weight-gain as serious -- especially since she'd gained so well until then and was
always very healthy and even abnormally strong, all of which I attributed to our healthy outdoors
lifestyle.
On the other hand I also knew it was possible that the vigorous outdoors weather could have been
sapping calories. Carrot picking season was almost at an end and I could do it myself so Owl could stay
with the baby in the warm Jeephouse. So after the technician told us Mara hadn't gained weight I
frequently left Owl and Mara cuddling together sleepily in the warm quilts and went out into the fields
by myself and picked with Moon and Mountain. But Owl still came out to help sometimes, especially
on warmer days. As far as I could see, we had thoughtfully appraised the situation and taken
appropriate action.
But the WIC technician had not felt we were concerned enough. Neither did he feel that I was
capable of solving the problem -- not without his magnificent professional help anyway. Holy Cow.
What an ego! The solution he preferred was that Owl should stop breast-feeding and begin giving Mara
a bottle! And he tried to force that stupid opinion of his on us!
Ridiculous! And lose all the natural immunity breast-feeding alone may provide? Outrageous! Oh
sure, if the problem persisted that might be different. But taking Mara off the breast could be an
irreversible error! I knew there was nothing wrong with Owl's breast milk! Owl was healthy as an
Amazon! And I knew Mushmara would show a positive weight-gain at our next visit, which we moved
forward to the following week.
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But for this county medical technician to insist Owl stop breast-feeding entirely! Instantly? What a
power trip that guy had to be on if he expected us to snap to attention regarding his every little bit of
advice! Especially as inane as that idea was to us. We couldn't seem to get through to him how
important breast-feeding was: The bonding! The nutrition! The natural immunity!
He argued with me. He wanted the decision to be his -- not mine. So then he had suggested that the
baby go into the hospital until her weight picked up!!!
I realized then that the guy was a little crazy. She hadn't lost any weight! She just hadn't gained any
over one two week period. That's all. She wasn't skinny, she wasn't run-down, she didn't lack energy.
She was healthy as could be. She had no cold. She had no fever. And she was happy. He was obviously
a bureaucrat technician who had become overly impressed with his own power over people. He was
nuts.
Breast-feeding in the hospital would be impossible unless Owl were there constantly, which I
doubted was his intention. Didn't he realize how important bonding was to a mother and child? What
was he thinking? He wasn't thinking. He was BEING. He was being... an important dude of high
renown. In his mind.
When I raised my objections his eyes looked bored -- as if my inexpert and unarticulate reference to
mother/child bonding through breast-feeding were a pretentious intellectual affectation on my part -something he had to endure that made his job extra difficult.
He said he still thought Mushmara should go into the hospital.
I paused to consider the colossal bill this highly arbitrary hospitalization would ensue! Where would
the money come from? The technician loomed enshrouded in an aura of tactical and arbitrary gloom...
He watched me... He knew from our past conversations that we were trying to learn ways to live
without being so dependent on the invidious coin. It was almost as if he were trying to show me my
naivete by embroiling me in a money problem! Manipulators of that genre look on life as a selfglorifying chess game. He looked like one of those nitwits! My intuition was throbbing but I couldn't
quite figure out how everything tied together. What was the real reason he wanted to separate
Mushmara from us? What could it possibly be?
When I tried to figure it all out one thing kept rising to the surface. Since Mushmara's birth, Sacred
Heart Hospital had been sending me weekly demands that I pay them two thousand dollars
immediately for Owl's maternity hospitalization and that fifty mile ambulance ride! They continually
threatened to turn the matter over to a collection agency. Each week the letters got nastier and nastier.
The last threatening letter had actually come from the collection agency itself -- and there was a Black
Hand drawn at the top of the page! What in the hell was going on? I sure didn't know. Bills and debts
weren't anything I was familiar with normally. Usually I either paid cash or did without -- or sought out
an alternative.
My intuition throbbed again. Was it possible the hospital or the hospital's collection agency had
arranged for this WIC medical technician to harass us? Gosh, that piece of the puzzle fit neatly into the
picture! But did it really belong there? Or was I just paranoid?
I mean what did people like that normally do with hippies who owed them two thousand dollars and
had no significant attachment to the world's monetary machinery? Did they ever get that mean? That
sly?
He sure was a skulky-looking bugger... It wouldn't surprise me to find out he was the henchman of
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some millionaire doctor or that he had some connection with that dirty black hand collection agency -especially in those confrontational days.
In the mid-seventies Rainbow women were eccentric and iconoclastic mothers with their midwives
and herbs and vegetarian ways and "partners" instead of husbands. They frequently had feuds with
members of the old medical community over such things as midwifery and home-birth and breastfeeding and herbalogy and refusing to give aspirin to children. (The counter culture midwives advised
against giving aspirin to children long before the established medical community ever realized that it
could cause Reyes' syndrome...) Doctors resented that they weren't looked up to as Gods anymore.
They didn't want people thinking they were fallible. And more and more people were beginning to
realize that a lot of the old curmudgeons were only in it for the money and hadn't read a medical book
in twenty years.
Remarkably, in the 1970's many doctors weren't even healthy! Their own cholesterol levels were
often sky-high from life-long red meat diets. They died of heart disease. Many smoked like chimneys.
They died of lung cancer. History now knows with certainty that it was a time when many doctors did
needless surgeries and raked in the dough doing things that should have been illegal if the truth were
known. Doctors had a high incidence of suicide. So when you stop and think about it you have to come
to the conclusion that anyone who implicitly trusted a doctor's advice simply because he was a doctor
was sure duped by the system.
I respect education and I wish I had one -- but I believe I can safely, truthfully, say: There are a good
many doctors who just plain aren't very smart. It's kind of ironic, isn't it?
The new age people were doing more than watching their diets. They were reevaluating life's
meanings. The WIC medical technician looked about as knowledgeless about counter-culture wisdom
as anyone else who'd wear a puke-green tie or eat a greasy chilidog on white bread.
He was miffed that I took so lightly his recommendation that Mushmara go to a hospital. To our
horror we were to learn in the courtroom that this man who we had willingly allowed to see our baby
every two weeks had advised CSD that in his opinion the baby should be taken from us permanently -because, (as he told them) -- we "seemed to have no interest in the baby".
How could I have ever trusted such a character?
But he was just one of several bureaucratic gangsters breathing down our necks.
The Springfield Public Health nurse we'd conflicted with in Blue River showed up at the first hearing
to inform the court of our recalcitrant attitudes. She gave the courtroom her version of the day she
required the aid of two armed police officers to force us to comply with her intention to take a blood
sample from Mushmara's foot. She sighed deeply from the tedium of giving this information. She went
on to commend the court that she had no faith whatsoever in our ability to ever master parenting to the
degree that she would consider Mushmara safe with us. The Judge pondered this powerful denunciation
and with great dignity thanked the Public Health Nurse for her time.
I stood up and tried to set the record straight but the Judge silenced me -- ordered me to sit quietly or
be removed from the courtroom.
If the Judge could have seen the matter through my eyes, he'd have jailed that Public Health Nurse
for contempt of humanity. She certainly is one of the most contemptible people I've ever met in my life.
I was so mad I was afraid I'd totally lose my temper and be expelled or jailed. I'd be no good to Owl
and Mara then... I held back my anger.
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I felt whipped and bloodied.
Next on the stand was the young carrot patch owner. He did not exactly speak badly of us -- but what
he said was so bland that its effect was negligible. I spoke with him privately afterwards. He confessed
that he believed an infant should have a better home than an automobile to live in, although he admitted
our rigs were fairly well provisioned for the child, and he said he realized that we worked hard to make
it so. I reminded them that I had tried to find a room or apartment and that they themselves had turned
us down for the room in the communal house, which would have been perfectly suitable, even if only
temporarily. But he didn't want to go into that.
We worked pretty hard for them... Rain of shine, always there... I had fantasized on the raw goodness
of laboring to pull up those muddy organic carrots for every fellow vegetarian in Eugene. We could
have spent those hours doing selfish work that paid lucratively. We chose that poor-paying job for the
service to our peers. Moon and Mountain felt the same way, too.
I thought inasmuch as those carrot patch folks were synonymous with our culture's very roots that
they would be sympathetic to our struggle to plant our family in their community. I thought they would
think of us as a brother and sister who were willing to work and learn and contribute and nurture and
share and grow...
In my heart, I could see their warm houses... their old wooden piano with hymns... their patched,
well worn implements caked with good clean dirt; I could smell their fresh baked breads and pies, their
entire rustic homebody scenario...
I felt stabbed.
The rude young girls who had masterminded the carrot patch kidnapping eyed us with sanguinary
venom as they testified. Yet, they were so young they couldn't discuss breast-feeding without blushing.
They seemed to know almost nothing about it. Their picture of perfection: bottle-fed babies in paper
diapers in lonely cribs with baby sitters two rooms away watching daytime television game-shows
while the mother puts in an eight hour office-day buying and selling people.
Finally Moon and Mountain came to speak for us -- and to such an enlightening degree that there
developed a feeling in the courtroom that Babylon's tower of lies were in danger of falling.
Moon told the court about the warm Jeephouse and about Owl's dutiful care of Mushmara. She
mentioned that Owl had such an abundance of breast milk that the front of her blouses were constantly
soaked.
At this point, lest anyone doubt this truth, I squeezed Owl's breast and milk squirted through her
blouse powerfully ten feet and onto the floor. But this caused a commotion in the courtroom and the
Judge banged his gavel and told me not to do that again. I explained to the Judge I didn't intend to
offend anyone. I merely wanted it on the record that Owl had absolutely no shortage of milk what so
ever, in any way, shape, or form!
Our friend Moon was excited and determined. She had prepared herself well to tell the court that we
ate plenty of nutritious food and our home always smelled fragrantly of oatmeals and spaghettis and
goulashes, that we ate quite well in fact, that we were never sick, and that we loved our baby very
much and took excellent care of her.
Moon knew in her heart that she could set the record straight. But Moon's truth was diametrically
opposed to what the court seemed to want to hear! When it became apparent that Moon was capable of
reversing the courtroom's perception of what had really happened she was suddenly dismissed from the
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stand! She was in mid-sentence when they told her they were done with her. But she felt she had much
more to say and began speaking on her own to inform the Judge of our preparations for Mushmara. The
Judge severely reprimanded her. He told her she was only allowed to answer questions put to her by an
attorney. Angrily, she left the chair.
Mountain, dressed in his fine leather patch-pants and vest now took the stand. His Afro hairstyle
bushed out fully twelve inches around his head. He is a highly intelligent person, half German and half
Peruvian. He is well traveled and speaks several languages. His eyes are piercing and radical -- but
kind. Our lawyer chose to only ask him a couple questions concerning our preparations and care of
Mushmara. He attempted to answer these questions at length but she cut him off and dismissed him.
Our court-appointed lady lawyer obviously didn't like Mountain very much.
The prosecution now addressed Mountain and asked tenuously, of what sort of skin was his vest
made?
He answered that he'd made it out of his German Shepherd after the dog had died. At that the court
nearly died too.
"No more questions, Your Honor!"
Mountain was dismissed.
Oh well. I assure you we had no great love for those lawyer's five hundred dollar suits either, which
were probably obtained with far less morals.
The court never really listened to our side. We lacked credentials of scholarship; hence we were not
credible as witnesses. Everything was very one-sided. We weren't treated like a family at all. We were
just street people, a problem that wouldn't go away: and what we mirrored in their subconsciouses
neutralized their probity.
However, in a way, the thing was obviously no longer entirely against us. We had shown the court
that we had friends who believed we did OK as parents. For what it was worth...
Moon and Mountain fumed in the anteroom during the recess, resenting that they'd each been cut off
in mid-testimony before they could say all the things they had planned to say about their observations
of our care of Mushmara. Moon sure had some good ideas too. I wished they had let her talk -- but of
course, that would have defeated their purpose! Which in another day would have been to impale us on
sharp sticks in front of their palace.
The day in court ended without the return of our daughter. But we were told that if we followed
certain guidelines there was a chance we'd get her back. So we did not feel all was lost. Not by a long
shot. Our next day in court would be better. We'd prepare well. We'd win.
The Judge arranged visitation privileges. After we moved into our own place, Mushmara would be
brought to our home twice per week under the supervision of the Public Health Nurse of Eugene. Until
we were situated in our own apartment, we would be allowed to visit Mara in her foster home.
"When does that mean we can we see her, Your Honor?" I asked, standing, unable to restrain myself.
"Why, as soon as arrangements can be made I suppose. Perhaps this weekend?"
107
He looked at a CSD worker, who busied herself with some papers and replied that might be possible,
depending on various schedules.
Owl looked at me and asked,
--"We wheel see Marie dis wheekhend, Tom?"
Her eyes were intense.
***
An address was scrawled in pencil on the scrap of paper Owl held in her hands as she sat beside me
in the truck; dressed in her best clothes; anxious, and alert. Slowly, we drove the old Scout up and
down streets, squinting and straining our eyes to compare the house-numbers with those on the paper in
her hand. At last we pulled over to the side and parked. The good-looking tract home with the
manicured fenced-in yard was several miles outside of Eugene.
We knocked. The middle-aged couple answered the door and let us in. There were children
everywhere. The man bellowed a curt order and sent them all scurrying noisily down a hallway and
into several rooms. Then the man went to a well-stuffed armchair next to the fireplace, lit up a pipe,
and began reading the newspaper.
The lady asked Owl, "Would you like to see Mushmara now?"
Owl's eyes were big as she scanned every visible nook and cranny of the room.
"Oh yes, Madame. Ma Marie is hare?"
The woman replied,
"She's just had her bottle and she might be sleeping, but I think I can bring her out for a few
minutes."
She disappeared down the hallway, and returned a short while later with Mushmara in her arms. Owl
went to hold her but the lady said we wouldn't be allowed to do that. We could look at her though. We
crowded close. I put a finger in her hand. She clutched and opened her blue eyes to look at me. "Hi
Mushmara. I love you." I said.
Owl stroked the darling's tiny face and whispered,
"Oh! Ow har you?, ma Marie. Hue look vharee beuteefule today! Yas! I ham so glad to see hue! I luv
hue so much..."
After a few awkward moments the lady took Mara over to the man in the armchair who absently
cradled her in his arms and gave her a bottle. We sat in chairs next to him and watched him feed her.
About a quarter of an hour passed. The children chased each other up and down the hallway now,
yelling and screaming. There must have been ten of them.
"Are all those YOUR kids?" I asked the man.
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"Oh, no. Ours are all grown and gone. These are all foster children we care for."
The kids had plastic guns.
"I shot you! You're dead!" one screamed.
"No! You're dead! I KILLED you!" another answered.
Then they ran up and down the hall and in and out of the rooms screaming, "I'm gonna kill you! I'm
gonna kill you!" Those words constituted the children's most frequent fun-phrases.
"You get paid for caring for each of these children?" I asked him, conversationally.
"Of course. If it wasn't for us, they wouldn't have any home at all. We love children."
"We love our daughter." I felt obliged to tell him.
"Apparently not enough to see that she got enough to eat! That's why they took her from you! She'll
eat well here. We'll love her. We love her more than you ever did."
"That's not true!" I said, feeling angry.
"Yes, it is." he stated simply.
The man leaned forward and switched on the television. The Sunday afternoon football game
appeared on the tube. He no longer paid any attention to us.
"No, it isn't." I said firmly, mindful now that I was close to losing my temper, and knowing full well
how that would make future visitations here untenable.
Ten minutes passed. The football game rumbled from the television. Owl and I continued to silently
watch Mara, asleep now in his arms. The woman came and stood before us. She took Mara from her
husband and burped the baby on her shoulder. She said to us that they had many things planned for the
afternoon so our visit must come to an end. We got our coats and kissed Mushmara goodbye.
The man turned in his chair and looked at us with undisguised malice.
"Don't make this a habit, now! We don't allow it. And make sure you NEVER come over without
making prior arrangements through CSD!"
I was so exhilarated from seeing Mushmara, that I hardly noticed the man's cruel words and tone of
voice.
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Outside, the biting wind whipped our coats as we walked to the Scout. A patrol car passed. As we
drove away, I noticed the little Pinto that belonged to the young girls from the CSD office. They were
sitting inside eating sandwiches and watching us. Another police car turned and went up a side street.
Hmmm. I thought that was sure a lot of police traffic for such an "off the beaten path" community.
Then I realized they all had been laying in wait to see if we would try to grab the baby and make a run
for it. Imagine! I had thought of doing exactly that, too! But not very seriously. But would you look at
them turkeys! They were sure ready for some action, weren't they? I bet they had their guns cocked...
Silently, we drove home to the house in Eugene where we had rented a room.
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TWELVE
WINDOW
The "co-op" house on Ash was a miserable ball and chain. Although I'd never lived in a co-op house
before, I had heard from friends that this arrangement harbored wonderful opportunities for lowincome "brothers and sisters" who cared to live together responsibly -- an equitable situation that
nurtured their Spirits. I'd lived in "communes" before, but co-op houses are a different breed of fox,
though the line that differentiates between the two is sometimes vague. Anyway, our financial resources
being quite low, a room in a co-op house was about all we could hope to find. For now, we just needed
a foothold. Later, once this mess with CSD was out of our way, we'd probably rent a whole house -and end up quite normal. For now though, a simple room in a co-op house would have to do. Such
accommodations were advertised in fair abundance on various bulletin boards in Eugene. Winter tends
to drive the street people off the streets into such places and unfortunately most of the available rooms
had already been taken. We had to take what we could get.
We had deeper reasons than economics for choosing a co-op house. In our crisis, we had desperate
need of some of that cultural wisdom which one might expect to find in those hot-beds of new-age
humanity, often shared with other struggling but knowledgeable parents and their children. As
drowning people desperately search their surroundings for a foothold of land, so we lunged for shore -to plant ourselves in just such a community.
Once we were established in a munificent co-op house, we looked forward to garnering the
association of midwives, artisans, organic gardeners, world wanderers, and in particular -- other
mothers and fathers not unlike ourselves, all of whose proximity would be guaranteed. In other words
we were seeking allies to help us fight the system.
Surely the diabolical execudroids who had kidnapped our daughter, could not prevail against the
amassed power of this sensitive society -- once we were properly plugged into the community and our
heartsong was heard.
But other than the longhaired landlord/homeowner, we were the only tenants in the house. So from
the start, the social element that our souls cried for -- was absent. Yet, this "co-op house" was
absolutely the only one we could find that had a vacant room and would accept us -- and at that, we had
to literally beg the dubious fellow, who would be our sole house-sharer.
But once we had given him the money and moved in, we discovered that sharing the living space
with him would not necessarily afford us the cultural assistance we had hoped to find. The homeowner
was not exactly a magnet for the holistic wisdom society.
After he had pocketed our money he turned into a nasty toad, griping at us constantly about every
little thing. His kvetching never seemed to end. He would look at us miserably and cry out that he
couldn't see how this living situation could ever possibly work! He would shake his head in despair and
wander around ranting.
After a few days, during which his affected miserableness became more and more strident, he
painfully managed to explain to us that when he had advertised the room as "a room in a co-op house"
the sort of person he really wanted to share his living space with was a beautiful single woman! And he
disclosed to us that he hoped that singular circumstance would develop into a love affair -- because he
had been very lonely since his "ex" had left him. Towards the accomplishment of that dream (or
gimmick?) he had gone to some considerable time and expense renovating the spare room into a snare
room.
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So after our first few days of living together he had us sit down with him for a frank and earnest talk.
He claimed to sympathize with our plight -- and he knew how difficult it must have been for us to give
him that $400 which left us too broke to even buy a gallon of gas -- but he said he just didn't feel
comfortable with another man in his house and so he felt I should leave. Unfortunately he'd already
spent the $400 so he couldn't return that to us. But, he said that in view of our dire circumstances -Owl might rent the room -- alone. Oh! He explained that he'd have no problem living with her as long
as I wasn't around! He hoped that perhaps I could find some other living situation separate from her for
a month or two until a larger room somewhere came along?
Oh, Brother!
Obviously, we were quite in the way of his machinations. At least I was. Being an imperfect man,
myself, I could almost sympathize with his cupidity. But it seemed to me that if he were to dig down
deep in his heart he could come up with a little compassionate assistance in the light of our vital and
pitiable need for housing -- needed so that we might redeem our baby from the dark forces which as a
member of the counter-culture he ought to understand. Surely a good karmic work ought to score his
soul a few glowing points that he could apply someday towards binding a rich relationship with some
sensitive woman... So, a temporary discomfiture would end up as a wholesome balm to his wounded
libido -- not to mention to the value of his rejuvenated integrity of heart and soul! So, the way I figured
it the success of his search for happiness might all the more likely thereby be realized if he just didn't
behave like a selfish pigfish to us.
I probably shouldn't have expounded myself thus to him, although I didn't say anything unkind,
much as he deserved it. Still, what I did say only made him mad. The bottom line was I was not about
to drive away and leave Owl living there alone with him, so he could just forget about that idea. And
since I had paid my rent I really didn't think Owl or I needed to go away.
A few days passed, bumpily. Before long, anything whatsoever Owl or I said or did was sufficient to
precipitate a gross argument. He felt he had made a terrible mistake allowing me to talk him into
renting the little room to us. He claimed I had manipulated him! He wanted us out of there!
His plan on how to get us to leave was simple. He figured all he'd have to do is say such rude things
to us and about us that we'd finally call it quits and go.
He said he couldn't figure out why we would ever want our baby back in the first place! Wasn't she
better off where she was? Weren't we better off without her?
He told us we couldn't afford the expense of caring for a child -- and probably never would!
He couldn't figure out why we had been wandering all over North America instead of settling down
in one place like everyone else he knew had been doing for years.
"Hell!" he said, "the sixties are OVER, man!"
The war resister/draft dodger thing from my past came up one day and set him off on another
belligerent tantrum. He wasn't a pacifist -- nor an activist. According to him, I was just a criminal
rationalizing my crime.
He asserted Owl was incompetent and lazy and didn't love her baby. Nor did I, he said.
There was no end to his bum-trips.
Originally, I had intended to go out looking for work now that we were settled. I left Owl home and
tried to do it one day but when I returned home in the afternoon she was an emotional wreck from the
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mental turmoil he had put her through while I was gone. So after that experience there was no way I'd
leave her home alone with him again. I didn't trust him at all. So looking for any more jobs wasn't
possible at that time. Even if I found one how could I have gone to work unless I brought Owl with
me?
I found it hard to imagine the kind of person with whom he would totally get along. He kept
complaining that if he had to live with someone he wanted to be able to at least get along with them.
What he wanted was a house-partner who was entirely amicable and coparcetic -- as long as she was a
pretty female and single and docile and as long as she "put out". He never let us forget for a moment,
that we were NOT the renter for whom he had prepared the space in his life. Far be it from me to want
to put our desperate attempt to regain our child between him and his need for sexual satisfaction. But it
seemed to me that most men, or at least most counter-culture men, would be sensitive enough to put
such things aside and give us a hand. What comes around goes around, we say...
Not him. His incessant whining continued from each moment to the next, as many hours as there
were in the day, so that the only peace of mind we had in that awful house occurred when he went out
shopping or visiting. As soon as he returned his peace-rending remonstrances began again, driving us
quickly into our room which in no wise availed our ears or hearts of any solace whatsoever, as the
walls were paper-thin and he knew we could still hear him.
Neither was he embittered solely against men. No! He was especially hard on Owl, which caused me
to come often to her defense. In fact women were a primary cause of his angst. Until recently a woman
had lived with him. He admitted they had fought constantly until she finally packed and left.
Owl didn't need any additional abuse at this time and frankly, neither did I, but what were we to do?
Unless we situated ourselves in one of "civilized humanity's" ticky-tacky cubicles we would stand no
hope of having Mara returned to us. This we had been told frankly by lawyers and welfare workers and
Public Health Nurses and everybody.
And so, since we had no more money with which to rent a different place, even if we had found one,
we had no recourse but to try to find some way to endure this live-in landlord. Time and again we tried.
But he never seemed to let up.
What hurt the most was when he told us that he basically didn't like kids and certainly didn't want
any in his house. Great! This situation showed a lot of promise! He even begrudged us the twiceweekly home-visitations when the Public Health Nurse brought over Mushmara for an hour. He
threatened to disallow these moments under his roof.
Some very good relationships begin luke-warm or even cold, and yet may progressively thaw, and
thanks to mutual respect, they may eventually bloom into genuine warm feelings -- even friendship. As
the weeks passed, the prospect of this vain hope became more and more dismal. One day he smugly
told us he hoped we never got Mara back -- ever. He was becoming not just a toad, but a poison toad.
But when he told us we'd have to move out immediately if we got custody of our daughter -- I guess
I began to hate him... Because, where then could our baby be returned to us? We had given him all our
money. We had no more money to move somewhere else. If he blocked our child from living with us...
What a horrible nightmare! What kind of monster would do that to us?
I'm not the sort of person who hates easily -- it doesn't set well with the joyous cosmology I have
always tried to see inside myself... In fact it made me sick. Even while I had sat in my dark solitary
confinement prison cell for my activities against the napalming of women and children, I had not hated
those who put me behind the locks and bars. But now I was witnessing my gentle Owl disintegrating in
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despair before my eyes. And Mushmara was locked away in a mindless foster baby factory. Some
things, some people -- seemed so cruel -- to harm people who were so defenseless...
So we'd have to move right away if the court returned Mary Morningdove! Where? The court would
never let us have our child back unless they were convinced she would be coming into a stable
element! Our landlord knew that. He didn't care.
At this point I felt the necessity to pack up Owl and all our belongings and leave that dead-end right
then and there -- and if I could have thought of anywhere to go, I would have done so. It was, after all,
what he wanted us to do -- and what we ourselves also felt was the only way to end this intolerable
situation. Believe me, I strained my brain trying to figure just where we might go and still receive those
twice a week visits. But there was nowhere.
The situation was so hopeless that I found myself praying to God. I asked for some sort of path I
could follow that would turn things around. I often fall back on old-fashioned prayer when I'm
desperate -- and I'm always amazed, but not surprised, when some good seems to show up.
The following day, by digging deep down, I had an earnest talk with the fellow, as humbly and
truthfully as I could find it in myself to do, and he seemed to respond slightly. For a few days after that
I was optimistic. We were walking a tightrope but I was feeling that we might survive.
Still, he wanted us out at the end of the month. And Children's Services told us explicitly that if we
failed to find agreeable habitation for the next month -- they would curtail all further visitations until
we did.
***
The Eugene Public Health nurse turned out to be a very nice person! I mean, almost a veritable Mary
Poppins. What cloud did she drop out of?
She sure seemed out of place: a tall classic beauty -- her quick and keening brown eyes reminded me
of Owl's. Both were East Coast women. There were deep spaces in both women's eyes from brooding
on the world. Like Owl she seemed to dwell in the wellspring of her soul...
Her emotions were her own -- she didn't take the time to put on voguish social airs. She knew our
pain intuitively. More important, she knew and feared our child's pain, separated from the mother. In
her heart she faced the simple truth that a child is tethered by only one string to this world in the
beginning, and that is: she knows her mother. What sort of monster would contrive to break that string?
The Nurse's name was Anna Nevarre. By the way she seemed to glare at the bureaucratic fools in the
world I beheld her to resemble a fencer parrying with the spirits of chicanery and sloth and malice. I
believe she had a real mission to try to help little children and mothers lost from each other in the
jejune mazes of a pretentious and heartless world.
She suggested some parenting classes which might appease the court and do us good. We agreed to
attend as soon as Mushmara Morningdove were restored to us. She attempted time and again to pull the
strings to bring this about since, as she explained, unless the child were with us, the classes would be of
no use. Meanwhile, she arranged visitations and watched us sharing the precious moments with our
baby. She took a few notes, during those hour-long visits, twice a week, in the room we rented on Ash
Street.
During those precious times I would hold Mushmara for one short beautiful moment. Then I'd give
her to Owl. How funny it seems to me now, looking back, to remember how my own soul's anguish
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would not be relieved until I could see Owl holding Mushmara in her arms tenderly, whispering secret
syllables to her and the baby cooing back. Only then could my own heart cease it's yammering and
screaming. I would sit beside or across from them.
In this way, an hour would flit past, and too, too soon, they would stoop and take her from Owl's
arms and go away. Alone, holding each others hands, and quaking in our guts like we'd been poisoned,
we'd stare through the window at the nurse's car pulling away from the curb and fading down the street
with our baby inside, farther and farther away with each moment, leaving us with the loneliest feeling
in the world.
***
Molly McPool was a social worker from Eugene. She attended each child-visitation with Anna
Navarre. After seeing how Owl was with Mara, Molly told us she would probably be recommending
the baby be placed back in our care, probationally at first. But if everything worked out, our family
should be restored and our lives would be our own again.
And so I was relieved for awhile. I had told Owl from the start that everything would be all right. I
knew in my heart that it was only a matter of time before someone in charge noticed that Owl was a
wise and tender mother and that I had both mother and child's interests in my heart constantly.
Molly McPool admired the clothes we had made for Mara and observed the love that had been handstitched into each piece. At the end of those meetings Molly hugged us and told us not to give up hope.
"Everything will work out. Give it time. Have faith."
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THIRTEEN
NOBULLRUSHES
The court ordered some counseling to coincide with our visitation privileges. To receive this service,
we could go to any of several places, most of which presented to me visions of inimical straight-culture
bias.
Imagine Owl trying to explain how she might wash Mushmara's home-made flannel diapers in a
tumbling mountain stream and hang them to dry in the wind on the back of the truck -- to a half-hearted
psychiatrist with his golf game on his mind. Or there he is thinking about his Mercedes Benz, or his
Gold card bill! AS IF he is going to be able to understand us and our counter-culture dreams. Crap! To
be placed out of our element one more time for the insufferable scrutiny of some plastic rich person
who, if our truck were broken down and we were stranded, wouldn't even go out of his way to give us a
lift -- seemed a hazardous place to entrust our most private confidences -- and a waste of time. It would
certainly cause more headaches than it could possibly cure.
Wearily, I asked our lawyer, "Is there ANYPLACE that does this type of counseling where they would
look upon us as something other than 'freaks'?"
She studied my question for a moment before wondering half-aloud if the court might be agreeable
to having our counseling done at Song Dove Health Clinic. This counter-culture "free clinic" located in
the University area, was revered by the people. If you had a problem, chances were that someone in
Song Dove could help you figure it out. At least, for a change, we'd be dealing with a group of peers
who presumably, hopefully, should not lack an understanding of our unique lifestyle, our dreams and
perspectives -- even our frailties and imperfections.
When the court approved the alternative, our hearts flashed with tall hopes... Hitherto, almost
everyone involved with our case had been purely other-worldish. Our lawyer, for instance, was a
wealthy woman of my parent's generation, who wanted me to go to court with short hair and wearing a
suit to make a good impression! And imagine Owl in make-up? Oh! This lawyer certainly deigned to
preserve our veritable heart and soul to the court, didn't she? As though either of us could be
comfortable feigning to be something we were not... For us to be so run around in circles -- and piously
judged -- by those cosmopolitan individuals, with their fantastic homes and University degrees, and
fine clothes, and new chromey automobiles -- had been so far, a baleful and ominous experience.
Now perhaps, with our court-ordered counseling taking place among members of our own culture,
we'd at least have the ball in our own ballpark for a change.
So it was with some fervor, a puerile glimmer of vested faith in the bonded trueness of our
alternative culture, that we hurried along the leafy residential boulevard and up the old painted steps of
that quaint wooden building which had been converted from a generations-old family residence -- to
ask the Song Dove staff if they would help us cut through the chains which were dragging us down into
the depths.
Well, it turned out there were many wonderful people working there -- but also there were some who
weren't quite as wonderful... Just what type became one's counselor seemed to depend upon the luck of
the draw. And the fellow who was appointed to our case soon proved that our bad luck was going to
continue for awhile unchanged.
Things began on the wrong foot. Against my better judgement Owl and I were separated and
counseled individually.
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Owl rarely does well with strangers. Her French-Canadian upbringing had, from the earliest age,
instilled in her an almost insurmountable distrust of officious English-speaking people asking personal
questions. If a person is unaware of that cultural situation they aren't going to have a clue about how to
make any mental connection with Owl. An English person has to be willing to go an extra mile to prove
to a French person that he or she is not a typical opinionated, arrogant, manipulative, impersonal, cog
in a soul-devouring machine. Otherwise it can happen that the French person will not relate well to
them, or may even ignore them. It is just a simple fact that you either know, or you don't. Period.
Anyway, it was obvious that none of the people we were being forced to deal with in Eugene at that
time were aware of such things. Except maybe Anna Nevarre. I tried to explain it a few times to some
of them to try to facilitate their abilities to communicate with Owl. But people like them don't like to be
told that someone will only communicate well with them if they come from their hearts and souls in
their every word. It's not in their job-description. It's not in their training. It makes them feel weird
inside their heads...
Which is precisely the nature of the chaos I am describing: the inability of some anglophones to do
something a human being ought to always do anyway. They had taken away Owl's baby. If they wanted
to discuss anything with her they had better start by finding some way to create some human bond
between their hearts and hers or she would never even see them at all, other than as the monsters her
ancestors had warned her about.
Some people meditate before beginning any difficult task. If any of them had really wanted to
understand us they might have found a good stereo and a set of earphones and put on some old Peter,
Paul, and Mary albums and spent a day listening to them. Joan Baez too. I don't see how they could
have possibly truly seen us at all otherwise with all the busyness and clashing I sensed inside their
craniums.
All the busy officious people thought Owl was mentally ill. People like them... always seem to see
people like Owl... that way. I knew it was a problem I would always have to deal with. God
orchestrates the whole thing, you know. Or maybe you don't know. But He does. Or She does. Many
are the people who have told me they see it clear as a bell that Owl is one of the pure tools that God is
using to heal our world...
Owl was suffering so bad... She was being crucified you know. Or maybe you don't know. But she
was. The world likes to do that to people. It's a problem that cosmic forces are dealing with you know.
Or maybe you don't know. But that's the way it is regardless.
The inflictions Owl had suffered over the past several years had caused her to build an ever more
formidable barricade against the world. She gave false and ridiculous answers. She utterly ignored the
questioner. She laughed at him. English speaking bureaucrat men were the worst. By the way they
behave you would think they never look in mirrors or listen to themselves speak. They kept poking her
with the sharp sticks of their mind and their mean eyes. They weren't likely to make any headway with
her that way. I tried my best to help them get through to her...
If the so called "counselor" at the White Dove clinic would have let me in with her, at least in the
beginning, I could have facilitated his getting to know her and vice versa. I could have explained to him
that many French people perceive the English world's disinterested clinical monotone way of carrying
out an interview to be threatening and insulting. I could have urged him to summon up all his heart
before asking her any questions and to never doubt her capacity to know the truth in her heart nor to
doubt her love of her child, nor to ever show himself to her as being incapable of passionate faith in the
human spirit. Because the eyes of her heart are like an Eagle's when it comes to seeing the doubt of
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such men; as a mother Eagle sees a hunter raise his rifle to shoot her out of the sky, so does Owl see the
doubt in someone's heart.
If he kept those things in mind he would have no difficulty communicating with Owl or with any
other French-Canadian. But of course he had his own agenda and would not listen to me. So in his
examination of Owl he chose to butt his head against her wall (which she had specifically built up for
self-protection.) I could have guided him past that. But his deaf ear dismissed my petition bluntly.
Consequently, as I knew would happen, he formed an inaccurate conception of our circumstances.
Seeing this counselor resist so tenuously my good advice (which I had earned during years of knowing
Owl well) I began to fear whether this boded ill the degree of service Song Dove could give us.
The small beard and glasses gave his physiognomy a studious appearance. He leaned back on two
legs of his wooden chair, his emotionless gaze affecting a bored disassociation with us, much similar to
the same sort of experience we might have run up against from anyone in a regular clinic. In fact, his
intolerance seemed even more evident. He gave me a headache. I didn't want to start off on the wrong
foot with him. Gosh! We desperately needed this man's assistance to save our life. But he stared
vacantly at us and shrugged off any empathy. My impression of him was that the reason we were
having all those problems all boiled down to: Because I was so uncool compared to him. After all -- he
worked at Song Dove! And, oh yeah, he had a college degree!
The kind of problems we were having with him was not atypical. Alas! Whenever our counterculture tries to assume responsible community projects we are prone to attract helpers who have
developed even more severe cases of ego-centricity than may be found in the straight world -- because
we are more individualistic --more iconoclastic --more metaphysical, and among the "brothers and
sisters" --more social. Put this all together into human personalities and you might just end up with
circumstances that do more harm than good for individuals who come for help.
Some of the Song Dove staff were real heartsong folks! Things might have turned out different if
someone else among them had counseled us. I asked them to please change our counselor -- to give us
a woman counselor for instance. She might have a better natural understanding of Owl... But they
refused to recognize my grievance and we were told we had to make do with the one we had.
The unfairness of it all caused me to lose my temper more than once. In those moments I stormed out
of sessions, and went from one of them to another, imploring,
--"Why can't you give us a different counselor?"
They asked me to please calm down. They asked me why I was so much on the defensive -- "a little
too much on the defensive", they said. They asked why should I always be defending Owl?
--"Maybe she should learn not to have to depend on you for that..." they said.
They asked me why I was shielding her from the world.
--"Are you afraid of losing her?" they asked.
They told me I'd have to keep my cool.
--"Do you always get this upset?" they wondered: writing notes.
So I'd apologize and we'd continue. Sometimes they were very right. Other times I think they were
off base. Could they see how hurt we were? Did they really understand what we were going through?
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Maybe we would have been better off being counseled at a regular clinic after all. I began to think
we might have made a mistake going to SongBird. A regular clinic would have been familiar with
counseling married couples through hard times. Married couples weren't all that common at SongBird...
The alternative clinic was a steeping potpourri of new-age peoples. They catered to University
students too young and too busy to have ever been in love; and to the prolific and oft-times smarmy
drug community: too stoned-out, too derelict, too unattachable to cherish someone forever; and to the
many gay people who thrived locally: their philosophies making deep inroads into everything countercultural. Marriage wasn't a part of those worlds. Freedom from traditional entrapments was the
mainsail here. Commitment was frowned upon. Hippies were already considered to be leftovers of a
lost age, churlish in comparison to anyone who'd found a comfortable niche in the vogue society that
existed peripheral to the University of Oregon. In this area anyone who lacked a University degree and
a regular paycheck was generally looked upon as depraved and very likely lost. This was 1977. The
first Yuppies were cakewalking with grabby hands out onto the fertile tundra of an anesthetized world.
(Sleeping sweetly since war's end and Nixon's fall...)
So Owl and I were just another uncalled-for and unapplauded side-show and caught up in the
clashing values of several distinct worlds: marrieds versus singles, Road gypsies versus University
hippies and town people, pay checks versus food stamps, old fashioned heterosexual lovers versus gay
liberation, young pacifists versus sanguinary old farts, career women versus homemakers, et al, and
Owl was expected to intuitively translate all the complex shades and nuances of each unspoken
variable into French and into constructive meaning for her life.
No wonder we preferred life around a campfire deep in the wilderness!
So we had to organize whatever powers we had within ourselves to make all this banana-rama
comprehensible. I kept coming back to the idea that perhaps it would be easier to make them
understand us rather than to try too hard understand them. (That might be bottomless...)
From our beginnings in Vancouver, we'd fought battles with a degenerate world to defend our right
to be deeply in love in an old fashioned way. Our Scout and Jeephouse were like two modern
Conestoga wagons and we had already traversed more miles of prairies and mountains than many
people see in a lifetime. Now an incumbent savage population of Baptists and lawyers caked in hideous
Tammy Baker war-paint had encircled us with bloodthirsty threats -- and captured our daughter as a
hostage.
Where would we find help here in Eugene? --Amidst this pedestal University society of six-figure
hopefuls, lounging around in Birkenstocks and Levi 501's? Get real!
Song Dove!
To regain custody of our ripped-off child, we are supposed to be counseled by a dorfus who:
1) believed the world already has too many children, therefore only selfish people want them.
2) Believed all people who attempt to grow together as One within the old sacrament of marriage are
relics of a defunct self-destructive, unenlightened, Neanderthal consciousness,
3) Preempted our heterosexual perspectives with atonal groans,
4) Believed a man eleven years older than the woman he marries must be a pervert, and:
There's surely more, but perhaps for #5, I'll simply say that he said he doubted Owl would remain
with me if she ever had a chance to look around. The nonplussed, contemptible way he alluded to this
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theory seemed calculated to make me boil over. To remain with the program, I constantly had to
impress upon myself that in my despair I was probably imagining him to be worse than he actually
was; that the pressure I had been under of late was causing me to uglify every innocent personality with
whom I came into contact -- an explanation I could live with -- and to remind myself how much we
needed this man's help. (More dubious feelings...)
To my way of seeing things, the manipulative Machiavellian ego that so undermines the natural
course of human hearts, is an insidious thing clinging to our counter-culture's supposed enlightenment.
The New-age culture has often discarded a lot of scruples while divesting ourselves of organized
religions and orthodox ethics. Being a full-fledged shareholder in the Utopian dreams of our age, I
certainly don't want to be unduly unkind.
But I had expected to receive enlightenment beyond SongBird's enceinte doors. "OM". I had hoped
this abundant fraternity of New Age realization would take our misfortune to their hearts and use all
their combined powers to carve us a path through the system's locked doors and closed minds and help
us to save our daughter.
Sure! Just like the cosmic conscious carrot patch commune that was there for us.
Just like the longhaired landlord on Ash Street who didn't want to take the time to understand a
tortured mother's sorrow.
Same thing.
Same family.
Same cosmology circus.
Same pseudo-demi-gods.
Same crushed dreams.
***
The counselor really started going overboard trying to bust us apart. Separately he told us both, that
if we were to split up there might be a fairly good chance Mushmara could be returned to one of us!
Pretty diabolical!
After our lawyer received the counselor's report she assured me custody of Mary Morningdove -- if I
left Owl. They were telling me that though they did not approve of my preferred lifestyle, it was Owl's
schizophrenia primarily that kept them from returning the baby to us.
Well, she wasn't schizophrenic. She was just different. Though it might be said fairly accurately that
she suffered from an emotional disability. Or an old fashioned person might put it more simply and say
that they had taken away her baby and her heart was broken. But all those officious people were too
busy with their gargantuan egos to see Owl clearly.
Too bad they never took the time to really know her. And it was their loss too, because Owl makes a
good friend. She's loving and kind. She takes life slower. She sees a lot of things that others miss. She's
an ineffable spirit. Words are not her forte, but anyone who takes the time to walk with her discovers a
real person.
Time. Why don't those people stop selling it so dear that they never have any? Dumbbells!
When the counselor suggested separation to Owl she quickly told him she would surely leave me -if they would give her the baby.
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After talking to Owl, he returned to me, saying Owl wanted to leave me -- and there was a chance
that if she did I could get Mushmara.
No wonder the French have such attitudes about English speaking peoples. It's a terrible disease for
people to do things like that...
So on top of all our other problems, we seemed to have a real parasite making a meal of us. What a
louse that counselor was! Since we technically couldn't get rid of him, I wondered vaguely if we might
possibly manipulate his manipulations to win Mara's freedom.
For a short time Owl and I considered feigning a separation to see if one or the other of us would be
granted more time with the baby so we could try to grab her and run for freedom. We'd be safe in
Canada... Or back in Vermont...
Our hopes zoomed for a week as we discussed the possible ramifications of such a separation with
the SongBird counselor and our lawyer but Owl and I came to realize the plan couldn't work. It was
just too complicated. Too weird.
Owl would have had a very hard time of it if I had left her. Being a Canadian she was not eligible for
any welfare or housing. Even if I gave her all the money that came my way that still wouldn't be
enough to set her up in an apartment -- where she might have to remain alone for months before our
opportunity came along. Emotionally, she wouldn't be safe if she lived alone -- and I couldn't bear the
thought of being without her either. Our marriage has always been a sacred thing to us, a God-given
thing. Whether the counselor could see that or not did not matter. He was nothing. He would not
destroy us. As long as Owl and I remained together we would be able to give each other the strength we
would need to face the creatures that were biting and tearing at us.
If we were to part, we'd have nothing...
I kept having a recurring vision about the way they were trying to separate us... My gut feelings told
me someone really wanted Owl free and available. An unattached young French girl would be a
pleasant diversion in the streets of the city.
I wasn't born yesterday. Unattaching wives and girlfriends from their mates is a gallant art form
throughout the dark Universe, no exception being the land of Rogue River rogues. For the past three
years motley assorted pernicious dudes had repeatedly sought to diverge Owl's path from mine -- in
every area we'd lived: Vancouver, Vermont, Tucson, Bisbee, Washington, the hot springs and now
Eugene.
But never before had such guile threatened us from one so redoubtably entrenched as that Song Dove
pirate!
The counselor continued to chip away at us, trying to destroy what remained of our family. I suppose
he figured he'd be doing the new age a favor by busting up two pathetic people chained to each other
by mutual ignorance, as he saw it...
They had Mara. I wouldn't let them get Owl, too!
He sent a lot of bullshit to the court, inferring that given any chance whatsoever, Owly would bail
out of our marriage entirely. (She really would have left me too, if she knew for sure she would get her
daughter returned to her. I would even have encouraged her to leave if I thought there was any way it
could actually happen.)
The counselor told the court that our vagabond lifestyle was a burden for Owl, that she wanted more
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out of life. He reported that apparently I was not ready to settle down, and that Owl had told him that if
she were alone she'd love to have an apartment in town and raise her daughter. And that Owl was really
prepared to leave me if it meant she'd regain Mushmara.
I really got unnerved. It felt like they might actually succeed in totally busting us up. Every time they
got Owl's ear she came back more laconic and nervous. I knew the promises they were making her
were taking their toll. But I also knew that without me she had no way of surviving in Oregon. So, how
would they unite her with Mushmara if she had no apartment and no food and if she wasn't even in the
country legally? Their promises were empty.
Since when is a family made stronger by splitting up people who love each other?
By staying together we might have our only chance. We'd try to find an apartment in town if that
would satisfy them. The way we saw things in our hearts the eternal mountain springs and flowery
meadows of our Gypsy pathways were more wholesome than their polluted alleys in time and space -but even a slum lord's money-maker would be all right with us if we could live together happily forever
with our daughter.
***
Why us?
Heroin addicts kept their children sometimes. Child beaters kept their children sometimes. Felons
with police records for armed robbery and assault kept their children sometimes. Some prostitutes keep
their children! There are retarded couples who keep their children. Chain smokers and alcoholics keep
their children! Drunk drivers keep their children! Nazis and white supremists keep their children!
Crooked lawyers keep their children! Mexican farm laborers living with fifteen people in a one-room
corrugated aluminum shack -- keep their children! Savings and Loan executives who steal billions of
dollars from the life-savings of elderly people -- keep their children!
Just how much worse than those aberrations were "our wandering Hippie-Gypsy ways"?
I think the simple truth is that it must have hurt their pride that we assumed the sovereign right to try
to keep out of reach of their sticky tentacles -- that given the opportunity we would try to hide our child
as did Moses' parents -- in the marsh grasses, among the bulrushes. Or even to run into the night to
Egyptland, as did Christ's parents. Innocently. Inalienably.
In the courtroom, we were presented as a quasi-family of pathetic fringe-dwelling schizophrenics
whose dubious partnership was on the verge of collapse. We were unfit therefore to viably nurture a
child.
But they never really knew us. They never really knew what we were, or who we were, or what we
meant to each other. How could they know us? They weren't doing their jobs out of interest in us. They
did them out of interest in themselves.
They poisoned us with their officious venom. We were mute before their knack. Thus did their
skullduggery prevail. Paralyzed by opprobrium, lost in an abysmal legal maze: We didn't know
anything!
--Except that we were flower children bound and gagged in the Troll King's food-bin.
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FOURTEEN
EUGENICS
The second court date finally arrived. We all assembled informally in the waiting area. I felt cheery
because I expected the testimony of Anna and Molly to outweigh anything contrary that might exude
from Song Dove or elsewhere. Mara would be returned this afternoon!
A tenseness manifested in the anteroom and we were bewildered to realized the positive new
developments of our parent-child visitations had not filtered down to our antagonists. They were as
against returning our child as ever. They peered across the room at us without attempting to conceal
their enmity.
Rebounding from some verbal abuse, Owl and I settled down to have a separate discussion with
Molly McPool and Anna Navarre, whose testimony should save us, regardless. Anna smiled and bid us
sit down. We sipped hot coffee from styrofoam cups, fortifying ourselves for what was to come.
Molly was very silent. As Anna and I kibitzed optimistically about Mara and visitations and the
sourpusses across the room, Molly didn't say a thing. She looked nervously at Anna and Moon and
Mountain and Owl and me for a long time and seemed to sigh. At last she cleared her throat and spoke
with difficulty...
"RobinTom and Owl, I have to tell you something that you are not prepared for.... There was no way
to know this would happen, but, what it is... is that... my Department of Children's Services... WILL
NOT be recommending that Mushmara be returned to you."
She spoke tiredly now, as though she was taking a great weight off and handing it to me to carry for
awhile.
"WhatEVER are you saying, Molly?" Anna Navarre asked at once, pursing her lips and squinting her
eyes like a falcon.
"But you told us..." I began.
Had I heard right? Molly was supposed to be one of our aces. She'd told us many times not to worry
because everything would be all right... She'd practically promised...
Molly waved us to silence.
"I can't do what I want to do. It doesn't matter what I said to you. It doesn't matter what I THINK.
My supervisor has instructed me that the position of Children's Services shall be: that the child should
be put into a foster home until parental rights may be terminated and the child put up for adoption. He
is MY BOSS. I am NOT ALLOWED to give my opinion of the matter to this court. I have been ordered
instead to give the opinion of the DIRECTOR of Children's Services and that opinion was told to me
unequivocally by HIM. It is NOT debatable and no amount of discussion will change it. I'm sorry if I
ever gave you the idea your daughter would be given back to you today. I didn't mean to deceive you. I
didn't know my department would make this decision. This is very hard for me... I'm sorry. I'm sorry..."
I erupted.
"But HE wasn't at the visitations, YOU were! He doesn't know how we are with our baby. YOU do!
How can he make a blind decision like this? Why would he? What's he got against US?"
I was at my wit's end.
A wide-eyed Moon was listening to Molly too.
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"Those sons of bitches are CRAZY. That's fucking STUPID!"
Beautiful Moon tended to swear when she lost her temper. I had to urge her to calm herself. It looked
like she was going to start picking up the chairs and cushions and throwing them at people and maybe
clawing some evil bureaucrat eyes out too. That wouldn't do US any good at all.
Mountain stood smoldering against a wall. Now he went to Moon and urged her not to lose control
of herself. Steam was coming out her ears.
Owl was avidly listening to everything. I could tell when I looked at her that she didn't know what
she had understood correctly from what she had misunderstood. Finally she just collapsed back unto a
cushion and tuned us all out, starring blankly. It was all just too much. I kissed her and told her not to
worry and Moon came over and tried to comfort her, and reassured her that at least SHE, Moon, would
tell the court the truth!! Some life came into Owl's eyes then and Moon hugged her dearly as only a
sister could do.
Moon had brought a list of pertinent questions written neatly on white paper which she wanted our
lawyer to ask her when she was on the stand. She had brought the list because during her previous
testimony, our lawyer had failed to ask her the important things which she had been prepared to explain
to the court. We all presumed the questions had been unasked because our lady lawyer had been too
busy to prepare her case adequately. So to make sure that error was not repeated this time Moon had
brought a list of questions for the lawyer to ask her!
The list was well thought out. Moon was on the ball. It contained questions like: --"Was the baby
kept in warm clothing by her parents?" and --"Did the parents have ample baby clothes?" and --"Were
the baby's clothes laundered regularly?" and --"Was the Jeephouse a warm house?" and --"Did you as
their constant friend ever observe any indication that they neglected their baby?" and --"Was their diet
healthy?"
Insignificant stuff...huh?
Our lawyer looked bewilderedly at the list with widening eyes. How audacious she must have
thought Moon to be --As though Moon should be telling her how to present the case! She saw no merit
at all in Moon's list! And though she smiled tolerantly and chatted nicely with Moon and us before the
trial, unbeknownst to us, she had no intention of asking Moon any of those questions. She was just
humoring the strange young hippie woman. You see, that list of questions might have been significant
to anyone who wanted to win our case but our lawyer was more concerned with political expedience.
She had to live and work in that community for years to come. She couldn't have it being said about her
that she had supported and defended people with counter-culture ideals against the system. Besides she
was very much a part of the social perspectives of the judge and the prosecutor and the caseworkers
and she didn't like our way of dressing or our lifestyles or our attitudes or even our odor. It would not
serve her purposes to have Moon on the stand validating our parental abilities. Moon's list of questions
was anathema to her.
Later, when Moon came down off the stand after less than a minute of answering our lawyer's
nondescript and ineffectual questions, she was angry to the core once again. Mountain wasn't even
called to the stand at all this time. Without waiting for the results of the trial, Mountain put his arm
around Moon and walked her out the door and back across the Fairy Street Bridge to their home in
Eugene. They had tried. What else could friends do?
The court provided a French interpreter for Owl but it is doubtful if she actually understood things
any better, frightened and shaken as she was.
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So now we came to know our court appointed attorney for what she actually was: a ritzy lady from
upper middle-class society who didn't believe in us at all. She did little in any of these trials but give us
negativity. She couldn't paint a picture she couldn't see. She couldn't make our case from her
perspective. She had her own agenda; it barely interconnected with ours.
I asked her why she had seen to it that Moon and Mountain were so swiftly dismissed. She
explained:
"Their ethnic hippie background would do us more harm than good."
Yeah, had I not lacked seven years of college I too would have understood how senseless it would
have been for us to have people who knew us really well give the court their personal observations and
impressions about our parenting abilities!
So we had no witnesses.
Molly McPool took the stand and put her hand on the Bible and pledged her oath and lied just like
she had warned us she had been ordered to do. I made an outburst to insist the court hear the truth but
the Judge cracked his gavel and angrily reminded me I would be silent or I would be cleared from the
court.
"These proceedings can continue just as well without you, Mr. Ollamh!" He admonished.
I suspected they could have indeed.
Lastly, Anna Navarre went up and sat in the chair, gave her oath. They asked her how Owl and I
reacted with Mara during visitations, and she told them. But neither attorney asked her what, as a nurse,
she felt about our parenting skills.
So she took the liberty of telling the court, unasked, that she could see no reason why Mushmara
should not be returned to us immediately and that with some simple and readily available parenting
classes we should have no difficulty mastering the roles of parenthood. She finished by warning the
Judge that prolonged and needless separation could cause the child irreparable harm. She spoke with
such dignity and self-assuredness that the room was stone silent till she was through -- and then it
exploded.
The prosecuting attorney was on his feet.
"OBJECTION YOUR HONOR! This woman is only a Public Health Nurse and is not competent to
make that evaluation. I move that her statement be stricken from the record!"
"INCOMPETENT?" Anna Navarre asserted indignantly, taken back. "I am a REGISTERED NURSE!
I actually observed these parents with their daughter. NO ONE ELSE IN THIS COURTROOM was
with them AS I WAS! If I am INCOMPETENT..."
The Judge was vigorously pounding his gavel on the bench.
"It is the opinion of the bench that it is ONLY the Department of Children's Services who are
qualified to make the recommendation as to placement of this child, NOT the nurse from Public Health.
Her Remarks shall be stricken from the record."
Anna grimaced and left the stand.
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The remainder of the hearing was marked with banality and passed like a steak knife through a finger
and was finished.
Afterward, Anna remarked to us that she hadn't much liked being called incompetent. Man-oh-man,
Did we know that! We were all pretty glum. A snaky feeling kept washing over my brain that this
whole trial was rigged to take our baby...
The judge had also cut our visits down to only once a month. (Again over the loud objections of
Anne Nevarre and myself which resulted in another stern censure from the bench.)
A deep gloominess pervaded us in the anteroom. I began to feel that there was no hope of getting
Mary Morningdove back now.
I looked at Owl to see if she'd understood. She was still looking from one of us to the other searching
for signs of hope. I'd have to explain.... Later...
***
Why were they doing this to us? I had a nagging nightmare shifting in and out of my mind,
whispering to me that none of these things had anything to do with the real reasons. I felt like there was
a flag after my name in official records -- something that steered special attention my way. I had heard
rumors of such things...
I was thinking that the FBI was still angry that the Quaker church, in concert with other peaceactivists, had supported me when I was in prison, still angry that in the end I had succeeded in having
my conviction overturned and had been released from prison with all charges dropped. The Feds had
gone through a great deal to put me into prison. They had even kept me in solitary confinement for
most of those eighteen months so that I wouldn't corrupt the murderers and rapists with my pacifism.
Then thanks to circumstances I myself had put into motion I had been released with all charges
dismissed. That must have made some of them very angry... Were they getting even with me now by
attacking my wife and child?
Or were they worried I might lead a new generation of draft resisters up the back roads into Canada
in the advent of another undeclared war? Maybe this was their subtle way of telling me I should shut up
and mind my manners -- because they could do anything to me.
In 1978 as Ellie and I banged our heads against the walls futilely in those courtrooms I often felt like
I was the only one in America being so evilly manipulated. But in truth I was only one of many
afflicted throughout that entire decade. It was a few years later before evidence came our way which
exposed the lengths the FBI was capable of going to.
In the late sixties the FBI had considered the famous actress Jean Seberg to be so capable of
changing society with her art that J. Edgar Hoover issued orders for agents to orchestrate mayhem in
her life, spreading lies about her in such a way that her reputation would be ruined and this would
neutralize the influence she had upon the public. The mission of the FBI was to drive her insane. She
was pregnant at the time, and their lies caused her so much sorrow that her baby was born prematurely
and died. Afterwards she became suicidal. In 1978 while Ellie and I were having our own problems in
the Eugene courtroom trying to get Mushmara returned to us Jean Seberg was enduring the final throes
of her own torments which culminated in 1979 when she succeeded in taking her own life. What a
waste.
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Eventually the Freedom of Information act allowed FBI files to be opened. The public was shocked
when it learned that the FBI had used their vast power and resources to deliberately secretly afflict Jean
Seberg, to drive her insane, to actually cause her to take her own life.
In those years the leadership in the FBI saw the United States as a White Puritan power. "Moral
integrity" as they saw it should not be compromised by the encroaching forces of moral turpitude in
some nations such as France. "Moral integrity" included keeping the blacks in their place, with little or
no political power, keeping American sexuality in the dark ages, keeping the economic reasons for
America’s wars a secret from the American people, making America believe that communism was
totally evil and capitalism was totally good. And everyone and anyone who tried to work for social
change was branded a communist, a pinko, a radical, a non-conformer -- was black-listed, and
sometimes marked for ruination, even death.
What had Jean Seberg done that caused the FBI to consider her such a threat? Many things. Her role
as Joan of Arc in Otto Preminger’s controversial movie "Saint Joan" had shocked America.
Previously this had been a taboo area. Artists were not supposed to show the capability of organized
religion in English-speaking worlds to function hand in glove with decadent politics, and were certainly
not supposed to show the fervent determination, so French, so passionate, of a woman, a people, to
defy such idiocy, even unto martyrdom in the fires of the stake. The establishment in America was
supposed to control things well enough that no such ideas would ever be given to the American public
on the screen. Jean Seberg had not only broke those rules, she had broken them with the true spirit of
Joan.
And afterwards she went on creating what could only be construed as trouble for the establishment’s
vision of American values. She next starred in Bonjour Tristesse playing a very sexual but sensitive
heroine. It may have been okay in France for a woman to be very sexual Lolita and at the same time be
very sensitive and human, but the over-controlling powers in America did not see that as a positive
image. Those were the days when it was still illegal in many states for a man and a woman to even live
in the same house unless they were married. Jean Seberg was a cultural icon in sexy freedom-loving
France. But in prude old America the FBI considered Jean Seberg to be someone they needed to stop.
Jean Seberg came to America and starred in the film Lillith. One can only imagine J. Edar Hoover’s
reaction to a veritable Lillith loose in America. She became active in left-wing politics. The war in Viet
Nam was escalating insanely and at the same time the streets of America were fomenting to the point
where even civil war seemed possible. Millions of unhappy young people were growing their hair long,
singing songs of protest, defying the government in every way. Black men died disproportionately in
Viet Nam, risked their lives for their country, and when they came home had no rights. Huey P. Newton
and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panthers and challenged the white establishment of the United
States to either wake up and make the changes necessary to create a free society where people of all
colors could live free and safe with equal opportunity, or prepare to deal with the anger of a black
society which was ready to fight for that change. Police across America executed military style raids on
Black Panther headquarters in cities across America, killing many. If the FBI could keep America
thinking that these angry black people were simply crazy and ignorant they might keep control of the
situation simply because whites so vastly outnumbered blacks. But all over the world voices raised in
support of an improvement in the condition of basic human rights in America -- and even prominent
and influential white actresses like Jean Seberg and Jane Fonda took active stands alongside the Black
Panthers.
It is at this time that J. Egar Hoover issued the orders for agents of the FBI to secretly contrive to
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destroy the reputation of Jean Seberg. They were effective enough to cause her the grief which
eventually lead to her death.
We are fortunate today that thanks to the Freedom of Information Act we have the documents which
reveal the destruction the FBI committed upon Jean Seberg. The FBI would never have revealed the
truth otherwise. Someone had to go in legally and force them to tell the truth. What we don’t know
today is how many other people the FBI ruined in such ways.
An intuitive person sometimes gets an eerie feeling. The hairs on the back of one’s neck stands up.
They just KNOW someone is watching from behind a bush with evil intentions. I had come to know
those nightmare manipulators quite well over the years. I had no reason to doubt they were still active.
Their powerful malevolence was thick in the air at times...
I was small potatoes. I was just a hippy with no money who had criss-crossed America for years
speaking out against the madness of war and social inequality. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I had met
an absolutely ravishing French Canadian girl who was passionately in love with me and who wandered
with me in my travels. Did we attract attention????? Did even more people listen to me? Did our
lifestyle cause other people to reconsider their own values? And then Owl and I started to have
children! We would soon be wandering across America in a two-story Jeep with a thatched roof,
playing guitars and writing songs, wearing amazing golden leather garments, with a goat scampering
on his teather, and with puppies and kittens, and pretty babies in home spun wool clothing we had
made ourselves. We’d be like something that had just popped out of a children’s Golden Book. Is that
something the powerful forces of the establishment wanted America to see??? No. If they had gone to
such lengths to ruin a powerful movie actress like Jean Seberg with lies they could destroy anyone.
Of course I didn’t know about Jean Seberg at that time. She wouldn’t finally be driven to kill herself
for another few months. Then the world would know. But I didn’t know yet. But I had a strong feeling
nonetheless that all these bogus charges against us were created just to destroy us. I even hoped I was
merely having delusions of paranoid schizophrenia. That would sure be a relief -- because there is
medicine for such things. So if it was just delusions I could take the medicine and get Mushmara back...
But if it wasn’t delusions, if it was all just the government destroying us with their secret teams of
psycho-agents we sure wouldn’t have much hope of winning against them.
Truthfully, I knew it wasn’t delusions. It was the powers of darkness versus the powers of Light. I
had no doubts about it at all. It just hurt so bad. Somehow I had refused to believe they would actually
take Owl’s baby away from her. Couldn’t they see how sacred she is? Owl glows. Anyone who can’t
see it is blind.
A whole lot of glowing people were coming to Oregon at that time, the whole huge counterculture
Rainbow Tribe, --gathering under their noses in sufficient numbers to present a threat to their
impunitous powers. Rainbow people are close knit and stand up determinedly for one another. This is
not healthy to the establishment. The establishment needs us to look week, disorganized, stupid.
Naturally they figured it might be possible to pop the bubble of the hippy organization if the
government could take away some of the hippy children. The obvious prevalence in Rainbow
Gatherings of pot and peyote and lysergics would give them legal reason. But getting near enough to
grab any of the hippy children inside a Rainbow Gathering might prove extremely difficult -- maybe
even dangerous!
Then they saw Owl. Here was a Rainbow woman who couldn't even defend herself because she
barely spoke English! She might be easy! And we were obviously in the center of many Rainbow
activities, living at the hot springs as we were, but we often came into Eugene and were very vulnerable
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at those times. So, unbeknownst to us CSD plotted that we would become the sacrificial lambs of the
bureaucracy's power play.
Was this what happened? All we could know for sure was that a government system whose valid
reason for existence should have been the protection of children and families -- had taken away our
child for no good reason and turned our lives into a nightmare. It was a classic battle of Darkness
versus Light, and the Darkness was winning.
***
Molly McPool remained our caseworker and we had to endure her frequently. To stomach a traitor as
an intermediary between our child and ourselves was a bitter pill. How much hope could such a one
purvey? None! And she made no pretense otherwise.
I did not care to speak with her thereafter. At length the silence had weighed too heavily upon her.
She came to our place on a special visit and commenced to tell us things that enabled us to somewhat
forgive her.
She put her hand on mine.
"RomTom, Listen! I want to tell you something. I probably shouldn't, but I will. I support my family
with this job. I need it and I will do nothing to jeopardize it. But unfortunately, my teenage son was
recently busted for possession of marijuana. Do you understand how this fact puts me in a precarious
position? It is not good for a social worker to have a problem of this nature. We are supposed to
provide the solutions for people's family problems. If the personal example of my own family at home is
not above reproach, how can anyone look to me for guidance or be expected to follow or even respect
my advice? How can I lay down the law or demand compliance -- when my own family is suffering
from the same flaws -- from the same lack of responsibility?
My boss knows about the marijuana conviction and he is holding it over my head. If I so much as
detour one inch from the course he sets, things will go bad for me. And so my boss has had occasion to
severely reprimand me of late and to demand that I become inured to reflect the policies of my
superiors and not merely my own, which are felt to be inadequate. I may not exercise liberal attitudes!
No, nor will my recommendations be allowed to support or condone what my superiors consider to be
moral laxity. Either I go along with the program as it has been spelled out to me, or the department
will replace me with someone who will.
My job comes first. My son comes first. Do you understand? That's why I can't help you."
I was jolted by her revelation. I knew infamous tyrants plagued these bureaucracies so that it often
sapped the minds and hearts of good folks working in the departments to keep that high-handedness off
the throats of little people; but I was aghast to perceive a sensitive woman abused and yielding to a
callous and myopic office Caligula.
Molly's hand was on my shoulder. She was crying.
"I wanted to help you and Owl..." she said softly through her tears.
Yes, she had. Still, there must be some hope! I tried to reason with her about the unethical condition
of allowing this monster to coerce her into compromising her sensitive values -- by making her tell the
court statements that were adverse to what she KNEW to be true -- she must find within herself the
strength to remain true to herself -- and us -- regardless of personal discomfiture! The entire life and
freedom of a precious child weighed in the balance!
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She held up her hand and begged me to stop. There was nothing more to say. She rose and hurried
out the door.
Her boss didn't like us... That's all... Simple as that... What an ASSHOLE! I had never even MET her
boss! Had he ever met ME? I seriously doubted it. So how could he judge me so severely without even
knowing us in the slightest -- and after ignoring reports from workers in his office who had come to
know us well? Maybe he just blindly hated hippies or something...
So I went over to the Children's Welfare office on Eleventh Street and asked to speak to the
supervisor. I had no intention of revealing the confidence Molly had made to me, but I wanted at least
to see this ruiner of our happiness one time with my own eyes. I recall I was giving some thought to
spitting in his face. Maybe I would -- probably I wouldn't. My antipathy gage was fluctuating wildly
those days. I don't know. Spitting in his face was an invigorating impulse though as I rushed to confront
him...
But in fact, I was quite capable of pushing my animosity aside and recovering my equanimity in
short order. I would not spit in his face. I would simply have a talk with him. Perhaps if he got to know
me, he'd realize Mushmara and Owl meant the world to me. Maybe he'd see that I was willing and
eager to be a good parent. Maybe I'd convince him I was very capable of all that. That made a lot more
sense.
And if that didn't work, maybe then I'd hawk a loogy into his snaky eyes.
My mind raged as I walked to his office. But I was calming. After all, I didn't want to ruin any
chance of getting Mushmara returned. I'd be cool. Basically I just thought he should meet one of the
people he was blindly destroying from safely behind his evil desk.
But he was elusive. I never could get the straight scoop from the secretaries or workers as to exactly
who he was, what his name was, or even where he was. They kept giving me run-arounds, saying there
was no supervisor per se. At one point, the matronly secretary curtly told me SHE was the supervisor
for the day. So, what did I want? I knew she wasn't the one.
I never met him, though on several other occasions I continued to try to find out who he was. I'll
always wish I could have met the prejudiced little pig just one time.
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FIFTEEN
ASHES TO ASHHOLES
DUCKS TO TRUCKS
Moon and Mountain volunteered their whole-hearted aid in stealing back our child. They sincerely
tried to talk us into making the attempt. But it was obvious to me that CSD was expecting just such a
strategy. You could see Hell in their eyes -- the way they had the girls in the Pinto waiting down the
street from the foster home that day -- and the squad cars. No doubt about their intentions. I knew they
had their 357 magnums waiting for us in deadly earnest. Such awful criminals we were! I could see the
headlines:
FOUR SHOT DEAD IN FOILED ATTEMPT TO KIDNAP BABY FROM LOVING FOSTER HOME!
Barf.
I couldn't have Moon and Mountain getting shot or going to prison if the plan failed. No, if we tried
this at all, Owl and I must do the thing ourselves. But, I couldn't allow Owl or Mara to be in danger
either. And what could I accomplish alone? No, I just couldn't think of any way to pull it off.
With only one child-visitation per month allowed her and the nearly nonexistent prospects of CSD
ever returning Mara, Owl seemed to be falling apart. At night she would sleep tender as a little girl in
my arms but in the morning she meandered blindly -- locked within the dolorous confusion of her heart
-- almost beyond my reach.
She no longer tried to make sense of the English conversations, not even mine. Nor would she wash
dishes or do housework. She threw tantrums at perfect strangers. She beat on me with her fists. (Which
I limply allowed.) She argued nonsensically to the walls, to herself.
One day she put a bra on over her blouse and sweater. Another time she walked naked into the living
area of the house where the homeowner was entertaining his friends. Once she started to walk out the
front door naked. Maybe she thought she was at the hotsprings...
Or maybe it was her way of protesting.
I don't know. But I could see only one solution. I had to get her back to Montreal, Quebec; to her
mother and father and her sisters and brother and grandparents. They would most likely know how to
soothe and heal her.
Maybe psychiatrists there could help her.
And maybe after we told them our story the French-Canadian government would even tell the United
States to relinquish the child of one of Canada's citizens! Now there was a plan...
Even if this were contingent to the authority of the Canadian Children's Services in Montreal it
would still be okay. French-Catholics put families before anything. Surely they would be wiser and
kinder to us than these Oregon creeps. Beyond any doubt the French Canadian authorities would at
least understand my Marie Elaine -- my "Owl".
Thanks to Owl's mindless performances and general miserableness we were no longer welcome in
the house on Ash Street. We had no place to live once this month's rent was up.
There was nothing to hold us in Eugene anymore -- unless a miracle developed. For instance: if the
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Judge allowed us weekly visitation, or if a perfect living situation came our way, or if I were to land a
high-paying job, or if some beatific lawyer came riding up on a white horse who said, "You're being
screwed. Don't worry! I'll get your child returned to you -- and punitive damages -- because they verily
deserve that!"
But no such Hombre made any appearance.
Other than that we would just have to escape this butterfly jar and drive our rigs across America to
Owl's hometown -- Montreal.
***
When I wasn't looking at apartments I spent the remainder of the month symbolically, atop the
Jeephouse building the upstairs bedroom and the inner trap door.
Hammer in hand, nails in my mouth, standing on the roof of the migratory green mailbox, I became
the Ash street sideshow. Some days I worked up there from early morning into the sunset. People came
out of their houses to chat and encourage me. I had to agree: my two-story house on wheels did look
mighty fine. Perhaps I could finish the motor and have her running soon...
If a miracle were to happen -- or if only the Judge were to finally listen to Anna Nevarre's advice that
the baby should be returned to us -- our dreamhouse would be complete and waiting. Ever and again I
found myself daydreaming that we would all fly silently and safely away one night...
But alas, the nightmare lurking just beyond this happy hippie hope glared with monstrous red eyes
spitting and hissing that we would never ever be so blessed as to live in this lovely caravanserai with
our daughter. In Vain! In Vain! My hammer pounded at the creature's eyes! So! They would take MY
daughter! Owl's own heart! Those money-sucking fiends! I would show them! I would show the world
our pilgrim-ship finished! At least they would see with their eyes the housecar I had planned for
Mushmara!
I wanted to show Owl. I wanted to show myself.
Anna Navarre watched me work. She told me she thought it was beautiful.
We didn't sleep in the home of the contentious man any longer. We slept in our house -- our two
story Jeephouse parked at the curb.
A hinged window opened to hear the wind; to cuddle together and watch the stars, and the hearttugging vees of Canadian Geese returning north; to breathe the fresh sweet air; to listen to the rumble
of passing trains distantly fading into the stony night.
Only Mushmara was missing. Our Merry Elf. Our Mary Morningdove. Only Mushmara. This magic
place was meant to be her home.
She must be missing us like we were missing her. Who would hold her now if she were to cry?
Would it be the same? Would it be enough?
Patterned carpets and rugs covered the floor, tapestries clothed the walls. The pine boards of the
walls were sanded and oiled.
High above the Ash street world chords from my guitar filtered through the pinewoods skyward; I
wrote some lullabies.
Owl sat up beside the swinging window. She embroidered and knit and listened to rain splatterdrumming on the roof and the hinged-up window glass; smelled the cleansed earth; watched the
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rivulets run down the pane.
Owl cries as silently and privately as possible. That's the only way she ever cries. Her head is turned
to the window away from me. She doesn't like me to see. She refuses to make a noise -- any more noise
than is absolutely beyond her ability to repress. Just tiny quiet muffled squeaks and sobs.
When I hold her in my arms she entirely melts -- she is all water.
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SIXTEEN
STARBERRY CREAM
About this time I received notification my driving privileges were suspended in the state of Oregon.
It felt like some sort of trap was springing closed.
I hadn't reimbursed the elderly couple for scratching their door in Lincoln City the year before. I had
no way to pay that bill. My wallet was not overflowing with greenery. Inasmuch as I hadn't fulfilled my
obligation, the state of Oregon suspended my right to drive within its borders.
I still had my Vermont driver’s license, so I figured I'd be safe to drive anywhere once I cleared out
of Oregon.
The rigs were rolling. We headed out highway 58 to Oakridge for one last soak in the ancient healing
hot springs -- desperate ablutions.
Also, we went to check into the only way we might possibly be able to stay and get Mara back. We
went to see if the tree planters in Oakridge might hire us.
They were all making a hundred dollars per day. If we got on one of those crews we could use
money to clear up all our problems. We'd pay off our traffic ticket. We'd pay for the repair of those
people's station wagon. We'd rent a wonderful house. We'd buy everything necessary to outfit a nursery
and kitchen so perfectly that CSD would not hesitate to give us back our daughter. This one last-ditch
effort would decide whether or not we must leave our baby and go to Montreal.
The "P.F. Flyer" tree planting crew were drinking in the Oakridge tavern. They told us we could get
to know their people all day and they'd vote on us that night at the home of one of the planters. I've
never been much of a drinker, and I tried to explain that to them in order to get the voting over with
faster so we could get out of the dark and smelly bar. I don't care for bars. I had better plans for a
hundred dollars per day than drinking it all up like many of them bragged that they did every single
day. They told me they wouldn't trust anyone who wouldn't drink with them -- so either stay and drink
-- or "hit the road". So I stayed and nursed two beers all day long.
When we got to the house that evening, they had me stand up and speak to the assembled crew. They
asked many questions. The main thing they wanted to know was why we wanted the jobs? I explained
it was our last and only chance to get our baby back from the grasp of the CSD.
Marriage and babies didn't set well with them.
Then they asked a bunch of other personal questions that hurt to answer. Mostly about my
relationship with Owl. It seemed there was a shortage of women in the woods. If there was going to be
one around they'd prefer she was unattached.
About the only things I had in common with them were my long hair and beard, and perhaps a love
of the outdoors. It's not like we had the same dreams. How could they understand when I told them
Owl and I had something special?
They said they had too many men on the crew as it was -- so there wouldn't be any place for me.
Sorry. But -- there might be room for just Owl. I told them it was either both of us or maybe me alone,
or neither of us. This inspired some surly comments. They'd been drinking all day -- and it showed.
(They asked why I was speaking for Owl? Maybe she felt different! They insisted Owl speak for
herself as to whether or not she wanted to work with them. She answered that she wouldn't work if I
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didn't -- which only made them more raucous.)
After drinking several more cases of beer, late in the night they finally got around to voting on our
membership.
We were blackballed...
It was probably just as well... I can't imagine much good coming out of that job -- regardless of the
pay.
Oh golly! Our glorious counter-culture! Isn't it something how we build this thing out of our deepest
hopes and dreams and then we expect it to be there for us and when it isn't we feel so wasted?
***
As we were leaving Oakridge a police car pulled us over, ran a check on my license and found out
my right to operate a vehicle had been revoked. The officer told me I could no longer drive my rigs. He
wrote me a $250 ticket.
Well, I didn't know what to do. I did know that once I got out of Oregon I'd be legal for all practical
purposes -- but I'd have to drive to get there!
I spent all the next day attempting to locate anyone who would drive my rigs into Eugene. No luck.
There seemed to be no alternative but to try to slip out unnoticed.
My brain was too numbed from all that had happened for me to have realized this cop would be
lying in wait with ants in his pants. Naturally he was right there instantly when we pulled out onto the
highway.
He wrote me a second ticket. This time though he also arrested me and took me directly to court with
five hundred dollars worth of fines to pay.
The lady Judge listened demurely as I laid my heart on her bench. I must have talked for twenty
minutes. She kept asking me questions. She was nice enough. I told her everything. In the end she
agreed to dismiss the entire jail sentence and half of the fines -- on condition that we immediately leave
the state within three days. That was her best and only offer.
Ironic. Justice would be served IF we left our child in Oregon and went elsewhere. It was either that
or I would have to go to jail for unpaid fines.
Going to jail would mean leaving Owl alone on the streets with nowhere to live and few friends in
any position to really help her! Those Oakridge tree planters would think it was girl-Christmas. I would
be helpless to help her. She'd be hungry, cold, alone... Someone would "take her in"... In her mental
state I could only fear the worst... Perhaps she'd get pregnant... Wouldn't that be Hell! Just as likely, the
police would be aware of her desolation as she wandered around the strange streets with nowhere to go
and no food to eat, and they would discover that she has no immigration papers and then they would
deport her for sure. She'd be taken to the Canadian border and dropped off. While I sat in a cell tearing
my hair out. And maybe I would lose her forever. And Mushmara would never have a mother to come
home to. She would never know Owl. She'd be a defenseless child broken and unloved in a foster
home. How ungodly tragic all that would be...
This was their idea of justice... This was the mighty sum of shining alabaster justice they offered us
from the immense reserves of their hearts: all they had to spare. Such a rich country! And that was all
they had to spare...
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This poor young mother deserved better than to be so crushed beneath their heels.
Someday humanity will evolve more intelligent ways of handling financial misfortunes and their
incumbent dilemmas than to evoke such tragedy! Jailing a family man who lacks the funds to pay his
arbitrary bail or his arbitrary fine is no fairer than the debtor's prisons of two centuries ago! And
jeopardizing a struggling family in such ways IS NOT JUSTICE and anyone who thinks it is morally
stupid. Period.
We took the Judge's alternative. Her fine stripped us of almost all of our travel money. God! I just
hoped we could get together enough bread to get enough gas to at least drive out of the state!
A kind mill-worker with a pick-up truck allowed me to persuade him to tow our rigs to Eugene. We
must have looked like a ridiculous railroad train!
After parking the vehicles safely at the carrot patch I went looking for someone who would be
willing to drive us up into the state of Washington. Finding no one, in desperation I went to the blood
bank and offered anyone ten dollars to drive us north.
Only one person, an alcoholic old reprobate, considered my offer. As desperate as I was I snapped
him up.
He could hardly manage the stick shift. He ground every gear. Usually he couldn't find the gears at
all and I had to shift for him. He swore he'd driven a stick before. I could hardly believe him.
We hadn't even cleared Eugene when we developed mechanical trouble on the freeway and had to
pull over. His bucking-bronco jump-starts had destroyed the universals on the rear drive shaft. I had to
get underneath and unattach the thing. I decided to try to continue driving out of the state on the front
driveshaft alone.
I told the old guy he should have his driver's license ready in case a cop stops to see what our
problem was while I got under the truck with some wrenches and did the mechanical work.
He replied that he didn't have one. Oh, Dandy.
The old geezer wheedled pathetically until he had relieved me of two precious dollars which I finally
handed over just to get rid of him. He went to find himself a drink. We never saw him again.
Of course the police were on us like stinkum on a lawyer. This time the cop gave me a break since he
hadn't actually seen me driving and soon we were alone again beside the road.
Failing to find anyone to drive the rigs, I seemed to have no alternative. After dark, I drove down the
back roads to Santa Clara, to the Carrot farm, praying desperately all the way that no cop would spot
us. I mean praying.
I parked the rigs, with the farmer's permission, in a field. I told him we'd be back in a few years to
pick them up. He scratched his head and chuckled.
Owl and I loaded all the gear we could carry into backpacks and said goodbye to Oregon. Our
thumbs out, we were flying like the wind.
***
Few things move as swiftly as a cross-country hitchhiker. A single man may have some trouble
getting a ride, but a man and a pretty woman get rides fast. In a few hours we were let off in some little
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prairie town in eastern Oregon a couple miles from Idaho.
We had two dollars left. From our freeway position, we could see a busy bakery/cafe in the little
town. A tall wire freeway fence separated us from any way of going in there for a warm-up. So, we
stood for two hours awaiting a ride. Traffic thinned out as the evening deepened. These tiny towns in
eastern Oregon roll up their sidewalks. The wind whistled across the empty fields and the empty lanes
of freeway. The stars above were a trillion diamonds.
A pick-up truck pulled over. We ran up and asked them how far they were going. They were local
kids. They said they weren't going anywhere. They asked us where we were going. They seemed all
right, a little bored. Good kids. They asked us if we'd like to come over to the cafe with them. I
answered that we'd welcome the invitation. Thank you! We threw everything in the back and climbed
in.
Standing in the line alongside the pie counter, talking, I discovered we had misunderstood them in
thinking they were offering to treat us to coffee and pie. They were nearly as broke as we were. I was
embarrassed for a moment to realize they had only offered to drive us over to the cafe. I recovered from
my faux pas as quickly as possible and decided Owl and I would share a cup of coffee and try to
conserve what little money we had. At least this would give us a half-hour or so to warm up and maybe
we'd meet a ride heading east.
I turned to tell Owl that we'd be sharing a cup of coffee -- and discovered she was already selecting a
piece of pie. I tried to whisper to her to put it back -- and her attention was distracted just long enough
for the whole pie to slip out of her hands and fall on the floor. Strawberry whipped cream. The pie
actually landed right side up and wasn't really damaged all that much but it was unsellable. The shop
owner told me I'd have to pay for it and I explained to him we had two dollars to our name and we were
hitchhiking to the east coast on the freeway and we were cold and... He came unglued. He was right
there in my face yelling at me...
"You mean you are telling me you haven't got any money to pay for this pie you've ruined? Well
you'd better dig some money up or you are going to jail!"
I looked at his blazing eyes. He looked ready to pounce on me. Rising tides of anxieties amassed
behind the floodgates of my mind. My ears hummed. The table-candles in the darkness, the faces of
many customers turned to look at Owl and me and the angry shop owner, the glass case full of
delicious-looking brightly-lit pies... Uncountable starlit light-years of emptiness extended in all
directions from this bubble of fantastic colors and shadows and musak. So, after all we'd been through
now I would be going to a jail cell from this pie shop under the stars. And Owl would be left alone
standing out there in the dark in the middle of nowhere. I guess I flipped out...
Everything we'd been through surged up and burst out. As though I were someone else standing off
to the side: I heard myself blurting heated words about what it feels like to be lost and homeless with
only two dollars in your pocket; and to be worried about a child left behind, far-away; and to be hungry
and trying to hold a pie plate with fingers numb from standing for hours out in biting cold winds -- to
be standing frozen and alien in an eerie room full of strange looking people all talking at once with
their mouths full to the brim and overflowing with pie and coke -- here in the dark void at the end of
worlds, on an ancient plateau, beneath a sea of stars.
His customers were all looking at us as I blitzed those things to him. I thought I sounded kinda crazy.
And I was thinking I was sure probably gonna regret my big mouth. Surprisingly -- the customer's
faces seemed -- compassionate!?
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America!
He scooped up the pie and exclaimed exasperatedly:
"Here! Take this pie and GO!"
He rushed us out the door into the night. I guess he had a heart after all...
We stood on the side of the freeway, outside of town. The Milky Way shone brightly -- stretched
magnificently across the heavens! How vast the sky seems to shivering hitchhikers on the edge of
civilization...
Our fingers dipped eagerly into the delicious strawberry whipped cream pie. As we licked them we
talked about how we wished Mary Morningdove were with us.
"She'd sure love this pie wouldn't she Owly?"
"Shur Rom! Marie wood love eet! I hhope dey geve uhur sum pie and teengs in de houze whare she
eez at..."
"Me too, Owly. I think they have many nice things there!"
"Puuhr bebe... She must wondaire whare we haar... She is too lettle for dis problam..."
--"My God, Marie Elaine! I don't know what else to do! It was hopeless there. Maybe in Quebec..."
An eighteen wheeler pulled over. We threw up our gear and scrambled into the cab. "Where you
going?" the driver asked good-naturedly.
"Montreal!" I answered, "But you can drop us off just across the Idaho border in the middle of the
prairie if you please."
"In the middle of nowhere?" he stammered, "I'm going several hundred miles! You're welcome to
keep me company!"
--"Thanks anyway; but just out in the boonies will be fine." I replied.
He dropped us off out there beneath the heavenly panoply and we heard him running through his
gears as we hopped the fence and carried our bags across the starlit landscape.
There were wide patches with no snow and soft prairie grasses. We laid out our bedroll.
"We are free of Oregon, Owl. It's gone. We're in Idaho, now! I wish we'd have gotten Mary
Morningdove out of Oregon too, but it's no use. They'll never give her to us. They'd have destroyed us if
we'd stayed. We had to escape to ever become strong enough to have a chance to get her back. Owl!
It's such a relief to be totally out of their clutches! Owl! Look at me! Marie Elaine! I Love You!"
She looked at me. She whispered:
"I luv hue too, RhomTom!"
Our lips pressed together tenderly.
This strength was new. Yesterday we were buried with monstrous cares. Tonight we stood almost
free beneath the eternal fires -- breathing deeply the crisp draughts of those star-kissed winter fields,
searching now in each other's eyes for the person we loved.
"Owly, take off your clothes."
The cold air was nothing. Quietly she took them off.
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"Now, lay back and close your eyes."
She laid back on the spread-out bedroll.
Slowly I took scoops of the strawberry whipped cream pie and spread them all over every inch of her
trembling skin.
"Wat haar hue dueeng?" she asked incredulous.
"Just lay there!"
I finished covering her completely and began to lick the pie off her body. Exquisite. Soon, my
French princess was giggling madly.
And then she was moaning very nicely.
And then she was up on an elbow trying to get some of the pie out of the tin for herself.
And then we were making love.
And then we were up in the moonlight and starlight briskly washing ourselves off with snow.
And then we were snuggled deep in our warm bedroll in each other's arms enjoying the first good
night's sleep we'd had in a very very long time.
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SEVENTEEN
TWO-THOUSAND BEERS
March stormwinds played havoc on our wintertide journey, pushed us vulnerably into each other,
and into snowbanks, defied our human preference for perpendicular peregrination, sent us skidding and
sloshing through dirty black snow beside busy highways -- to lose our footing on sudden hidden ice;
picking each other up, and our cumbrous packs -- holding each other steady; scraping the soppy black
diesel slush off knees and elbows and seats of pants -- moving on.
Truck exhaust thickly riding turbulent traffic-battered whirlwinds -- carbon monoxide at its juiciest -truck after truck interminably roaring by our beleaguered trudging forms -- Tyrannosaurus engines
revving high less than ten feet from our ears to get the most out of every shift, out of every gallon of
fuel: Chicago -- the dirty wind city.
And human lives seemed to grind upon each other like so many gears. No people paused to wave or
chat or flash V signs or thumbs up or invite us in to freshen or eat something warm -- no -- just
commuters hurrying like tread-wheel mice, their automobiles enabling them to enjoy some small relief
from the boredom of the cage -- spin faster -- endure longer; peering incredulously out their windows at
us, faces dismayed -- then choked with annoyance. Their widened eyes seem to be saying, "Get a life!"
Coming into the outskirts of Detroit, a ten-year-old stationwagon pulls over. A well dressed middleclass black woman picks us up (merely for Owl's sake, she says) -- and drops us at a city bus stop.
Power lines above our heads buzz loudly. I feel the air magnetized around my ears. It's driving me
crazy.
"Yikes. Let's hurry and get out of here, Owl!"
Faces in sordid entryways stare out hauntingly -- grizzled faces. They remind me of dog pound dogs
in separate wire cages. Careful! -- They bite! ...I know the power lines are killing them.
The city bus lets us off at the tunnel to Windsor, Canada. There's no good place to stand and
hitchhike. Due to some unknown engineer's unforgivable oversight, the merging lanes weren't designed
with this in mind. We choose a small triangular area between the two main converging streams of
vehicles. Now it's more like flagging down a car than waiting patiently with thumbs out. Everything
may hang in the balance now. We're not sure what a cop may say if we are spotted before a ride saves
us.
Not to worry. I see the ruddy Canuk countenances through the windshield as they slow to stop beside
us. We're gonesville.
Our packs are in the trunk and we are four beery Canadians. If the inspector's nose is in working
order he could notice that two of these proletariats are wearing socks that haven't been washed in twothousand miles. Warily we approach the Customs station.
Any well-dressed person in a good car with ample identification will fly through the border
unmolested in twenty seconds or less. A bank robber with a valise full of money has no problem
crossing the border. A rapist with a good job and seventy-one credit cards sashays through unhindered.
A Savings and Loan executive from Dallas, Texas, with twenty million dollars in the closet of his
Winnebago breezes through the border like a migrating Canadian Goose. A cocaine dealer in a semitruck loaded with fifty million dollars worth of crack thunders through the border all smiles.
But a dearly plagued married couple with two dollars in their pockets, no ill intentions whatsoever in
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their hearts, seeking family and medical help -- must resort to this stratagem to pass. Yet, Some would
say nothing in this system needs rectifying or worse: that the problem is theirs and not the system's...
Yes, the uniformed men of the border are inclined to feel poor people are "undesirable influences".
But what sort of person is a desirable influence? A TV evangelist with a Swiss bank account wearing a
suit so clean you could eat off his cuffs? Prostitutes in fine dresses, fast cars three payments behind,
and a purse full of greenbacks? Alcoholics with good jobs and spiffy TRWs and a half-empty bottle
under the seat? Slumlords in Cadillacs? All these types pass swiftly through the portals!
Who then is the great undesirable alien? Certitude, Monsieur! Autant que je sache: It is the
wandering poet! The Gypsy with the lute! The poor young girl with flowers in her hair. Ah how
despicable are the impoverished wanderers! So wise and observant is this customs officer! Isn't it grand
to have one's priorities so clearly established? Bravo! Ad Nauseum.
Why is the criteria for unacceptability primarily old clothes, clunky car, and lack of cash? With no
leeway for human exigency? What will happen if they break this couple apart here? They know a
young woman will get raped when she is vulnerable! Tabernak! This tragedy has already happened
once before! Do they look like they care? Do they?
If they vouchsafe any meager explanation at all for their reprehensible reptilian arrogance, it is: "I
don't make the laws. I only enforce them. I'm only following orders." (Memories of Nuhrenburg's
lessons apparently not withstanding...) They look straight ahead. They make the treadwheel turn. Do
watcha do. Du wacky du.
Those border guards who manipulated such miscreancy in our lives represent Canada's other face...
Sometimes Canadians of this ilk assume themselves to "be the betters" of anyone unfortunate enough
to come in contact with them -- and they find enjoyment in developing a tact of syrupy sweet
contemptible condescension -- a purulent affectation of doubtful value.
God's Children all know from their star-strewn inception that Human nature wonts to be kind and
fair -- and prodigious officialism is such an absurd abnormality.
Approaching a border like this -- I often find myself thinking dearly such thoughts of God. I do hope
He (or She) is listening up there...
Fortunately for us the Customs officer doesn't notice our socks haven't been washed in two thousand
years. He waves us through.
The dangerous dreary robo-executives are far behind us. We are safe across! I feel faint and reborn!
The city of Windsor passes in moments and the highway stretches through a crisp gold and white
landscape.
Our benefactors -- these two totally decent if irregular hombres (like the vast wonderful majority of
their Northland compatriots), hand us each a cold beer before they let us out with handshakes and
rousing "Good Luck! Aye?" Canadiana.
How kind-hearted are the Canadian common people! How homey and romantic! I know, because
I've lived among them often! They tickle me because they are just regular riverside dancers in the
moonlight, following the star-lit beery waters of their hearts to the sea of souls -- and getting the most
out of life all along the way. I always enjoy their company!
Behind us, southward, remain debauched city populations frantic in their weird delusions about what
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life must be. Northward is calm but vibrant. The wind carries the scent of wilderness! The vastness of
nature is always nearby! And so, the people here have gusto! It makes their women sexy!! (Like
Barbara Streisand and Joni Mitchell!) It makes their men hearty and sensitive.
Canada is not my home but I feel at home here. Canada is Owl's country. I wonder if she feels a heart
tug. Soon I know.
"Canhada! Whe har een Canhada! Hit is soe pritty! C'est beau, Canhada!", she exclaims as she
stands and breathes the crisp fragrant oxygen and feasts her eyes on her homeland.
We shoulder our packs and force march north. One must always get as far away from the border as
fast as possible even if it means walking. Never stand looking strange and obvious -- as though you
have nowhere to go. Walking implies initiative and purpose and makes you harder to notice as anything
out of the ordinary.
People pick up walkers faster as long as you keep your thumb out while you walk. Each ride
removes you further from the border. Fifty miles is the safety zone. It's our peril if we linger...
***
Highballing fast, Ontario passes in the night. A couple long truck rides and early morning finds us
tap dancing through Quebec like Snoopy and Charlie Brown.
La Belle Province. Perfumed land. Pretty rural areas -- the farms are like paintings. The country
people talk with their eyes. Not understanding the language I could eavesdrop on the emotions -- the
titillations -- the delicate sensitivity, and the generous spirit that so inspired Longfellow and remains
unchanged to this day.
Rolling along the excellent roads I remembered the first time I came to Montreal...
It was early in 1969... Winter snows covered the Northland. My army surplus pack and down bag felt
jaunty as I hefted them and waved goodbye to my ride as he sped away. I strolled down the snowy
avenue of St. Catherine admiring the ancient architecture and overhearing snatches of the strange new
vocabulary. People were walking quickly, speeding from one warm tenement to another, or from
shopping to home or perhaps from school. Billowing snow winnowed them from the sidewalks leaving
me to saunter alone, smiling and singing softly to myself. Freedom! In this big city! These folks love
the warmth they've made for their lives! How they scurry from this ice!
I had been outside much of the winter and the day seemed not uncomfortable to me at all. Besides -I had nowhere to go. I'd never been in Montreal before. I knew no one here. So I had best prepare
myself for being once again "the stranger in a strange land." And that often meant alone, cold, and
hungry. Yet for some reason I felt cheerfully optimistic. A premonition of things to come?
The yet early afternoon began to fade already into night. The vast city's streets were nearly emptied
as I meandered along.
I'd been walking for only an hour when a man hurtled himself out of a doorway, clutching his coat
and hat and scarf, lunged against the windswept flurries and struggled across the darkening street -- to
confront me speaking meaningless phonetics up at my face, while looking deeply and sincerely eye to
eye. I shrugged and smiled. He tried again in broken English this time:
"Eggscuse moi messeur, Hyou haf zumware for wharm?"
"No, my friend! But who would want to be inside on such a beautiful day as this?"
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(Ridiculous as it sounds, I was probably half-serious! (Oh, most likely, quite stoned, too...)
"Sorree Mezzeur -- I do note unnairstannn. Wood you khom my houze? Pleaze!!"
"Hey! Thank you! Sure!"
I followed him there to his tiny old apartment that he shared with two others. A woman with very
long hair dried my clothes with an iron. I protested they should not put themselves out on my account.
Nothing could make them cease from their purpose. So I watched, amazed at their insistent kindness.
They fixed me a cup of tea which never emptied before they poured more. We attempted conversation.
Hearts succeeded where minds did not.
They were intensely interested in my anti-war activities and sought out a neighbor to interpret for
them. These gentle beings were fervent French-Canadian Peace activists, determined to hone their
emotions and purposes against the Vietnam War to correspond with the needs of southern brothers and
sisters.
Towards the end of the day my new friend took me to the home of another friend -- more tea and
difficult communication -- and eventually, another friend; a larger place, on Ross street, where I was
welcome to spend the night. With a solemn heartfelt handshake, he left me alone with the solitary
occupant -- a beautiful young woman! After some delicious dark beer and good hash rolled in tobacco,
this buxom beauty announced in fair English adorned with luscious French accents, that she was ready
to turn in for the night. I was welcome to sleep downstairs in my feather bag -- or I could join her in her
homemade quilts: The choice was mine. She stood there on the steps wearing nothing but a totally
untied bathrobe. I remember looking upon her 24-inch waist and 40-inch bust while deciding.
Ah, Sister Earth, Bless the day you looked down from your abode in the stars and noticed me...
I remember the stairs to her bedroom in the two hundred-year-old apartment were warped and
slanted precariously. Three sweet days I spent with her. Then she told me casually that her best friend
was very much interested in meeting me. She introduced me to the woman and the woman's husband -and left me there with a kiss goodbye and the reminder that I was welcome back in her house whenever
I wanted.
The entire floor of that hundred and fifty year old flat was bowed severely towards the middle!
Amazing! While the husband and I chatted (or tried to) the married woman prepared a candlelit French
feast. What beautiful cuisine! Afterwards there was more good beer and potent Brown Lebanese Hash
and some illuminating conversation.
When the day was finally done, they told me it was their intention that I was to sleep in their bed
while they slept in blankets on the living room floor! I refused! No! I would not take their bed! They
pled with me! NO! I adamantly rolled out my bag on the floor and crawled in to sleep. At this they
graciously bid me "Goodnight". He shook my hand, she stooped to kiss me on the cheek -- and then
changed and kissed me on the mouth! Late in the night I awoke to hear them whispering in their room
for some time. Then the door opened and the lady came and stood over me looking at my face. She saw
I was awake, kissed me again and slipped into my bag with me with me. We bounced that bag all over
that ancient wooden floor all night long! And in the morning she thanked me profusely before getting
up to fix us all a great breakfast.
In this way we passed two weeks until my girlfriend Windy, whose arrival I'd been awaiting all this
time, finally came in on the Voyager bus from her parent's home in Trenton, Ontario -- and we resumed
our journey together. Windy and I had been traveling together since meeting in Winnipeg, Manitoba a
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couple months earlier.
What a year 1969 was! What a town Montreal was! In my heart I was resolved that I wanted
somehow to spend my life near some of those wonderful warm French people.
Alas! 1969 was gone. Like so many of us, I too had thought it would last forever...
Khayyam's words remind me of those days:
"Iram indeed is gone and all its Rose,
And Jamshyd's Sev'n-ring'd Cup where no one knows;
But still the Vine her ancient Ruby yields,
And still a Garden by the Water blows
Ah, my Belov'ed, fill the cup that clears
Today of past Regrets and Future Fears;
Tomorrow! -- Why, Tomorrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Seven Thousand Years."
***
Here I was again entering Montreal with my wife, Owl on my arm. Now we both had back packs and
down bags. Nearly ten years had passed since I first came to Montreal hitchhiking -- for this was now
the winter of 1978.
Each time I arrive in this Paris of the North, I feel an awe for the wonders deep within the cement
and glass and steel and ancient wood. The heart of this city is hot and humid and electrifying. That's
why I have Owl. Wherever I go I have a little of this magic. Behind her beautiful brown eyes -Montreal's kind heart. And within these impressive manmade edifices -- I know there are other hearts as
gentle as hers -- kin and kith.
Owl and I ventured down into the bloodstream of the metropolis. Montreal's well-kept subway
proudly teems with a zestful spirit. It is a tumultuous aviary of colorfully exotic, lilting syllables -- the
magical French language which I could not understand, and which excites my heart.
Owl is home.
I see less anxiety in her face and I become aware that taking her into my English speaking world was
acid rain to her spirit. Who would have believed this tragedy would befall my dear young friend. What
irony in my soul, that the gentle Rainbow world I'd thought would shelter and establish our fledgling
family, left us instead, as vulnerable as a turtle without a shell in the traffic of life. Quebec felt like aloe
oil on bad sunburn.
This multitude of strange people on this subway were not strange at all to Owl. They were the
background music of the heartsongs that formed her subconscious and they were the whispering human
melodies she carried every mile she wandered and they were the rhythms she applied to every
windsong that pushed our sails.
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EIGHTEEN
LEATHER DRESS
Owl's large family are intelligent gentlefolk, spread all over Montreal.
Sitting in living rooms and around dining tables, we explained as well as we could how we'd lost the
baby to the wolves of Eugene. It was really difficult for me to get across to them what we'd been up
against -- and it hurt. After all, we had lost their child too; for Mary Morningdove was their
granddaughter and great-granddaughter and their niece. I felt crippled with my empty hands, no baby to
pass to them to hold -- not at all what I had planned.
Owl too, sometimes had trouble communicating, even with her folks. They only speak French and
she would forgetfully slip in and out between French and English, and they'd get some very puzzled
expressions. I had to constantly remind her to speak French to them. The situation was curious -- but at
least now they would be apprised of the magnitude of Owl's problem.
A neighbor from down the hall graciously served as a translator so they could understand what I had
to say. It was not easy. There were things, because of the culture-gap, that even the translator couldn't
manage. The culture I loved was more foreign to them than anything merely anglophile. They had a
hard time with conscientious objection, and with hitchhiking and with nude beaches. My lack of a
regular job didn't help either. The list wasn't short.
They had never heard of vegetarianism. The thought of raising a child without meat was a shocking
offense in their book. They were city folks; it's doubtful they could visualize us as gypsies or as
homestead seekers. From their perspective I suppose we were just renegade youth -- or worse -- bums.
The fact that I was broke was another indignity. I had three hundred dollars in a bank account in
California. Feeling pretty uncomfortable, I sent for it right away.
We stayed with Owl's mother, Lise. Those two were much alike. I hugged her and called her "mom".
So, she giggled and cooked special things, becoming sensitive to our meatless diet. We slept in Owl's
old room. The walls bore childish graffiti from those years and I studied the scrawls with interest. Lise
showed us family albums. I was surprised to see that Owl's hair was long enough to sit on in those
days.
Sometimes her sister, Ginnette came to spend a few hours. She was a madcap child, a beauty!
Singing French folksongs and playing the guitar -- and still in high school! Her brother, Gilles, came
too. Like all brothers he loved his sister like crazy and was very concerned for her. We had some good
talks although he knew very little English. He was studying electronics in a technical school.
Her father picked us up once and took us out for Chinese food. He was a dignified and proper fellow,
with a tolerable command of English. He looked too young to be Owl's dad. We had a pretty good
conversation.
Owl's grandparents were an hour bus ride away. We went to see them and they prepared a feast.
Owl's old bicycle was leaning against the garage. She hopped on and was gone for hours. I anxiously
watched for her through the curtains. Her family gave me looks that seemed to say, "Knowing her the
way we do -- she may be gone for years!"
I was frazzled to the bone by the time she returned.
In the days that followed, Owl began to open up like a flower that hadn't seen the sun in a long time.
She'd never spoken much, as long as I'd known her. Now she would jabber with her sisters for hours on
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end. The downside was that they told me, through the translator, that Owl didn't always make sense
when she talked. They asked me why? I could only explain that Owl had taken her misfortunes very
hard and that I'd been hoping that reassociation with her own family would give her something solid
and familiar to regenerate her mental clarity, to heal her wounded heart. That's why I'd brought her
home to Montreal.
They tried to understand.
So, I took Owl to a Mental Health Hospital. Even French doctors can have aloof officious attitudes
which always seem to sidetrack something in Owl's mind. She started off the interview by telling the
female psychiatrist a bunch of crazy things -- that she was from Mexico, and that I was her brother. I
straightened all that out, but not without difficulty, as the doctor was not sure which of us was telling
her the truth! Then Owl became indignant and asserted that she did not need or want a doctor. So, the
woman brought her back to me in the waiting room. One thing good the doctor told me was that from
what she could see, Owl was not schizophrenic and certainly not retarded. She was suffering from the
shock of some tragedies, and hopefully, this could be treated. But there was nothing she could do unless
Owl wanted help voluntarily. I tried to convince Owl of the necessity but she wasn't going for it. There
didn't seem to be anything to do for the time being but let the beautiful spring weather and the kindness
of being around her family again ease her heart.
The St. Lawrence River ran near the apartment. We took long walks and sat in the parks along the
banks. There was an awesome little stone Catholic Church secluded from any vestiges of the city. (It
reminded me of Bouvard and Pecechet's church in the last paragraphs of Flaubert's incredibly poignant
posthumous novel.) A plaque on the wall revealed that this beautiful, wonderful, church was almost
four hundred years old.
Also nearby, we found an interesting little forested island with really run-down cabins tucked into the
trees and shrubs. Each cabin had its own weathered old dock. We met some people who lived there and
they told us the rent was really cheap... But we'd need to own a small boat to go back and forth. The
place looked so exciting! I could smell the wood smoke from the stoves. I felt certain that if we got
Mara back we would live there. What a romantic thought.
***
Old Montreal is a soulful place. We drank beers in the sidewalk cafes, watched jugglers, passed
joints, perused paintings.
One day I came nose to nose with Mick Jagger in his jaunty tieless black tux. We stood in our places
staring at each other for nearly half a minute! I think he was admiring my unusual leather patchpants
and sheepskin top. It was an electric minute, that's for sure. But at the time I had it in my head that he
was staring because he'd seen Owl in her fancy leather dress and heard some of her story and had me
pointed out in connection with it. It's a little absurd but it's not entirely absurd, mainly because of her
amazing mini-dress...
To try to make some money I'd gone out and found a Montreal furrier and got some pretty fantastic
golden sheepskin scraps from him for $20. The owner of the ultra-fancy store was one of those
awesome cerebrally wise French people that I have met from time to time. When he found out I didn't
actually have the $20 yet and that I wanted him to hold the scraps for me for a while he simply told me
to take them and bring him the money when I had it. He said not to worry because he trusted me. I
thanked him profusely. And one day, much later I did pay him the $20.
Montreal has been the center of some of the finest fur industries in the world for four hundred years.
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I've never before seen sheepskin as fine as the pieces I got from him. The fleece was so brightly colored
and soft! And the leather was soft as a baby's skin! When we got the large bag of pieces back to Lise's
apartment I hand-stitched together a mini-dress of the very best of them to cheer Owl up -- and to show
her family that I had some magic that should be worth money anywhere, and probably to show them
that I wasn't as dumb as I appeared to be.
In addition to the dress I made some fancy Scottish sporran pouches and purses of the sheepskin too,
and a beautiful backpack, all hand sewn.
The dress was form fitting, complete with darts and narrow waist. And it was deliciously reversible.
With the wool inside and the fine soft brown leather outside, it was mind-boggling with a barbaric
ancient beauty. With the leather inside and the golden fleece outside, it was stunning as a sunset so
bright the eyes hurt. It was so stunning that wherever Owl wore it people stopped flat in their tracks. It
was the most incredible dress in the entire clotheshorse city of Montreal. It could have been worn to the
finest shindig in Montreal. It could have been displayed in one of the fine dress shops. Owl was
beautiful normally but in this dress she became the fashion model I'd always seen her to be.
After showing off the new creation to her family, and blowing their minds, we had to go to old
Montreal for the fun of seeing the reactions there. Man-oh-man! We turned heads wherever we went.
Owl was radiating.
Then, in a way she did a hurtful thing I guess, but I understand and I forgive her. She ditched me
there in Old Montreal. She was lingering slightly behind me looking at store windows and the next time
I turned around she was gone. And for the next two days I wandered those streets at all hours of the day
and night looking for her. I got pretty frantic. I couldn't figure out how she could just suddenly
disappear. Sometimes I'd stop and call out her name hoping she was nearby and would hear me and
people would turn and look at me like I was a madman.
I suppose I was a madman, actually. The strain of everything was taking its toll on me. I was so
worried about Mushmara... And Owl had been losing her mind from her own grief... and so we'd come
all the way across the continent to Montreal to try to get her some help from her family. And I could
barely communicate with them. And I felt so different from them -- so out of place. So strange.
And since Owl had disappeared I had looked for her each day and then returned to her mother's
apartment each night hoping to find Owl there and she never was. Her mother would ask me if I had
found her and I'd answer "no". She'd shrug her shoulders and say something I couldn't understand, but I
gathered she didn't expect Owl would ever be coming back to me. She thought Owl had left me. I
couldn't believe that. Not after all we'd been through together. But where was she? So I stood on street
corners in Old Montreal and yelled her name at the top of my lungs and frightened people. I'm lucky I
didn't get arrested...
I didn't care who thought I was crazy. I was worried that I'd lost her forever, that she had disappeared
like a loosed rabbit, back into her briar patch. And that's about what did happen -- but not forever.
It was while I was wandering the streets of Old Montreal one evening looking for Owl that I ran into
Mick Jagger. We came face to face, ten feet apart and without saying a word, we just looked at each
other. I didn't realize for sure that he was who he was until I turned on the radio the next day, in her
mother's apartment. I was listening to an English radio station. The DJ broke my spell by saying, "Any
of you walking about Old Montreal last night may have been surprised to meet Mick Jagger himself,
strolling around in his tieless black tuxedo, and partaking in the merriment!" So it was he! I had
thought I was imagining things.
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Owl came strolling in the front door of her mother's apartment later that afternoon looking very tired.
I was greatly relieved to see her. When I asked her where she'd been, she shrugged and smiled and said,
"I jhuust was owt for a wolk!"
And that's all she ever said about it.
***
Money remained a problem. Her mother had to pay for all the food. We promised to repay her when
our money arrived. The tension mounted daily.
Regrettably, the bank was giving me the sort of unkind runaround French-Canadian businesses
sometimes give to Anglophiles. They tried to tell me no one there spoke English -- and then they totally
ignored me. They wouldn't cash my check unless I had Quebec ID. When my check finally arrived in
their mail they sent it back to my bank in the states because: "No one of that name has an account at
this bank..." I had that very morning once again been there prevailing upon them to look for it in their
mail! So I had to borrow Lise's phone for a long distance call to my bank and ask them to send the
check back to Montreal again. Then when it arrived again -- about two weeks later! -- The Montreal
bank would not accept my ID! So they sent the check back to my bank in the states for collection!
Another two weeks passed! What a run around! Finally I thought for sure I had everything straightened
out. My money was due any day. I telephoned my bank and they told me they could not understand
why I had not got the money yet because they'd sent it off right away and the mail shouldn't take any
longer than four days and it had been two weeks so it surely should have arrived. I went to the
Montreal bank to ask about it every morning. When the bank employees saw me enter they always
became very severe. Day after day I was told, coldly, that nothing for me had arrived. I had the distinct
impression that they were lying to me and that my money actually was there and they were deliberately
misleading me. Apparently it had been lost in the mail. I telephoned my bank in the states again and
they agreed that it was probably lost and cancelled the check and then assured me they would send the
money immediately by wire. So it should get to the Montreal bank by the next day for sure. When I
arrived at the bank in the morning and went up to a teller. She pretended not to understand English and
referred me to a man who came up behind her. He told me that I was not allowed in the bank ever
again! Of course, I asked to see the manager. The man said he was the manager. He told me to stand
there and wait while he "checked something". Twenty minutes passed while I stood there totally
ignored. Eventually I managed to flag his attention and I asked him what I was waiting for? He
answered:
"You are hwaiting for the polise to harrive and remufe hyou forevair!"
Good grief.
I left hurriedly and telephoned a clerk in my bank in the States who I had spoken with several times
about this situation. She was very sympathetic. I explained what I thought was going on and asked her
to phone this French bank personally and attempt to straighten things out. She did this for me. The
French bank manager could easily give me a hard time for no reason but no Frenchman is likely to give
a hard time to a woman with a pleasant voice who is telephoning long distance on a business matter.
One thing about those Quebekers: they are ludicrous chauvinists. Thanks to her my problem was finally
resolved and I picked up my money.
148
All in all, it took about two months to get my three hundred dollars. During this time, Owl's family
had probably come to believe I was making the money up in my head -- and so, I was becoming a
nervous wreck.
When I finally got my mits on the moola, I was feverish -- giddy -- with sheer relief! I had been
leaning so heavily on Owl's family! Now it was finally done. I could repay them. I had a thick stack of
Canadian tens and twenties in my hand. I was feverish. I was not thinking clearly at all. I rolled it all up
and crammed the wad in my front pocket -- and only withdrew it a couple times to buy Owl a few
trinkets in the mall shops before walking the two blocks to her mom's place. So jocund, so blithe! We
skipped and danced...
Oh what joy a little money is after having none and depending on others... I remember the little
French kids in the middle of Chartrand street playing stickball as we passed.
We bounded up the steps to her mom's apartment and opened the door and went in. At last, in a
moment I would be handing her the fifty dollars I'd been promising her for so long. What a relief it
would be. I remember her mom smiling... watching me as we came through the door... waiting
hopefully...
I reached in my pocket...
The money was GONE!!!!
Back and forth we ran between the bank and Lise's apartment. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back
and forth. I was truly a madman now. Over and over again I pulled out my pockets and gaped at their
emptiness. Empty! Empty! Back and forth we hurried along the route we'd walked home from the
bank. Back and
Forth. Crazily looking down drains. When in a state of frenzy I burst into the bank asking them if I
had dropped the money on their floor they looked like they were going for their guns to shoot me. I
hurried back outside.
Madly I asked startled French shop owners:
"Did you find a bunch of MONEY?"
Feeling utterly stupid. They gaped at me, mouths open. I was a madman, a madman. I ran breathless
and feverish and scared, dragging by her hand a bedraggled whimpering Owl behind me...
Finding nothing.
Not a dollar.
Each time after totally retracing our steps, we reentered Owl's mother's apartment and saw her
standing there, staring blankly at us, her face skeptical; muttering in broken English, admonishing:
"I'm sorry, fifty dollars!"
...As though this were some scheme of mine to get out of paying her the money I'd promised her for
helping us all these weeks.
And Owl and I would wordlessly back out the door and stumble down the stairs again and out into
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the waning afternoon to look one more time.
The day was becoming morbidly dark. We made one last slow trip to the bank and back, so carefully,
crying inside, praying in agony. But hope was dying a bitter death. Dusk's enveloping gloom found us
stumbling morosely, craven with despair, up the winding tenement stairs to face her mother... as though
to the guillotine itself...
"Messeur! Messeur!"
A little child is at my elbow, pulling on my sleeve.
"Messeur! Hyou drop thees!"
I look down on the beautiful innocent boy's face. Through the isinglass of deep melancholy I vaguely
perceived a tiny hand reaching up to me...
...And in his little hand I see a thick roll of multi-colored Canadian money! MY MONEY!
The little boy had found my money!
I went berserk with incredulous joy. My brain was in shock. I stammered, "Thank you, Thank you,
Thank you!" over and over; continuing to mumble the words at him as he turned and even after he had
walked away down the stairs and out the door of the building I was still mumbling
"Thank you, thank you..."
I staggered up the stairs. I was astonished that I still was alive! Because I had been thinking I must
be dead! Here handed to us by a child -- was our life, our chance to have a future! My veritable faith in
God was restored!
Dazed by the brilliance of the experience, we made our way, I remember not how, up to Lise's
apartment and gave her some money. Then exhausted we fell back on the sofa staring blindly -- reliving
the near disaster over and over in our minds -- totally and forever blown away by the proportions of the
day.
The whole experience reeked auspiciously of some sort of primal rebirth.
Much, much later that day I thought, "I should have given the boy a reward! Tomorrow I will find
him and give him something." And the next day we looked many times in the street for the boy but we
didn't see him. The following day, he was still not there all morning, as we went off on the public bus to
visit Owl's sister, Diane. But, returning in the late afternoon I saw him with the other kids playing in the
street. Happily I went toward him, to meet him again, and finally to reward him -- but he turned from
me as I approached. Yet I hurried up to him.
"Hi! Hi! Little boy! Excuse me! Hello, hello!"
He turned then and looked up at me...
So somberly...
His face was bruised and battered, his eyes swollen and cut.
I've never seen a little child so beaten!
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I'll never forget that look on his face -- deeper and more painful than the bruises and the cuts; his
beautiful wounded eyes looking at me...
A child is a magical thing. For innocence is not, after all, of this polluted world. When the innocence
of youth passes and is gone: what a tragedy... To lose such a treasure...
Innocence is an eternal thing, like baby birds in a nest, or unspoiled Elysium groves of hot pools and
fruit trees, and gentle people who have never known clothing, or guile, or meanness, or threat.
Innocence is primordial forests that have never known acid rain -- or young boys playing baseball in
the dirty streets of old cities who have learned in Sunday school that one should return another’s'
property when found.
I see how children lose their innocence. Their parent's sins drag children into the pit. Since it is
written that we must be as little children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, it is plain to see that we must
somehow regain the innocence that we have lost.
No thing happens outside of God's plan. That little child set things straight for me.
But here my philosophizing bottle-necked -- because I was trying to understand what had happened
to us that caused us to lose Mushmara and I was relating every experience that happened to us to that
problem. And so I got to wondering if it is possible for bad things to happen to people so that God may
be glorified in the end. Did I lose the money so that I would remember God? Did God take Mushmara
away and put her in that cruel foster home that I would become a Catholic? Does God cause loved ones
to be mangled in car wrecks by drunk drivers to turn people to become Seventh Day Adventists? Did
God cause the Jewish Holocaust so that mankind would become Pentcostals? Is God behind all the pain
and suffering and every evil thing in the world? What a headache it gave me to think those thoughts.
No, it would not be possible for me to believe that God intended that Mushmara be put in that
money-grabbing foster home, that processed twenty foster children at a time in bunk beds and mats on
the floor, receiving $276 per child and ignoring them as they chased each other up and down halls
screaming at one another, "I'm gonna kill you!"
I would never forget that insipid "home" where they were keeping our daughter. The two visits there
left us feeling so clammy... so frightened for her...
That was not God's doing. That was man's doing. No God of Compassion would have any part of
such evil.
Only the zombie lackeys of a mindless bureaucracy would believe that purgatory to be a better home
for our Mushmara than the pretty little world Owl and I had been struggling to create!
***
The weight of our heartache was such that we knew we had need of counseling -- maybe even
spiritual guidance. Here in Owl's homeland I felt safer about baring our souls. You can't just let anyone
see your soul -- some people might use it to wipe their feet!
Looking through the yellow pages under "Churches" I came upon a listing for a Seventh Day
Adventist church on the other side of Montreal. My first wife's parents had been Seventh Day
Adventists and whenever I'd visited that church I'd always felt comfortable. Most of them were
vegetarians too and so at least they ought to understand me when I were to explain how we'd been
ostracized on that account. When you go to talk with someone from a church to help you figure out
why your life has been falling apart the last thing you need is to have them tell you to "Start eating dead
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cows like Christ does!" --or to "Stop going to places where people run around naked -- because it is
evil!" Oh yes, I'm sure God prefers natty three piece suits...
So Sunday morning we boarded a bus and headed across Montreal. It turned out to be a long, long
ride and we had to change buses several times with some long waits on corners, and once we even got
on a wrong bus and went miles out of our way. Finally we seemed to have found the right street and we
got off the bus and ran along several blocks until we came to a big old stone church and we figured that
must be the place. We could hear music and singing so we knew the service had already commenced
and we were late. So we opened the door and tried to slip in quietly.
It was surreal. Every face turned to look at us. It was an all black church.
In the farthest stretch of my imagination I had not expected that. Flustered, but not to be undone, we
looked to find an empty space in the rear. No luck. Every pew was full. In fact the church was packed.
Near the front were two empty spaces. An usher motioned us towards them. Slowly we made our way
and finally were seated; the gentle folk obligingly parted and scrunched. My neck was turning red. To
have these neatly dressed and perfumed folks right behind me -- What would they be thinking about
my unkempt snarly long hair and beard? Our clothes were clean but they weren't "church clothes"! I
wished I could just get up and leave. But I didn't want to appear prejudiced -- and I couldn't help but
think that God was playing some sort of trick on me to teach me some sort of hard lesson. Yikes.
The service was in French. I couldn't understand a word. At least Owl could -- but her emotional
disorder seemed to be acting up -- disgustingly. She began giggling... Then she got up and went to the
bathroom. Everyone scrunched their legs so she could get by. She didn't return for fifteen minutes. I felt
very alone.
When she at last returned, she was giggling again. She didn't seem to have any personal
comportment at all! She was staring at people and ignoring the sermon. I whispered to her to "cool it".
Plainly, everyone there was having a lousy Sunday because of us.
As she arose to go to the bathroom for a second time, an usher cleared his throat and got our
attention. He wiggled his finger for us to get up and follow him. We walked behind him silently out the
big doors into the anteroom and up a staircase to a second floor and into an office. He asked us to sit
down and then he asked us what we wanted and who we were. But he asked us in French. When I told
him I only spoke English he became angry. So he spoke to Owl. But Owl began giving him skitzed-out
answers. "Not now, Owl! NOT NOW!!" I thought to myself.
Another deacon-type person arrived. More questioning. A third entered -- a translator. I explained to
him our innocent intentions and Owl's traumatic emotional disorder. He conferred with the others and
then turned hostilely and told me he sensed something was very wrong here! He said that my story and
Owl's story didn't Jibe! Owl had told him she didn't know who I was! She had told him that she had just
met me that morning! And she'd said she was from Pakistan!
Dandy. Owl, you really know how to hurt a guy!
We eventually figured out that Seventh Day Adventists celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday, not
Sunday. So we were definitely in the wrong place. You can say that again! After about an hour of quite
scary interrogation the sincere and insulted black churchmen let us go.
Phooey. I'm still not sure what exactly I learned from that experience.
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NINETEEN
STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT
I had a plan. Owl wasn't a United States Citizen. She was Canadian. So technically Owl's baby was
Canadian. So wouldn't it be possible that Canadian authorities would want the United States to transfer
the child to a government agency in Montreal and let Canada deal with the problem?
I knew first hand what it was like to be railroaded by the courts of justice in the United States; what
it was like to go before a judge on a serious matter with only a court appointed attorney who really
didn't care one way or the other what happened to you -- with an entire system prejudiced against you
because of your different social beliefs. Our best hope seemed to depend upon whether we could get
Canada to bring Mushmara to Montreal.
So one of the first things I had done upon arriving in Canada was to contact the Canadian Children's
Welfare department to see if they could get a Canadian's child returned after an apprehension in a
foreign country. They took down all the information and looked into the matter. But it did not turn out
as I hoped. They concluded that our daughter could be considered a citizen of either country since I was
a United States citizen; so, there was virtually nothing they could do -- unless the State of Oregon were
willing to transfer the child and jurisdiction to the handling of Canadian authorities.
If Oregon would be willing to do that it would mean that we'd be able to raise our daughter near
Owl's family and she would become part of them. She'd grow up speaking both languages. She'd have
grandparents and aunts and uncles. Immigration would most likely give me a visa to live in Quebec
permanently. The Children's Services of Quebec would probably be very kind and understanding. If
only the Oregon Court would agree to it everything would work out after all... But would Oregon listen
to reason?
Another court date was approaching. But Oregon was a long ways away. We telephoned the
Children's Welfare people in Eugene, and told them we were living with Owl's family in Montreal,
where all these problems could be dealt with more realistically. Would the Oregon court be so kind as
to transfer Mushmara to Canadian Children's Services in Montreal where we could meet whatever
criteria they would demand to have our child returned to us?
No, they answered, we'd have to come back to Oregon and handle the matter.
What? With no place to live and no job, and no relatives to help Owl with her first child? With
nothing at all substantial going for us there? Without even a driver's license? And with a judge in
Oakridge who wanted to put me in jail if she ever saw me again? How could we ever regain custody of
Mara under those conditions?
Nonetheless, they said we must return to Oregon for trial or forfeit our parental rights.
We told them we were poor people. We didn't have the money to go traipsing back and forth from
Owl's home to wherever some court was arbitrarily holding our child!
I reminded them that we had only been passing through Oregon when we'd had our baby. Canada
had been our home originally. Now we were back among Owl's family. This was where Mushmara
should be too. Not stuck in Oregon 3000 miles away from all her Quebec relatives.
So, what was the big problem? All they'd have to do is send Mushmara to Montreal on a plane and
let the local authorities take over -- that way, even if we failed to get custody of her, some other
member of Owl's family would! At least she wouldn't be among strangers! Why couldn't the Eugene
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authorities agree that this plan would be in the best interest of the child! N'cest pas?
No. Oregon wasn't interested in being nice. And in all honesty, they obviously weren't interested in
the best interests of the child either, though it might shock some people to realize that fact. They were
only interested in the political statement they were making by taking our child away. The way they
were treating Molly McPool and Anna Nevarre was evidence of their subversive intent. All their farfetched machinations stunk! And especially that repulsive baby factory! It was like something out of
Charles Dickens! Gut feelings don't lie. Oregon CSD was hell-bent on cutting out our hearts with a dull
knife.
We telephoned our court appointed attorney and she managed to give us a hand. My biggest
objection against her is that although she felt the Eugene Oregon Children Services Department and the
court system were wrongheaded in what they were doing to us, she never realized that their
Machiavellian tactics were actually pure evil. She was too much immersed in their system to be
objective enough to suspect the truth.
Sometimes I was too angry to speak with them, so it was handy for our lawyer to do the negotiating.
She relayed information back and forth. Thanks to her, the Eugene court arranged to send us two
round-trip bus tickets at the expense of the state of Oregon. So, having given it our best shot, to have
Mary Morningdove placed within reach of Owl's French-Canadian family, we had no recourse but to
return to the scene of the kidnapping and let the kidnappers have their way with us again.
***
In preparation for the seven thousand mile trip we packed large sacks full of egg salad and tuna fish
sandwiches. Lise baked us some cookies. We bought a bag of apples.
In our rolled-up bedrolls we included a package from Lise for Mushmara. Lise had spent two weeks
knitting the most beautiful baby outfit I have ever seen -- with three needles twirling and whirling
nonstop, with beautiful thoughtful facial expressions. Mushmara was her first grandchild. I had
observed her rocking and knitting like that, hour after hour. Her beauty was much like the beauty I saw
in Owl. And Mushmara would also share those kind and thoughtful genes...
We'd see that Mushmara got the baby outfit...
We loaded up the sheepskin articles we'd made in the new pack, thinking Owl could wear the dress
around Eugene and if anyone liked the dress enough to want to buy one, we could take orders for them.
Also I figured we'd try to sell the fine sporrans at the Saturday Market. Hopefully, we'd put some badly
needed money together.
In all, the sheepskin articles of apparel represented several hundred hours of fancy hand stitching and
embroidery. Our hopes surged when we reflected on the rich pile of goods. Through the long hours of
many nights, we'd labored on the floor of Lise's apartment till we were exhausted. Lise had often come
out in her bathrobe at three or four A.M. and urged us to put the sewing away and get some sleep.
Those long hours would pay off now! When the Children's Welfare people saw all our fine work,
they would know we had talent enough and enterprise to provide for all the needs our child might
require. We'd show them.
The way I saw it that lovely bag of denim and sheepskin might just be the answer to the prayers.
Could it possibly contain the seeds of an extremely successful industry that would flourish in Eugene
overnight and totally solve our money problems? The beautiful bag of hopes and dreams... Could they
help us regain our daughter? Yes!
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Unfortunately, the beautiful pack and all its contents was stolen from the bus luggage compartment
in Cleveland, Ohio, and never seen again. Needless to say, Greyhound never reimbursed us for our loss.
Some CIA agent is probably wearing Owl's leather dress this very minute! Hell's belles! Do you think
he looks cute in it?
***
After two days on the bus, we arrived in Eugene, and went straight to a bed of luxury -- because the
state of Oregon paid for our motel room while we were there, too. Our satisfaction was minimal. They
made up for their generosity by being ugly as sin in court.
Since we had left the area, the court maintained we had lost interest in our child. Well, they could
stuff that! I informed the court that our allotted ONE VISIT PER MONTH with our child did not
inspire us with any great allusion of the court's INTEREST in us as a family, nor indicate any good
intentions towards our reunification. I expressed to them that Owl was a fragile young mother; the
afflictions she had endured because of them had sorely threatened her emotional and mental wellbeing; and I had seen no other remedy but to take her back to her family in Montreal to ask them for
help in healing her spirit and soul from the wounds which this separation from her child had caused. I
reminded the court that I love Owl, that I have an obligation to her. I watched their eyes as I spoke. It
was obvious they were listening without hearing. I may as well have been speaking Portuguese at the
bottom of a deep well for all my thoughts mattered to them.
They listened to the Song Dove counselor though. (After all, he did have that darn old stupendous
college degree and a Freudian-looking beard!) He testified that he believed Owl had been seriously
mentally deficient all her life and in his opinion she would never be a normal mother. Yeah, he told the
court she had been born retarded. He looked real distinguished in that Freudian beard and wire-rim
glasses. The court was easily impressed.
Moon and Mountain tried to testify again and weren't even allowed near the stand. But Anna
Navairre was next.
This time Anna contrived to squeeze a lot of vital information into the allowable boundaries of her
answers. Still she was rudely repeatedly censored.
Anna testified that as a Public Health nurse, she could say from her experience and education that it
is not uncommon for a baby to not gain weight during a two week period, especially in winter where
more calories are needed in colder weather -- and she also told the court that we had never missed a
WIC appointment, spaced every two weeks, to have the baby's health checked, and that the baby had
always been very healthy at those times. She clarified another important issue: that although Mushmara
did not gain a predicted two ounces during one two week period in December it was not necessarily
significant -- because she had not lost weight during that period... and she went even further to educate
the court that when we had been told about these facts we had readily agreed to supplement the breastfeeding with a bottle formula if another check-up, one week later, were to indicate it was really
necessary. Anna emphatically stated that we had been conscientious with our child, and that we had
been open to outside assistance from the beginning -- and that we had even sought out such advice and
assistance on our own. She said she had personally observed Owl's care of Mushmara during the
visitations, the way we prepared her bottles and fed her and burped her, the way we changed her
diapers. She marveled at the flannel diapers that we had sewn by hand, as well as the many other pieces
of clothing. She said that in her educated opinion, having worked with a great many young mothers and
fathers in her years as a Public Health nurse for the State of Oregon, that we did all these things well
and with a great amount of love. Anna then took the bull by the horns and lamented with concerted
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emotion upon the judge’s decision to limit out visitations to only once per month. With a clear voice of
knowledge and authority she informed the court that this unfortunate edict would definitely compound
the harm done to all of us, child as well as parents. Anna was aware of the impact of her testimony. She
concluded humbly and simply that it was obvious to her that both Owl and I were prepared and capable
of giving the best home to our child and therefore that it was her strong opinion that Mushmara should
be returned to us as soon as possible.
Before Anna had quite finished her last words the courtroom was beginning to grumble loudly.
Members of the CSD staff conferred noisily with prosecution lawyers, who in turn stood and called for
the attention of the Judge. The hubbub in the room became quite loud. He was soon pounding his gavel
on the bench again and again and yelling at the courtroom to come to order.
It was a joyous melee for us. Anna had lanced the boil once again and the consternation of our
adversaries was the exuding putrescence of their calumnies. Eventually order was restored and the
noble nurse was angrily dismissed for telling them what they didn't want to hear one more time.
(It's interesting here to note that because of the abusive treatment she received during this and other
similar cases, Anna Navarre quit her job in this Oregon community and returned home to
Massachusetts where the sensitive New England people would give her the respect she needed to do
her work. We telephoned and corresponded with her for several years after her transition.
Another thing worth knowing is that what Molly McPool had to endure from her department
supervisor is not uncommon. As recently as 1989, the head of Children's Services in Oregon had to step
down under charges and accusations of harassing his employees.
Also you may bear in mind that I have changed the names of all these individuals for the purposes of
privacy.)
***
At the conclusion of the hearing in Oregon, custody of Mary Morningdove was again remanded to
the overflowing house of the money-monger foster pseudo-family. We were allowed one short visit
with her in the busy front office area of the Children's Welfare Department, which about tore our hearts
into shreds.
We gave her a little present we had made: a small brown teddy bear, handsown from pieces of the
fine sheepskin. And we gave her the things Lise had knit. Fortunately, Owl had kept them rolled in her
sleeping bag which wasn't among the items stolen in Cleveland.
Tenderly, and in spite of consternated objections from the staff, Owl put Lise's creations on the
darling, and held her up to get a good look at her and gently told her these soft new clothes were from
her granmama. Mara's expressive eyes conveyed what I could only take to be beatific understanding.
The visit hurt sorely. I felt we were holding Mara for the last time. I watched Owl rocking her in her
arms, Her lips pressed delicately to her child's forehead; then at last, rising her face to look fondly
down into the brilliant blue eyes the way Owl had done so often before, Holy ineffable communication.
Then, I watched as the social workers placed their hands and arms between mother and child as Owl
mumbled "ma bebe, ma bebe", and pried the infant loose and swiftly scooted her out of the room. We
watched the empty corridor down which they had vanished. Owl stood and walked heavily out of the
office. I followed her.
I don't remember the rest of the day or how we got to the station, or boarding the bus, or where we
sat, or if we talked. I remember once I sat bolt upright and stared out the window. Owl had her hand on
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my arm, gripping me so tight her fingers turned white; but otherwise she didn't move.
***
The Greyhound carried us east as far as Boise, Idaho, where we got passes to jump off for a couple
days. We hitchhiked northeast a hundred miles into the mountains and countryside. At the end of a
sixty-mile gravel road lay the one horse town of Atlanta, and just beyond, a group of hotsprings in a
rocked-off streamside and bubbling up here and there amidst a meadow full of wildflowers.
In those limpid pools, which are the warm eyes of God, we quenched our aching souls for two days
-- supine and motionless, as the sun and the moon and the eternal stars rolled over us in their orbits.
Then reluctantly, we slowly rose and redoned our worldly garb -- to hitch back the long gravel road
into man's less perfect civilization, and the city of Boise, there to catch the Greyhound once again, to
rumble along in naugahyde seats, amidst the smells of box lunches and hair spray, the gabbles and
snores, for three-thousand miles, east to Montreal.
Goodbye, Mushmara.
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TWEN
REVERIE ET MATEUS
As much as I loved Montreal, and as much as Owl needed her roots, no matter how hard we tried or
where we looked, we found no way to sustain ourselves. Without proper Immigration papers I could
not work. In order for me to get those papers they expected me to separate from Owl and live in the
U.S. until Immigration accepted my application for permission to live and work in Canada. That could
take months or even years -- or they might never give me the permission at all... And while I languished
south of the border Owl was supposed to remain in Montreal to be considered my "sponsor". More and
more it felt to me like my name was red-flagged in computers, like some Snively Whiplash character
was hiding in a secret mainframe doing everything he could to bust us apart.
I acquired the immigration forms anyway and looked them over on the off chance that we might
figure out some way to accomplish what they required without leaving Owl vulnerable. The forms
repeatedly referred to large sums of money to which the immigrant was presumed to have access,
asking the amount in his bank account and asking the person to list all his property and its value. And
the forms also required a list of job guarantees; not to mention all the person's past employers as
references. And they wanted a complete list of every address where the person had lived in the past ten
years. Oh that would be fun! Owl, as my sponsor, was supposed to provide similar information. When I
finished the forms, almost all the spaces were blank. I had no previous addresses, no property, no bank
accounts, no credit cards, no stocks and bonds, nothing of value, no regular employer since 1967. So if
this stuff was the absolute criteria by which they selected who was eligible to immigrate and who was
not, we were in bad shape...
Was I expecting a miracle? Who was I trying to kid? Once underground, always underground. Would
they never let us merely live our lives? Only with a unique and special consideration would the likes of
me be allowed to immigrate. Yet, somehow I fully expected our circumstances merited such
consideration. All I'd have to do is find the one bureaucrat who didn't treat every human as if they were
nothing more than a batch of numbers on a piece of paper.
We needed an answer soon. Unless I could go out and find some regular employment, even the
freedom of minimum self-sufficiency was beyond our grasp in this premier metropolis. The one thing
in our favor was that if I did find a regular job I could go to work without leaving Owl totally alone and
vulnerable what with her family all nearby. But of course I couldn't work anywhere until I got my
working papers. So we were stuck. The only scant shelter afforded us from destitution in the streets
were the apartments of Owl's mother and that of her sister. And it had come to the point where we had
worn their kind hospitality paper thin -- and I couldn't stand the embarrassment of allowing the
situation to continue.
The hospital where I'd taken Owl put the final kibosh on our dreams of settling in Montreal. They
found it necessary to make inquiries of Immigration as to my status. An Immigration officer contacted
me by phone at Lise's apartment and told me once more that I must wait in the United States for
permission to relocate in Canada. He asked me emphatically if I understood him? I told him I did. He
asked me if my papers were then in order? Ho Boy... I told him I'd be bringing them in real soon...
Well, damn! If it just plain wasn't possible for us to live safely in Montreal at this time we still had
one ace in the hole: Vancouver was an easy cross-country, late-spring hitchhike from Montreal -- and
Vancouver had been the birthplace of our relationship together. So many different kinds of people of
every nationality called Vancouver their home that the police might not pay much attention to us. And
once we were safely settled in, perhaps I could try again for legal entry -- maybe someone in the
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Vancouver office would be more sensitive to our circumstances. In Vancouver we could at least tread
water for the time being while we sorted out all this mess.
Hope, hope, hope...
And we could camp on Wreck Beach again! The thought of returning to our Garden of Eden buoyed
our spirits.
***
So, off we went...
Sometimes on a highway in the spring, a person's thumb feels as large as the entire rest of his body.
It's almost an erotic thing. Everything fresh and sweet is in front of you. New worlds, new hopes, new
dreams. Each wild roaming breeze tastes sweet, sweet, sweet. We flew across Canada so fast! The only
part of the trip that stands out in my memory is diving off a highway bridge into a cold river in
Saskatchewan.
Arriving in Vancouver, the first thing we did was to wander along the beach near the hostel at
Spanish Banks to see if "Loveislikealittleboatuponthesea" was still sitting there upon the sands waiting
for us. Talk about silly! Of course our wonderful old canoe had been scarfed up by someone years ago!
But I missed those days so badly! And I missed that wonderful old patched up canoe... So I just had to
the spot where I had left her and look... and see if it was still there, just in case no one had... Of course
it was long gone as surely as our first wonderful beachbum year together was forever gone... (Unless
we will be allowed to relive it again in Heaven someday...)
What a blessing real romance is for the soul! This wonderful nude beach was a living manifesto of
freedom of the human spirit -- and romance. We loved that beach with a tender yet dynamic passion.
"Loveislikealittleboatuponthesea": the perfect name for the canoe that belonged to the young couple
who wintered in a shack on that shore over the winter of 1975-76.
And fresh spring oxygen imploded a myriad treasured memories... and in our minds and hearts we
drifted back to the year we'd met, and we relived the moments...
Schizo Al had sold us the fiberglass canoe and one crabpot for one hundred dollars. Al was a
consistent escapee from a Vancouver mental hospital. As often as they caught him and took him back
he escaped again and returned to his camp on the south end of Wreck Beach. Other than being a
friendly wild man, there was nothing else wrong with him.
When I invented the finest wine in the world -- of anise and bananas and honey and dates, and
bottled the batch and tucked it into the cave which I'd dug into the cliffs, it was Al (the fat bear!) who
burrowed in and sat inside drinking bottle after bottle until he passed out! and then tried to deny the
fact! And he stunk so badly of it -- it was entirely obvious to anyone with a nose that he had slept in
that wine. But he continued to deny that he had done it. Man! He rivaled the flowers of spring, he
smelled so thickly of my banana, anise, honey wine. The pig. He had rolled in it like a dog. That Al. I'd
been so mad at him. I'd yelled and screamed; and he'd stood there so stinkin' hangdog guilty while I
roared.
Al had dug his way into our cave and drank the wine because he thought we had left the beach for
good. Actually we had only hitchhiked to the Okanogan to pick apples. I had walled up and hidden the
entrance to the cave with the idea that the wine would age safely while we were gone and I had very
much looked forward to drinking those bottles with my lady. So I'd been pretty angry to see them all
gone.
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But that night as I lay with Owl I thought about how I had blown up at Al and I felt bad. What a
mischievous little bear he was... And the more I thought about it the funnier it seemed. I started
laughing -- because I realized I really loved that brother, a lot. And I was sorry I'd gotten so mad at him.
So the next day I bought a bottle of wine and went to his camp and shared it with him and we were
friends again.
Of course, with the vicissitudes of life I'd be yelling at him again sure enough in the days to come.
But while we shared that bottle of wine in the setting sun of a warm autumn evening all of life was
excellent.
Since he had sold us the canoe he always seemed to think he could borrow it to fish whenever he
wished. The problem was that he would often be too drunk or too tired to bring it back. When that
happened I'd have to walk the winding mile down the beach a mile to his camp and get it. Sometimes
we'd sit together on a log and share a joint and watch the seabirds soar. Then I'd paddle home... Such a
life... I could have lived a hundred years of it and nothing else and never been happier...
Two years had passed since those heavenly days! And now that we had returned to our beach I
wanted our canoe back! Our lovely canoe! I ached to know who had found it and taken it home where
it now probably was resting unused in his musty garage, ignored and covered with dust... I hoped I
would meet somebody who knew where it was... Loveislikealittleboatuponthesea was a chunk of our
heart...
As we sat again upon the warm sands the flashbacks flooded my mind like the day the sea had
swallowed the little canoe and we had to fight like dolphins to bring her home...
On stormy days when we would be a half-mile or so out in the ocean pulling up the crabpots the
huge steep waves rolled up and down like a roller coaster. It got pretty dangerous sometimes. The
waves could get so steep they would cap and we had to make sure we didn't get hit broadside or we
would flip for sure. When we were looking up at the waves from the bottom of a trough they looked
like mountains.
Getting the canoe safely to shore on such a day was always a harrowing experience. We would shoot
like a cannon ball towards shore pushed by a towering wall of water. The canoe would be like a twig in
a hurricane, careening over the cold sea towards the shallows -- shallows strewn with thousands of tons
of boulders -- through which there was only one ancient channel ten feet wide! We never missed that
channel but it took all our combined acumen to ride a great wave through the narrow passage and arrive
on shore safe and sound.
I remembered steering for that channel with my rear oar plunged deep in the body of the monster
water; hollering to Owl above the roar of breaking surf, "HARD ON THE RIGHT! HARD ON THE
RIGHT! NOW LEFT! LEFT! QUICKLY! LEFT!" The canoe plunging into the channel, sometimes
scraping an ugly giant crag with a side or the bottom, and the amassed roller behind us picking us up
ass first and hurling us forward onto the sand. Then we'd be jumping out into the knee-deep turbulence
of tons and tons of water returning to the sea from the high shore, where we would have to exert every
muscle in our bodies to pull the canoe desperately up onto the beach before the next breaker engulfed
us.
Then we'd be laughing together as we carried our fiberglass beauty home on our shoulders, oh so
happily... I remember Owl saying,
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"RhobeenTom, You gathare de stikks for de fyre and I will do deeshes and bool de watair. Yhou whan
rize wit de crrabs, Rhom?"
The canoe: Pathmaker to wilderness islands. Returnee to aboriginal antiquity. Unleasher of aeonchained Spirit.
And too, I remembered how we would walk the five miles into the city every couple days, stopping
at each little Chinese Market and taking the great leather bag off our shoulders, dumping the struggling
crustaceans on the floor for the proprietors to choose and buy at one dollar each.
I remember their excited children nervously hiding behind their parent's legs and aprons, and
pointing excitedly at the writhing monsters -- while the dads playfully extended pencils into the
pinching claws. I remember how we returned again to our camp with wine and groceries, walking with
our arms around each other, Owl's head on my shoulder, and after we reached the sanctuary of our
beautiful free beach, remembered how we doffed our hot and sticky clothes, and ran along the tops of
the beached logs hand in hand as though we were a couple of the local squirrels.
Love was ever like this.
And then there was the haunting flashback memory of Christmas night 1975 when a winter blizzard
pushed a giant tree off the top of the four hundred foot cliff above us, and how it came crashing,
bouncing down the sloped banks towards us making a horrendous noise, and bringing with it a
veritable avalanche of mud and stone, all joining together and tipping our shack sideways, till we are
scarcely five feet from the mountainous storm-waves of the high tide. One huge branch smashed down
onto "Loveislikealittleboatuponthesea" flattening her midsection like a flounder.
The highest tide of the year, a furious snowstorm, and the avalanche tipping our cabin into the
churning sea -- all came in the same pitch dark early morning hour. The sea was full of mighty Douglas
Fir and Cedar and curly maple logs, often weighing many tons each, which were bouncing and twisting
and smashing against one another and resounding with crashes louder than the thunder which shook the
heavens. And the four hundred foot sea-cliffs echoed every roar and crash.
The avalanche was slow. The house tilted gradually over half an hour, as we lay wide-awake
watching the rafters bend and break. We hoped it would stop -- because there was no place for us to go
except out into the deadly sea where the invisible monster logs could mash us to pulp. All the paths
were covered by the murderous high tide. The avalanching cliff face was a quicksand conglomeration
of thick snow and sliding mud. At any moment the entire structure could collapse and slide into the
maelstrom.
I lit a candle so we could watch the walls collapsing slowly. We had time to dress in our leathers and
boots. We waited, watching, listening, preparing to bolt into the sea, only if necessary -- praying at least
for the faintest light of dawn to come first because it was so dark we couldn't see our hands in front of
our faces... But it was long before the dawn that the end came and we dashed out of the collapsing
cabin into the black winter sea of bouncing giant logs. Thigh deep near the shore, the withdrawing
waves wanted to pull us along with them into the maw of the deep. We clung to each other in the dark
swirling waters but a great roller suddenly swept over us and the raw force of nature engulfed us like
oak leaves in a hurricane and we were torn apart. We screamed for each other but the roar of the ocean
overpowered our voices. Then a huge wave receded and in a lull I heard Owl's voice and struggled to
her and together again we helped each other get our footing and make our way along the edge of the
sea and cliffs until we came to more negotiable terrain. After that we struggled on in the utter darkness
for three miles through sludge and blizzard and sea in bursts of running as each wave of bouncing
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massive timbers receded.
Finally we had arrived on the threshold of the safe habitat of some friends: five young men, who
occupied the old abandoned WWII army bunkers. And there we all stood together, amidst the thunder
and the gloom, with candlelight reflecting off the cement block walls which eerily echoed and absorbed
our conversations... And we listened to the fierce storm through the several thick blankets which made
their door, and we warmed ourselves beside their fire and drank from tin cans which burned our lips -full of hot black coffee, and finally we slept out the storm. In the morning, the soft, wet snow was two
foot deep.
After the winter had blunted and we started having some warm days, we had repaired our little boat.
Flat as a sand dollar -- but we fixed it! Everyone said it couldn't be done -- but we did it anyway.
And then we'd built a new shack (in a safer area) -- of large logs and ten penny nails, and hand-made
cedar shakes -- and with a twelve foot canopy and a hanging fireplace we made from the lid of a fifty
gallon drum and rusty sea chains -- and a long shelf beside the fire on which several people could sit.
Our tiny house was built up on stilts -- and just big enough for two to sleep, side by side; nicely
insulated and snug, with a window and a swinging door. (And the wine cellar/meditation room -- dug in
the cliff face!) We sat high above the ground and cooked our meals in the fire of the suspended brazier
-- and watched the combers roll in and the sea gulls soar. And sometimes our friends from the bunker
came by and we cooked them oyster breads and spaghetti feasts and crab omelets, and clam chow
miens; and we played our guitars. Ah! Such cherished memories!
In fact we were so warm with our brazier and blankets that we were often nude during that winter of
1975. Heck it was a nude beach, so why not? Even though two feet of snow might cover the coastal
landscape we sometimes lounged around our shack naked as the seals. A quick sprint through fresh
snow and out waist deep into the surf to get a bucket of water for boiling potatoes or doing dishes
wasn't uncommon either -- not uncommon to us, anyway. It was quite an astounding spectacle to casual
passers-by though...
The same people who cavorted naked there in summer came also in winter for nature walks. And
they were always dressed for the occasion in layers upon layers of wool: boots, overcoats, gloves,
scarves, and hats; bundled up as bundled could be.
It had just so happened one Sunday morning that Owl needed a bucket of water. The snow out front
was thick, fresh, and untracked. What fun! I ran out totally naked, kicking snow every which direction,
and straight into the sea where I scooped the bucket full of water and stood for a moment absorbing the
celestial quiet beauty around me, a long lost primordial atavism surging through my consciousness
from the days when all mankind walked through every sort of weather with no clothing whatsoever.
Then I turned to walk back to my shack -- and whom should I meet? Why, three friends from the
previous summer, as thickly dressed as could be expected! Oh! I am quite sure they were wearing every
single piece of winter protection they could find in their closets -- and they were staring at me with
their eyes bulging out and their mouths hanging open.
"What are you doing? Where are your clothes?" they gasped.
"Hey! This is a nude beach, isn't it? What's the matter with you? Are you weighted down with
scruples? Why are you wearing all those clothes?"
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"But this is WINTER! Argh!! Aren't you FREEZING??!!"
"What??!! In this balmy weather? Listen to those birds sing! Are they wearing overcoats, scarves,
and galoshes? No! So why are YOU?"
And so we carried on our happy repartee'. It was good to see my summer friends again. They asked
about Owl and I told them she was up in the camp making coffee. Would they like to come up and join
us? And so they did -- quite surprised to learn we'd not left the beach since summer. We sat on the shelf
that I'd built high up above the ground beside the warm brazier and we watched all the Sunday beach
wanderers trundle by through the new snow, and hollered for them to come join us. And they came and
shared our fire and our coffee...
Many were our visitors throughout that winter of 1975. Many prosperous city dwellers would have
traded places with us in a hot minute.
Yet another memory, this one containing a valuable lesson I learned the hard way:
Some mornings the sea was as calm as glass... One such morning I was too cozy in my soft pillow,
and I didn't want to paddle out to get the crabs. But someone had to do it or we would lose them. I
pulled the string that raised the hinged window and looked out. The sea appeared safe enough for Owl
to go alone. So I had urged Owl to take the canoe out by herself and pull up the crabpots while I slept
in. I suppose nearly an hour passed and I began to worry because she hadn't returned. Plus I could
plainly hear that the wind had come up fast and hard. I looked out the window and freaked. The sea
was tossing viscously in high winds!
I rushed out along the sands. There was Owl a quarter mile out to sea battling alone against huge
waves! She disappeared between the giant rollers for interminably long periods. My heart was caught
in my throat. Then with tears of relief I would at last see her valiantly reach the crest of a mountainous
wall of water paddling furiously, then soar down the roller's steep face trying to get to shore... But for
all her efforts she wasn't making much headway against the wind that regarded the canoe as a sail and
was trying to push it out to sea. It was a battle just to keep the canoe’s nose into the wind and pointed
towards shore. The wind kept blowing it sideways. Then she would have to battle hard to turn the nose
forward again. Oh God! If the canoe were swamped or if it tipped... Oh God! The tide was against her
too! Try as she would for all her efforts she was fighting a losing battle as the forces of nature took her
farther and farther out to sea. Owl looked exhausted and desperate.
The wind come up now even stronger and I watched in horror as the canoe became smaller and
smaller. I screamed to her!
"Come on Owl! Try coming in at an angle to the shore! You can do it! Paddle hard! COME ON
OWL!"
I don't know how but somehow she hears me. She renews her efforts. She turns the canoe slightly
north. I'm shouting prayers up into the tumbling clouds! She begins to make some headway.
At long last she approaches land, and then a monstrous crusher amasses behind her like a mountain
and picks up the canoe and flings it mightily toward the shore -- and towards the ROCKS; and Owl is
hanging on for her life, trying her best to aim for the channel like threading a needle in a hurricane -and she almost makes it! C-CR-CRUNCH-NCH-CH!!
She has smashed into a great boulder ten feet from shore. Before my eyes the seas are tipping her
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and the canoe is filling with water and Owl and the canoe and the crabs and the gear and everything are
being smashed against the rocks by the merciless waves. I am in the water now, clutching Owl -- a
giant comber is enveloping us, tumbling us, raking our faces across the sandy bottom, colliding us with
massive ragged granite underwater projections, hauling us back out into the depths -- but our four feet
are planted in the shifting, sucking sands and we are holding each other from the abyss, and fighting the
unfathomable power that craves so hungrily to ravish us from this life.
Then, we are dragging each other up onto the beach.
We were safe then. But we could see our poor canoe still contorted in the rocky seas, full of water
and sand, pounding against boulders twice the size of motorcycles. Crazily -- and it was indeed a very
crazy thing to do -- we dared the sea again, and put our strength together and managed to get her safely
to the shore. She must have weighed two thousand pounds full of water.
Later, drenched and exhausted we collapsed in each others arms in the warm quilts of our hut -observing behind feverish eyelids, more clearly than ever before, how tenuous are the threads of life...
and realizing, it seemed like for the first time, how important we were to each other...
How fortunate we were to have each other... to still have each other...
In the days that had followed we had repaired our vessel for the second time; battle-scars gave her
dignity! But for Owl, I never again let her take the canoe out alone. No way. I was so angry with myself
for my stupidity. It could easily have been the terrible end.
After that the months passed gently with us both realizing we were approaching our anniversary.
We'd spent a whole year camping on Wreck Beach. I looked at Owl with new eyes now. She wasn't just
my girlfriend anymore. She was my mate. As the weather warmed the nudist crowd began to arrive
again, in dribbles and drabs at first and then in greater numbers. We'd made it full circle and we were
ready for another summer.
But in May of '76, three policemen with axes came along the beach searching for illegal campers.
Beach camping was discouraged with fines and jail but in those days the police never seemed to get
around to routing people out until late spring. Our friends in the bunkers were the first to be visited and
evicted. They ran south and warned us. We gathered important belongings and abandoned our camp,
heading into the jungley area to the south known as the Endowment lands, where Al had built a new
camp. We stayed with him for the day, out of their range of activity, at least for the present.
With great difficulty the police tore down our beautiful shack. The first cop tried to do it by himself
and swore and swore when he discovered we had built our shelter of stout notched logs and thick eight
inch long nails, intending that the buried stilts would even be able to resist a rare superhigh surge of the
sea. The cop couldn't put a dent in our shack by himself. We didn't consider it safe to be close enough
to watch but friends who were sun bathing on the beach nearby told us the cop was really pissed off at
whoever had built it.
But the next day three cops returned with axes and matches and gasoline and together they brought it
down and set it on fire.
That driftwood shack was our first real home. And it truly was also a beautiful work of art. Too bad
they had to destroy it. It was so strong and beautiful that it could have been a little community center
for the beach community. But such an idyllic vision wasn't in the interest of "the powers that be".
Eventually they got to Al's camp too. They removed him again to the mental hospital. We were the
last ones left of everyone who had wintered there. We were in hiding. I knew it was only a matter of
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time before we would eventually be discovered and -- God forbid -- separated -- unless we did
something. For by this time our love was a fever. Surely there were other lands in which we could
dwell safely. So that is how it had happened that we had decided to hitchhike east to the land of MFF in
Vermont.
The hardest thing to leave was our canoe. We sat on a log for two hours trying to go. Finally, we
turned our backs and walked away. On a driftwood log beside her we left an antique copy of Rudyard
Kipling's Ships. It would be a sacrilege if the new owner of our canoe were someone who didn't love
poetry.
Those twelve months that we lived on Wreck Beach, from May 1975 to May 1976, were like gifts
from God -- blessings that would flavor every other thing that happened in our lives -- bequeathing us
courage and strength and faith...
And so it was that those most wonderful memories wafted through our heads with the cedar campfire
smoke as we found ourselves returned in May of 1978...
***
We were surprised to perceive that only two years had passed since our departure. How strange time
is... With only the smallest effort of imagination we might have made ourselves believe that everything
that had happened in between May of 1976 and May of 1978 had all just been a bad dream. If
"Loveislikealittleboatuponthesea" had been there on the shore waiting for us, surely we would have
awakened and discovered it so... We would have resumed the perfect dream.
Ah, we could use a good fantasy! We deserved one after everything we'd been through. So we tried
our best to pretend we'd never left Wreck Beach; tried to pretend we fit in exactly where we had left
off. Sometimes, we almost fooled ourselves.
One heavy moment was when we went to the wreckage of our beautiful beach shack and dug up a
couple of banged up pots we'd cooked every meal in two years before. I beat the dents out of them and
we were really thrilled to use them again. They were a solid tangible connection with our past. I also
dug for a couple of knives and a few bottles of homemade wine we'd buried but found them not.
I bet Al got 'em...
Mostly, we lay in the warm sand and baked in the sun.
There is an inner excitement on a giant nude beach. The place is full of beautiful human bodies! It's
part of the primeval makeup of the human id. Unclothed humanity socializing freely is extinct today
other than on those nude beaches. That part of the human mind never opens the magic door anymore,
except to a few fortunate utopian gymnosophists.
The ancient lifestyle is forbidden -- considered taboo even to look upon. How strange: civilization's
blindness... What did the human race ever do to deserve such blindness? --Round the clockwork
furnaces of Maya to dwell, drones of confusion, wondering what are human beings anyway with all
their closed attitudes and selfish vanity, their pretension and their cruelty to one another? What is life?
Where are the answers? Humanity born as strangers to the earth...
Here on this vast nude beach beyond the pale of Earth's common purgatories we basked in the
freedom and the wisdom that only members of nudist communities know.
However, thanks to our recent tragedy, our Heaven was cloaked with obscuring mist. There was a
difference now; we'd brought a world of sorrows to our old paradise. In 1975 Owl had been the
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happiest, most beautiful person I'd ever met: of all the roses on Cupid's quiver, she was the fairest; but
now two years had passed and she was a changed person. Owl was sad as sad could be. She would have
been happier if she'd lost an arm instead of her child.
I wanted to make her happy and I knew that would be next to impossible. I bought her little treats,
ice cream and pizza. I took her dancing. Once, when I had thirty "extra" dollars, I took her to a fine
French restaurant. Ha! They wouldn't serve us because I had no tie. We were too grungy. Nice try
though.
So, we shared a bottle of Mateus in an alley instead -- the same alley in which we'd shared a bottle of
Cold Duck one day long ago. Perhaps it meant more to us than that fine French restaurant would have
meant... Still, Owl was lonely and hurting. What more could I do?
One day, as the beach scene titupped around us, I noticed that Owl was watching a young blond lad
who was camped in his tent nearby. She was smiling, daydreaming. Now, I like to say that Owl and I
basically began our relationship as an open one, and that the honor bestowed in the giving of freedom
had been so pure that it caused us to admire, and then love, each other. And so, we grew ever closer
together. Yet we were free. Occasionally, I had used my credits to bounce some beautiful bones, but
Owl rarely roved. Once, I asked her why? (Though I was secretly glad enough that she didn't...) She
answered that she just didn't want anyone but me. Good enough. Realistically, that would mean
considerably fewer problems. However, I expected to continue my own sexual sabbaticals, infrequent
though they were... She assured me that was all right. And I thought that was very kind of her. And it
isn't like we ever sought another life-partner. No way. We loved each other. It's just that other friends
were possible, even sexually, without causing a ridiculous to-do. At any rate, as I said, extra-curricular
hoopla was infrequent at best.
So, I noticed Owl watching this young blond fellow. I also noticed that he would occasionally stare
at her. He seemed infatuated. She was very beautiful... After a day of this, I thought perhaps I did know
a way to cheer Owly up. I'd already made his acquaintance. He was nice, well mannered. To make a
long story, short, I fixed them up with each other and they spent an entire day rocking his little tent
until it caved in on them.
And I went about my day on the beach feeling especially benevolent.
Owl was very tender with me after that experience. She smiled a little more. Hugged me a lot. And
seemed to trust me to be more aware of the secret needs of her heart than she had thought possible.
Long before I ever met Owly, I had decided that I wanted a life-long soulmate -- but not the typical
jealous and unforgiving divorce-doomed American version of wifeliness. Everything I read and heard
indicated to me that many French women cherished life-long relationships, were amazingly
understanding, not prone to petty jealousies, and had coined the universal phrase, "menage de toi". In
my heart of hearts I had hoped my soulmate would be just such a Frenchwoman -- and from our first
year together, I'd happily discovered her felicity and considerate friendship, when sometimes another
lady friend shared our bed. My Owly was the most special gift God could have given me. Could a man
be more finely blessed than to have the devotion of a sensible, hearty woman like this?
So it was 1978. And we had returned to a place we loved. And we tried to throw away some of our
cares. We bought a few cases of beer and put them in a gunnysack with ice and walked along the threemile beach selling cold beer just as we had done during our first months together. Some old friends
recognized us and asked where we'd been. Others thought we'd never left!
I went to Canadian Immigration and after a couple visits -- and met a very understanding human
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being, a French-Canadian -- who listened long and asked meticulous questions. And he actually gave
me permission -- and proper papers -- so that I could remain in Canada legally! Whoopy! But he
emphatically explained one important thing to me: If I were to leave Canada, for ANY REASON, before
all paperwork was complete -- I'd never get another chance to come in! Those terms sounded kind of
strange but I saw no reason not to consent to them, especially if he hurried the paperwork through.
So Owl and I went back to the beach and started making some definite plans.
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TWEN-ONE
GOAT BOYS
Sylvester Tide lived in a cove on an island off the coast of British Columbia. When he talked he
rambled on and on like the saltiest of sea dogs, and generally resembled a character that fell out of a
Disney cartoon.
He had lived on every form of old boat that a keen-sighted individuals who knew where to look
might glom unto with glee and purchase with a month's wages. His first mate in life was a beautiful
woman named Sarah who paddled, rowed, or set sails in any craft Sylvester's duffel bag was stowed in.
His funky old WWII four-wheel-drive wasn't even licensed but that never kept it off the road on those
islands. He wisely traveled the back roads from cove to cove in early morn and twilight and thus
avoided trouble. Their seashack was only reachable by boat. Their lives were made up of kerosene
lanterns, fishnets, shelves of excellent old books, a pantry full of homebaked breads, and a neverending supply of fresh salmon, oysters and crabs.
One day in July, Sylvester shuffled up to us on Wreck beach and we talked all day long. We hit it off
good.
Sylvester asked us why we were wasting our lives there on that public beach? There was no future
there! No place for people like us to take root! Especially when we could be building our lives among
people much like ourselves. He told us there were islands not far from Vancouver, where many, many
hippie mothers and fathers and beautiful children galore, had been squatting on government land for at
least fifteen years that he knew of personally -- and with minimal unwholesome contact with the crazy
world. He said there were even communes! And if a person wanted to rent, why, rent was cheap! There
were even fantastic care-taking deals available for the summer homes of city folks! The opportunities
were endless!
What he described sounded idyllic. In fact, he convinced us to such a degree that we would be
welcomed and that we would fit in splendidly on the island where he lived -- in short: that we belonged
in his cove -- that we packed up everything and boarded the first of the three ferries that brought us to
Cortez Island.
***
Quadra! Cortez Island! Farm Island! And a thousand more! Loggers chewed these little islands up
and spit them out fifty years ago. The old growth was gone but new trees cloaked the islands thick and
lush. These were verdant paradises popping out of cerulean seas, noisy with the cries of seagulls and
the laughter of fishermen's children.
After the ferry unboarded us at a quaint little place named Whaletown, we began an hour's hike
overland, and found a community unlike any we'd ever seen -- Carrington Harbor.
The cabins the long-ago loggers built and lived in were now appropriated as homes of especially
lucky people who couldn't have been more fortunate if they'd won the lottery -- considering the
overflowing cornucopia of nature in all her raw beauty and the unlimited abundance of resources
available to any ingenuity.
Their children learned at home -- not only regular school subjects, but boat building and repair,
weaving fishnets, log cabin repair, fishing, crabbing, oystering, gardening, goat tending, horse riding,
hunting -- and a whole bunch of etceteras.
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Jammer and Kelly lived in one such cabin with their two sons. During the several years of their
habitation their homestead had become a picturesque amalgamation of practical small industries: A
bounteous garden seemed to lack nothing that could be grown. Several boat hulls lay upside down
beside their dwelling. A new boat, freshly built by hand, stood at the water! The fragrance of Salmon
cooking on the griddle wafted from the kitchen window. And a cellar full of tasty homebrew yielded
cool reflections on the passing day around their hospitable table. What more could a human being ask
from life?
Down the cove half a mile, another young couple lived on a twenty-one foot sailboat that had
recently come in from Hawaii. Still others hung their hats in ramshackle shacks and houseboats all
around the cove.
This was a boating community. Life would be extremely difficult here for anyone who owned no
boat. But there were boats to be had for a song. B.C. is a land where $500 boats abound. Sure, they are
old and need repair -- but life is for learning. Often such boats were twenty to thirty feet long -- big
enough to live aboard. A person learns a lot about boat repair while getting anything this size ready for
the water. Some boats are even given away freely -- just to see somebody do something good with the
thing before it rots into the landscape.
And this wasn't a "cash money in my hand or be on your way" sort of place, either. Among the lowincome people, bartering labor for things was handier than paying out hard-to-come-by dollars. One
might barter in this way for a hull, or a sea-stove with rails, or a milking goat, or some old brass
portholes. They barter for everything in these little island communities.
And there are ways to make money, too.
Large logs, lost in bad weather from great ships bound for Japan, lay in the sands of every shore and
toss in the waves. Log salvagers make big money, returning the logs to the shippers. Oyster gatherers
and crabbers make good money too. Or one may always hire out on a fishing boat.
We hadn't even been there a full week before I had dibs on a couple boats. Jammer wanted to sell me
a lifeboat for twenty dollars. It would only need a couple of rotten planks replaced and he said he'd loan
me a book on how to do it myself and help get me started.
And there was an old thirty-two foot Japanese Gill-netter abandoned on the shore that would be
destroyed by winter seas unless someone took the time to save its life. It was just a shell, no engine or
mast, no interior at all. But the hull was sound and complete. Jammer said it was mine if I gave it a
home. Wow.
Thoroughly convinced of the viability of the lifestyle, we gathered up some long logs and straddled
and paddled them around the shoreline to a spot we selected for our place. With these logs and a saw
and hammer and some ten-penny nails, we built a dock. As our own temporary home, we had a regular
nest of sleeping bags and clothes and a bit of plastic to keep the rain off and we were fast making plans
to build another driftwood shack.
Jammer and Kelly invited us to live in a spare cabin beside theirs for a month while its regular
occupant was away. As this would give us some excellent opportunities to learn from a wilderness
seacoast homesteading family who had been flourishing for several years, we took them up on their
kind offer.
I have to admit in our unfamiliarity with the conventions of the backwater aristocrats who inhabited
those several sites around Carrington Harbor, that we stepped on some toes and made a few lamentable
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social errors. I won't elaborate on that. I must also admit to our desolate and uncomfortable feeling
upon being told by some of those descendants of jolly old England that there existed no place in their
hearts for any French-Canadians! When they expostulated those opinions I found them rude and
repulsive. And citizens of the United States were not held in high regard either generally by these folks,
because the ones seen around these islands usually threw around money like it was water and thought
they could buy anything and everything and so the locals thought they had insufferable attitudes. So, all
things considered, between me being a "Yank" and Owl being a "Frog" perhaps we couldn't have been
expected to do everything right as far as the Carrington Harbor people were concerned no matter how
hard we tried.
But, on the other hand, there were some of them who welcomed us outright and seemed to say we
had as much right to be there as anyone. Even the most bigoted among them only showed that bad side
when they'd drank too much or when we showed our ignorance of local customs in some gross error. I'd
say all the difficulties were entirely surmountable given time.
One of the prettiest things about Jammer's place was a small tree and grass-covered island, actually a
steep jagged sea crag, which existed a hundred yards out from their cabin. They kept their milk goats
there and called it "Goat Island".
Their two boys rowed a tiny pram boat back and forth. I was amazed to see the abilities of those
children, both under eight years old, and already wise to the sea. They swam and sailed every day, and
went hunting and fishing with their father. Overall, they were very obedient and mature for their age,
and respectful, not only of their parents (although these days that would have been marvelous enough!)
but respectful of the sea, and of nature, of their father's tools, and of all people.
Oh! We were enraptured! If only we could raise our children here and be part of this community!
"Well, why the Hell can't you?" Jammer asked.
So we set ourselves to making a home that would be our own.
Wow! Everything was falling into place. Thanks to the abundant resources and good friends, I would
soon have a large boat with which I could lucratively salvage logs and fish for Salmon and Cod and
Dungeness... Surely very soon now we would have the means to get Mushmara returned to us! If only
they didn't terminate our parental rights in our absence -- and adopt her off to someone! What could we
do to prevent that?
Jammer's log cabin caused me to remember my sister Joey who lived in a large log cabin in Alaska
with her husband and family. I hadn't seen or heard from her in years. I remembered her husband, a
likeable young man, a hard worker, and fond of reading. What if...
Excitedly, I telephoned Joey and asked her if there was any way she could wrest Mary Morningdove
safely away those vultures in Oregon and take care of her in their home in Alaska while we settled
ourselves in this island community -- just until we could successfully petition the court to allow her to
be returned to us. Surely, inside of a year we could start working with Children's Services of B.C. to get
their assistance in a legal transition.
Joey told me she would speak with her husband Pat and otherwise look into the matter right away,
and so she did. Within a month Joey had made the arrangements with all the authorities. A couple
flights to Eugene tied up all the loose ends and -- wonder of wonders! -- One day Joey picked up
Mushmara at that hellhole fosterfactory and they boarded a jet and flew home together to Soldotna,
Alaska! At long last Owl and I were able to breathe free knowing she was safe. The only bad thing was
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that the court in Eugene, Oregon still retained control of her though, and anything concerning any
change in her status had to be done through them. But that was all secondary to the fact that we'd
finally managed to get Mary out of their clutches and now she was safely living with my sister and no
matter what happened to us from here on out she would be safe.
Now, with our hearts unburdened, we could devote more time and energy to developing our
homestead dream. And ever and again as another day waned, we would stand from our work and look
into the sunset and whisper, "Mushmara will come home soon!!"
For a couple months our preparations moved forward -- though not quite as fast as we would have
wanted. I wanted to build a home from which we could never be run out. The biggest stumbling block
to that dream was the fact that most of our neighbors were content to be squatting without any actual
permission from any corporation or government agency that really owned the land. The standard, "The
land belongs to the people, we are the people!" was enough for them. Gol darnit! I could foresee
difficulties with Children's Services unless I could find some way to get a more binding contract...
God! It would be the pits if all our dreams were shattered by some social worker who came out to
inspect our living situation and filed a report saying we were illegally camped on land we didn't own
and living in a hovel made of driftwood... When I talked to Jammer about it he told me bluntly that the
community of Carrington Harbor didn't allow government social workers around their children. If any
such person even showed their face in Carrington Harbor they would be treated so badly they would
not feel safe staying. I told him that social workers would surely have to okay our living situation in
order to transfer Mushmara to us. At that Jammer squinted his eyes and looked at me with considerable
anger and cautioned me that I'd better listen to what he said and not be bringing any government agents
into Carrington Harbor.
If a person shoots a deer out of season when his family needs the meat it comes under the category of
human necessity. But only a very stupid person would let the wrong people know about it unless they
are masochistic and enjoy having trouble come knocking at their door. So if you lived at Carrington
Harbor and if a thirty-two foot caravel planked gill-netter lay abandoned on it's side on the beach with
it's name-plank missing -- you might choose to fix it up and make use of it -- but don't be fool enough
to ask anyone where it came from! And above all don't try to register it. That's the message Jammer
needed me to understand...
You see, the question is: why is the name-plank missing? It could have been stolen, stripped and the
name-plank taken to keep it from being identified. Or its owner might have reported it sunk or
destroyed by fire and collected the insurance and then taken the name-plank and left it there. The
government is hot on the trail of such boats and God help anyone found in possession of one who
doesn't have a lot of good answers.
So the more I thought about it the more I realized it would be plum loco for an American like me to
invest everything in such an unregisterable boat. Sooner or later there would be a confrontation with
some badgeman. A local might be able to talk or bluster his way out of it, but it isn't likely I would
succeed. I would go straight to jail. Then I would be deported. Possessing an illegal ship like that
Japanese Gill-netter could sink me in deep water in more ways than one. Jammer was irate that I would
even worry about authorities, or that I would turn down a free gill-netter for such qualms.
Both Jammer and Kelly had eyes that could stare down a bear. Jammer had once motored half way
around Vancouver Island in a seven-foot pram, through storms and past whirlpools... Kelly had
delivered both of her sons by herself squatting, with no one else even on the isolated island where they
lived at the time. She had lived on beachpeas and oysters and nothing else once for months when
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Jammer was away earning money and there was no boat for her to go elsewhere. Jammer had planed
his own wood with an Alaskan Mill and handbuilt his own sailboat -- and it was a beauty of excellent
craftsmanship. They were resourceful and tough and they kind of had a mean streak when it came to
putting up with landlubbers or yankees or government badges. And for the most part such individuals
knew better than to set foot there.
When Owl and I had first walked up and introduced ourselves to Jammer and Kelly they graciously
brought out delicious homemade wine and we sat and talked together. He soon laughed and told me I
was either the dumbest person he'd ever met or I had the most gall of anyone he had ever known, for
me to just come avisiting and thinking we could live there, considering how out of place we were.
Carrington Harbor dwellers had a reputation for beating outsiders to a pulp... That reputation kept them
free.
They lived on the edge... They were very strong, but they could survive only as long as they never
exposed their vulnerabilities to the bad guys. The bad guys of the world thought money could buy
everything and everyone, and people who had money owned everything and everyone. And the
government was the dominant social structure of the bad guys. The government was not welcome. And
the Carrington Harbor folks tended to look at people through their keen squinty eyes to see if they
secretly harbored anything that might threaten their world in any way. A person had to be real careful
there.
***
In late September, just as we prepared to put our winter shack together, we received notification by
mail from the court in Eugene that since we'd ceased visiting Mary Morningdove, they assumed we
were abandoning her. And unless we were to visit her immediately, our parental rights would be
terminated and all hope of ever regaining her would be gone forever.
After all we'd gone through to get this homestead off and running just so that we would have a place
among other families like ourselves in which to raise her, it had come to this, that we would either
leave all we had accomplished -- or lose Mushmara forever in the spider-webbed traps of Eugene's
courts.
Damn those Eugene heartbreakers! Just when we finally had a chance to be settled they were forcing
us to immediately travel to Alaska or lose our child forever!
I telephoned Eugene and got hold of a bored sounding woman who told me there was no mitigation
possible on the matter, and no discussion necessary. I demanded to speak to her supervisor. I was
disconnected at that moment because I'd run out of quarters for the pay phone. So I ran to the
Whaletown store and got five dollars worth of quarters and called her back again. She put me on hold. I
hung up after three minutes and ran and got more quarters and called her again. I reminded her this was
an expensive long distant call. She was still very bored and she didn't bother much about concealing
her irritation but this time she put me through to some guy.
I caught my breath and slowly explained our circumstances. After listening to what I had to say, he
blandly told me the decision of Children's Services would stand unchanged. He was a succinct and
taciturn individual and he soon had me livid. Was this the dissembling supervisor of ill repute? I was
burning with rage but I restrained myself and patiently tried again to outline the difficulties a winter
visitation in Alaska entailed. Further, I went over how hard it had been for me to get permission from
the Immigration authorities in British Columbia to allow me to remain and even to work in Canada, and
I explained to him about the condition they had stipulated when they had granted me permission to
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stay: that if we were to leave Canada before I obtained my permanent visa, then all that hard-earned
negotiation would be null and void -- and I would not be given another chance. And if after knowing
this, the Eugene court was still determined to terminate our parental rights unless we visited Mara in
Alaska immediately -- then did they realize that the only way we could go to Alaska at this time would
be if we hitchhiked? For Children's Services of Oregon to expect us to head for Alaska -- with winter
coming -- would be insane. We could freeze to death! Our deaths would be on their hands. They'd have
murdered us. I asked him if he would at least let us wait until spring?
There was a long silence. He was still there but he wasn't saying anything. I distinctly sensed that he
was angry because I had successfully manipulated Mushmara out of the clutches of his evil foster-child
racket when Joey flew with her to Alaska. Call it intuition but now I sensed he was getting even.
Oregon still carried the paperwork on my daughter so he had all the leverage he needed to make me
jump through any hoops he demanded.
I could hear him breathing in the silence on the other end of the line. It sounded like he was
slithering around in a reptile terrarium. "Well how about it?" I asked, to remind him I was still on the
pay phone, waiting.
"No..." he answered heavily, "Either visit Mary Morningdove immediately or your parental rights
will be permanently terminated."
He hung up on me.
He knew we had no way to get to Alaska other than by hitchhiking. I'd told him that. Yet he'd given
us no alternative but to do just that -- in October? Christ! What a monster!
It took no great insight to understand that dirtbag's scheme. He thought it would be impossible for us
to go two thousand miles North from Vancouver, British Columbia in October! He thought even if we
tried -- we'd freeze to death and be out of his hair entirely!
Well, he sure didn't know US very well did he? It didn't take us two seconds to make our decision. We
would most certainly hitchhike to Alaska. Oh yes.
I telephoned Canadian Immigration and explained this latest development, hoping they'd understand
that I had no alternative but to leave the country temporarily. But the Immigration officer reiterated as
before that if we left Canada it was out of his hands -- I would probably not be permitted back in the
country again and all paperwork that had been started would become useless.
Somehow there would have to be a way through! There was a chance we could slip through both
ways without Canada ever knowing we'd left. Phooey! There was no use waiting around. We had
packing to do -- and good-byes to make to our friends.
Our boatdock rose and fell in the waves. We had worked so hard to build it. Would the 20-ft lifeboat
Jammer was selling us ever be tied to it now? I picked up my guitar. I had no room for it on this trip. I
leaned it against a tree. Someone will find it before the snows come and give it a home. I looked at my
Owly, encumbered now with her heavy pack. I had promised her a home -- this home. Was I a liar?
Would this ever be our home? Would there be a home for us in Alaska?
Here on Cortez Island we beheld the beginnings of the security that every family deserves and needs.
Others nearby had already found theirs. Yet we were leaving it all behind to jump into a dark and
freezing unknown land... Yet it had to be done, didn't it?
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As parents we had no choice. A shit-encrusted bureaucracy that could not imagine the beauty of
Carrington Harbor and could not believe the devotion that existed in our hearts -- was forcing this
dangerous journey upon us.
We rolled up the biggest bedroll we'd ever had, tidied our camp, and strolled together hand-in-hand
out to the ferries and highways. Then with one ride after another we progressed northward towards the
twenty-five hundred mile long gravel road known as the Alaskan highway.
It was October. We were hiking straight into the beginning of an Alaskan winter, and though it was
too early for me to have much more than an inkling of it, Owl was pregnant again.
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We were hiking straight into an Alaskan Winter...
TWEN-TWO
BURNING HEART
The most Hazardous highway in North America runs north from Edmonton, Alberta, through the
Yukon and the Northwest Territories into Alaska. Built in record time during World War II to carry
military supplies to Alaska, which was then under Japanese attack, it served the purposes of the United
States far more than those of Canada through which country most of the highway passed.
Consequently, after the war, Canada had little inclination to improve its portion of the road. Although
pavement replaced gravel on almost every major highway in North America by the 1970's, the Alaskan
Highway remained two thousand-five hundred miles of gravel -- slippery, rutty, windshield-shattering
gravel.
Compact cars full of tourists shared the unmarked lanes with fast-moving eighteen wheelers driven
by professionals who had schedules to meet. Here are America's highest mountain passes with switchbacks so steep and treacherous that almost every traveler sits on the edge of their seat, their noses glued
to the windshield during the entire trip. Lose your concentration for a moment and you are a goner.
We never waited long for a ride but the waits we did have set us in some of the most exciting scenery
a person could hope to see, at least from a roadside. The spirit becomes buoyant. Wandering
unexplored roads is such a romantic thing for a couple to do. Usually the dangers seem irrelevant -- at
least until they bite your nose and jerk your strings.
Like when we were half dozing in the front seat of an eighty thousand pound cement truck that was
carefully descending a steep and winding mountain pass when another eighty-thousand pound cement
truck screamed up behind us at a hundred miles per hour and whipped around our vehicle in a tornado
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of chaos -- and plummeted over the edge into oblivion.
Obviously the speeding driver, having lost his brakes, had come upon us in this, the last curve before
a safe straightaway on the mountain, and rather than smashing into us and taking us over the edge with
him he had with considerable keen-minded agility veered around us before totally losing control and
diving over the precipice: down, down, down, into the clouds below.
The driver of our rig stopped immediately. I jumped out and skied down the rubble on my heels. A
few hundred feet down, the wreckage of the truck rested in several large pieces among thick trees. I
searched and yelled but found no sign of the driver. Owl called me from the road, her voice faint from
the distance and echoing on the ridges. They'd found him. He was up above; having been thrown out or
jumped out in the last moment. But at any rate, the poor young man was dead. The same company
owned both cement trucks and our driver told us the fellow had only recently been hired and hadn't yet
acquired much driving experience. He was only twenty-one years old.
We were saved by a man I'll never know, and who never knew us, other than what his heart said in
his final moments when he chose to sheer around us on two wheels, and in so doing -- saved us from
the sure death he absolutely knew to be his lot. Therefore he must be the human spirit incarnate. What a
brave soul... Ask me if I like truck drivers.
The snow was falling as we walked into Alaska. Customs had questioned us for an hour before
letting us through. So determined were we to get to Soldotna and see Mushmara that the snow wasn't
even cold. The border guards seemed amazed when we walked resolutely out into the flurries knowing
there was nothing but solid Alaskan wilderness for the next ninety miles without so much as a single
cafe or motel or even a gas station. Not that we had any choice. There were no offers from the Customs
men for any shelter from the storm, no suggestions either. It was no concern of theirs if we froze to
death.
Ahead of us were ninety miles of wild snowstorm and nothing else all the way to the next town. One
never knows if rides will come easily or not. Inclement weather may make drivers extra sympathetic;
however it may also make them decide to stay holed-up in a restaurant or motel until the weather clears
up. So, hitchhikers will either find some ingenuity or they will suffer. This time our worries dissolved
quickly. We got all our rides -- one, two, three, with nary a delay... We were making excellent time,
speeding towards the town of Soldotna, where my sister lived with her family -- and where also lived a
wee little bit of our own family -- our daughter who we hadn't seen in so long that we were just aching
to see her and hold her in our arms.
The near disaster in the cement truck, the increasing cold, the uncertainty of the future, the absence
of the secure feeling of recent months, the weariness of heartache, the anticipation of being with
Mushmara again, and finally perhaps that very poignant propinquity, was having a visible affect on
Owl. Her emotional illness had been fairly dormant while we were in Canada but anxiety and fatigue
can wreck havoc on anyone's personality and Owl was more susceptible than most. I was getting real
anxious to get her to my sister's house where she could have a long rest. Everything would be all right
once we got there. She was talking to herself and her speech was irrational. More than once she
severely irritated the people who gave us lifts. She didn't seem to know where she was or what we were
doing or even who I was. She told people she didn't know who I was and sometimes they believed her.
Our last ride was very strange. The fellow was driving a big old Lincoln and drinking. I didn't like
the way he was looking at Owl as she sat between us in the front seat. I pulled her over next to me and
the miles rolled on by, a hundred miles at least. The guy was a little scary. Our conversation together
was marked by his half-drunk sexual innuendoes. I was happy when we at last approached Soldotna.
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Night had fallen and according to the mileage signs we should be entering Soldotna in five miles or so
when he pulled his Lincoln off the road at a solitary bar tucked into the wilderness of pines. I got out of
the car and went inside the bar to telephone my sister to get directions to her house, leaving Owl with
the bags in the big car with the warm heater. As I stepped into the building's entryway, the old Lincoln
backed out of the parking-lot quickly, its wheels spraying gravel and ice every which direction, and
roared down the highway -- with Owl inside. Quaking with terror, I ran into the bar to get help and to
call the police. I frantically asked the first person I saw inside where the telephone was.
"There's no phone here"; the disinterested person mildly answered my distraught plea. The man
slumping beside him added that the nearest one was several miles away. Well then, I thought quickly,
I'd have to ask someone here to give me a quick ride to that phone or to the police station.
Desperately, I blurted out Owl's predicament. The men in the bar didn't move a muscle. A few eyed
me strangely and silently. Others didn't even pause in their conversations.
Inside my brain the words bounced around crazily, "No Phone! NO PHONE!" I lost all tact at that
point and began yelling loudly that this was an EMERGENCY! My world was spinning. He might be
raping her or beating her or...
"Will somebody please help me?" I interjected loudly into the thick apathy of the smoky room. They
stopped talking and a half dozen bleary eyes gazed at me.
The massive bartender chewed on a toothpick, his bar-cloth swirling absently on the counter. He
roused himself, seriously looked at me with tired, intense round eyes; sighted at me down his index
finger and boomed:
"Buddy, I don't know what your problem is, but it's YOUR problem; NOT OURS! Take it somewhere
else. There's NO PHONE in here, and I'm not serving you any beer, as you've obviously had enough for
one night -- and NO ONE in HERE is driving you ANYWHERE. FURTHERMORE: don't even THINK
of bothering my customers! So you got NO REASON to be in here. Now, Get out that door, and I mean
NOW!"
I made another attempt to explain that I hadn't had any beer at all and that this was really an
EmErGeNcY but the bartender plucked the toothpick out of his teeth and muttered "That does it!" and
started coming around the bar at me with death in his eyes. I retreated outside into the winter night as
fast as I could move. He didn't follow.
I walked to the road. There were no other buildings or stores in sight, just a snowy road swathed into
the dark pines and a night sky of a zillion stars. I had no idea how far Soldotna was from where I was
standing. I figured I would try to flag down a ride... But not one car passed in five minutes... I knew at
that rate I could be standing there all night! I was going nuts with worry!
I could take it no more. I was on the verge of running off down the highway when a well-dressed
businessman ambled out of the bar fumbling for his car-keys. I went to him and begged him for a ride,
and he said to get in. As we entered Soldotna, I went so far as to ask him if he'd drive around a bit
looking for an old Lincoln Continental parked in the trees or just off the road. My wife's life might be
at stake! But he answered that he had agreed to give me a ride into Soldotna, but that's all. He said he
was in a hurry to get home.
He let me off at a phone and I called the police. Then I stood and waited and waited. It took them
half an hour to get there. The cop took down my information and said he'd look for her. I telephoned
my sister too and she drove up in her car and after hurried greetings we commenced to drive around
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and search for Owl.
An hour later, I was falling apart. I mean what little sanity I had left was about shattered. My whole
world was going down the toilet. I'd brought Owl so very very far so she could be reunited with her
baby and here in the last mile some crazy man had stolen her away and she was probably at that very
minute at his mercy. Maybe she would never get to see her baby. Maybe neither Mara nor myself
would ever see Owl again. What a cruel world this was! I felt like lying down in the snow and dying.
Joey and I were standing out in the cold near the police station. Joey was all concerned but she didn't
know what to do. She said she had to get home pretty soon to feed her kids. I knew she did. But I didn't
want to leave the police station in case they heard something. It was pretty cold...
Then some headlights pierced the dark and a large car made a U-turn down the street in the dark and
a door opened. I couldn't quite make out what was going on because there were trees in the way. I
started walking in that direction and saw that someone was moving along the snowy road towards me,
obviously laboring under the load of heavy backpacks and bags.. I had a feeling... Yes. It was Owl.
Owl was giddy and incoherent. Nothing she said made any sense. She would not talk about whatever
had happened. The police told us that if she had nothing to say about the incident there was nothing
more they could do.
So we all squeezed into Joey's compact car and she drove us to her home. Soon we were sitting in
her warm living room and Joey brought out Mushmara. She'd grown so big! She was a year old now.
How time had passed! We put Mara in Owl's arms and I was much relieved to see mother and daughter
at last together again. Owl kissed her and whispered to her but otherwise remained disjointed and
inattentive. Owl lapsed in and out of awareness. Finally she sat back to stare at the walls blankly. She
seemed to not understand where she was. We put her to bed.
Owl remained disoriented for several days -- but even weeks later, she was subject to deep
confusion. I think she was trying to figure the world out, and the answers were so complex and
contained so many painful variables, that she found them unacceptable, and just turned it all off as if it
were a blaring radio.
My sister would have felt more comfortable if Owl could have conversed, being a great talker
herself. Well, Owl's the same way -- in Quebec and in French. But now... with all this heartache... Joey
found Owl's unintelligible mumbles more than disconcerting. Owl was rehashing wounds over and
over in her heart -- making her own sense of chaos. Where does pleasant conversation casually fit in?
She kept to herself. She kept to her burning heart. She has never spoken of her abduction. I guess it
was just one burden among so many that she was literally crushed by the combined weight. It's really
not even unusual or hard to understand.
But gradually in the days that followed, when she held Mushmara I saw the out of control fires
quench slowly but surely. She would murmur, "Ma Bebe, Ma Marie," and hug Mara close.
At first, almost out of habit, she tried to breastfeed the wee love. I guess she didn't know that breast
milk dries up when not used. I felt embarrassed for her. But what do I know? Sure, I bet I know a
hundred normal mothers who might have tried the same thing -- to see if the milk could be turned back
on. But in my sister's home, things like this were creating -- a culture clash. To smooth out the vibes we
had to tell Owl, that kind of feeding was of no value at this time. Mara was used to bottles now... Owl
accepted these small social corrections easily, never bearing resentment; which I always figured was a
tribute to her intelligence. Afterwards, she resigned herself to holding her daughter, rocking her,
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watching her and whispering to her.
The one thing that hurt me though was that Owl asked me many times -- as though she might not
have heard my answer correctly yet -- or in case the answer had changed by reason of the sheer weight
of the supreme divinity of a mother/child bond:
"Har we taking Maree home wit us now to Canadha?"
This shook up my sister terribly, who worried we'd try to run with the babe and would thus
jeopardize all the good she'd accomplished. I had to assure Joey we were grateful and had no such
intentions. (Were we intending to try to hitchhike three thousand winter miles with a baby concealed
under our coats? Not likely.) I had to tell Owl over and over that we could not have Mushmara back
until we could satisfy CSD of our ability to provide a good home for her. But her facial expressions
always seemed to say that she felt she must have missed something vital in the translation. So Owl
never ceased asking me when we could bring "Marie" with us. I wish she would have ceased. I had to
wring out my heart after each time I went through this. Yet, she never seemed to hear my answer.
I could hardly drag Owl away now to return south. I couldn't much drag myself away either. I began
to think maybe I could find a job here in Alaska so we could stay near Mara.
My sister, Joey is a wonderful, gentle momma. We could have found no better person to fill our
need. Her love is pure and simple. She is tuff as oyster shells and smolders like a volcano.
Joey sympathized with Owl's condition but she didn't know Owl. Joey wondered if Owl wasn't
always like this for all she knew. She had heard the awful reports from CSD in Eugene and had been
led to believe that Mushmara would have starved to death if she'd not been taken from us. I was
distressed and disgusted to hear that Joey believed those lies but there was little I could do to change
her vision. I am convinced if she ever became aware of the malfeasance that had shanghaied Mara in
Oregon, she would have been shocked -- but she wasn't about to believe it from me. The perspective of
her black sheep brother could not hold water when compared with the views of any swivel-butt with a
college education. She worked as a secretary in a nice hospital and tended to believe that all social
workers are prone to unbiased truth in their reports. She presumed every social servant shared the
commitment to excellence she had in her own life. It is very difficult for truth to overcome wishful
thinking of that sort. Our lack of credibility was only made worse in her mind by the way Joey and her
husband saw us arrive, hitchhiking into town just as winter was beginning, with very little money and
not much likelihood of remedying that situation. And of course Owl's mental condition accentuated
their worries.
Mushmara Morningdove was playing now. Her blue eyes were expressive! She was so French
looking! She cooed. I couldn't get enough of her. She had grown so much! My own heart ached as I
held her! I wanted her! Perhaps, if I found a good job here everything would work out.
We stayed with them in their home for the first few days sleeping on the floor, but after that they put
us up in a cute little camping trailer that was parked behind Pat's mother's home a couple miles away.
There was propane heat in the trailer and a stove and a comfy bed. Perhaps most importantly this was a
place where Owl and I could have some space to ourselves where we didn't freak people out and they
didn't freak us out. I hoped I could find work locally and spend all winter there. It looked to me like our
best chance to get things together. I asked Joey and Pat if that would be all right with them but they
didn't feel comfortable with the idea. Truthfully it was a disappointment. I knew that we would have a
rough time of it finding winter accommodations in that strange land where we didn't know anyone -unless we received some help from relatives.
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I had disagreements with my sister and her husband. There were parts of our lives that were totally
beyond their comprehension: communes for instance, and nude beaches for another. Things we said,
stories we related, went right over their heads. I could sense Joey holding back judgement sometimes.
Once she suggested timidly, "But you can't raise a child in a place like that!"
Her husband wasn't so timid with his observations. I believed Owl and I had everything necessary in
our hearts and souls to be good parents for Mushmara. Pat voiced his doubts. He disdained what he
perceived to be our feckless lifestyle. And we thought he drank too much. Despite our differences, I
believe we liked each other -- we also certainly had some mutually edifying conversations, some
delicious meals of Salmon he'd caught himself and my sister had canned, some enjoyable days all
socializing together with Mushmara on our laps... And Owl and I were certainly appreciative that he
had taken our daughter into his home as one of his own... But we just couldn't seem to always see eye
to eye well enough for this living arrangement to last.
My sister put it this way:
"This isn't a commune you know..."
Well, yes, I knew that...
All in all, Joey's home was a gentle one and her other children were growing up to be intelligent and
considerate. We felt we'd made a good decision. Mary (they called her Mary Elf) would be safe and
well cared for in their home. There was no need for us to remain anchored there. The arctic cold and
lack of transportation was a primary inhibiting factor though. They gave us a month to find somewhere
else to live...
So before long we found ourselves enduring some queasy feelings when we came to their home to
visit our daughter. Because the days were flying away one after another and although
I walked around Soldotna looking for employment and a different place to live I found nothing. And
it was on everyone's mind that our time was running out in the trailer.
Owl sometimes seemed to get angry. I couldn't blame her. But I often had to take the side of my
sister and brother-in-law for all the obvious reasons. And of course Owl and I both wanted the same
thing: we just wanted to have our daughter with us and live our own lives. But there wasn't any way to
do that. Owl couldn't understand why I didn't do something to get Mara back living with us. She
resorted to deliberately harassing me in a sophisticated way: angry glances, insinuations, snubbing. And
not only me. She seemed to scorn Joey too sometimes, or Pat. Actually it was the whole pretentious
Anglophile system. That's what we all represented to her. A mother's mind is simple and straightforward and honest; and to Owl it was as though we had all contributed to kicking her savagely in the
stomach with our great Anglophile love for monstrous bureaucratic inhumanity. She blamed us all.
This animosity never lasted long. Her good sense always restored her heart and she would soon be
busy trying to make up for her anger. I was as close to Owl as a person could be and I watched and
endured these sweeps of the pendulum. Any fool could have seen she was suffering real bad.
My mind flashed back to a day back on Cortez island when we'd stood on Jammer's cabin steps and
Owl had frantically, pathetically, looked at me and implored: "Tom! We must have a HOME for de
bebe!" The effect that moment had on me was stupefying. Here was the woman I loved; I had this
obligation -- this duty -- to provide for her. So, I had intensified my industry, thinking our Carrington
Harbor home would fill that need and appease my tearing conscience... But all that had fallen apart!
And now, here we were... in the frozen arctic! ...And Owl was pregnant again! ...And in our present
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situation we had less security than ever -- we didn't even have a vehicle in which we might look around
for work or go shopping or even just sit in and stay warm... no job... no home of our own...
And I only had to look in Owl's eyes to know what she was thinking...
Oh God! What was I to do?
Yeah. And back in Carrington Harbor -- a day or so after that other thing... Immersed in my own
insipid foibles, I'd yelled mercilessly at her about the miscreants of Eugene who'd snagged Mushmara
from our bosom, and she finally could take no more and had staggered out the door. A few minutes
later I followed her outside and what did I see? I saw her hitting herself in the face with her fist and
crying. Taking the blame for it all! Punishing herself for everything!
Oh! That she could try to take all that blame upon herself... Oh! That she would try to bear that
heavy load alone! Oh! Need I say, I fell upon her with kisses and pleading, and begged her forgiveness;
and begged her to realize these things weren't her fault... Need I say, I resolved then before God and
everything Holy to give her, somehow, the simple things she asked out of this life? The simple things
she deserved?
Well, very little time had passed since the day of that momentous resolution... and here we were -- in
Alaska! The crises were piling up, suffocating us.
***
So after we'd been staying in the otherwise unused trailer for a month, Pat decided it was time for us
to go away and give his family some peace. So, we reluctantly cleared our gear out of the warm little
abode and hitchhiked west to the small seacoast town of Homer to put some kind distance between his
family and mine -- a breathing space -- and to look for winter work and try to locate a room to rent.
Beside the road, Owl sat on the large bedroll while I stood facing traffic thumbing. How strange we
felt. This Northern winterland was no place to be homeless!! Where were we going? We had no place
in this world anymore.
For all the thoughts that had ever inhabited my brain -- for all the thoughts that ever would -- it was
amazing how empty I seemed to be when I stood there and searched for options, clues, assurances.
How perplexing!
I stuck my tongue out and tasted a snowflake melt. Owl noticed and did the same thing. Silently we
waited for a lift.
At least, we'd seen Mushmara. With that thought came warmth. I noticed Owl's eyes glowing. I knew
where her thoughts lay. And so we were more than a little happy as we waited there on the side of the
road...
Our sheepskin vests, our oily sweaters, our leather patchpants, all served to repel the snow and the
icy winds. The cold air smelled of wood smoke and evergreen, and tasted zingy fresh.
Optimistically, I found myself reflecting that we probably had within ourselves whatever would be
necessary to get on with our lives.
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TWEN-THREE
SURVIVAL SUIT
Homer is one of the warmest Alaskan towns in winter. The temperatures rarely drop below minus
thirty degrees.
Here fierce winter storms stir a vast caldron and the maelstrom seas toss coal up from the depths
onto the shore and locals roam the sands in pick-ups and four-wheel drives seeking large chunks to
burn at home and sometimes to sell for extra winter cash. In the warmer months, wanderers camp on
the beaches with tents and sleeping bags, or if they have no tent they make a temporary shelter under
sheets of plastic. By the time the arctic winter approaches all but the most foolish have journeyed on to
warmer climes or have found conventional suburban accommodations.
On the November evening when we arrived in Homer we walked upon the beach looking for a place
to roll out our bedrolls. Amidst briny logs we found the broken remains of one of the summer camper's
stick-and-plastic huts. We patched the tears, built a coal fire, put our soft sheepskin vests beneath our
heads, and spent a night considerably warmer than we'd expected, at least until the fire went out. After
that it was awful cold.
The sun doesn't rise at any decent hour in Alaska in the winter. But dark though it was something
told us another day had begun. We arose and felt around in the dark for our clothes. Our old leather
Vibram boots were frozen hard as rocks. It was almost impossible to push our feet into them. The final
effort scraped off layers of skin. We may as well have had horseshoes nailed to our feet for the pain of
walking in those frozen boots.
The winds blew fiercely off the sea, scoured us briskly, severely. Gulps of the frigid air shocked our
lungs. We rolled up our gear and kicked our way through snow and sand towards the few neon lights
far in the distance that marked the town's business district.
Coffee on a morning like that is something you might like to pour into your leather boots to soften
them up and warm your feet. You try to sit in the warmest spot in the restaurant or bar, next to the
blazing woodstove, preferably. If you happen to possess an incredible sum of money on such a cold
morning, after such a frozen night, you are in luck! Alaskan businesses will probably cherish your
companionship and conversation.
In our case, inevitably they tired of refilling the cup of coffee Owl and I shared. The thing sat empty
for longer and longer intervals while we glanced at its ceramic void hungrily from time to time, not
daring to broach the waitress of our... emptiness. Sure we felt foolish. But we were broke. And cold. We
asked about work. They told us this was the wrong time of the year to be looking for employment.
Come back in the spring! We had a problem.
The second day the bartender/owner of the establishment eyed us warily when we arrived.
--"Yesterday coffee refills were gratis -- cause I felt sorry for you. Today, you pay full price for each
one... This is a business!"
I offered to sweep up, wash windows.... No. He had someone to do that.
"Sorry..."
The few other restaurants and bars told us the same thing -- often far more rudely. Since they charged
for each refill, ten cups of coffee between two people on a cold winter day easily came to five dollars.
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We didn't have that kind of money. We didn't have much money at all. In fact I was reduced to spare
changing for the first time in years. Not flagrantly though. I felt bad enough about it. I wasn't a wino.
We were just desperate.
I thought maybe if I explained to the tavern owner that we'd been forced by circumstances to
hitchhike up there and had arrived penniless -- that we had no money at all -- that we didn't know how
we'd even get food or stay warm -- he'd come up with some employment. Surely he must know a large
portion of the employers in town... He'd give us a clue, send us in the right direction, introduce us to
someone. I was ready to start working that minute.
But when I tried talking about those things with him he constantly walked on down the bar and didn't
return for long periods of time. So I'd hold my last thought and wait. He'd stay down there at the other
end of the bar gabbing with another customer. When he finally got back, I'd try to pick up where I'd left
off -- and two sentences later he'd be gone again. I was feeling so desperate that I overlooked the
obvious fact that he was avoiding me. Cold temperatures tend to diminish my faculties.
Finally he returned and I started to talk to him again and he broke into my words irritably:
"Hey, so you're broke! So, what else is new? Is that all you've got to talk about? As though I need to
hear another Goddamn sob story! Christ, man! Take it somewhere else, and your dippy woman, too!
Look, I'm sorry. But keep your problems to yourself! Here, have one more cup of coffee on me. Then get
out of here."
There's an immense feeling of shame that comes with being willing and able to work -- yet
remaining unemployed, homeless.
So we learned not to think we could just hang out in there waiting to meet someone who'd give us a
job. ("Don't bother the customers...") We tried to make one cup of coffee last a long time. We'd go out
in the cold, walk around until we couldn't stand it, and return to slowly drink another cup.
Personally, sharing a cup of coffee with Owl beside a woodstove, sitting close together and talking as
we watched the colorful Alaskan world develop around us, was a pleasant and even romantic interlude
-- but short-lived. It never was long before someone told us "not to take up residence" in the place.
"Don't make like this is your living room, man..." When we returned later for another cup, their
conversation would stop and they'd all look at us. We knew we'd been the lowly subjects of their
discussion.
They were fond of asking us when we'd bathed last. Other destitutes might have replied "times are
rough since the Jacuzzi broke down!" But we just mumbled something to change the subject: --"Day
before yesterday..." They'd usually leave us alone then. We'd have accepted the use of a tub if they'd
offered. They'd rather have thought of us jumping into the sea.
We began to seek out warm malls where we'd stand in the areas between the shops. Anything to keep
from freezing. Then we saw their eyes. The clerks in the stores were staring at us. The no loitering
signs were prominent.
I spotted a pay phone and went and faked a phone call. This gave us time to warm up. Soon after I
hung up we were asked to leave. Once again we walked out into the world of ice. We walked a lot -and paced for warmth. We huddled behind buildings out of the wind. We walked through grocery stores
and bought five cents of candy. We returned occasionally to fake a phone call when we were desperate.
No doubt we were the talk of the town. It's awful being destitute in full view! I thought it was
surprising the local folks didn't offer us so much as a shed for warmth or a small job doing -- anything.
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But all they did was just stare at us suspiciously and ignore us.
We felt terrible to be putting them through all this.
Once a policeman checked us out thoroughly. We didn't hold anything back. We told him we had no
place to stay warm. No place to sleep. No friends or relatives nearby. No money. No work. And that
Owl was pregnant. He seemed to listen considerately to our replies to his questions. He was the first
person we had met in Homer who listened to us with anything resembling sensitivity. We hoped he'd
tell us some solution that might exist for our dilemma, perhaps a mission or church group. Anything.
But he didn't. He just told us he'd had received complaints about us from people who worked in the
mall. They'd called the police not because they feared we were freezing to death, but because they
thought we were lurking around trying to steal things. I assured him that we did not ever do that. His
sensitivity was now revealed to be a useful appliance he could turn on or off at will. His eyes no longer
betrayed any empathy at all. He cared a lot if we were stealing candybars from the businesses but he
didn't care at all if we were freezing to death on the streets of his town. Oh. Something else he warned
us about: sleeping on the beach was illegal. If he heard about us sleeping on the beach he would have to
arrest us. He asked me if I intended to sleep on the beach? I mumbled "certainly not". He didn't press
the issue to find out where we would sleep if not on the beach. He just warned us not to loiter around
the mall and sauntered off.
Daytime the winds off the sea whip any bare skin raw -- and you hurt until you're numb and then,
you burn.
It's funny how a person's inner vision of oneself is so different from how others see us. In my heart I
could easily imagine someone noticing our plight and stepping forward to meet us and afterwards
handing me his business card with the words:
"Call me first thing in the morning. I'll have something for you. I'm sorry to see you like this. I can
tell you're honest."
But we never ran into a single person like that. Not one.
I don't know why... Plainly we were considered unemployable. We must have appeared pretty bad for
them to figure we deserved to freeze to death in their streets in front of their cold eyes.
We met some other desperate homeless people living inside a flimsy canopy on the back of a pick-up
truck. The only job they had found was repairing fishing nets for which they were paid the lowest
wages in Alaska. The knots had to be tied with bare hands, on wet nets, outside in the thirty below zero
weather. They couldn't work enough hours to rent the most squalid doghouse on the Kenai Peninsula.
Their hands resembled claws. They had coffee money -- but they kept dropping the mugs.
We envied them their job and their truck.
As they gazed at us there was horror in their eyes. They were glad they'd found the job before we
did.
Actually, I was too. I couldn't bear to think of Owl's hands in that condition.
We continued to sleep on the beach. We would walk along the highway past the businesses and
watch the traffic on the road. When there were no headlights in any direction we would hightail it as
fast as we could out among the sand and snow and logs. In the starlight we would find the tattered
plastic shelter and roll out our blankets and sleeping bags in layers and crawl in and cover up. We could
not build a fire or it might be seen and bring the police. We shivered all night.
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We didn't take into account the fact that the tides in winter are the highest of the year. One night the
ocean came upon us as we slept -- suddenly soaking the bottom of our blankets and bags. It was too
dark to see what was happening. We awoke to discover ourselves surrounded by the fast rising tide.
Mighty combers were rushing to the shore playing pickup sticks with the great logs. We gathered our
gear in our arms and ran for our lives. What a cold wet shivery night that was...
***
The cheapest rentals in Homer in 1978 were the log cabins in the center of town: one room for $270
per month. One day in one of those cabins we met the first and only people in the entire town of Homer
who were concerned about how we were doing out in the cold. The poor people assembled in the little
room were a montage of rogues, pathetic souls struggling through the winter as best they could.
The cabin was packed. One of them gave us all a special treasure that day, some songs from his
guitar. He was like every poet/guitarist in the Hands of God whom we had ever listened to in Boulder,
or Tucson, or Old Montreal, or Cougar in those mystical days when the stars seemed to have us all
tethered to the primal dynamos of Universe Center; rhythms, melodies, and poems busting into our
minds for solace and encouragement from the same source of sources that promised our hearts and
struck our paths and fused together all our tears running to the One Salty Ocean.
Sitting among those honorable folk ordained were we to receive singing from a Spirit Wind that
pushed the sails of his heart into the waysides of our withering souls -- to restrengthen us to endure
what otherwise could not be endured. We sat enthralled, all of us, listening to his ballads for hours. He
was a fire that warmed us all, in places we didn't know we were cold.
The landlady limited how many could sleep in her rental units, and was so strict about it that our
friends did not dare to help us lest they lose what they had. So that night we slept again on the beach
under our plastic.
The following afternoon we returned to the cabin. The fellows were all very somber. They told us
piteously that the valiant singer of the day before was dead. He had been very hungry and very cold and
the only job he could find was a dangerous one -- as a helper on a crab boat. So he'd gone out to sea
early that morning. But the greedy captain had overloaded his ship with crab pots making it top-heavy.
In rough seas, the craft had overturned and sunk. Only the captain had a survival suit. Only the captain
survived.
Crab fishing is lucrative, but there was no money for a six-hundred dollar rubber survival suit for the
slave-labor employee. Insurance bought the captain a new boat, better than the last one. It would hold
more crab nets. He would employ two slaves. He would become wealthier. There would still be no
survival suit for those desperate helpers -- obtained from the freezing desperate men lurking in the
frozen streets. They were totally dispensable. Everyone knows how expensive Dungeness and Alaskan
crabs are in restaurants. Even small crab pot boats bring in hundreds and thousands of pounds of crabs
and the owners buy new houses and new cars and new boats. But the guitarist's job as a helper paid
minimum wage and there was no survival suit to save his worthless life.
I could have been next. In fact I could easily have been the person who that captain had approached
and offered the job that day instead of him. If he had included a warm place for Owl to wait while we
were at sea I would probably have taken it. But what if he had said that Owl could come along and sit
in the cabin and drink coffee while we fished? We'd have done that.
We are certainly all in the hands of God...
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If it wasn't for the small check deposited monthly in my California bank account, we too would have
entertained these captains and insurance brokers and bartenders one morning by being found frozen
solid on one of their sidewalks.
When my bank finally sent some money we ravenously attacked a restaurant, ordering so much food
we made ourselves sick and had to eat aspirin. But it was truly a paltry sum. If we had spent the money
on motel rooms it would all have been gone in less than a week. We had to find some way to make it
stretch. Some way to make it provide us with a warm place to live and sleep. Size didn't matter. We'd
have gladly accepted a cluttered broom closet in a garage.
***
As we wandered up and down those frozen streets I couldn't help but notice the cutest little hotrod I'd
ever seen parked in a lot near the highway. Time and again I'd find myself stopping to gazing at it in
admiration, pressing my face against the windows to peek inside. The thing was like a cartoon -- it was
too purty to be real. There was a "For Sale" sign in the window but I didn't want to destroy the illusion
by discovering the fantastic price the next owner would cough up for this jewel. I had no aspiration or
hope that she would ever be mine. I just loved her lines -- just for the sake of the sacred Verve that only
freezing pedestrians in the Arctic might express. Wow. I ate her up with my eyes. My dreams melted on
her and glazed her like a donut.
She was a 1952 Chevy delivery Sedan: baby blue, bucket seats, reversed deep-dish chrome rims,
velvet side panels, floor panels, roof panels and no dents. She had a visor over the windshield, a little
bitty wooden steering wheel -- and a blown up motor.
Finally I couldn't resist any longer. I looked at the price. $100. Heaven was smiling. I bought her.
All of a sudden I had to solve the logistics problem of moving around a truck with a blown motor in
winter in Alaska. Even if we didn't get her running till Spring, once parked we'd have the warm place to
sleep we'd been looking for.
And then a little more good luck came our way. We met a fellow who let us park our new rig on his
property while we rebuilt the motor.
He was a homespun good-natured person and he would often put on coffee for us in the morning and
let us use his bathroom. And he didn't mind at all if Owl sat around the kitchen of his house-trailer
talking to him while I worked on the motor of the Chevy outside. He entirely sympathized with what
she'd been through. And I don't recall that he ever deigned to treat her as if she were strange, or weird,
or abnormal, or dumb. I don't understand how a person with his attitudes could survive among the other
Alaskans.
I bought a new crank kit with all the bearings and a gasket set. I pulled the transmission and the
head. I worked outside, on frozen ground, in weather that never got warmer than zero degrees. My
fingers froze to the wrenches, skin tearing in the removal, blood freezing on sockets and ratchets.
Remembering the Jeep failure, I sought out a local mechanic and asked him if he would give me
some pointers so I didn't go through a situation again. He was a typical Alaskan though. He said if I
wanted it done right I should pay him thirty dollars per hour to do the work. I told him I didn't have that
kind of money, that my wife and I were homeless and hungry and freezing every night, and that by
getting the Chevy running we would have a large part of our problem solved. So it was really important
that I do the rebuilding job myself and that I do it right and got the car running good.
He listened to me impatiently. He put his hand up for me to stop talking. He said he didn't have time
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to listen to such things. He said he wanted me to listen to what he had to say, and listen good. He made
his living by repairing vehicles. If he told people how to do it themselves they wouldn't need his
services, would they? So why would he want to tell me how to rebuild that Chevy engine? He pointed
to the door.
Okay. He made his point. I would have to figure it out myself.
The Chevy sat on a gentle incline of ice and snow. I had to jack up the car and remove the right front
tire. One thing my dad taught me long ago, with such nose-to-nose emphasis that I will never forget it,
is that when you remove a wheel, always block up the car. If nothing else is handy, use the wheel itself.
Never leave a jacked-up car unblocked.
So, I set the tire under the suspension as I slid under the motor to install the crank. Suddenly the car
lurched forward; the jack tilted and WHAM! The whole car fell on me! But that nine-inch wide wheel
I'd set under the springs saved my life!
My arm was pinned across my chest though, and I had only one breath in my lungs and when it was
gone I could not get another one. With that lone breath I called "Owlee! HELP!" and just lay there,
struggling to refill my flattened lungs.
Inside the closed doors of the house trailer, fifty feet away, a radio was playing on the table between
Owl and our new friend as they sat over coffee.
But Owl heard my scream.
I heard the trailer doors open and the sound of footsteps scurrying across the snow. I heard anxious
voices questioning each other, hurriedly.
"Are you sure you heard him call for help?"
"Whair is he?"
"Do you see him?"
"He was juust here working on de car a mhinute passed!"
"LOOK! He's unner de car!" -- "Oh! De kar has fall on heem! He can note get howt!"
"Tom!! Can you breathe?"
"Oh Rhom!"
"He can't talk! Is he conscious?"
"Yes, I tink so..."
"Here, I'll try to lift it...oooff... Come, let's both try..."
"Oh! It eez much heavee!"
"This is no good. We'll have to jack the car up."
Although neither one had ever used a jack like mine before, Owl had watched me and between the
two of them, they managed to raise the car far enough for me to crawl out.
I was lucky to be alive, thanks to Owl. Her heart was tuned to me for sure because ears alone would
not have been enough. She saved my life.
My arm ached, but I continued working on the motor. I think the poor property owner finally started
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worrying about his insurance. Plus he explained to us that some other family members were returning
and they would need their space. He told us he could only let us stay a couple more days. My money
was almost gone. We were betting everything on this old blue goose.
If the Chevy would run, we would have no trouble wintering in Alaska. We could visit Mary
Morningdove whenever we wanted. We could drive around these towns and find work. We would no
longer be limited to Homer. We could even drive the rig down the Alaskan highway to B.C. and Cortez
island! This rig meant so much. My frozen fingers had a purpose. I worked on her after dark by electric
light on a long extension cord. Finally, everything was assembled and ready for me to turn the key.
But the motor wouldn't start. We tried pulling it. The wheels wouldn't budge unless it was in neutral.
Frantically I dropped the pan and checked a bearing. It was scored BAD, just like the Jeep bearings
had been. Whatever I had done wrong I had done wrong on both vehicles.
The friend from the house trailer looked over the motor sadly.
"Did you put enough 'first lube' on the rods and mains?"
"What is 'first lube'?" I asked him.
"You know! The grease you put on the bearings to lube them until the oil pump can pump oil through
the system!" he answered incredulous at my lack of knowledge.
"I never heard of that before. I thought the oil in the system lubed them all from the git-go." I replied.
He looked at me with a tired expression.
Then it hit me like a ton of ice. This was the missing piece to the puzzle. This was the same reason
why the Jeep had scored her bearings back in Blue River. What a fool I'd been! I'd let the same mistake
ruin both motors. No one had ever told me about greasing the rod and main bearings during
installation!
I was desolated.
Ruining each of the two motors had canceled all the good things that would have happened if the
cars had become usable! Vast wonderful things!
Either one of those rigs could have saved our family if they would have run after I rebuilt them.
Oh man-oh-man! To think of the wasted hours! Wasted Dreams!
And I had no more money to make things turn out right!
And
No
More
Time.
188
TWEN-FOUR
XMAS
If only we could find a fairly permanent place to park the Chevy we'd at least have a warm place to
sleep. And we'd need someone to tow us...
The little car was as cold inside as out whenever we first crawled in and shut the door. Body heat
eventually warmed up the small interior -- but that took several hours. The coldest nights were still
tough -- but nowhere near as tough as it had been on the beach. Mornings in the Chevy were always
warm. We could have hibernated like bears...
We're dreamers. My dreams have always been the wind in the sails of my life. They blow me away
sometimes. I follow them. I steer by them.
In the arctic cold, diving into the blankets was sometimes the only way to stop shaking. The terrible
cold would make dreamers out of anyone. One needs an escape...
As we cuddled together we dreamed life's dreams.... Phantasies and bad dreams -- all kinds of icicle
inspired dreams, calling us to our sheepskin-shirt pillows.
My dreams were usually fun things -- real escapism. Often I was swept back with passionate
phantasies recalling those Sexual Freedom League-type thrilling days of yesteryear, the sixties, when
we were dogmatic, (dog-o-matic?) dutibound free-fuckers, obligated to liberate each other's sexual
inhibitions... Tantra-ganja-extravaganzaers. Pillow-soaring, those celestial feline freelove tanned-andbanned ladies bespoke me and come-hithered me, and we tumbled in the mists of timelessness,
nineteen-sixty-ninefullness... Sometimes they were daisyfiel' dreams, sometimes they were mistymellow memories. Mmmm-mmm-mmm
More often Owl was my dream-mate: I dreamed portraits of her, cameos, eyes full of beach fun,
intense sexuality, wise serenity. In my dreams she would look me deep in my eyes and touch my lips
with a finger. As if she were saying, "Thees eez forhevair Romanytomany. Hyou and I. No hwon wheell
hevair tek dis awhay." And I would awaken full with the knowledge of the absolute Holy difference
between her and every other woman I'd known. She was meant for me and I for her...
And Mara was there too. Sometimes I was enraptured by the happy baby bouncing in my arms,
wide-eyed and talking to me about Owl and soft flannel and the gentle pastel colors of tiny toys,
waving a cat-tail reed with a firm little hand beneath a sky of swirling clouds and the swaying boughs
of river-trees, trembling in the whisper-winds of the baby's voice and birdsong.
And I had a dream of Owl standing in a cotton dress singing a song on a golden beach to a tow head
child who clutched her dress and hung onto her legs, and looked up at her with dove's eyes and would
never let her go, never let her go, never let her go...
And there were bad dreams too...
Bad dreams of Nazi-like government officers grilling us slowly till we'd break into hysteria. Bad
dreams of vehicles out of control hurtling through space down, down, down, toward boulders and trees.
Bad dreams of giant crabs inching sideways closer and closer to us, their claws menacing, their beady
little red eyes waving and peering as they crawl onto us.....
***
For Christmas, canneries pack gift boxes of Alaskan King Crab. Huge ships bring them into dock
and dump them down ramps into great bins. These animals are alive as live can be and they distinctly
189
resemble one's worst dreams.
Crabs are cannibals. Given any chance at all, they will eat each other. They approach one another
warily; claws raised in threat. Attacking at every opportunity, they grapple and disarm the other and the
winner feasts. Of all animals, they eat the most human flesh, too. I never met a seaman who didn't hate
crabs, no matter how good they taste, no matter how rich they make the fisherman.
Towards the end of November Owl and I were both hired to pack the crablegs in boxes for shipment
all over the world. I thought it would be good experience for her. She'd never had a chance to work at a
job before. If only they'd tolerate her idiosyncrasies until she got the hang of it everything might just be
okay. But Owl was too spaced-out. She became engrossed watching all the employees and didn't pay
attention to the crabs passing by on the conveyor belt. The supervisor called me into the office to
explain her behavior. He thought she was on drugs. I tried to explain some of the things she'd been
through. But he only half listened. He had a business to run. He said he was astonished that I would
believe a person in her condition would be capable of working. I still think she would have caught on in
time.
They wouldn't let her wait inside the factory while I worked so Owl had to stay outside in the thirtybelow zero cold. I was extremely worried about her being alone out there while I packed crabs. It was
so dark much of the time. And the grizzled men of Homer looked at her so strangely... Sometimes she
went out on the beach and huddled in a sleeping bag to keep warm. Other times she just stood there in
the parking lot for hours. I felt so sorry for her. Thirty below zero, standing outside in the freezing
darkness... Oh God!
I guess it was about the second week of December when we managed to pull together enough money
to rent one of those "cheap" log cabins in town. We towed the Chevy to our new home. It was a great
feeling of relief to living inside a regular domicile with a real bed and cupboards and stove and
refrigerator -- a safe and warm home for my Owl, where I wouldn't have to worry about her while I
worked...
She spent her days alone in the cabin. She cooked dinner for me when I came home from work. She
did some knitting. She baked some cakes and seemed to enjoy house-mouse things but I think she
sometimes got pretty lonely.
Still the normal wifeliness of the arrangement had her jumping around happily much of the time. In
fact, she seemed so normal I came to feel all her past problems, including the mental ones, stemmed
from my inability to provide her with a regular home and normal life. Evidently that's what fit most
perfectly into her gentle dreams...I made up my mind to try to make up for what she'd missed. In no
time I took to imagining us happily growing old in the Homer community, fishing and working in the
packing plants. I realized this was a feeling I had been missing out on too.
A simple life. A happy life.
I made up my mind. If in two months it looked like we were well on our way to the security that
would appease Children's Services, we'd start the negotiations to get Mara returned. I couldn't speak to
Owl about it yet, though. I couldn't bear to get her hopes up if...
***
Christmas arrived. There was no money for presents and only chicken for dinner but we were happy.
Owl outdid herself cooking and cleaning. She mused and hummed as she worked, looking at me now
190
and then as if she wanted to say something. Her eyes were brilliant with animation when she finally
spoke.
"It wood be nize, Rhom, if Marie were heer wit us for dis dey, do you tink?"
I held her tight and stared through the window into the night over her shoulder.
"Yes, Owly, that would be the most wonderful thing I could imagine, too." I answered her gently.
As gently she asked me back:
"You teenk eet would be possibool, your sistare wood allow Marie to kome for won dey, maybee?"
She'd been asking me this a lot lately. There was a rock in my gut. My temples throbbed and my
throat choked up. But I answered,
"No, it wouldn't be possible -- not right away anyway..."
Joey was afraid if we had Mara in our possession alone we might run for the border somehow. She
wasn't about to trust Mara with us. We weren't invited there for the holidays, either. We'd worn out our
welcome in her home, with our month-long stay. Chagrin. Good Gosh! Were we ever the lousy black
sheep!
Still, Owl couldn't understand why she couldn't have Mara a little sometimes. The cabin was so big
and warm and... Though I tried my best to explain the situation to her, she still couldn't drop the
subject.
I'd talked to my sister on the phone about it. These things weren't happening.
Owl didn't give up. She had obviously been thinking on this matter very much during her long hours
of solitude that day in the cabin.
"But yhou could ask herr eef nachst moonth Marie kude come veesit? Just for won hhour Rom? Won
Hhour?"
I had to sit down. At work I could almost forget my heart. I could almost put Owl's heart out of my
mind too. Now I had to face her. I buried my head in my hands. She put her hand on my forearm. When
I looked up she was still looking at me as before. These ideas were urgent in her heart. They had to
come out.
"I will telephone Joey and ask her again, my love."
"--Won hhour Maybee... It wood note be too mutch Rhom! It wood be nize, Rhom! I kude make a
leetle cake -- wit frosting? Yhou teenk Rhom? It wood be so nize!"
She was cheering like a winter flower. Her hands at her side, she looked from my eyes to the rafters
to the window to the stove. I knew she was planning the cake already. I knew she'd been planning it for
days.
I had to go outside. I had to get some air. I'd only leave her for a moment, but I had to go outside
alone.
"Perhaps we'll fix the Chevy, Owl, in the spring. Then we will visit her whenever we like! And
perhaps we'll have some picnics and things!"
When Owl heard this, she effervesced, "Ooh Rhom! That would be so nize! To driive the leetle car to
viisit Marie. You tink we could feex it?"
191
It was Christmas. I wanted to make her happy.
"Owl, most of the parts are new. We need another crank kit is all. I'll do it right, next time."
She squeezed me tight. "Good, Tom!"
I kissed her and hurried out the door into the night and stood in the dark beside the cabin. Maybe
Joey would allow it... If the job panned out good... If I could fix the Chevy... Maybe...
A Christmas of hope.
Hope... Yes, A Christmas of hope built on seafoam. I lived in the pipedream that the packing plant
would so appreciate my services that they would find a place for me on a permanent basis. At least I
expected several months work. But just after Christmas they told me there was no more work and gave
me my final check which wasn't enough for rent and barely enough for a little food, especially since
they had taken out for a pair of expensive tall rubber boots that everyone who worked there had to
wear. Well at least they fit and I had room inside for two or three thick pairs of socks.
Fortunately my bank was sending some money and it should arrive around the sixth of January. I
went to the manager of the cabins and told her that I was laid-off and that I had some money coming up
to cover the rent and it should arrive around January sixth.
But she glanced at me meanly and said, "Your rent isn't due on the SIXTH. It's due on the FIRST.
And that is when I expect to have it in my hands. That's how things work around here. We don't permit
any goddamn funny business so you better get with the system. If you don't have your rent money on the
day it is due you will be out on your ass -- because I already have it rented to someone else. Lots of
people want that cabin."
Her eyes stared, boring holes through me as she talked. I hadn't expected her to be so unbending.
Surely she was joking. She wouldn't really evict us in January simply because our rent was a few days
late would she? One look at her eyes told me she was stone cold serious.
"I don't know what to do! I will have the money. It's being sent from California. But it can't possibly
get here before the sixth..."
She fumed.
"What part of what I said don't you understand? If you and that stupid broad you have living with
you don't have your rent money on the first you have to GET OUT. IT'S THAT SIMPLE. Is it any
CLEARER now?"
She actually looked like she wanted to get physically violent with me! And she was deliberately
insulting me to make me angry so I would say something that would give her a reason! I humbled
myself low and tried to appeal to her. Maybe she mistakenly thought we had relatives or friend who
would take us in.
"We don't have anywhere else to go. We'd have to go back to living in the car until my money gets
here..."
"Not on my property, you won't!" she cut in brutally.
"And living in an automobile is ILLEGAL in Homer. We don't allow that here. You try doing that
anywhere in this town and I'll report you to the police."
"Why would you do that?" I was astonished.
192
"Because you'd be breaking the law, that's why. I suppose you think you can just pick and choose
whatever laws you want to obey and break the others? Not in this town you don't! It's MY DUTY to
report you."
"Golly! That's pretty heartless. My wife is pregnant. She can't be freezing outside. I have to have
shelter for her--"
"DON'T YOU TALK BACK TO ME! When my husband gets home from work he'll set you straight,
Mister!"
"I'm not! I'm just saying--"
"IT'S NOT MY PROBLEM! Go to Welfare or something. I'm just telling you -- you better be out of
that cabin on the first!"
Shaken badly, I turned to leave. She yelled again.
"DON'T YOU WALK OFF WHILE I'M TALKING TO YOU! I don't want you touching that car until
the fifty-dollar cleaning deposit that you still haven't paid me is in my hands. I'm holding the car until
then. And I'm warning you, I can have the police here in five minutes -- So don't be trying anything
sneaky!"
"But the cabin is clean. And since we're leaving--"
"I warned you about mouthing off to me! It's part of the agreement. Everyone pays a cleaning
deposit. And you haven't yet. After you leave, I'll check the cabin and see how clean it is -- but I'll tell
you this now -- we consider the cleaning deposit to be nonrefundable."
"But, we have so very little money. I've been laid off from the packing plant--"
"I'M CALLING MY HUSBAND!"
She hissed and slammed the door in my face.
She really looked like a crab. If life energy can somehow be in two places at one time, then I was
seeing her sidle sideways as she spoke in a voice as cold as the winter sea, with eyes that never left me.
She seemed to be pointing the way to a cold, cold death.
She was definitely Dungenesse. Definitely.
Owly was noticeably pregnant now. She loved this little log house. It wasn't much but at least it
satisfied our immediate needs. She was cooking supper when I came in.
Delicately, I told her we were kicked out of the cabin as of the first of January -- and that they were
holding our car until we paid them fifty dollars we owed and threatening to call the police if we tried to
sleep in the car. I assured her that as soon as our money arrived, we would find some other place to
rent. I told her it wasn't my fault. This terrible lady landlord was awfully cold-hearted!
It seemed to me that Owl could not cognize what I was saying. Looking in her eyes, I didn't see
things registering sensibly. After a moment she asked me:
"Wharre weel we go, Rom?"
She had such faith in me...
But I had no reassuring answer. The deadly sting of the landlady's words seemed to have paralyzed
me. Everywhere I looked I saw a dead end.
193
"The beach, I guess, but even that might not be possible -- or it could be difficult anyway. The police
are imposing a thirty-dollar fine on any campers caught sleeping on the beach. And it's double for a
second offence, and triple for a third... The police find them easily by the glow of their fires. The only
safe way is to sleep without a fire..."
Owl looked deep into my eyes and then away out through the window glass towards the beach.
"That wood be COLD, Rhom. Not good for de Bebe..."
She rubbed her tummy.
"I know..."
Dumbly, it was all I could say. I felt moribund. I tried to think of some words I could say to Owl to
give her some hope. I could say that perhaps the landlord would relent. Being a woman herself she
must be feeling some compassion somewhere inside her soul for my pregnant wife. But even if she had
one, I couldn't see soul-searching as being a normal habit of hers.
I went out looking for work or housing, anything. Together, we went to the welfare office. There was
not even food stamps available for us. There was no emergency housing. We called churches. There
wasn't a single church in the town of Homer willing to offer us any emergency assistance. We went to
each and every one of them.
Alaska was incredible. The same scenario was repeated over and over. We would be admitted into an
office to speak to a church secretary. She would ask us to sit down. She would ask us to spill our guts at
length. Then she would pass us on to another secretary or administrator who would ask us to tell him or
her all our circumstances all over again. Then that person would in turn pass us on to a minister who
would ask us to go through all the information again. And then he would invariably end up telling us
the church had no funds and no facilities to assist us.
It's quite possible that their answer might have been different if we had been members of their
church. Or even if we had been ardent Christians in any familiar way they could recognize. My religion
was strong but it was my own and it was a lot different from anything Baptists or Lutherans were likely
to understand, so I knew it would be best if I kept my mouth shut about it. It was a very difficult
situation to be in. To be forced to be asking for money or emergency accommodations from church
people whose lives and beliefs were so alien to everything happening in our lives. How could they
understand us? I am sure they could not understand us at all. They must have stereotyped us quickly as
hippie potheads, and perhaps very radical ones. They didn't want us anywhere near their church and
they certainly didn't want to be giving us any sustenance which would allow us to go on living our
heathen lives on their money. So it was either we start singing their songs and living their ways or we
should just flat go off and die in some snowdrift and the faster the better.
It was all so obvious. But I loved Owl and I didn't want her to suffer in that terrible cold anymore
with our baby in her belly. We had to do something. So I kept on searching. I went through every
church in Homer one by one looking for any one of them who might be able to help us.
The ministers and their secretaries were all so impersonal and callous...
A minister was interviewing me and he had come to the point of telling me that his church couldn't
help Owl and I find anyplace warm to sleep or any food to eat and I asked him:
"How about this: Is there any WORK I could do for you in return for some help in surviving this
dreadful winter? It's not for me that I ask -- But my wife is pregnant! I'm getting so worried..."
194
Here the clergyman changed the subject to ask me if I'd discovered Christ. It made me exasperated.
Owl had her French Bible. I had my English one. We actually carried them in our packs. We might not
have had such a problem if there had been a silent Quaker Meeting in Homer. I like the way silent
Quakers leave a man's faith to be a private and personal thing between that person and God. This
minister sitting opposite me was deliberating whether this man and woman who had come to him for
help were worth any effort on his part to keep them from dying. Here before him sat a pregnant young
woman in danger of freezing to death on the doorsteps of his Christian church and this minister wanted
to make sure I wasn't a secret Buddhist first. Or who knows what? Maybe a Hindu. Or a Catholic. Or
God forbid, a pagan Goddess worshipper...
Owl is a natural Christian in the simplest of ways. But me, I get deeply involved in my thoughts on
philosophy and religion and things make sense to me that most Christian ministers would consider
heretical nonsense -- so I knew I didn't want to let him get me started or we might end up arguing and it
would scuttle any chance we had of finding a warm place to get out of the cold. I very carefully
answered all his questions with my thoughts phrased in ways which would not couch my differentness
-- and I even prayed with him -- and I felt real clammy because such prayers seem so indifferent and
callous when afterwards the same clergymen turn you out into the freezing cold empty-handed. I guess
he sensed my differentness and he wanted to root some of it out so he asked me more pointed questions
and I answered them as best I could. He smiled widely a few times as though I was quite a character. It
actually made me optimistic. The interview went on and on. When it was finally over he shook hands
with us and thanked us for stopping by and chatting with him. He said he had had an enjoyable
afternoon but now he had to get back to work. Then he turned us out into the cold with a hollow
sounding:
"I'm really sorry that I have nothing material to offer you to help you out of your predicament."
He gave us nothing.
Back at the end of the sixties and in the early seventies I went through a stage in my life where I was
reading the bible constantly and I memorized quite a few passages. The verses came forth again one
day in Homer during an interview...
A church receptionist had just spent an hour giving me the same run-around that all the other
churches had given us. I told her we had slept out on the frozen beach when we arrived and that we
were about to be forced to have to do it again and that Owl was pregnant... She didn't regard it with
much interest or concern at all. I could tell by looking at her that she had never suffered in the cold,
never gone hungry, never worried the kind of worries Owl and I were facing daily. It is not in my
nature to judge someone like her too harshly for such ignorance but I also suspected that she believed I
was lying about us sleeping on the winter beach -- in order to connive money out of her church. And
that hurt. She seemed to have made up her mind that we were degenerates and unworthy of her
attention. It became obvious that she was about to dismiss us. It seemed so unfair...
Then she asked me if I knew who Jesus Christ was! Like as though she were Pope John and I were a
Pygmy from deepest Africa. It was really exasperating.
"Sure", I answered her, "At one period or another in my life I have even memorized some scriptures
about Christians aiding others less fortunate than themselves! Good Samaritan stuff, want to hear
some verses?" And with some nitty-gritty sincerity, I recited her a few of the ones that dealt with
"Scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites" and I also started to quote to her a large section from the Sermon on
the Mount.
195
Whereupon she replied angrily, "Really, Mr. Ollamh, do you have to be hostile?"
I had meant no disrespect but had only tried to show her our hearts were not so very far off the
beaten track of the scriptures of any Christian church. After all: I wasn't trying to disguise the fact that
we'd come to them in an effort to keep from freezing. We weren't necessarily there to be saved or
converted to their church. We came freezing and homeless seeking Christian charity, pure and simple -out of dire need. But they were all fluff and bluff and guff. Charity for scraggly hippies wasn't on their
agenda.
Oh, we knew intrinsically that there were good folks practicing heartfelt Christianity just over the
next hill, if we only managed to live long enough to find them.
But walking along afterwards, bending ourselves into the bitter-cold sea-winds, we could not help
but think aloud to each other that Alaska's version of Christianity that Christmas season seemed to be
leaving out the person and the teachings of the vital human element which Christian churches normally
consider to be the center of their church.
196
TWEN-FIVE
GEE--LOVES
On January first I went to see the manager again and she opened the door a bare crack to keep the
cold outside and probably me, too.
"You should have been out by now. You and your girlfriend or wife or whatever she is, have one hour
to move everything out of the cabin or I'm calling the police".
So that was it. We were out.
I had considered trying to grab the car quickly and towing it... where? Anyway, I always had to come
back to the fact that we couldn't have moved the car without great difficulty. It would require a lot of
snow shoveling before anyone could tow it off. And it was sitting under two feet of the crisp white fluff
-- right in front of her window!
Snow is good insulation. Hungrily I imagined how warm it would be to sleep inside our car -- if only
she had a heart.
Peeking with one angry eye through the crack of the door she watched me think. Guessing my
thoughts, she reminded me she could have the police there in minutes if we tried taking the car.
I lost my temper momentarily:
"That's O.K. The beach is FINE! It's only minus thirty degrees!"
"Don't you dare get insolent with me. I don't have to take any crap from the likes of you! Now get
your stuff out of that cabin and get out of here! And don't forget: The police will get you if you try
sleeping on the beach. It's ILLEGAL!"
She slammed the door again.
For the life of me I couldn't understand what she expected of us! If she kicked us out of our
apartment and we had no money to rent another place and she wouldn't let us near our car and if she'd
call the police if we tried to sleep on the beach -- Where exactly did she expect us to go? What was left
for us to do? What was she trying to do to us? That's something I've never figured out.
I stood there at her door for a moment trying to think of something more to say, some bargain to
strike. I'd brought my stash of rough uncut star rubies in my pocket in case I could interest her in a
small deal... But that was clutching at straws. Heck, they weren't even cut. But if there were some sort
of grindstone around I could make her something valuable. So I was standing there debating whether to
knock again.
I knocked. The door erupted and there was her big mean face like some sort of arctic crocodile.
"YEAH?"
"I have some star rubies from India..."
"Yeah? Where the Hell would YOU ever get RUBIES?"
"I grind them into gemstones for rings. It's my trade. I'm a gem cutter."
"Yeah? Well, I don't believe you! And I'm not interested in rocks! We use MONEY here. M-O-N-E-Y!
ROCKS? RUBIES? How would I know they're not fake? You're not pullin' anything over on me!
"They are REAL! You could hold them as collateral until the sixth. Then I'll collect them and pay my
197
rent!"
"Collateral? I've got collateral! I've got your car! And YOU are OUT! We don't want you around
here. You better hurry if you know what's good for you."
She slammed the door again.
Still I stood there. Owl was pregnant. There must be something...
Through the door, I heard her dialing the phone. Dismayed, I turned and trudged hurriedly back to
our cabin. Was she calling the cops?
So now I had to go tell Owl that everything had to be moved immediately into the Chevy or the
police would come. In fact, they might be on their way, even now. I told her again how we couldn't
sleep in the Chevy while it was on this property. Even after we paid the deposit off, sleeping in the car
would be rough. The city had a bitter impound policy. The snowplows tolerated no unmovable
vehicles.
I had only one dreadful idea where we would sleep and that was on the beach -- with no fire. And
now the winter was at its peak -- much colder than it had been when we slept out there in November.
This was gonna be rough.
Owl began to cry. She rarely complained about our lot in life, about the road we had to trek together,
but at this time, she broke down.
Yet, I could not be all sympathy. I didn't have time to be. The police might be on their way here right
now. At the next moment they might be pounding on this door with that crocodile face bitching at their
side.
I kissed Owl and shook her and picked up her chin with my finger so she could see my eyes and I
hers as I said this thing which I had to say to her:
"Listen to me, Owl! Your tears are lost on those people! Your tears are worthless! Those people don't
care about you -- or me -- or the baby in your tummy! Wake up and look around! They don't like you!
They don't like me! They don't like themselves! They like MONEY! Nothing else! Don't expect anything
good or kind from them! They won't bat an eye if we're frozen dead tomorrow morning! The only one
who loves me is YOU. The only one who loves you is ME! If we are going to live through this, we'll
have to help each other to be strong -- because short of seeing us dead, nothing would tickle them more
than to see me go to jail and you left out there, wandering the streets and freezing all alone -- in front
of them -- free for them to use. This cruel world has deprived them of any television channels, so to kill
their boredom they've made their own streets into tragic and terrible soap operas! We are their
entertainment! If we freeze to death they'll love it! We have to be smarter than them! We have to stay
together and stay alive! Now let's put all this stuff into the car and go to the store and get whatever
food is the most for the money with what we have left and go out onto the beach!!"
Owl listened to my speech and I knew she was taking it all in. It did mean the difference between life
and death and she knew it.
"Yes, Rhom. I weel."
She spoke softly. Then silently we began to clear out the cabin as fast as we could.
When the car was all loaded, we started for the grocery store. As we walked I counted all the money
we had -- four dollars and some change. Whenever we passed likely people in the streets, I forgot my
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pride and asked them if they could help us get some money together for food. Most ignored me; but
two people gave me, all together, about five dollars.
I had to pull Owl along. She was shuffling slow as a turtle and I was worried the police were still
about to pounce on us -- so I was actually tugging and pulling her along. She would not loosen up and
run. She made me practically drag her. She was looking down, a deep bewilderment in her eyes, as
though she just couldn't understand something.
Finally in the large grocery store I left her behind and hurried among the aisles and sought out
bargains on peanut butter and bread to spend our nine dollars on. We had to keep a dollar's worth of
change for coffee or emergencies.
All of a sudden there was a commotion and someone came up to me and said impatiently, urgently:
"Are you with that woman you came in with? You better come quick!"
In the front of the aisles of food a lady was laying on the floor. People were gathered around her
trying to help her sit up. Owl was standing near her, surrounded by a group of angry people who were
all talking at once. Frantically I asked Owl what had happened but she wouldn't respond to me. But
some of the people crowding around told me Owl had walked up and hit this woman -- all of a sudden
and for no visible reason. The woman was standing up now, shakily. Her face looked slightly askew. I
went over to her and started talking a thousand words a minute. I explained to her that I was sorry
about what Owl had done and I told her that Owl had "lost a child" and not been the same since -- but
that this was the first time she'd ever lashed out at anyone with no reason! I was sorry! I pleaded with
her to not hold it against Owl and I told her that I would remove Owl immediately from the store and
take care of her. I begged her pardon, ardently, over and over. She just kind of stared.
Then I hurriedly paid for my peanut butter and bread and rushed Owl out the door. We almost made
it across the parking lot, which was already dark with the early northern night, when a man came
rushing out of the store, running in our direction -- yelling.
"Hey you! STOP! STOP!"
He quickly reached us.
"Did your wife just hit my wife in the store?"
"Yes! I believe she did... But--"
I explained the whole thing again as fast as I could. He was barely listening. He was foaming at the
mouth.
"I am a police officer!" he interrupted me in a fury, whipping out his wallet badge and shoving it in
my face...
"I am taking my wife to a hospital for x-rays immediately! I WOULD arrest you right now except
that seeing to my wife is MORE IMPORTANT right now than seeing you incarcerated. BUT as soon as
we are done at the hospital, I WILL come to arrest you and you WILL go to jail! Is that CLEAR?"
"Yes!" I answered trying to explain again.
"SHUT UP!! he exploded, "Now tell me your address and don't you DARE lie to me or I'll beat the
shit out of you right HERE and NOW!"
I gave him the address of the cabins.
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"You will see me in an HOUR!" he roared and left.
Owl and I walked swiftly into the night.
"What happened in there Owly?" I asked as we hurried along.
"This wuman, she wuz lookeen uglee at me! Glharing! At me! With hur eyes... I went ovair to hur
and heet hur!"
"She was glaring at you? That policeman's wife was standing there glaring at you as you waited for
me?"
"Mai ouis... Yes..."
I thought to myself, how cruel it was for anyone to glare at my fragile little Owly when she is so
brave and she's been through so much! What other woman is as strong or as kind as my wonderful
gentle partner in life? We walked silently but swiftly back to the Chevy. Long before we arrived we
were running.
If they arrested either one of us, we'd be separated for sure. She'd be deported. Owl could easily end
up raped or worse if she were left to fend for herself on the streets of Homer or if she were dropped off
alone on the other side of the cold Canadian border. How would I ever find her in winter in Canada?
No! This must not happen!
We grabbed our bedroll and packed our backpack with every essential thing I could think of and
hurried out onto the highway.
"We must walk FAST Owly! We must get far out of town before anyone knows we're gone. They will
never think of us fleeing like this, into the Alaskan winter night, hitchhiking! If we are fast we may
escape!"
"Yes Rhom. I weel hurree!" she answered. And she scurried along beside me.
"I ham sorry I heet de wuman, RhomTom!" she whimpered as we trotted along.
"Oh my Gosh Owl!" I said to her, "You certainly SHOULDN’T have hit her! What a terrible mistake
you have made! They may arrest you now! And send you back to Canada! What a terrible mistake! But
Owl -- I UNDERSTAND why you hit her! Here we are starving and freezing and all they can do is...
glare?! You did nothing to deserve such abuse. You are a poor mother who misses your baby. And you
are cold and homeless. And you love ME with all your heart. Just like you love Mushmara. And what
do you get? Glares and insults from mean people who should know better. No Owl. It is not your fault.
No one has a right to treat you so badly my darling.... I know you. I love you! I know what a wonderful,
gentle person you are. I know what selfish women like her have done to you -- you who are the kindest,
most honest person I have ever known. I cannot stand to see them abuse you, Owly. My dear, my life!
But hurry now! We must get away!"
We hurried even faster out the road, leaving the town of Homer behind us and turning to flash our
thumb at every pair of gleaming headlights. The cars were surprised to see us suddenly in their beams
and veered out wide in the road but they did not stop. We hurried on.
Finally, three miles outside of town we stopped to catch our breath a few moments and then picked
up our packs and bags again and hurried on. Our lungs burned. Tears were frozen on Owl's face.
"Hurry, Owly, Please," I whispered.
"I hurree!" she whispered back.
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Another mile and we stopped again. I had no gloves. We hadn't time to find them. It was well below
zero. My fingers were on fire. Owl gave me her gloves and I wore them for a couple minutes until I got
circulation back, and then I gave them back to her.
"Just one," she said and gave back one glove and put her bare hand in her pocket. I did the same.
We hurried on.
A new pickup truck pulled over. We threw our bags in the back and climbed in.
"I'm only going four miles to the next town", the middle-aged gentleman in the expensive sheepskin
coat said.
"That's great! Every little bit helps!" I replied.
We drove in silence a moment and he turned and looked at us:
"Are you two in trouble?" he asked.
I blurted out the whole story. I shouldn't have, but we needed any help we could get and I had to trust
someone. He listened and didn't say much. When at the end he didn't say anything, I asked him if he
could spare any money to help us out, he said:
"No."
He pulled over to drop us off. As we got out I asked:
"Would you have an extra pair of gloves?"
He looked at me strange.
"You mean to tell me you are intending to hitchhike out of Alaska in this freezing weather tonight
with NO GLOVES?" he asked as though he were in pain.
"I have no choice." I answered him.
He looked at the pair of fine leather gloves lying on his dashboard...
"I only have these... but... I guess you need them more than I do...." And he handed them to me.
"Thank YOU!" I said and took them and closed the door.
We got our packs and he drove off. We waited a long twenty minutes for the next ride, fearing a
police car would pull up any moment. Finally, a ride took us twenty-five miles and we began to feel we
were safely away.
We hadn't stood hitchhiking in Homer, in plain sight. We had hurried through town in the dark,
probably unnoticed. The cops would presume we were hiding somewhere in town. They'd probably
figure we'd be easy enough to find in the morning.
Several short rides and several hours later a lady actually took us into her home and let us sleep on
her living room floor for the night. She told us she'd been a hippie in "the old days". In her heart she
was still kind; she was like a breath of spring.
Morning found us plodding through a thick snowstorm up to the door of my sister's home in
Soldotna. She was getting ready for work and was in kind of a hurry, but she greeted us and gave us
something to eat as I told her what had happened. She listened but she had all she could do caring for
her own family. The adventures and travails of her wayward brother and his strange wife made her tired
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and perplexed.
Her husband had made it clear that we weren't welcome around his home except perhaps for an
occasional brief visit, and that only if we telephoned first. Joey reminded me that I had not phoned.
"We had to leave so suddenly..." I began.
She said hurriedly, "Anyway, take a quick look at Mary, then you'll have to be on your way or I'll be
late for work."
We looked in quickly on Mushmara sleeping in her crib. Pretty little child. Peaceful and warm.
Colorful toys cluttered the room. We both stooped to lightly kiss her; she didn't awake. Then Joey sent
us out of her house. We were standing in the snow again.
We walked to the highway and put out our thumbs.
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TWENSIX
MADNESS
We'd done all we could in Alaska after all.
We'd visited with our daughter so CSD wouldn't be terminating our parental rights right away. We'd
tried to stay, but there was no way to stay longer -- no work, no place to live except outside under a
piece of plastic in the freezing cold. This was ludicrous. Time to vamoose.
Hitchhiking a hundred miles brought us to Anchorage. Still fearing the long arm of the claw, we
hurried right through. Three hundred more miles would bring us to the eastern Alaska town of Tok.
Those miles of Wilderness highway were covered with an assortment of rides some of which were
warm, in comfortable seats with good music. Some were cold-hearted though, namely the rides in the
back of pick-up trucks at sixty miles per hour which wind-whipped our skin bright pink till it seemed
on fire and we opened up our bedroll and tried to shield ourselves from the chilly vortex -- which at
sixty miles per hour was probably a wind-chill factor of -- Oh God, it's unbelievable, so what's the use
of saying it. We huddled together shivering because the excruciating cruel cold penetrated everything.
After those trucks dropped us off the thirty below zero weather seemed almost warm in comparison.
Except that our teeth chattered so badly that speech was impossible. We stood shivering together
wondering if we would die.
We were so broke! Taking a glove off to dip a crushed piece of bread into a jar of peanut butter is a
desperate meal in the Arctic North.
"Make one for me, too..."
Times like this, money is ridiculous. The entire concept of have and have-nots to a refugee is
profoundly bewildering. The golden light shining from restaurant windows holds no warmth for
impoverished travelers. The proprietors and employees shame you. "People who haven't money
shouldn't travel!" The patent phrase shields them from all human empathy -- as if you have a choice
when fate flings you into the abyss; as if you have a home but you just prefer for some reason to be
gadabouting in Hell.
They stand in the warmth behind their windows and frown as their eyes meet yours when you walk
past. I thought they looked lonely -- and I wondered if the same disinterest towards our humanity, also
manifested in their homes, causing divorce, child abuse, low SAT scores, and general regressive
intolerance and ignorance.
There's an amazing multitude of single people in Alaska. As I pulled Owl closer I wondered if the
frowning faces in the windows weren't angered to see that we shared our frigid homeless plight
together, hand in hand; fearful that perhaps we were warmer inside our hearts than they were in their
buildings.
Our parent's religions taught us that Christians do such-and-such for each other in such-and-such
situations. How often though, Christians just seem to help those stricken souls who are similar to
themselves: living on the same street, member of the same clubs, having the same length of hair, or
who go to the same church... This, of course, has all been said before. It's just that we witnessed Alaska
to be so selfish. Looking back I am bemused...
Like, think of all the flashy brochures luring tourists to Alaska. Not one of them mentions that
Alaska consistently leads all the other states in rapes per capita, year after year -- a statistic I read in a
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newspaper while I was there that put everything in perspective for me.
Actually, if you stop and think, for a hundred years, (since the gold rush) every desperado who was
bound to be hung if he remained in the south forty-eight, retired to Mexico or Canada or Alaska if he
could make good his escape. Alaska is famous for its share of those brutes and their descendants. Three
or four or five generations later -- like father, like son -- you will find some of the most calculating,
lucreous, beady eyes, looking at you from time-to-time from the other side of a counter.
We didn't want to freeze to death. Our leather clothes were what saved our lives. Clothes that we'd
made for our usual outdoor winter lifestyle formerly in Vermont and Quebec and British Columbia and
Oregon. The sheepskin pullover vests, the sweaters Owl knit of natural wool with the natural oils
unremoved, and our leather patch pants. These were probably some of the warmest winterproof
garments in the state and could easily have cost over a thousand dollars to duplicate there.
They enabled us to plow through any weather. Beautiful as they were they weren't all flash either:
they were functional bad weather gear. But after hours outside at fifty below zero, even in those handstitched, custom-fitted, thermal masterpieces... we were cold.
We passed right on through the town of Tok without stopping. A good-natured Indian family picked
us up in a sedan already crammed full from a supply-run to the city. It was a tight squeeze but warm.
We slept for hours to the lullaby of humming tires and zoomed over miles and miles of wide-open
wilderness highway.
They drove us to within ten miles of the Canadian border, and let us off at a motel/cafe. We thanked
the nice folks and, gathering our baggage, we lumbered in the starlight like a couple polar bears. The
cafe's lights were off. It was closed. The motel was probably always open to anyone who had money
for a room, but that wasn't us.
We walked into the woods across the road opposite the cafe. About two hundred feet into the trees
we found a place under a tall pine. We rolled out our bedroll, putting a waterproof plastic on the bottom
and then, one by one, an assortment of sleeping bags and blankets -- a cozy nest. We both took off all
our clothes and rolled the sheepskin vests up wool side out for pillows and we cuddled up and got
warm and made love and fell asleep.
One of the secrets to living outside in below-zero temperatures is that you will be warmer cuddled up
together in the nude than wearing clothes. Maybe that's how and why love was invented in the dawn of
time when the hairless apes of our ancestry faced an approaching ice age! It also may account for some
of the bad jokes about Canadian Mounties and their horses...
Morning light found us unanxious to exit our bed in the snow except for the thought of coffee in the
cafe across the street. Perhaps we'd meet a trucker there who'd give us a ride into Canada.
I got up and got dressed. Last of all, I tried to pull on my rubber boots. They were all I had. My
Vibrams had finally fallen apart after three harsh years of use. The rubber boots that I'd gotten from the
cannery weren't made for outdoor living. With two pair of thick socks I was hoping they would be
adequately warm. But the rubber conducted cold like gold conducts electricity, right on through the two
pair of heavy socks. Plus snow got in and melted and became water and having nowhere to go became
gushy muck. Walking in the cold the rubber boots became stiff and wouldn't bend with the foot and so I
soon had developed large painful blisters.
Owl had good Vibram hiking boots but she got blisters too. I held her lovely small foot in my hand
and inspected the ugliest blister, two inches across. It looked so terrible I felt like crying to think of
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what my dear Owl went through to be by my side. I gently put her socks on her feet and then her boots.
She did not cry or say a word about the pain. I looked at her face, tinged pink with the frigid air. She
was twenty-one years old. So pretty. So loyal. What a gift God had given me to share my life, what a
wonderful gift...
Trying to pull my rubber boots onto my feet after they had sat out in the cold all night was almost
impossible. There was a cake of ice inside them. They were solid as rocks and they would not go all the
way on my feet even after I did a bunch of jumping and stomping. The heel would not drop down in. I
gave up and walked as well as I could. They'd warm and stretch with body heat as the day progressed.
We rolled up our bedroll and hobbled for the cafe. Once we had some hot coffee in us we would be
able to think more clearly. We really needed to sit back comfortably somewhere for a few minutes so
we could refocus on what was going on and develop some keen strategy to help us get through this.
And we needed somewhere to warm our shoes so they would fit our feet.
Now we felt the full impact of arctic winter. The day was just starting and was at its coldest.
Standing in our cold boots, trying to put gloves over our fingers was difficult. Our fingers became
almost unmoveable. Zipping-up our coats took long minutes of trial and error. We wore scarves of wool
to shield our face from the million pinpoints of snow crystals on the wind. Our eyes squinted out
through a narrow space. We had to lean against the wind as we made a path through the crisp snow,
shuffling slowly.
"I'm COLD, Rhom!" Owl whimpered and I really began to worry for her.
My woman was so strong. I was proud of her. But it was so terribly cold! I had no right to subject her
to such danger! I had an obligation to care for her and protect her. With all my heart I struggled to think
of some way to untangle this mess we were in.
I kissed Owly and hugged her. I yelled through my scarf and over the wind:
"I'll break the path through the snow. You follow in my tracks!"
One of my boots slipped off in the deep snow. I dug it out and carried it the rest of the way to the
road and there I tried again to smash my foot down inside it. There's no way it would fit, especially
now that I had clusters of snow clinging to my sock.
The cafe was just across the highway from us. Owl put on a burst of speed and ran for the door. I was
right behind her. As we put our hands on the handle, a voice growled out behind us:
"The restaurant is closed!"
A man was leaning on a snow shovel looking at us. He went on:
"We're only open in the warm months." He returned to his shoveling.
"Hey! Could we just get a cup of coffee and warm up? We been out all.."
He cut me off in mid-sentence.
"Are you deaf? I told you, the restaurant is CLOSED! So you better just get out there on the road
and get on out of here!"
He was a cold-hearted man for such a cold morning. Owl was standing there with silent tears
freezing to icicles on her cheeks.
I asked him, "Is there any other store or restaurant near here?"
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"Nope!" he answered. "This is the only place until Beaver Creek ten miles east."
"Could my wife and I use your bathroom, please, at least?"
"All right. But be quick about it."
We went into the bathrooms. They were warm. Hot air was coming up through a vent in the floor. I
took off my boots and turned them upside down to catch the warm air and soften them up. I wiggled
my toes on the vent till I could feel them again. I stood there feeling the shudders in my body begin to
cease. I had really been shaking! My teeth began chattering totally out of control. I bit my tongue trying
to make them stop. OUCH!! Finally, my body settled down. After a few minutes, I began to feel better.
Five more minutes went by. The man's voice boomed through the closed door:
"You been in there long enough! Come on! I got work to do. I can't stand here all day waiting for
you!"
I yelled "I'm coming!" and felt my tongue throb where I'd bitten it. I spit blood into the sink. I put my
boots on. They were soft now. I bundled up and went out into the hellish cold. I didn't see Owl. I went
to her door and hollered, "Hurry up Owl!" No answer.
The man came up and growled:
"Come on you two, get out of here. Where's the woman?"
"I don't know." I replied, worried. "She doesn't answer."
"Well you better get in there and get her! I'm getting pissed off!"
I went in. Owl was standing on the warm air grate in the washroom, looking straight ahead, bundled
up just as she had been.
"Come on, Owl. We got to go now."
"NO!" She refused and looked at me.
There was terror mixed with the tears in her eyes.
"YES, Owly! Come on." I urged her quietly, yet imperatively. "That man out there is crazy. I don't
trust him! We got to go NOW!"
"No! It's too khold! NO, Rhom!"
The man's voice shook the room.
"Come on, you two!"
"We're coming!" I shouted.
I pushed Owl toward the door. She resisted. I gently lifted her chin with my finger and looked
intensely into her eyes. Softly, I told her:
"Owl, there are people more dangerous to us than this weather! And that man is one! Now get going!
Please!" Owl opened the door. The cold hit us like knives.
"Don't come back!" The man glared at us.
Owl turned and tried to duck back into the bathroom but I cut her off and headed her out toward the
road.
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"She's pregnant..." I said to the man.
"That's not my problem!" he answered, "And don't get smart with me because I'll kick the shit out of
you here and now!"
He was hell-bent to bloody me up and probably Owl too if I read him right. His eyes were insane. He
held the shovel like a weapon with one hand and the other was clenched into a fist. He stepped towards
me on the very verge of attack...
I gripped Owl's hand and turned her bodily towards the highway and pulled her along. She was
unaware of how close we were to danger. She was totally dazed and unresponsive. I pulled her along
towards the road. We set our bags down just beyond the driveway of the motel and stood there facing in
the direction of the cars we hoped would come.
We hadn't seen a car so far that morning. Not one. Everything was silent but the wind in the pines.
The frigid air seared our lungs. We hugged each other and began to pace to keep our feet from freezing.
Half an hour passed without a single vehicle passing. Finally a car approached. We put out our
thumbs and waved. The car got nearer. Then we saw it was a police car. It pulled over. He ran an I.D.
check on us. I asked if he'd take us on to the border. He said he wasn't going that way. He was turning
around and heading back to Tok. He said he only came out because the motel owner had called him on
the phone and reported that he'd had some trouble from us.
"Trouble?" I was astonished. And here I'd been standing there thinking that evil stupid jerk had been
giving US trouble! My system suffered a little shock to hear the situation described in reverse-idiom.
I explained to the officer what had happened.
The sheriff wasn't impressed or interested in our viewpoint.
"It's his motel. He has rights. You don't. He doesn't want you standing near his motel either. Bad for
business. So you better start walking."
"Sir, my wife and I are freezing. She's pregnant too..."
He handed back our I.D.s.
"If I had to arrest you, I'd be taking you back to Tok. Otherwise, I have things I need to be tending to.
I'm the only patrolman on duty for a hundred miles."
I looked at Owl. If we were arrested she'd be deported to God knows where. If he was asking us if
we wanted to go to jail, the answer was no. We'd surely be better off here, braving these elements.
"Do you want to go to jail?" He asked.
"No, sir."
"Then start walkin'..."
He turned his patrol car around and left.
We picked up our bags. The edge of the road snow crunched loudly with each step until we were out
of sight of the motel. We put down our bags and rested a moment. Still no cars. We picked them up
again and crunched through the silent morning.
The only other sound was that of the white clouds of our breath trying to force their way through the
wool scarves.
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208
TWENSEVEN
MOTHER CHURCH
The car that finally pulled over was full of men in suits, about four of them in a medium-sized fourdoor sedan. They told us they "only had room for the woman"...
If the loss of the ride hadn't boded so life threatening, I'd have told them we didn't need their damn
ride. I swallowed my anger and told them we had to stay together but I was sure we could squeeze in
somewhere. They relented and we crushed ourselves and our packs into an unmelodic chorus of grunts
and groans.
The ten miles passed in silence and we were surprised when the car full of zoot-suit red-necks let us
off -- not in town, but once again in raw wilderness.
"Sorry we can't take you further. Beaver Creek is just two miles up ahead. You can walk from here.
This is a rest area."
I have no idea why they didn't take us all the way into town but they resisted all importuning.
Perhaps they feared we had drugs in our packs and didn't want to be searched at the border and held as
accessories to a crime. Or perhaps they just didn't want to be seen with a pair of scraggly hippies. I
don't know.
As they drove off we looked around and at first we saw nothing but rolling fields of snowdrifts, a
lonely-looking empty wilderness. I realized that we could freeze to death there and no one would even
know about it for hours, or even days. As we stood there scanning the horizon I made out the roofs of
two small buildings a couple hundred feet off the road, two half-buried wooden outhouses. We stood on
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the silent highway waiting for a car to come along but the highway was empty.
Speeding unrestrained over barren hills the piercing frigid wind blew words away unheard, filled and
choked our throats, dried our mouths like a torch, chapped our lips, and froze the layer of film on our
eyeballs, causing us to blink constantly, painfully. Twenty minutes later we both began to worry. There
had been no vehicles whatsoever.
I remembered what the Indian folks had told us yesterday about the temperature in this area staying
consistently at fifty below zero for five months at a stretch. Our leathers were receiving the maximum
test. But my feet in the hard rubber boots were throbbing with intense pain. They felt like a car had
driven over the toes. Owl fared better in her quality leather boots but as I looked at her I could see that
she looked very weak. Somehow I didn't want to try the two-mile walk. What if it turned out to actually
be six miles? What if Owl used up all her strength and we couldn't make Beaver Creek? I too, was
reaching my limits.
An hour passed and no cars. The cold was becoming our torturer and we were its writhing victims.
I had an idea.
"Owl, let's each take some blankets and go into an outhouse, out of this terrible wind, and try to
warm up and maybe even sleep for an hour. There may be more traffic on the road an hour from now."
"Ok, Rhom..."
We found a well-worn path through the drifts that lead to the outbuildings. Apparently they were
frequently used.
Before we even opened a door the smell nearly killed us. The buildings were clean enough, but they
stunk worse than any outhouse I have ever known, and I've seen lots of outhouses. The stench was
incredible: "Ripley's Believe it or Not" material. I have been to nauseating landfills and I've been to
city's sewage disposal sites. The stench from those two outhouses was the absolute worst I had ever
experienced.
"Whenever I think of Alaska I will think of this rest area." I told Owl.
There was only enough room for one person in each building so she went in one and I in the other.
They were very uncomfortable. They were freezing. Large open spaces underneath the roofs made
them as cold inside as out. It was impossible for them to retain any heat. They did keep out the frigid
wind -- but that factor also meant the aroma that thickly steeped the air was unmolested -- and once the
door was shut, settled more and more thickly within the confines of the walls.
I put my head under a sleeping bag. I held my nose with my fingers. I believe I actually slept for
fifteen minutes. Half-slept. Then I lay awake, plugging my nose. My lungs were already raw from the
abrasive frosty oxygen. Now they rebelled at having putrefaction rubbed into their vulnerable tender
inflamed cells. I could take it no longer. I'd had enough. I got up and went outside.
"Let's go, Owl!"
She came out, dragging an open sleeping bag, and looking sick.
We returned to the road, quite dizzy. We felt poisoned.
But we'd learned something valuable about ourselves. We learned that we'd rather wholesomely
freeze to death than be gassed to death in filth. It's an allegory to something. I'm not exactly sure of
who or what or where or when. But it is a deeply etched allegory.
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We walked, glad to put those buildings and their stench behind us, glad to feel the piercing wind
cleanse the poisons from the tender fibers of our beings. We walked and walked. Blisters and all. Fifty
below zero. Dizzy. Tired. Heartsick. Frightened. We walked.
When the town was finally in sight, a pick-up truck picked us up and brought us the rest of the way
into Beaver Creek. But the short fast ride chilled us so badly that our knees wouldn't bend and we were
so stiff-legged that we had trouble climbing out of the back of the truck. We stood like popsicles on
sticks hardly able to move, looking at the buildings.
A cafe: a brightly-lit wooden building full of warmth, bloomed from the land of snow. We brought
our bags inside and set them down and gratefully surveyed the bustling little crowd of morning
customers. We'd made it to civilization! What an ordeal we'd just come through!
I'd managed to get some small change from the men in the truck. The waitress took our order for
coffee and frenchfries. We sat at a table and thawed slowly. As chunks of snow and ice melted and fell
off our hats and sheepskin tops and leather pants and boots large puddles of water formed around our
table. I found a mop and cleaned it up.
We were in Canada but the Customs station was still a few blocks ahead. We decided to try to wait
there for a ride that would take us straight through to White Horse or beyond, hoping to accomplish a
subterfuge similar to the one that had successfully got us across from Detroit into Winsor. We'd only
have to find a decent sort of person who'd give us a hand. A good-hearted softie is easy to spot,
especially in a restaurant where it's possible to start up a casual conversation.
After an hour or so of waiting and sensing a dearth of that specific sub-species of humanity, we
realized it was probably an endangered species in that part of the world, which would be entirely
understandable.
The cafe had a pool table. A couple of people were shooting a game and I decided to ask them if they
were going on to White Horse. Actually they didn't look friendly at all. But no one did. So I had to take
a chance and ask someone.
They told me they were local people and rarely left town, so "no", they couldn't give us a ride. They
asked where we were coming from and where were we going and I told them a bit of our personal
history, hoping to break some ice and hear them say, "Heck, come on! We'll give you folks a ride across
the border. Got nothing else to do!". It's happened before. I wasn't wrong in looking for such a gesture.
I talked too much, though. The cold had probably unsprung something in my brain. I heard myself,
heard the words coming out of my mouth. Too much. I was too foreign. Too strange. My clothes were
funny-lookin'. I was hinting at colluding an illegality with them -- kind of indiscreetly -- and in their
hometown. And I was asking a lot of a couple galoots who were total strangers to me.
Finally I shut up, embarrassed. The men excused themselves and went back to their game, ignoring
me. In fact they seemed pissed off.
Owl too was unsprung. She was talking to herself. When unpleasantness or fear colors the
atmosphere of a room she often loses control of herself in this way. Someone asked me if she was on
drugs. That led me into another talking spree trying to explain Owl's emotional disorder. They just
stared at me. I think they preferred to believe we were both on drugs. I perceived the impression I'd
given and got control of my flapping mouth and shut it.
I sat with Owl and tried to gentle her, as everyone in the room was watching her now -- but she was
beyond my reach. She was lost deep inside her heart, talking to her soul, and her daughter, and perhaps
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to the child in her womb -- unfortunately aloud. She was rambling on and on... I shook her to get her
attention. She broke away from me angrily.
Someone came up to me yapping angrily:
"Hey man! We don't treat women like that around here, man!"
I tried to explain. He was getting heated. His friends moseyed over to back him up and watch the fur
fly. I was talking a lot again. They didn't want to hear me at all. I didn't want to hear me either.
The owner, sensing trouble and potential broken chairs and pool tables, came over to me and asked:
"Can you read?"
I answered affirmative. He pointed to the "No Loitering" sign and told me to read that.
I was a troublemaker to his way of seeing things. There was no talking to him. His was a
moneymaking enterprise. If you had no money you had no reason to be there. No matter how cold it
was outside. His attitude was becoming increasingly volatile even though we were gathering our packs
together and making every effort to leave quickly. There was no mistaking that he smelled blood and he
wanted some. There was also the usual below the surface awareness that they were all thinking that
Owl was very pretty and that if it were somehow to happen that I became bloody and battered and
perhaps jailed she would be needing someplace cozy to stay for awhile and those perquisites were
worth gambling in blood. I knew I was very close to becoming dead meat. We scooted out the door by
the skin of our teeth.
Perhaps winter ennui causes such northern men to try to create action of that sort, but whatever the
season they truly love bloodshed. And they love taking and winning whatever they can lay claim to by
reason of superior brutality. It's a high voltage charge of adrenaline. It's as raw and ruthless as the land.
It's their rite of passage. When an Elk or Bear is shot and the animal must be skinned and cut up in
pieces to carry it out there is blood everywhere in the snow. And the end result of this carnage is
venison and bear meat in the freezer. Rites of passage. In another case the end result of a field of blood
might be a helpless beautiful woman with no resource but to do anything she is asked to do. Coldly,
dispassionately as killing. The strong survive and prosper. All else must serve or die.
We didn't look at life that way. We were different and it was only too obvious that we were different.
But no one even wanted to listen to our philosophies. They had their own agendas. And it was doubtful
that we would survive their agendas. So I considered that we were very lucky to make it outside that
place safely.
At least we had warmed up.
We went into another cafe across and up the street aways. I bought a post card and sat at a table and
wrote a note to the Homer police department explaining that I was sorry for what had happened but my
wife had been very frightened and discouraged by our homeless situation and had momentarily lost her
mind in the store and hit the woman. So I told them I was taking her back to her homeland, Canada, to
her family, where she would no longer have to suffer these extremes and uncertainties. I went on to say
that we both hoped the woman and her husband would forgive us for the discomfort we'd put her
through. I signed my name and put general delivery, Whaletown, B.C. as our address. The postmark
was Beaver Creek, Canada, so I figured they'd drop any charges now that we'd plainly left the United
States and were outside of their jurisdiction. That way maybe we could still visit Mary Morningdove
without getting arrested on a warrant someday in the future. I mailed the card.
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We had coffee and talked to the owners of the cafe. They sat there and looked at us and listened to
me and hardly said a word in response. At first I thought they were being receptive and understanding
so I was encouraged to elaborate on things. But it was all in my head and it began to dawn on me that
they weren't really interested in anything I was saying at all. Maybe they thought I was some sort of
lunatic. I was talking too much. The cold and all the recent trauma had really set me off. I couldn't shut
up. Their carefully composed faces had deceived me. But as I talked on and I watched them I saw their
faces sour and I knew they didn't like my ways of thinking at all. If I hadn't mentioned how Mary
Morningdove was taken away I might have been all right. They said they thought there must be
something very wrong with us or Children's Services wouldn't have taken away our child.
Of course it was neither the first nor the last time that we would hear that line of reasoning. But one
tends to forget such things. A person figures things out according to his or her way of seeing them and
it becomes the only truth as far as he is concerned and he figures that anyone would understand and see
things his way if he took the time to explain them. But it doesn't always happen like that. People come
to their own conclusions. Their biases affect them, their allegiances, politics, their emotions. But mostly
their biases. Prejudices. So anyway I spilled my guts out to those strangers only to have them decide
they'd just as soon that I took my strange tirades against America's social agencies elsewhere. They
thanked us to leave their cafe and not come back. It jolted me back into reality. The problem was: We'd
run out of cafes...
Lacking any other real alternatives we walked up the street to the end of town to the Custom's
station.
Well, if my big mouth loused-up things here this would be strike three and we'd be out. Out in the
cold, that is. In the cold of no-man's-land.
I tried to keep my cool but the Customs man had so many questions he wanted answered! I told him
I had permission to be in Canada from Immigration in Vancouver but the officials had asked me not to
leave Canada or it might be all null and void. (I figured I'd better be as truthful as possible with him
inasmuch as his computer and telephone had access to all the answers anyway.) I explained how we
had to go to Alaska or we'd have lost our parental rights! He listened and after half an hour he told us
he didn't know if he could let me in. We'd have to wait and come back in a couple hours after he made
some phone calls and checked things out.
I told him we had no place to go while we waited and asked if we could wait in the entrance room of
the Customs station. He supposed so.
We sat on some chairs. At least it was warm. Morning turned into afternoon and the very little light
allotted this day waned while working hours remained on the clock.
Several Indian people came in and sat down beside us. I never did find out what they were doing
there. I think the little town offered very little for them to do, less that they hadn't done so often before
that it bored them to death, and nothing but redneck whites to get in the way of things Indian folks
might want to do.
Word must have passed that a couple of hippies were sitting in the Custom's station and so the
Indians came to sit around with someone new and interesting.
Of course, the first thing they asked was if we had a joint we could smoke with them! I would have
liked to do that! And I told them so.
"But it would be kind of crazy for a couple of hippies with backpacks to try to hitch through Customs
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with grass wouldn't it?" I asked them.
They shrugged. White Man's preoccupation with fool laws concerned them little. They were Inuit
Indians! This was still their land; no matter what boundary lines the crazy white race drew on maps.
Indians like hippies. Hippies like Indians. Peyote and Marijuana and Mushrooms belong to both
cultures. Visions and sweat lodges and love of nature and even disgust for the deceit and callousness of
the White Man's government, all are things they share in common. Over the years a friendship has
evolved between the two cultures.
And so we talked together for many hours. These guys seemed to have been as bottled up as I had
been and we all swapped stories and ideas without a lull in the conversation, listening to each other
with all ears and all our senses.
At one point the young Indian started crying and then he looked at me fiercely,
"My Mother!" he began angrily, his thick Athabascan accents resounding in the small room:
"My Mother! Do you want to know HOW SHE DIED, my brother? I want to tell you how my Mother
died! My mother FROZE to death!!!!!!!...... In!!! a!!!! CHURCH!!!! My brother! That is HOW my
mother died! SHE FROZE TO DEATH!!! in a church!!! on her knees!!! praying!!! My mother froze to
death in a church, on her knees, praying. There was NO HEAT in the church, brother!!! She froze to
death praying.... On her knees..."
He was crying.
"She was just an Indian woman!" he sobbed, "The white man says, 'Indians don't need things'. Yet
she believed if she prayed there would be something better! And she DIED praying in the little Indian
church IN THIS TOWN! Don't think THIS is a GOOD TOWN, brother! This town LET MY MOTHER
DIE -- and NEVER CARED!!! This town will NEVER care!"
And he cried for a long time while we sat silently beside him thinking about what he had said.
So, he had entrusted a piece of his heart to me. I will never forget it.
The Indians asked us if we'd like to come home with them and spend the night. They promised that
in the morning they would take us through the border on the back roads that they travel many times a
day.
My God, we should have gone with them. I will regret forever my decision to wait and try to go
through the legal way. I'm the sort of person that dumbly believes that laws on the books of civilized
peoples are there to insure the domestic tranquility of the humanity they touch; to be inexorably
committed to that humanity, to be flexible to that humanity -- but never to be flexible to the forces that
would threaten decent purposes, especially of little people who struggle to remain above the surface of
the cold seas. I was brought up in my early years with such perspectives about democracy and freedom
and humanity.
I absolutely expected permission to pass through the border, to be allowed to hitchhike south to
return to Cortez island and continue building our homestead among our friends -- to have our child
born there and to nurture all our dreams.
I worried that if I took our new Indian friends up on their offer of assistance, I might be checked
down the road a ways and it would be discovered that I'd snuck through the back way. Stupid me. If
we'd gone with the Indians we'd have gone through the border and homesteaded on Cortez.
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The Customs officer called us back into his office around six o'clock after checking with his
superiors. He apologized that he wouldn't be able to let me into the country and furthermore he said I'd
have to leave Beaver Creek, Canada immediately. To make sure we went, he personally gave us a ride
out of Beaver Creek in the direction of the U.S. Customs station; but he didn't take us all the way there,
dropping us off instead about two miles east of it, on a lonely stretch of highway. I prevailed upon him
to give us a ride all the way there but he would not for whatever reasons I do not know. He warned me
that if I turned back and reentered Beaver Creek I'd be jailed and deported.
Snow was falling like a thick blanket -- which was good because when it's really cold it never snows.
Obviously, the weather had warmed a little -- maybe to fifteen below zero. It still seemed very cold.
The starlight on the snow gave some light as we walked beside the highway.
I was worried that the United States Customs might turn Owl back. The best way around that would
be to hitch a ride through the border station. We stuck out our thumbs. About fifteen minutes later a
lonely car passed us and pulled over. We threw our bags inside. Unfortunately he was only going a
quarter mile past the border station. He was a local.
The fellow was pretty laid back. He asked me if we'd like to smoke a joint. We felt comfortable with
him and the pot might take the edge off everything and maybe give us a new perspective. So we shared
a few tokes. He gave me a small joint to take with me and I put it in a shirt pocket. Then we proceeded
to the U.S Customs.
The officers may have been notified we were coming. They looked at our bags and bedroll and asked
us to come inside the office. The driver wished us luck and took off.
So we went through another interrogation. The officer was taciturn and testy. It looked like he wasn't
going to let Owl into the country. He wanted to know what all we were carrying in our bags and he had
me open some things up. All of a sudden I was thinking about that joint in my pocket. Whoa! What a
thoughtless move! I should never have accepted that joint! If he searched me and found it I'd be going
to jail for sure. Oh God! How could I have been so dumb? I know better than to travel through a border
with pot. My heart started pounding so loud I was afraid he would hear it. When he left the room for a
minute I dug the joint out of my pocket and stuffed it in my mouth and chewed it up and swallowed it. I
was half choking when he returned a few minutes later. But it was gone.
In fact that joint was probably about the last joint I ever possessed in my life. I was so shaken up by
how close Owl and I almost came to what might easily have been the end of our life together just
because of one stupid marijuana cigarette that something inside me clicked and I just won't have any of
it in my possession ever since.
I applied myself to explaining to the Customs officer how desperate we were. I explained to him
about Mushmara and how we were trying to regain custody of her. He seemed to have some heart after
all. At last he agreed to allow Owl into the United States with the condition that we go directly to U.S.
Immigration in Anchorage and get her squared away. We agreed to do that and so he passed us through.
***
Ninety miles of snowladen pineforests and desolate empty highways lay between us and the next
town of human habitation, Tok. There were no automobile tracks in the new snow. We could barely
make out the road. The wind blew wild through the forest and all the branches crashing against each
other amounted to a small roar. Our ears were covered with scarves. It would be difficult to detect a
car's engine coming up behind us.
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Eventually a car passed slowly, the driver eyeing us fearfully. His vehicle left a hard-packed tire
imprint for us to walk in which was a vast improvement over kicking through a foot of fresh snow with
each step. But we had to keep our ears open lest another car come up behind us and hit us, walking as
we were in the tire-tracks down the middle of the road. Another car did come along and we didn't feel
safe anymore so we went back to walking on the roadside, making our own path as best we could
through the deep fresh snow. Owl walked in my footprints just behind me.
I told Owl we would walk on until we came to a bridge and we'd roll out our bedroll underneath and
sleep until morning. We plodded along.
Sometimes the moon broke through the clouds and the landscape seemed very pretty. Moonbeams
and snowdrifts and me and Owl. We held hands as we walked. The flurries dropping from the sky were
like feathers. They didn't hardly even melt on our faces; they piled up. We were just two snowflakes
walking through eternity.
We must have walked at least five miles before we found the bridge we were looking for. I went over
the side and found an area free of snow and only a little rocky. I went back up and helped Owl down
the steep embankment. We lit a candle and rolled out our bedroll and soon were nestled serenely,
tightly in each other's arms.
We could have slept like logs all night. We were doing fine, deep, deep in dreamland -- when from
far, far away, from another world, comes a distant loud voice:
"Hello... hello... Hel-lo! Is anybody down there?"
Vaguely, in the warm black void, I'm thinking I am in the middle of nothing. The voice must be a
dream. Nobody on Earth could know we are under this bridge. NOBODY.
"Hello! Is anyone down there?" the voice calls.
I am suddenly awake. This is eerie. Someone is calling down to us! That's not possible, is it? I sit up,
alert.
This could be great danger. Who in the Hell could possibly know we were under a bridge miles from
civilization in a snowstorm in the middle of nowhere?
Should I answer?
I hollered up testily:
"Yes! What do you want?"
The voice answered back:
"I am a State trooper and I've been following your tracks in the snow for several miles. Are you
aware there are wolves following you?"
BOING! I am AWAKE!
"WOLVES! WOLVES? DID YOU SAY WOLVES?" I yelled into the night. Did I hear him right?
He yells back:
"Yes, WOLVES. Their tracks are parallel to yours. They are definitely all around you! I'm offering
you a ride into Tok if you want one!"
"We'll be right up!"
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Owl, still half-asleep, hasn't translated all of this. I explained quickly while we dressed as fast as we
could and rolled up our bedroll. We helped each other clamber up the steep detritus and loose soft snow
to the top.
The officer was standing there waiting beside his patrol car with all the colored interior lights
glowing and the motor running. The exhaust rose through the falling snow and the windshield wipers
busily flicked long clean arcs.
He seemed surprised when he saw Owl come up over the side.
"She's pregnant isn't she?" He asked me after we'd stashed our packs in the trunk and settled into the
warm car.
"Yes."
"That's why the wolves were following you. Usually they avoid man, but if anything is crippled or
wounded or big with child, or helpless in any way -- they notice. It's what they look for. That's how they
feed."
Yikes!
We had a very pleasant ride into Tok with the officer and he told us a lot about wolves and eagles and
rabbits. He told us it was his job to destroy all the wolves he found lurking around the highways.
Primarily, they were attracted by the thousands of white road-kill rabbits that dotted the asphalt --free
fresh meat.
There's no doubt he was one of the nicest people we met in Alaska. The trooper took us to a
minister's home in Tok and the minister and his wife put us up in their basement for the night where we
slept soundly. In the morning they brought us each a plate of eggs and toast before sending us on our
way. We thanked them profusely for their service and we meant it.
Strangely enough however, they never spoke kindly to us. In fact, other than what was absolutely
necessary -- they ignored us. Now in my life I've met some ministers who were beacons of compassion,
divine love, and friendly, unpretentious representatives of God's grace. But that couple gave us the
feeling we were a dirty chore they had to do like plunging a toilet. They must have been into
Christianity for the real-estate.
We walked the half-mile to a restaurant bar on the highway where we could try to catch a ride. It was
definitely too cold to snow now. At least twenty degrees colder than yesterday. Probably much more.
We held hands as we walked. We knew we possessed a love that would warm us more sufficiently than
any fire. Perhaps it would be enough to keep us alive. Maybe not. But at least it was warm enough to
keep us together through it all and comfort each other. God never created a more perfect design than
that two people should share each other's lives.
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TWENEIGHT
GREAT SPIRIT LOOKING DOWN
This wind wounds any bare or thinly covered flesh with a pain as vibrant as multiple dogbites,
causes uncharacteristic oaths and prayers, muttered forlornly through clenched teeth.
Two hundred feet to the door; one hundred feet more; sixty feet! Only twenty-five feet to go! Ten
feet! Four feet! Open! Open! Open!
We weren't alone in trying to hitchhike out of Tok in that blistering cold. Several Inuit men were
battling the elements alongside us. No one could bear to stand long in the wind. Not even those who
were born and raised in it.
We all developed the same tactic, standing in the anteroom of the restaurant, out of the wind and
cold, until we were ready to brave the road again. Then with a brave resolution, perhaps a smile of
goodbye to the others remaining behind, pushing quickly through the outer door so as to let in a
minimum of frigid air, one would struggle as fast as possible to the highway, there to brace oneself
against the onslaught, leaning into the wind, squinting over a scarf, letting one's thumb fly whenever a
vehicle approached. No one could remain out there longer than five or ten minutes before beating a fast
retreat back into the protection of the tiny anteroom and the other assembled would-be travelers.
Returning through the door after another unsuccessful try, an Indian would stamp his feet and roll his
eyes in disbelief at the infernal intensity of the nature he'd just quit. He'd try to light a cigarette with
numb fingers and he'd drop tobacco and papers and matches all over the floor. It always took two of
them to get one cigarette rolled. Finally one would hold the match while the other would cup both
hands together around the flickering tiny flame and puff deeply on the glowing cig and warm his hands
on the tiny ember; and then he'd offer it around, especially to any whose hands were too frozen to be
able to roll one for himself -- and then he'd stand there with pink hands and brilliant brown eyes,
fortified in solemn companionship -- and hope aloud that someone picked him up soon.
Owl and I alternated. First she took a turn and when she came in, I went out. Once we reached the
road, we'd count to two hundred slow before rushing back into the shelter. Sometimes we'd stay out
longer -- other times we couldn't even last a full count, or we'd rush the final numbers considerably.
The auto ferry brought cars up from the south forty-eight to Valdez and unloaded them. From there
they drove through the corner of Canada and through Beaver Creek and Tok and on to Anchorage or
Fairbanks. So, from time to time a stream of cars would come through town and we'd all hurry out to
try to flag one down. We kept a lookout for this stream of cars. They were our best chance of getting a
ride out of Tok.
Standing in the little restaurant entryway with the Indians was a good experience, even though we
didn't talk much. It took too much energy to talk -- and anyway, we were all shivering uncontrollably
and our teeth were chattering so bad that speech was difficult to understand; and the Indian folks agreed
with me when I remarked how it was so easy to severely bite one's tongue if one weren't careful. Yes, it
happened sometimes to them, too. And they'd put holes in cigarettes and chatter them to smithereens,
too! They laughed mildly, unselfconsciously. I was glad to hear it was as difficult for them because I'd
been dwelling of late on a caustic personal apprehension that I was just a whiny anemic white boy who
couldn't cut Alaska's mustard. Now I could put all that behind me.
And everyone's feet hurt too so we stood on first one foot and then the other or stood on the heels
and favored the toes. And being as they were rather poor their footwear didn't come close to comparing
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with ours. And so we all suffered in that tiny chairless walk-in freezer of a room. (Who can imagine
running to a walk-in freezer to warm oneself up? Yet no common freezer ever gets anywhere near as
cold as that entry room! But when you consider the abysmal cold of the arctic winter outside the doors,
then you begin to understand! With the wind chill factor, the temperature outside might have been -75
degrees or even much colder...)
Yet despite the suffering it was also possible for someone to try to make a wry joke sometimes to
cheer us all up. At least the restaurant seemed kindly obliged to allow us to continue standing there
unbothered in their walk-in space. For this we were all grateful; but I noticed that each person looked
with anxious trepidation at the faces of the employees whenever they passed near us, expecting at any
moment to be asked to please go die in the streets and not block the doorway. Apparently, the
management had faced the truth that we needed their sanctuary in the worst way because they never
attempted to dissuade us from that nook all day long -- and in fact, I sometimes perceived a glance of
compassion tendered our way from those worthy people...
We, the eight or ten freezing refugees on their doorstep, on the other hand, took up as little space as
possible and never spoke to their customers and generally tried to be as unintrusive and courteous as
possible -- to the point of obsequiousness if necessary.
All day long we gathered there together, the Indian men and Owl and I. We all spoke so seldom, yet
once one of them remarked that it was unusual to see a woman so strong and uncomplaining; to which
the Indian beside him added from a depth of thought, "...Especially a white woman!" and we all kind of
laughed. I didn't have to worry when she stood alone among them while I hitchhiked. They treated her
with ponderous dignity, as a treasured companion of this day -- someone who would be remembered.
I began to feel like I was one of these Indians and perhaps a Great Spirit looking down upon this
planet from high, high up, might see us together in this adversity and see no difference between us. The
light disappeared from the day and who would have thought this day could get colder? But it did. The
wind was eating us.
But, a profound knowledge -- a personal vision of the common Oneness of all the people of the
world washed my spirit and I was somewhat warmer inside. I noticed that Owl was no less affected by
her humble companions of this day.
And the day was gone. Gone to wherever spent days go... Everyone walked off into the dark. I don't
know where the Indians went. I didn't know where to go myself. But we had to go somewhere because
the restaurant was closing. We wrapped up as good as possible and headed for the minister's home
where we'd spent the previous night.
We had to push against the wind and tears began to flow from our eyes. We weren't crying. The body
has to wash the ice out of the eyes and they naturally secrete water at times like that. It was a long, long
half-mile. We counted to two hundred over and over many times along the way.
We were turning blue by the time we arrived and knocked on the door. The minister's wife answered
with a pained expression. She watched as I tried unsuccessfully for the first minute to control my
stuttering. Finally I managed:
"H-H-Hi, W-W-We d-d-didn't ge-ga-get-t a r-r-r-ride owwwt. We t-tried all d-day."
"I'm sorry," she interjected pointedly, "my husband isn't home right now. You'll have to come back
later."
She began to shut the door.
219
"M-Ma'am, ex-xccuse m-me! M-Ma'am, we are f-f-freezing-g-g-g and w-we j-j-just w-walked a llong-g-g w-ways..."
I was almost frantic.
And she was becoming obviously angry. She rebuked us:
"I am SORRY! But my husband is the only one who can decide what to do about your problem! If
you want you can come back in an hour." She slunk back into the obscurity and shut the door gently
and firmly. We heard the lock turn. Click.
Owl and I looked at each other amazed and very frightened. We looked around. There was nowhere
to find shelter. We scurried down the road the direction we had come. I remembered a group of trees
and shrubs. We went into them and unrolled our bedroll and crawled in. Maybe it was just an extra cold
night, or maybe our body fatigue was at a point where we could not easily recover, maybe it's because
we left all our clothes on so we wouldn't have to dress again in an hour, but we could not get very warm
at all. We lay there shivering and chattering for what we hoped was an hour, though at times like those
it's hard to gage time. At least I got warm enough so I could manage to speak without stuttering so
badly.
We rolled up our bedroll and walked stiffly back to the minister's home and knocked again on the
door. No one answered. We knocked again. Still no answer. A light was on. I looked in the front
window. The minister's wife was sitting in an easy chair, talking on the phone. Maybe she hadn't heard
our knock? We knocked louder. No answer. We stomped our feet to try to warm them and hugged each
other and danced around like monkeys in pain and waited. Three minutes later we knocked again. No
answer. And three minutes later we knocked again. There was a bustling behind the door. The knob
turned.
The lady looked out and spoke:
"My husband isn't home yet, and only he can...."
I had to tell her!
"Ma'am, I'm w-worried for my w-w-wife b-b-being out-t-t here in the c-c-c-cold in her c-c-ccondition. C-C-Could you at least let HER c-c-come in and warm up, p-p-p-please?"
But she rebuffed me acidly again:
"Only my husband can make that decision!! And he is not home yet!!"
Again she shut the door, harsher this time. Click.
We painfully returned to the patch of trees and rolled out our bedroll once more. We covered up and
huddled together and waited out one more hour. Then once again, we gathered up our things and went
back to the door and knocked. No answer. We waited and knocked again. The woman opened the door.
"I g-g-guess your-r h-h-husband-d isn't-t h-h-home yet-t-t?" I asked through chattering teeth.
She looked at me severely and replied:
"No, he HAS come home. He's had a HARD day and was VERY tired. He has retired for the night. I
want to tell you that I think it is VERY RUDE OF YOU to be WAKING US UP to come to the door like
this!"
I was considerably taken back by what she said. Did she think we really had a warm place
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somewhere and were just bothering her frivolously? Surely not!
"D-D-Did y-you t-t-tell him-m-m w-w-we h-h-had-d n-n-no p-p-place...."
She broke in sharply:
"I told him about your problem! --And he told me to tell you that we let people stay one night only on
an emergency basis but after that they must make other arrangements. We don't allow anyone to stay a
second night."
"B-B-But w-we d-d-don't-t kn-kn-know-ow-ow anyon-one h-here in T-T-Tok! And w-we are f-f-freezaz-azing! P-Please, wa-won't y-you..."
The door opened wider and the minister himself stood behind her in his bathrobe, glaring at us as if
we were the proverbial fallen angels whom he himself was delegated by God to send straight to Hell;
and he said in a very loud, very horrible voice:
"I'm TIRED of you giving my wife TROUBLE! She told me all about it! And SHE TOLD YOU our
policy here. Now, I think you had better run along!! OR ELSE!!!"
We shrank as though petrified from the door. Now we were numb in spirit as well as heart and body.
Owl was shaking like a leaf and starting to cry. I was holding her up.
For him to say this to us was as much as to say:
"Go die, you sinners. There's no place left on this Earth for you anymore. Shelter and food and
warmth exists solely for those who are deserving -- like us! Go die, you! And take your wife with you to
die also -- and the child in her womb, whom God intends no place but death -- and all on MY say so,
for I am His sole emissary here -- and I am sending you to your death. So go die!"
Being as we were, deathly feverishly cold, this is how his actions appeared to us. Even now that we
have warmed up over several years, looking back upon the confrontation, we would not change our
perceptions of his meaning much.
As we stood in the snow before the closed door of the evil minister's home, the moonshadows of tall
pines blent with subdued lights glowing from the windows. --A staticy radio communication rent the
silent gloomy night! We looked for it's source and were surprised to see a police car sitting half-hidden
up the street. As we gazed in wonder, the officer rolled down his window and motioned us over to him.
Suddenly I feared once more, that Owl would be deported, and I approached him quaking inside.
Naturally, the Lord of Compassion's shepherd had called the police, to protect himself and his wife
from the dangerous hippie criminals that were brazenly terrorizing them. Why was it so difficult to
accept us for what we were: a harmless young couple stranded in an arctic winter? But it would require
years for our minds to totally attend to the irony. At that time it was enough that we found ourselves
alive, and hoping to remain so.
The cop ran an I.D. check. I explained our circumstances to him. No, he didn't have an inkling of a
solution for our problem. Icily, he passed back my papers and warned us not to return to the minister's
house. He drove away slowly.
We went back down the road to the trees and ducked through the brush and got into our bedroll
again. Were there wolves here, I wondered?
Fearing now a sudden attack by wolves, or police, or Baptists, or Presbyterians, or who knows what,
we left our clothes on to be ready for the worst. Heck, this patch of trees was within their town -- and it
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might offend their sense of decency if we died there. If they came to beat us up they'd be easier on us if
we weren't naked. Strange how members of organized religion often seem to hate nakedness worse than
almost anything.
Perhaps the clothes prevented us from warming each other; but we shivered all night. My ears heard
every sound. Our teeth continued chattering uncontrollably for some time. We used them as percussion
to songs we hummed and it made us laugh. But then I bit my tongue again and it hurt bad. We hugged
each other fiercely.
I thought about that minister. I'd often thought of becoming a minister myself. If I had, there's no
way I'd have ever developed an attitude like he had towards people. Of that I was sure.
He seemed spoiled and far from the heart of God. It's the class difference between people like them
in their warm houses, never knowing the lack of anything, and believing God has given them all that
because they are so righteously deserving -- and us, whom they perhaps see to be undeserving
hooligans enveloped in the plague of sin, whom God endlessly chastises for our shameful unrepentant
iniquities.
And I think of all of God's people mentioned in the Bible, who were driven to become refugees, and
all the apostles scourged and abused, homeless and hungry. Were their travails also indicative that they
had fallen in sin and were outside the love of God? No. It's a sorry sign of our times when so-called
Christian people glibly conclude that every misfortune that befalls anyone is a sign of God's disfavor.
Holding unto that viewpoint means they can keep their wallets in their pockets with no unsavory
compunctions. "Scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites..."
How small they were for all the blessings God has given them! Isn't that the way of life though? The
Pharisees living snugly in their complacent religious society, ignoring the suffering, wounded, and
robbed victims whom they prefer to believe God has punished and brought to this sorry state. This
sorry state...
We lay awake with our eyes closed, huddled under our blankets and sleeping bags, shuddering,
holding hands. Finally, hours later, body heat warmed us enough for our teeth to cease their spasticity.
The northland winter night is an interminably long thing. Waiting for daybreak seemed to take
forever. And as we waited, we were aware of many stages and subtle changes that took place -- in the
Creation around us -- and in ourselves -- and yet we were the same as we ever were. Nothing in our
lives had really changed.
We were wide-awake in the pit of the night.
Crisp stars twinkled down through the black swaying branches of the trees. We stared intensely into
their essence, searching for whatever warmth those far away suns could give.
Owl, whispered,
"Rhom?"
"Yes, Owl?"
"I was d-drimming a little d-dreeem, of Mareee in her c-crib at your sistare's houze. Mareee is so pp-pritty! Yes?"
"Yes, Owl, M-Marie is so pretty... She l-looks l-like you, Owl."
"Rhom, I t-tink she is m-more p-pritty den anyting I know."
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"Me too, Owl. I think so t-too."
Owl snuggled tight against me. Her breathing was easier. Maybe she would sleep. I stayed awake
and watched the stars.
When I finally slept for scarce minutes, I dreamed of wolves tearing at my head and awoke shaking.
I thought I heard traffic on the highway. The Valdez cars might be coming through. There wasn't a
shred of light in the sky to indicate morning but that didn't mean anything this far north. We could stay
in the cold bed no longer. We hurriedly gathered up our bundles and rushed to the highway.
As we walked along the road, many automobiles began to pass us. We put out our thumbs. One of
them veered over to the side of the road and stopped. We ran up.
"I don't know how we'll fit you in but I'm going as far as Anchorage and you're welcome to come
along!" the young driver said, smiling at us.
"You'll probably never know how grateful we are! I believe you may have saved our lives!" I said as
we climbed in.
He probably thought I was exaggerating.
We slept all the way.
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TWENNINE
ABATTOIR
Anchorage was to be our home for most of the next two months.
One excursion out was to rent a tow bar and have our Chevy towed from Homer to my sister's home
in Soldotna. I telephoned the cops In Homer to see what my status was. I told them I was calling from
Canada and I wanted to know what had ever happened as a result of the problem we'd had there. They
said no charges had been filed and we were in no danger if we returned. And I sent the battle-axe
manager of the cabins the fifty dollars she believed we owed her so she had no hold on the car.
We were fortunate to find someone with a truck to do the towing right away. If we'd had to stick
around that town for very long we'd surely have run into that cop or his wife again and God only knows
what would have happened. As it was when we arrived at the cabins to tow the car the woman tried to
tell me I couldn't move it until her husband came home. Fat chance. We ignored her and hitched it to
the truck and were gone.
It was my intention to repair that beautiful little car eventually. It would mean so much to us to have
it running. But just getting it safely to my sister's house was a start. If she'd take care of it for us while
we were gone we could even return to the south forty-eight until we saved up some money and we
were better able to survive in Alaska. That way we'd always have the beautiful Chevy waiting for us to
live in whenever we wanted to visit, so we'd never have to face a winter quite like this again.
And one day, on her sixteenth birthday, one of the spiffiest machines in the state of Alaska would
belong to Mushmara Morningdove. So all in all, once the Chevy was parked in my sister's front yard I
felt greatly relieved.
It would have been perfect if my sister and Pat would have allowed us to camp in the Chevy in their
driveway until winter was over. Being near Mushmara would have healed our shattered hearts. I'd
eventually have adapted myself and found employment. Owl would have eventually regained her
emotional/cognitive strength and become the aunt to Joey's children which she was meant to be, as well
as Mushmara's mother. But it was no go. They made it quite clear to us.
So Soldotna was out as a place to live. And we may as well have gone swimming in the winter sea
with a pack of sharks as to have tried again to live in Homer. Anchorage was about the only place left
for us. So that's where we went. Not that we ever found any great way to live in Anchorage. We were
living on the streets. It was hell.
We certainly didn't have thirty dollars a night to rent a room in a hotel. The only solution we could
possibly hope to find would be to meet some counter-culture friends who would let us crash in a corner
of their home until we could reconnoiter a more permanent winter arrangement. Only counter culture
people would be able to accept people like us who would be content to winter in their garage until a job
and a better living situation became available.
Normally we might have expected to have some success in finding someone like that. In larger
populated areas, "bus people" and groups of alternative resource enthusiasts gather together in various
ways in communes and co-ops and on farms or set up short-term vehicle villages for the mutual benefit
of pooling their survival skills and for the unique companionship of their society. But in Anchorage we
found no such sympathetic peer group. And what peripheral-peers we did chance across were
sometimes stranger than the straight people.
One day someone told us about a vegetarian restaurant. It was quite a long walk across town,
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especially bundled up and weighted down as we were. Now we weren't going there because we had a
desperate craving for a garden burger! We were going there because we were looking for some
members of our culture who would understand our crisis and help us find somewhere warm to sleep at
night, and anything else that would help us get through the winter.
But it turned out the vegetarian restaurant people existed solely for the purpose of selling their fancy
sandwiches. And we couldn't afford them. There was only a disinterested cashier when we arrived and
she didn't look happy that we had interrupted the book she was reading. It seemed to me that if we
bought something and lingered awhile whoever owned the place might drop by and we would have a
better chance of connecting with a sympathetic person. So we dug nickels and dimes and pennies out of
all the recesses of our garments and got together enough to afford to split a small bowl of vegetarian
soup. The girl obviously thought it was quite peculiar that two people would share one bowl of soup.
An hour passed. The girl began eyeing us. The soup was long gone.
A couple times I tried to talk with the young waitress about the reason we had come but she was not
at all receptive. We were four-armed aliens to her. She told me the owner was out but should return in a
couple hours if we would like to come back later. I pointed to our backpacks and bundles and explained
the obvious, that we had nowhere to go to do any waiting.
I suppose it was our leather clothes that irked her. I explained to her that we were vegetarians but we
made an exception when it came to leather. I told her how warm our leather pants and sheepskin vests
were compared to anything else. I explained that we would have frozen to death if it hadn't been for our
leathers. She looked very bored and disbelieving about what I was saying, and impatient for me to be
done talking so she could return to her book. So she left us alone and we sat back down at the table and
waited for the owner. We waited most of the day...
He came in an hour after dark, a very business-minded bearded individual; but we did manage a
conversation. He even seemed half-interested in our plight. He invited us to come to his home for
dinner. But he didn't invite us for that night -- he invited us for a night a few days hence. I had hoped I
could convey to him that we were living on the street with nowhere to sleep. But he didn't seem to
understand. So we left and walked back into Anchorage.
Two days later we went to his home for a supper. He was a proud homeowner and just had to show
us around, upstairs and downstairs. The rooms were full of Oriental carpets and tapestries and large
futon pillows were scattered everywhere. And the house was so warm! A person could easily lay down
anywhere and be perfectly cozy all night long. Incense burned in each room. He had a lot of empty
space. I thought he was preparing to tell us we could stay there for awhile. But in fact, he wasn't.
He was one of those unique counter-culture people who had always had about everything a person
might need in life. It is doubtful that his life had ever been in jeopardy for the lack of anything. It is
doubtful that he understood what we were going through one little bit. But the strangest thing about
him as far as we were concerned was that he did not at all understand the love that existed between Owl
and me, or the way we felt about regaining Mushmara. He laughed at us when we told him we were
married. He didn't believe in marriage. I asked him if he didn't ever get lonely? He told me he loved to
share his workspace and his house space with women. But not marriage. Vegetarian women wanted to
work in vegetarian restaurants. Far more came to him than he could hire. He picked and chose the ones
he wanted around him and sometimes he invited them home to stay in his house. We met a couple of
the women there. They seemed quite sensual, the way vegetarian women so often are. But they were
busy doing things and didn't take part in our conversation. All in all, I seriously doubted that he ever
got very lonely in his set-up. In fact, a certain glint in his eyes told me he was used to satiating himself
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with an unending supply of the most beautiful delights in creation.
Love? He laughed. He asked me if I thought Owl and I "loved" each other? I told him yes we did
love each other. He got serious and cynical then. He said from what he could see we didn't even know
what love was! He said maybe we "needed" each other. But that wasn't love. That was "need", a false
and weak and useless reason for two people to be together. He said if I really loved Owl I wouldn't
have her freezing out of doors with me in an Alaskan winter.
I'm not saying he was all wrong. A lot of the things he said had grains of truth to them. But he really
didn't know us well enough to be saying those things. He had no real idea of what we'd been through. It
wasn't fair.
So after we all ate some bulgar and vegetables with chopsticks we sat and chatted and I told him we
needed somewhere to live for awhile, someplace within the counter-culture community where we could
recuperate and learn the ropes of surviving in Alaska. And since he was well established there I was
hoping he could help or point us to someone else in the counterculture community who could. He
evaded answering me and turned the conversation to other topics for awhile before swinging back to it
in his own pace. He offered me a deal. He said he didn't have room for both of us in his home, but he
felt sorry for the young beautiful French Canadian girl I was dragging around out in the Alaska winter
and he would be willing to make some room for her in his home. He said he didn't feel sorry for me
because I should know better, and I could probably survive on my own with my know-how. At any rate,
I should learn to deal with my own problems. But Owl could stay if she would like to. I almost said yes
for Owl's sake.
He saw me hesitate and said that if I really loved Owl I would do it for her. I didn't like the feeling of
what was happening. It didn't seem right. With all the room he had, and the two of us would require so
little... But he would only take in Owl... Owl and I tried to talk it over, but what was there to say? What
alternative did we have? But it seemed sick. It seemed like he was breaking us up. I worried that he'd
use the opportunity to get to Owl... But I felt so guilty about her being pregnant and out in the freezing
cold with me...
I told him we'd try it as long as I could come visit her.
I left her there with him that night and walked off into the Anchorage streets alone.
That night I felt so miserable all by myself. It's one thing to sleep at night cuddled up with someone
you love. No matter how cold it is you have a fire in your hearts which will get you through to
morning. But to be all alone in a strange city... I tossed and turned. I lay awake and felt awful. And I
was worried about Owl... The next day I returned to the guy's house. He seemed angry to see me. He
told me he couldn't be having me coming over there just any time I wanted. I knew then it absolutely
wouldn't work. I told Owl to get her stuff and come with me. He tried to tell me that it wasn't up to me,
that it was her decision to make, not mine. Owl told him she was leaving and got her stuff and we left.
We were very tender to each other after that. I felt rotten that I'd almost let that character bust us up.
I'd learned another valuable lesson though, not unlike the one I'd learned when we tried to sleep in
those outhouses: I'd learned love is the better choice despite hardships, better than any substitute, no
matter how comfortable. Or something like that...
***
So, there was no "culture" to speak of to help us: none of that famed shelter from the storm made
famous in song and fairy tale.
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And there were no jobs.
And there was no emergency Welfare assistance.
We went to the Welfare office and were told we weren't eligible for any program other than maybe
foodstamps. There was a waiting line for those and you had to have an address before you applied or
they wouldn't even let you fill out the form. Owl, being a Canadian, wasn't eligible anyway, and if I
applied with her anywhere near me there'd be trouble from Immigration because you had to list all the
people in your household and whether or not they were citizens. Soon after we'd arrived in Anchorage
we'd gone to the Immigration department as per our border-crossing agreement and they'd told us Owl
could remain in the country only as long as she didn't apply for any foodstamps or other Welfare
assistance.
So between this, that, and the other thing, we were left out in the freezing streets.
And the dark avenues of Anchorage were dangerous. Years later we would meet our close friend
Madelaine Kowe and she would tell us about her horrendous experiences on those same streets: how
she'd been hired by an Anchorage taxi company to drive the night shift -- after the last two male drivers
on the shift had been robbed and murdered. Yet, she'd made that job work because it was the only thing
between her family and freezing. And when desperate men pulled guns on her she looked them in the
eyes and told them she wasn't afraid of death because she knew God would protect her so she could
take care of her children and she gave the desperate men the money they demanded and they never
harmed her. And so she survived. But knowing Madelaine Kowe, that's to be expected.
The nights were so long! There were only six or seven hours of daylight each day. That left us
wandering in the dark for hours and hours -- and hours! It was a haunting experience. Lewd forms hung
waiting in crevices and doorways, faces twisted with loneliness, and squalor, and anger, peering out at
passers-by hopelessly. Contrasting them were the puffy, sweaty faces of successful men, hurrying up
and hurrying down the ghostly streets -- alone. Alone with ample dwellings, alone with many plastic
credit cards, alone with fancy cars -- alone and running pop-eyed like rats on treadwheels -- because
there were no women on these streets. There are fewer women in ratio to men in Alaska than in any
other state. Those puffy, sweaty men were caught in a trap of horrible greedy loneliness, and despite
their fat wallets, they were running their brains out from one filthy titty-bar to the next.
We discovered a church agency that would put us up for the night -- but they had no "family areas".
Husbands and wives were split up and had to spend ten hours per day locked in with strangers. I didn't
feel comfortable at all thinking of Owl, after all the trauma that had racked her, spending ten hours or
more per day in the company of strange women of the Anchorage streets: prostitutes, addicts, drunks,
thieves, psychopaths -- tough, desperate women. Nor did I feel comfortable leaving her in the care of
strange and questionable social workers during those hours. There's no way of knowing what would
happen to her -- or if she could locate me in an emergency.
I didn't relish the company in the male quarters either.
"What God has joined together, let no man cast asunder".
We ran across a few other homeless couples who were having a similarly tough winter and through
them we heard of some condemned apartment buildings. The police continuously tried to roust out the
homeless folks but a crude warning system almost always enabled most everyone to safely get out the
back door, or out a side window. Then after the police left they'd all return.
Most rooms had broken windows. Refuse piled up everywhere. Commodes, long unplumbed, were
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disgustingly full. That stench could sometimes be somewhat negated by keeping the bathroom door
closed, if it still was on its hinges, which was rare. Some rooms had amassed stacks of cardboard to
shore up open windows. Yet in spite of the cold some nocturnal tenants left the windows wide open to
circulate the air -- because their bathroom had no door and they were afraid what would happen to their
minds if they slept all night in the uncirculated miasma.
If no fools ever started little fires in the rooms to keep warm, the police would perhaps not have been
so circumspect -- however when the weather is forty below zero, the mind does crazy things. It is a
wonder the place had never caught fire inasmuch as ashes of past small fires of cardboard and paper,
burned in gallon coffee tins, were everywhere.
We all migrated out of there early every morning in the pitch dark and went in search of spare
change for coffee and if we were lucky, some breakfast. The Salvation Army gave out sandwiches each
day at noon, and "Meals on Wheels" provided hot food for all to eat in the evening in the bar district.
We stood in the snow and chowed down and everyone felt really thankful. Of course, being vegetarian
was not possible any more. We would have starved. But after our recent experience with the vegetarian
restaurant owner I'd become disinclined to want to want to make any mental connection between him
and myself. In short, it felt good to eat meat. It would be a long time before I could eat a garden burger
again without thinking of Owl on his oriental pillows.
There was a pretty good heartsong happening around the cart. "Meals on Wheels" was operated by
people who were filled with some pretty inspiring amazing grace considering the decadence those
wheels rolled through to bring a daily warm meal to all the needy people.
Most of our day was spent walking around the city trying to find a store or office or restaurant that
would allow us to step inside for a few moments to warm up.
Some days and nights were colder than others. On the hellaciously cold ones, we all ran a frantic
pace around the city. All the homeless people were tired, cold, undernourished, and often sick; all were
shuffling in search of a life. There wasn't much of a life to be had.
And many didn't succeed in keeping what little there was...
***
For the most part I have never cared much for bars. Most bars anyway. When I was young and single
I wouldn't go to a bar to meet women because there is nothing as lousy in the world as having drunken
sex with someone you don't know and barely remembering what happened.
Blurred minds and loneliness... People waste their lives away in bars, dark and smelly, brain-pickling
dens. They become mordant and useless and they grow old and ugly until the cigarette smoke and
alcohol poisons them to death. But they die so slowly. Who wants to sit and watch people die?
I do like an occasional beer in a sunny establishment full of light jazz and fairly equal numbers of
men and women having intelligent unexploitive conversations; places where people who don't even
drink alcohol often come just for the good music and the good coffee and the good chess games, or to
spend an afternoon reading a good book, or to enlighten their souls with kind friendships; a place like
"Jo Federigo's" in Eugene, Oregon or "The Pub at The End of the Universe" on 28th and Gladstone in
Portland, Oregon -- or Paula's "Spaghetti West" in Port Orford, Oregon with all the wonderful paintings
on the walls, beautiful music, and its library of fine art books, scintilating conversations based on real
friendship. And who could forget Paula's amazing flambeau spaghetti dinners that melt in one's mouth?
But don't expect to find any such restaurant humanity in Alaska. At least not in 1979.
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The Anchorage bars stunk. Only the most derelict personalities entered their doors. As long as they
had green folding money, or until it ran out, they were welcome. There was no jazz. Just booming loud
brain-bashing garbage music. Cigarette smoke hung so thick you couldn't see through it. Everyone had
emphysema, everyone had puffy faces, wrinkled and nervous. Tempers flared in the darkness and old
fat barmaids gave ultimatums to irritable sots. Other than her, the only woman in the typical bar was an
occasional Eskimo and she was usually fat and bitter too, and sometimes volatile.
Many Eskimos, Inuits, and Athabascan Indians gathered in the bars. They were frequently homeless.
Whatever homes they had were far away. They came to the city to drink and get drunk. The goodhearted Inuit men we'd met in that anteroom in Tok are basically the same as these -- except they had
not been dehumanized by booze yet. They were still noble. But they lose their nobility fast when they
start guzzling.
They rarely eat when they are in the bars. They just drink. Every cent they get goes to the bar. When
that is gone, they beg other patrons for more change for more beer. Eventually they get thrown out the
door and down the steps and they lay sprawled in the bloody sooty snow beside the door.
What a ghastly sight to see... At any time of the day we'd see them laying in their vomit, coughing up
blood, wrestling each other over a dropped dollar, calling each other names, swearing, mumbling evil
threats at each other... They were grotesque ugly caricatures of their brave heritage as they would whine
and harangue and beg passers-by for spare change. If in so-doing they'd get a dollar or two, they would
drag their bodies back inside the bar where they were allowed to remain until that money was drunk up
and gone -- and then they were thrown out again. Those Eskimos considered themselves lucky if they
could manage to stay drunk all day.
When the bars closed everyone was pushed out the doors. Some staggered off down the streets to
warmth. Others had no place to stagger to, or couldn't walk because they were too drunk. Many sank to
the sidewalk and never got back up. They died there. The cruel arctic night murders them in cold, cold
blood. They were never dressed warmly enough. We heard them grunting and breathing hard as we
walked quickly past.
One night a man lay on the ice moaning. Owl and I stopped. He was bleeding. But what can we do?
We are homeless too. Maybe we could help him get to a shelter or telephone a friend for him... I bent
over him and asked:
"Is there anything I can do?"
In the dark the hand of the Indian man, lying in the freezing snow, darts out and grabs my ankle
savagely. He is cursing me and trying to pull me down in the snow with him. He is raging and cursing.
His face is grizzly as death. In terror, I shake loose from his grip and we run up the street with our
hearts in our throats. Hearing nothing chasing us, we stop to look back. He is still lying there. He is still
cursing...
Now he is transformed to become an ignoble thing, because he is sick and maybe he is dying and
maybe it makes him angry, and he is not sure whose fault it is.
No one is sure whose fault it is.
In the morning, hours before the sun lights the day and long before the work-traffic has begun -because it is better if the general public never become too aware of all this -- a little vehicle like a street
sweeper with a spotlight, goes round and round all the streets in the silence of the night's dark heart.
The men in the cab are looking for bodies. That's their nightly job. They scrape four or five frozen
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Indians off the streets and take them to a sort of morgue. Sometimes more. Rarely less. They have to
hurry to get the job done so the tourists don't see the carnage in the morning. Only the crimson blood
remains where it has melted into the snow and ice.
As a race, these native peoples lived for untold generations without alcohol. Now in a few
generations they've become a national disaster. They have nothing in their genes to protect them from
alcohol's effects. And nothing in America's society protects them either. The miserable Indian is
anathema to the upwardly mobile enrichment processes of avaricious Babylon -- so the scraping crew
ever decreases the "eyesore".
Curiosity and our relentless search for a place to warm up led us into one such bar. Some dancers
were topless and bottomless. The place smelled real bad -- not as bad as those outhouses near Beaver
Creek -- but similar. An ugly older woman caked in make-up and a dog-faced female impersonator in a
g-string contorted profanely while repelling surly hoots and heckles. Every eye was snaky and strange.
But then they turned to look at pretty Owl and nudged the one beside them to look also; soon many
gaped with deadly wolfish eyes that seemed to say, "Hungry! Tired! Vulnerable! Ripe!"
Revulsion and awareness of danger gripped my heart like a vice. Quickly seeking the obscured exit
we weaved and struggled through the cursing, taunting, muttering, moaning human forms packed
standing room only in the thick shadowy putrid room, holding each other's hand tightly so as not to get
torn apart -- and with relief lurched back out into the frigid black void, where we hurried down the
street -- freaking out, looking back over our shoulders to be sure none of them were following us.
It was better outside in the cold. We'd freeze to death before we'd go in there again.
And more than once over the months as we struggled through that bitter labyrinth, we discovered a
certain gaunt creature with hollow eyes WAS following us -- and we ran -- and he ran too -- around
corners, and through alleys -- until we finally lost him by hurrying through the front of a store and out
the back. But on another day -- there he was again! And we ran again! And when at last we thought we
were safe, we ducked into some store and made our way down the aisle and waited and watched
anxiously, concealed among the goods, hoping we'd lost him. But then all of a sudden he entered the
door and looked around shrewdly -- and we ran outside and flagged down a passing taxi and begged the
driver to give us a ride a couple blocks in any direction because someone very strange was following
us. He did that for us. I telephoned the Anchorage police department and anonymously explained the
situation and give them a description of the ghoul.
Then I telephoned my sister and we hitchhiked to her home to visit for a day and a half, and slept in
our Chevy. But that was the limit; she couldn't allow us to stay any longer than that. So we had to leave
again, and there was nowhere to go but back to Anchorage. We returned there with fear gripping our
hearts, fear of the ghoul...
We never saw that creature with the hollow eyes again. But we stayed ever alert, and never went to
sleep in the abandoned apartments without taking a roundabout route, checking often behind us.
***
Owl began to get noticeably large, the several layers of clothes accentuating the appearance to the
extent that everywhere we went, women told us they were afraid she was going to have the baby right
there in front of them at any moment. And the more obviously pregnant Owl became, the more I felt
remiss and ashamed.
I wasn't an addict or a drunk, nor was I retarded or even severely schizophrenic; but I was providing
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nothing for my wife and the child soon to be born. I may as well have been all of those things. What I
was was alienated from society. A doctor once told me that it is actually a form of schizophrenia.
Doctors don't know everything though, and I have seen them to be notoriously wrong about such
things. Anyway I take such opinions with a grain of salt. Still, for all I know maybe that doctor wasn't
entirely wrong. (But it is a known fact that among professionals it is psychiatrists who are most likely
to commit suicide, so maybe that doctor isn't even around anymore...)
But I didn't need a doctor to tell me what I was putting Owl through. Frankly, I thought I was too
intelligent to have sunk to such depths and not be able to figure a way out. It seemed a most remarkable
delusion on my part. I couldn't explain what was happening to me -- to us, and I felt I must be in
actuality, no wiser than those Eskimos dying in the slop and snow outside the bars. Though I was not an
alcoholic, what I was was no more justifiable, particularly because thanks to my weird brand of
incompetence, Owl must suffer, too. Because she loved me.
I also don't know if her love for me indicated a lack of wisdom on her part (which people had often
alluded to be certainly true...) --or if it was a divine wisdom that she had, straight from the eternal
compassionate heart of God. That's what I saw in her. That gentle inner light caused her to be so far
beyond the pale of the human beings who mocked her as to make her quite invisible to them, other than
the habiliments of her poverty, which alone their unopened eyes might perceive. How absurd! As if
wealth should be the primary common denominator of human appraisal!
Nonetheless, it hurt me deeply to be rewarding her loyalty with this grim vale.
My sister urged me to cut my hair and shave and make it easier for someone to hire me. But for some
reason, I couldn't do that. I doubted it would get me hired anywhere anyway -- especially in Alaska
where even rednecks often wear beards and long hair solely for the warmth. And that was certainly
reason enough for me to keep my hair. I couldn't imagine that making myself colder to fulfill some
inane social convention would thereby transubstantiate me into a successful carpet salesman or
apprentice paint peeler. Stock broker?
But my hair was the old "Hippie flag" too. Darn. It helped me be what I believed. I still felt called to
make some social statement, some radical humanist contribution to the world; to prove that alternative
ways existed to this greedy, selfish, uncaring, plastic-loving, dirty, bloody world.
So, I kept my hair and my independence and I stayed a little warmer.
But was I really any wiser?
I don't know. Sometimes illusions start early in life...
As a kid, I always had my nose in a book. And I was always getting into scrapes -- over religion, and
politics, and to protect my property, and of course over girls. We're talking elementary school here!
I've been a political poet since I was a preposterous little kid in Enid Anderson's sixth grade class in
Newport, Minnesota. She encouraged me to write and paint.
Of all the poems I wrote that year in sixth grade my favorite was a haunting thing, probably inspired
by reading books like Robert Louis Stevenson's KIDNAPPED and H.G. Wells' OUTLINE OF
HISTORY under the covers by flashlight till late in the night. The first stanza often pops into my mind
at the weirdest moments:
Bellicose militants into the milieu marched;
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The well-accoutered vanguard left the farmlands parched.
Thus began -- the battle hinted monody was in store;
The priest gave benison -- Belial laughed -- amidst the abattoir...
What a weird poem for a twelve year old kid to write, huh? It was really long poem but it got burned
up... so it's gone forever now except for those first four lines... When I was a kid I thought I was gonna
be a poet someday...
I wrote of love, too! At twelve years old!! But I won't quote from those poems.
I believe this stuff I was writing had my teacher and most of my fellow students stumped as to what I
was about. Twelve year old boys didn't usually write like that but I couldn't seem to help it...
I wonder if poetry grows wild in Minnesota, like the apples or the lake-rice; or whether it traveled on
the winds like dandelion spore -- or whether the original Lakota dwellers of the land planted it in the
soil to grow into our hearts -- because many are the lyricists who wander there.
Bob Dylan was a Minnesota kid too. He must have heard similar restless currents and set them
down. His personal inner rhyme and reason enriched us all, sounded like our own spirits calling. He
easily found words for emotions we all felt. I always identified with him in rock-bottom moments. I
wonder if there was a living wind that whistled along the rivers and across the lakes and fields looking
for the youngsters who stood alone on Minnesota hills with their eyes off in the clouds -- to fill them
with mumbo-jumbo rhymes... Dylan must have been a preposterous little kid too...
So it was natural for me in Alaska to find myself wondering what a destitute Dylan would do if he
were standing in my rock-solid rubber boots....
"To be on your Own, A Complete Unknown, Frozen to the Bone..."
I knew hippie families that were surviving nicely -- raising packs of wild kids in buses and tents and
on communes and on homesteads! I identified with them. If they could survive and succeed, why
couldn't I? And while I tried to figure it all out -- I was dragging my Owly along with me down all
these freezing alleys.
It IS a tribute to Owl that she'd believe in me enough to follow me down the roughest road I'd go -but should I have even asked her? True, I'd never thought it would be this hard... Also true, I always
seemed to be thinking our great opportunity was just around the corner; but perhaps all that was just
dreams.
It all seemed to work out for some people -- but not us.
I can still see Owl looking up into my eyes and whispering the cry that had been the solitary thought
of her soul for months -- the cry that came from the deepest writhings of her mother-being,
"Tom, we have to have a HOME... for the BEBE... a HOUZE!"
And whenever she said this I would promise her
Urgently
That we would,
But
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Inside my skull,
My mind
Convoluted endlessly,
Like a jammed computer!
Searching frantically,
For options....
But
Life
Continued
Exactly
The same.
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***
PROVIDENCE
The pit
Had greasy walls we couldn't climb-And murderous creatures in the slime.
Time was Love could heal in kind,
But
A cold clock's hands
Our hands entwined,
And though we rushed
--We fell behind,
Clave firmament, gazed above,
Prayed for the dove of our langsyne;
And feared we then the cost of Love
--To pay with Heart what's bought with mind!
And Love?
Well, Love stood waiting at the gate
Spurned alas! She turned to contemplate;
Wondered wanly what had made us late,
Caused our plans to deviate?
Ah Love,
Thou must hear our blended voices on a winter's winds;
We're sorry! They would not let us in!
So, be warm -- and know thou art truly Loved-That Providence doth God alone Create...
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THIRTY
FLIGHT
My sister always let me reverse the charges.
Early in March she surprised me during one of these conversations by giving us enough money to fly
from Anchorage to Seattle.
We boarded the jet in thirty below zero weather on March seventh and enjoyed our first jet plane
flight as much for the warmth and comfort as anything else. A few hours later we exited the plane in
Tacoma, Washington to discover a temperature of sixty degree above zero, a balmy day!
Our minds were stupefied; our bodies were shocked.
We stumbled around in circles attempting to locate our bags.
We were numb with the feeling that we'd been rescued from death's icy door -- that we were safe
again in a wonderful, comfortable land.
Hurrying out of the airport the warm sunshine felt like a fairy tale. We headed for the freeway and
out of the city, doing a lot of fast walking -- amazed out of our heads that both Alaska temperatures and
Washington temperatures could be existing simultaneously.
Happy but sick. Before we reached the outskirts of Tacoma I was on the verge of collapse with fever.
The crystal-cold Alaskan air must have kept my lungs antiseptically clean of viruses, but made them
raw and vulnerable to whoever it was on the plane that spewed the air with a virulent overabundance of
bad germs -- because within an hour of landing I was reeling with the worst cold of my life. I couldn't
even keep my balance walking. With Owl's help I stumbled to a path between tall bushes that turned
out to lead into a deserted homeless camp between the freeways. There I fell to the ground and passed
out.
I remember very little for the next few days. I was about as sick as I've ever been in my life but Owl
took care of me. Sometimes she went out alone into the unfamiliar streets to bring back food and water.
I always urged her to come back as quickly as possible. I was shitting diarrhea and vomiting
simultaneously and I was so dizzy I could barely rise up and wobble to the bushes.
But all we had at the start was five dollars and by the second day that was all gone and I needed food
and aspirins. I had no choice but to ask Owl if she could try asking someone for some spare change.
Normally I would never allow her to do that. But she went out to try. I was so frightened for her safety
that if my legs would have supported my weight I'd have gone looking for her after ten minutes, but I
could not so much as turn over, nor even stay awake most of the time. She came back an hour later with
bread and soup.
On the third day I awoke several times and she was always gone. Towards the evening I staggered
out to the edge of the city and looked upon nothing but bustling traffic. Where was she? Was she in
trouble? Had she wandered too far and gotten lost? Had someone picked her up and dropped her off
forty miles away? What could I do? There was nothing I could do but go back and wait for her. I was so
weak... I returned to the camp and collapsed again. I laid awake much of the night waiting for her. Day
broke. I was feeling a little better. I went to the street and spare-changed five dollars and got some food
and returned to the camp hoping Owl would have returned. But she hadn't.
I began to wonder if Owl had deliberately left me. I don't know why I had such doubts about her. But
after all the hell that we had been through maybe it would be the smartest thing she could do. What
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woman could take so much and still stay true? Especially in this day and age. She was so pretty, so
kind, so young. To think of all the men who would have gladly given her a fine home and an education
and children and everything a woman needs... Why should she bother with me after I had proven so
thoroughly to be so incapable of fulfilling even her most basic needs? But the thought of living without
her made me feel utterly lost. I loved her so much...
But I also knew it was just as possible that she was trying to get back to me and couldn't. She might
be in jail. She might be in a hospital. She might be in danger. I went out to the street and located a
policeman and explained the situation to him as well as I could. I even told him where I was camped.
He wrote down a few details and told me if he found her he'd bring her to me. He was a nice enough
person but he also asked me if I realized it was illegal for me to camp there. I told him if I left there I
might never find her. He seemed to let it go at that.
The next day he came back to see how I was doing. He hadn't seen her and he shared his opinion
with me that she had probably left me. He also said I'd have to move out of the bushes very soon or he
might have to arrest me, within the hour in fact. He said he was sorry about it, but it was his job. So I
would be going to jail if I stayed. That wouldn't do me any good. And if I moved how would Owl and I
ever find each other? But then again maybe he was right: maybe it ought to be obvious to me that she
didn't want to find me.
I found myself numbly packing up my gear. I walked out to the freeway and stuck out my thumb. I
was alone. It's a terrible feeling to be alone after being so close to someone for so long. The wind blew
down the freeway carrying the sweet scent of spring and all the pretty ladies in Tacoma. And among
them was surely an atom of scent of my Owl. I would be leaving her among them. What would happen
to her? The cars passed. The drivers saw me but no one stopped. It was very illegal to hitch there but it
was the only way.
A realization slowly swept over me. Where in the Hell was I going? Was I going to just up and leave
and go on with my life as though the years I had spent with Owl were nothing? Could I just leave her
and forget her? Whoa! So what if I was arrested for camping there waiting for her? So What? At least I
was waiting. At least I hadn't given up. I could hide from the cops. I could wait. What was more
important?
So there I was standing on the side of the highway with three lanes of cars passing me and I was
praying to God to make things right, to show me what I needed to do. A car pulled over and I picked up
my gear and ran for it. But my steps got heavier and heavier. When I got to the car he had the door
open. I popped my head in and told him I'd changed my mind. I didn't need the ride after all.
And as I walked back to the camp I was almost overcome with my emotions, realizing how close I
had almost come to going away from the only thing that had meaning in my life and I was bathed in a
waterfall of hope. When I got there I saw Owl's coat and I knew she had returned while I was gone.
But there was no sign of her. I left a note on her pack telling her to stay put and then I went back out
and walked around the nearby streets looking for her rather frantically but I didn't find her. I guess I
was looking kinda wild because a cop car spotted me and veered over and the two cops got out and
gave me the third degree, figuring I was on drugs. They were talking about taking me to jail. I
explained to them everything that had happened, how we had just arrived from Alaska and I had lost
track of my wife and how I had just found her coat and so I knew she was nearby. They still seemed
quite suspicious of me but they let me go. Close call. I returned to the camp and waited for her.
A little later my ears picked up the static of a cop radio and heavy footsteps coming along the path
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between the bushes. It was the cop who I'd asked to help me find Owl. He told me he was going to
have to arrest me since I was still there. I explained to him that Owl had returned while I was gone, and
left her coat. So I knew she'd be back for it very soon. He was slightly sensitive to the information and
he said in that case he wouldn't arrest me right then. He'd give me another hour. So he left again.
There was no way I was going to leave without Owl. I got all my gear together and hid it a little
ways away and I prepared an escape plan for when he came back again. I could hide.
Owl came through the bushes about an hour before sunset. I was so happy to see her... It was a heavy
tearful moment. I promised her the world again. She herself was very calm. She seemed to be unaware
of how long she had been gone. She said she thought it was only a few hours. So I never have learned
what happened. It's always that way with Owl. All that really mattered though was that she was back.
Our happiness was neatly shattered by the static of a police radio. I peeked out and saw two police
cars alongside the road and officers coming our way.
Owl and I grabbed up our gear and headed the opposite direction running through the bushes. We
made it to the street and out onto the freeway. I stuck out my thumb and miraculously the first car
pulled over and picked us up. And we were gone.
***
But where were we going?
Washington was having such a delightful spring. But we sure couldn't stay there. It would have been
nice though. The sea winds smelled so sweet and felt so warm... The buds were busting out on trees
everywhere and the birds were flying hither and yon gathering string and twigs for their nests.
We ourselves had to have a nest -- fast. It would need to be more than a nest though. It would have to
be a secure home -- a home beyond the reproach of any Children's Services -- a place we each could
grow to our maximum potential,
I set my mind to resolve this puzzle immediately. The size of Owl's belly negated any
procrastination.
Oregon had a warm climate and we could hitchhike there in only a few hours. But there was no way,
no way, no way, I would take my pregnant wife into Oregon again. What a ghastly thought. Those
bloodsuckers in Oregon's Department of Children's Services would bleed Owl like the Nazis bled the
Jews. Dry. They'd already torn one baby out of Owl's guts. It was simple truth that they'd love to do it
again.
And we could forget about staying in Washington too, although the climate was about as nice as
Oregon's. But we didn't know anybody in Washington. How could we get together all the vital things
we desperately needed when we didn't have a single good friend in the whole state? But the worse
thing about Washington was the police problem. Like hitchhiking is illegal on many Washington
highways. How do poor people get around when their cars break down? They get hitchhiking tickets,
that's what! As though they can afford them! A state that is as inconsiderate as that of its low-income
people isn't likely to be any kindhearted sanctuary for us, that's for sure. And I would never as long as I
live forget our lousy experiences in Ferndale and Aberdeen. They seemed to indicate the existence of
powerful cruel men and maybe even some ghoulish cosmic forces. And we sure didn't need any such
energies near us with a new baby. We'd be struggling hard enough to survive without having to deal
with the likes of them.
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And California was certainly out of the picture. California had imprisoned me for a crime of
conscience -- packed me in with violent and truly evil men. I could have been killed in prison and none
of those lawyers or judges would have shed a tear. Certainly not. And California had jailed me many
times, for all kinds of ridiculous little reasons, like failing to leash my dogs in Laguna Beach, and for
sleeping on the Beach, and for hitchhiking! Jail obliterates feelings of security, strips a person of pride
and honor, imperils a man by placing him inside a cage with murderers -- and in his absence from
home his family is also imperiled for they have no loving protector. And how many tears are shed when
a man's wife is raped while he is in jail for hitchhiking to work? None. Is it worth imperiling an entire
family over enforcement of petty laws? Justice is blind and dangerous in California. In fact Owl and I
would have more to fear from the system of Justice in California than we would from any criminals we
might meet there. But that's all too true of most places these days.
How could we raise a family in a state that can jail a person for arbitrary stupid laws -- arrests which
are often just a personality conflict with a cop who claims the right to manifest prejudice and arrogance
and brutality towards the long-haired culture that he can't understand? The Darth Vadar Empire loves to
institutionalize all those people who cannot fit in this immoral world any more; where money makes
the laws to protect money and it takes money to get any fair legal defense -- and those with little or no
money are drowned in the system like a bag of cats.
If I brought Owl into their system they'd employ seven extra fat asses just to observe her and control
her and counsel her, and take her baby, and police her, and medicate her, and guard her and deport her,
and computerize her record; and an equal amount of ant workers to do similar hell to me. Forget
California.
How about Arizona? No, not Arizona. We'd searched there and found nothing. Nothing but a cheap
California imitation; a little more rusticated; but full of the same dementia.
Well, what about British Columbia?
Yes, that would be best -- but no, it wouldn't work either. We'd never get through the Douglas/Blaine
border crossing. They'd separate us for even trying. We knew them.
New Mexico?
The unpleasant experiences of 1976 still lingered... Was there any reason to suppose we would find a
safe haven there this time? Owl's pregnancy could compound our difficulties terribly...
I wanted to be around other writers and artists and craftspeople -- in some part of the country where
a person like me could start out with nothing and work and grow and eventually have a comfortable
home in the country where our children could grow up wise and strong and happy.
But towns like Taos are no longer the habitats of "starving artists" and "garden philosophers" seeking
purity and humanity and community among others like themselves. For poverty obscures their good
qualities. Myopic social controllers lump the poor altogether and step on them in bunches, squash them
flat. Inept cheaply paid court appointed attorneys are not justice for the poor. The poor are easily
wounded by the system which should preserve them. Many are the brilliant people of the world who
have no business-sense and therefore must remain poor. They are considered useless flotsam by the
wealthy new investors.
Any gentle person would have a hard time in Taos. Everyone has guns. Indians have guns. Shop
owners have guns. Artists have guns. Even hippies have guns. I don't like guns.
Many were the brothers and sisters who had tried to carve a life out of Taos. The area has a
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mysterious magnetism that tends to attract them. Time and again I had been one of those. And I had
never come close to finding a safe haven.
In 1970 I had showed up on the doorstep of Llama foundation so sick I could barely stand up.
Thousands of miles on the road protesting the war had taken its toll. I had spoken before crowds in
Universities. I had led runners to Canada. Then I had taken sick and had nowhere to rest and heal. So I
had come to Llama Foundation. They gave me one night -- and turned me out in the morning because I
was too sick to work in their garden, which was mandatory for all "guests". I had to heal somewhere.
Or I thought I would die. So I went to my mother's house in California. And I was arrested there and
taken to prison.
After my release in 1972 I'd hitchhiked to the Hog Farm commune in southern New Mexico. I had
picked up a St Bernard puppy as my companion to help me heal from the trauma of the eighteen
months of confinement, mostly in solitary. The Hog Farm guys were a sorry bunch. One night they
tried to force-feed peyote buttons to my pup. They thought it was the funniest thing ever. I had to
wrestle my dog away from them. It was all down hill after that. There were no friends or "brothers"
there after that confrontation. I had to leave. So much for the sacred energy of New Mexico.
No, we would not go to New Mexico. I would resist the magnetic pull this time.
So where were we to go?.... Quebec?
Quebec! If only we could get a foothold there! A way in. Now, there, certainly, was the perfect home
for us. But how could we do it?...
Maybe if we started in Vermont...
Good old Vermont. It sure had its minuses. It sure was a poor second best. It sure hadn't been a
triple-A livable place for us before. And it sure was ornery. Some of its folks still had the mental
attitudes of the 1930's. Isolationists. Every town had sets of spinster sisters living out their unmarried
lives together. And the Vermont police were still as fond of brutality as if the entire human rights
movement had passed by unobserved.
And next door was New Hampshire with its "Live Free or Die" license plate. I think that license
plate is designed to condition everyone who lives there to prepare themselves to kill any hippies who
irk them on a bad day. They sure can be mean to us...
Vermont!
Green mountains. Farmer aristocrats. Old Land. Old Money. Old people. (So many of the youth had
gone to Boston, New York, Florida, Jamaica...) Antiques still in use. Blacksmiths, still in business. Old
traditions.
Vermont!
Quaint. Pretty. Quiet. Slow moving. Rural. Thoughtful. Opinionated. Homebodies. Musical. Family
first. Old-fashioned. Poetry contest in the town papers. Drawing contests. Churches. Milk cows. Corn.
Small Colleges. Alcoholics. Homemade jams for sale. Communes.
Vermont... A border on Quebec! The decision was made.
It was sixty degrees in Tacoma! Tee shirt weather. Traveling weather! I wished, for Owl's sake, we
could have had one ride straight through all those miles, on a Greyhound or on a jet. I burned to get her
to a place she could just rest like she should be doing, where I could bring her wool to knit baby things
and we could lean on each other in front of a hearth fire, warm and cozy.
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We'd have things like that as soon as we arrived in Vermont. Once there, I knew it would take us at
least a month to recover from everything we'd been through. I wished we could start that recovery
immediately.
The spring weather felt perfect for movin' on down the road...
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THIRTY-ONE
COUCH POTATOES
As Interstate 90 carried us east through Washington the spring weather of the coast vanished. The air
was frigid and a thin layer of snow covered the land. I slept much of the time and when I awoke I felt
very weak. Clearly I was not ready yet to be doing any traveling. I started looking for somewhere we
could hole up for a few days. The person who had picked us up told me he would be letting us off in
the middle of a town very quickly. I felt I was too sick to be standing in the middle of a strange town.
There was a long stretch of highway alongside us. I asked him to let us off right there and he did.
The cattle fence was a hundred feet from the highway through brittle grass but there was no snow.
We crunched along and clambered over the fence and made our way into the sagebrush. I was too weak
to lay out our sleeping gear so Owl did it and we went to sleep. I crashed real hard. I mean I was out of
it, totally. I couldn't get up the next day so Owl and I lay there all day long cuddled together. She could
use the sleep too, although she wasn't sick. She's usually much healthier than I am.
On the second day I still could not even sit up in the bedroll. But Owl was feeling antsy. She was up
and moving around doing things. I just slept. We needed some nutrition. Once when I blearily awoke
for a few minutes Owl asked me how far the nearest town was from us. The driver had told me it was
just a few miles. She wanted to walk there and bring back some food. I told her to be careful and
passed out again. She was gone when I awoke again. It was then that I fully realized what I had done in
allowing her to make that trip alone and I was very frightened and laid very much awake until Owl
returned two hours later with some food. So everything was okay. The next morning I was still sick and
Owl went for food again. But this time she didn't come back in two hours and not in four and not in six.
Finally in the late afternoon I put on my clothes and climbed over the fence and walked down the
highway looking for her.
A car pulled over and offered me a ride. He was a nice enough person and I told him my problem and
he offered to help me look for Owl. We drove into the town and he even bought us some groceries. I
described Owl to the lady. She told me a woman of that description had been in there hours ago. I was
afraid Owl was lost and walking along the road so he drove ten miles in each direction but there was no
sign of her.
But when I tried to get back to our camp I realized I didn't know where it was. I myself was lost. All
the fences looked the same. And I was still very weak. I kept running the hundred-foot distance to the
fence at likely places and running back to his truck exhausted. We drove up and down doing that until
he was exasperated. He let me out and drove away.
So I stood there on the side of the road in the cold with evening coming on with no sleeping bag and
no Owl and no idea where I was. Our camp could be five miles in either direction as far as I knew. I
started walking east. It all seemed so futile. A car was passing and I put out my thumb. He stopped. He
was another kind person and he listened and agreed to help. We spent an hour just driving slowly on the
side of the highway looking for the camp.
I was sick. My brain wasn’t functioning at top speed. I was dizzy and tired and cold. I needed to lie
down. But more important than any of that was the fact that I didn’t know how to find my way back to
Owl. Finally I dropped all resistance in my heart and prayed to God in a silent way.
Almost immediately afterwards I spotted a piece of paper on the ground. The driver stopped and
backed up the car. I recognized the scrap as something I’d been carrying in my pocket for days. Nearby
there were scuffmarks in the dirt coming from the far off fence. I ran to the wire and saw our bags in
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the sagebrush. And Owl was in the bags asleep.
***
So my sickness was about over and we were ready to fly again. Owl's big belly made me want to
hurry. Vermont was still two thousand hitchhiking miles away, which doesn't take long unless you
dilly-dally. Our thumbs were pointing east, over our shoulders, and our feet were walkin' backwards
into the rising sun and our eyes would watch it set, one ride after another, watching the western world
fade into the sunset, you might say.
There was a small problem though. The warm spring days of early March that we had encountered in
Seattle had fooled me into thinking the whole world was involved in spring. East of the Cascades
though, spring was a pipedream. We're talkin' deep winter. And the further east we traveled the deeper
the winter got. Did we really ever leave Alaska or was that delirium from freezing?
It seemed too much bad luck that we should still be in the thick of all this life-threatening stuff. Cold,
white fluffy stuff -- insolent icy numb-nose stuff.
The ride that let us off in Cheyenne, Wyoming sure set us down on one big frozen cow pie. We
gathered our bags and stood beside the highway, looking at a few freeway off-ramp businesses
clustered there. A cafe might warm us and get us a ride.
A police car stopped.
"I hope you two aren't thinking of hitchhiking.." the officer began, "because that would be illegal
and I would have to take you straight to jail and you would have to pay a big fine."
"We're just passing through, officer. Someone just dropped us off."
"I don't care. I better not see you hitchhiking. Is that clear? Let's see some I.D.."
He ran his computer check and handed back our I.D.s. Owl didn't know how to talk to him. He had
her off a ways from me grilling her. I tried to offer my help but that only made him madder. Finally he
asked me for some ID for her and I dug out what we had. He looked at our marriage license and asked
to see her green card. I sidestepped his question telling him she was my legal wife. Nonchalantly,
coldly, he said he'd have to notify the border patrol about Owl and see if they wanted to go to the
trouble of coming down to Cheyenne to pick her up. Two other patrol cars arrived and it looked like
they were going to run us in for vagrancy and loitering. But after making us stand out in the cold for
thirty minutes they let us go for the time being.
I got the impression they just let us go to watch us walking around out in the cold with no way to
hitch a ride out of town. They knew we'd try sooner or later and that would be their chance to swarm in
again and arrest us big time. Or Immigration could show up at any minute and give them all a show.
That way the town could clearly see they were earning their pay -- fighting crime and keeping the
streets free of degenerate pregnant women and hippie vegetarian pacifist scumbags. Local cattle
ranches would be real proud of them.
I kept my eye out for cop cars and when the area seemed free of them for a short while I quickly and
surreptitiously panhandled a couple dollars. (That was illegal too.) So we got some french-fries. A little
warm food in the stomach always helps a person think.
The police shift changed at five o'clock and the new officers ran new I.D checks on us all over again
and treated us, if anything, more contemptuously than the first. Surly Wyoming bad guys. Hating us
was the highlight of their day. No fooling around. There was enough pure unadulterated hatred shooting
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from their eyes to kill a horse.
They reminded us again that we weren't supposed to solicit rides in any way. Walking on the freeway
was illegal too, they said. They were smirking insidiously, with their heads cocked sideways, chewing
on toothpicks, thumbs in their belt loops. They wanted some action. They wanted me to just say one
little thing back to them one tenth as mean as the things they were saying to us and they'd have an
excuse to beat me bloody and throw me in jail. And then pretty Owl would be at their mercy. There was
no mistaking their intentions. I stayed so cool they just stared at me. It pissed them off bad that I would
stay so cool.
There was no apparent way to get out of that town. They were obviously closing in for the kill. We
had merely a matter of minutes.
I saw no police cars for a space of time. A truck came in off the freeway -- not a hippie, but a heplooking suburban got out to go in the restaurant. I quickly went up to him and talked turkey -- fast. I
told him our situation and pleaded for a ride at least to the city limits. He was sympathetic and willing
but he said inasmuch as the front was packed about as full as could be, we'd have to ride in the back of
his pickup truck, which was pretty full too, and he didn't imagine we'd want to be out in the cold and
wind!
He was wrong there. I told him not to worry about us. We'd be just fine back there. He said "all
right". The temperature was only about ten degrees above zero. Considering what we had lived through
in Alaska that was nothing. I could have broke out Bermuda shorts and flowered shirts.
Just before we got rolling I told him that if the cops stopped him please don't tell them I asked for the
ride, but to say he'd volunteered it. He understood. As he climbed in behind the wheel we looked all
around -- seeing no cops Owl and I clambered quickly over the sides and scrunched down low in the
bed.
With one eye barely over the side I saw a cop car drive by obviously looking all around for us. We
hunched lower. The truck slowly backed out and made for the on-ramp. Two other patrol cars appeared
and cruised the area real slow. One of them must have spotted me because they all turned at once and
came after our truck.
We were on the freeway now. The wind was cold, cold, cold, at sixty miles per hour. A cop car
passed us and another hung beside us. The officer stared sideways at me with shit in his eyes. Another
cop car was two car lengths behind. They hung around us like this for about four miles. When we
passed the city limits they all turned off. Whew. Man-oh-man. Gosh...
The truck took us twenty miles and dropped us at a rest area. We'd only been there five minutes when
a sheriff drove in and wanted to talk to us. He seemed unaware of what had just happened in Cheyenne
so I didn't tell him about it. He ran my identification through his computer and finding nothing handed
it back to me. Then he got in his patrol car and rolled out. But the hair stood up on the back of my neck
and I had a clear feeling of trouble coming our way. Because he was heading straight into that pack of
wasps we'd just left in Cheyenne and his radio was sure to get red hot with what they had to say to him.
And then that sheriff would surely spin his wheels around and burn the pavement getting back to us. So
I gave some thought to running out into the countryside and hiding in the sagebrush -- except that there
would be tracks in the snow.
So we stood there like sitting ducks. The rest area was empty. Each minute felt like an hour as I
waited for some savior to come and take us to safety. I guess I prayed... Because sure enough, a truck
came rolling along the highway and pulled right in.
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I asked the driver where he was going and he said Boulder. I told him my wife and I were really
anxious to get to Boulder before dark and that we'd been waiting in the rest area for a long time. He
said to climb in. There was only room for one in the front so Owl rode up there and I climbed into the
bed of the truck. The truck pulled out onto the freeway and I looked behind us and saw the sheriff car
spin into the rest area real fast and park right where we had been standing. But our truck was merged
with traffic and flying. I kept alert for him coming up behind us but very soon we turned off Interstate
90 on the highway south to Colorado and we were much safer.
I guess it was about thirty miles to the state line. I watched for that sheriff every mile with terrible
fear. When I saw the Colorado State welcome sign I about passed out from sheer relief.
Only a very pinheaded human being would ever think we had escaped "justice". We had done
nothing wrong. The amount of harm those officers would have done to us would have been a true
crime. We were clearly in the hands of God. We had escaped intact again. We were safe again. Owl was
in the front seat of the truck and I was in the bed of the truck scrunched up against the glass watching
her face through the window -- and I was thanking God. And if I could have kissed her and held her
hands in mine I would have. To think of the cruel things those Cheyenne police would have committed
upon us... Thank you God. Thank you God.
People who love to inflict pain and suffering upon innocents worship a different "god" from the One
we worship. The spirit of Love is obvious in the hearts where It lives. The darkness is appalled by the
Light and the king of darkness calls his minions to try to extinquish the Light. It is evil, pure and
simple, to want to harm innocent people the way they wanted to harm us. The power that motivated
them has a natural enmity with the gentle spirit that guides us; the same spirit that warned us about
them and saved us from them. They needed to destroy us. But it was the Spirit they really wanted to
harm if the truth be known. They were just getting at it through us.
Wyoming has a bad reputation among hitchhikers. Why anyone would ever live there I'll never
know. There's so much hate there...
God, it is terrible to be hated. Whenever I meet a black person who thinks I am a typical white
person who cannot understand what it is like to be hated I try to tell them what I have learned about it
from personal experience. Sometimes I think God gave me this life so I could learn to communicate
about what it's like to be hated, senselessly, especially by people who are supposed to exist to protect
people. What a bottomless task it is.
***
I hadn't intended on going to Boulder but that's where the fellow was going, so Boulder it was. I
hadn't been to Boulder since 1973. And I really wasn't sure if it was safe for me to go back yet so I was
a little shaky.
When I got out of prison for the "crime" of Conscientious Objection in the fall of 1972 I'd almost
immediately returned to the road. I bought an International Metro Van and put a bed in it and drove it to
Boulder early in 1973 in the thick of winter. And I'd wandered through the Colorado mountains in that
rig and had some swell times. But it had all ended in the spring when somehow the parked Metro, with
no one aboard, had rolled down one of the longest, steepest, residential streets in Boulder, jumped a
curb, and smashed its way into the middle of somebody's living room. I think the emergency brake
slipped. I don't know. No one in the house was hurt, thank God, although they were pretty shook up and
understandably angry. I avoided the police and managed to get my guitar and a few other possessions
from the impound yard where it was towed and then I hitchhiked out of town. And I hadn't been back
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since. Six years had passed. I had no idea whether or not the Boulder police would still want to do
anything to me about it.
Now there was an instance where I might not have been very innocent. I may have been negligent.
But I have chosen to believe that someone deliberately released the emergency brake and sent my
vehicle careening down the hill -- because I remember setting the brake and turning the wheels towards
the curb. But maybe I didn't. It's a foggy memory... At the time I was deathly afraid of jail cells having
so recently been released after spending eighteen months in one. I could not face that prospect again. I
was sorry. I suffered loss too. I had lost my rig. I didn't have any money to fix their house. I had no job.
The only thing I could do was split town. That's when I'd gone to MFF in Vermont for the first time.
When Owl and I arrived in Boulder the police did check out my identification and it was a scary
moment for me. But my record came back clean. So I breathed easier.
I sort of took Owl on a tour of all the great places. But everything had changed so much. None of the
people I used to know were there anymore.
We went to the stone church and I was happy to see that they still let homeless people sleep in the
pews and on the thick carpets. But the cops came by every night and checked everyone's ID's. Back in
1969 it had practically been a commune in that church every night. And the cops never bothered us.
Late one dark night in the summer of 1969 I had made love with a beautiful sensual young woman on
the altar of that church. Moonlight pouring through stained glass windows was the only illumination.
Her skin tones in the light were so fine and the LSD was so fantastic... We'd made love for at least an
hour on the carpets and in the pulpit and finally on the altar. I'd thought everyone was asleep. But when
we finally orgasmed there was a round of applause from several hippies in the pews. Ah! Those were
the good old days...
So Owl and I spent a couple nights in that church but the police bugged us bad and the minister came
in one morning and told us they didn't really want to allow homeless people to sleep in there anymore.
He said they kept the doors open all night so people could come in and pray, not so that homeless
people could have somewhere warm to sleep. I resisted a strong urge to try to teach him what Christ
would expect him to do for the least of his brethren who were tired and cold. It doesn't make good
sense to piss off a minister of a fine stone church who has his mind set. They practically all think that
way these days anyway. You'd waste your breath talking to them. Keep both coats man.
So people still were cold and homeless. And many of them didn't have any alternative place to sleep.
And it was freezing cold outside in the streets of the mountain city of Boulder Colorado in the month of
March. So people tried to convince the cops and the minister that they had come there to pray, not to
sleep. It was really pathetic to see people on their knees falling over with fatigue only to be rudely
shaken awake and told that sleeping wasn't allowed and that they would have to go out the big churchdoors into the freezing night.
I discovered an office in the church that we could get into and lock the door behind us and sleep
soundly and warm all night long. We would make a surreptitious exit in the early morning unobserved.
The strategy worked for better than a week but then the minister came along with a key one morning
and that was the end of that.
Sleeping anywhere within the city limits was illegal and punishable by a stiff fine and jail so we had
a real problem every night. We tried walking out of town to sleep in the evenings. The cops were lousy.
Sometimes they would follow us in their patrol cars and even though we were a couple miles from the
town and past the city limits sign they would come into the weeds and trees looking for us and they'd
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wake us up and tell us we couldn't sleep there. They'd always threaten to take us to jail but fortunately
for us they never did. We got some tickets though. As I remember they were for fifty dollars each... We
sure didn't intend to stay around long enough to pay them. What homeless person freezing out in the
cold nights has enough money to pay a bunch of fifty-dollar fines? How do police and courts get away
with such scams against people? You'd think they never heard of Thomas Jefferson and the famous
documents he wrote.
I got to talking one evening with someone about our predicament of having nowhere to sleep and the
fellow thought for a minute and said he could help us out for one night only. He took us over to some
kind of counter-culture bicycle store in a little old shack of a building. We couldn't see it very well in
the dark. He let us in and told us we could roll out our sleeping bags on the floor behind the bikes. The
only thing was that I was to make sure we were out of there before the place opened up for business
and lock the door behind us. I felt honored that he knew instinctively that we were not thieves.
So Owl and I went to sleep. Several hours later we heard the latch turning and the door opening and I
sat up thinking our benefactor had returned. I said hello into the dark. The room became abruptly silent.
A man's startled voice called out, "Who's there? Is someone in here?"
By that time I realized the person coming in was not the same person who had let us spend the night.
I didn't know what to say.
"It's me, uh, RobinTom..." rather unsure of myself.
"RobinTom? I don't know anyone named RobinTom. Who the hell is in my shop? Stay right where
you are! I've caught you, whoever you are, and you're not going to get away." He fumbled around for
the light switch.
"Listen man, I'm not here to steal anything. Me and my wife arrived in town and we didn't have a
place to sleep and this guy we met downtown brought us here and said we could roll out our sleeping
bags if we left early in the morning..."
The lights came on and the man looked at me and Owl still in our bags. He could see we were
sleeping, not robbing. But he was very angry. He wanted to know WHO had given us permission. Not
remembering his name I described the fellow. The guy knew who he was, and he telephoned the guy
then and there and found out we were telling the truth. But the shop owner remained angry and he had
us pack up our stuff and get out of there. So there we were stumbling around Boulder at four AM, half
sleep, trying to dodge cops.
Then in a nearly identical situation we nearly got arrested for sleeping on the kitchen table of a co-op
house. Some tenants called the police. We got out of that by the skin of our teeth too.
Ninety-eight percent of all the "anti-social activities", i.e. supposed illegalities, that I've ever been
accused of in my life have been for sleeping. Yawn.
Finally we tried sleeping behind a sofa in the living room of the girl's dormitory on the campus. It
was something I had got away with a couple times back in 1973 when I was a young single guy
crashing around Boulder and I knew some of the girls who lived there. But now it was six years later
and there were two of us.
Well it worked for a couple nights. We just waited until no one was in the room and we threw a
sleeping bag behind the sofa and crawled in. The carpet was soft and the room was warm. Warm was
good. In the morning we crawled out early before anyone was up and around.
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Then about two AM on the second night some girls came in with their boyfriends and they all sat on
the sofa and chairs laughing and having fun and one of the girls looked behind the sofa and saw me and
about freaked out. And then the custodian arrived and it turned into a real circus. They were all real
surly. They wouldn't even allow me to move.
A cop arrived in minutes. He had his gun drawn and pointed at me and he ordered me to come out
from behind the sofa slowly. Seeing scraggly old me back there was one thing and quite bad enough in
itself. But then Owl's sweet young face appeared and that really brought down the house. Because Owl
was about the same age as many of the students there and her face was so pretty and innocent looking,
well, she was certainly as beautiful as any young woman in the dorm. She was so exotic looking in her
sheepskin vest and her home knit sweater and her leather bellbottom patchpants. And then there was
her beautiful French accent... The question was what was such an amazing young kitten doing with
some flea-bitten hippie behind the dormitory couch? It had them all talking at once.
The cop gaped at our marriage license and looked back and forth from Owl to me. I told him we had
just gotten into town and we needed someplace warm to sleep and so we'd hit upon the idea of sleeping
behind the sofa. When it was all said and done he realized we didn't have any weird purposes for being
there and everything cooled down.
Maybe there was no one on duty at that time to run the police computer but we were fortunate he
didn't discover that other town cops had already had run-ins with us during the past week and a half or
so. So he didn't arrest us. He said he'd give us a break one time. He would let us go on one condition:
We had to be out of town by morning and never come back.
Something funny is that back in '73 a Boulder cop had also discovered me behind the same
dormitory couch and he had also let me go on the condition that I would leave Boulder immediately.
Oh well... I guess some things are worth doing twice...
Good bye Boulder, you bittersweet town. You have a church with the holiest altar I know.
***
We headed north. But I didn't want to deal with Wyoming again so I made sure we got a ride from
the rest area with someone who could get us all the way through that state, heading east on Interstate
90.
In Sioux Falls a "hippie" took us home to his house full of other "hippies". I don't know what that
house was. He said it wasn't a commune. Maybe it was something like a co-op house. We couldn't
concentrate on anything anyone said. We were so tired; we kept falling asleep wherever we sat. Maybe
they thought it was rude of us. All I know is that when I told them I didn't feel like smoking any reefer,
they became hostile and scary -- suspicious I was a narc. I think they were into heavy dope like crank
or heroin.
They stalked and moped and harangued and threatened and intimidated each other so much, well,
they simply weren't like any gentle Rainbow people I'd ever known. It was just as well when they
changed their mind and wanted us to leave the house at about one A.M.. Being around them was like
tossing a loaded pistol back and forth.
We got to the freeway and crawled off into some bushes to get some badly needed sleep.
We've been treated rotten by all kinds of people wearing all kinds of costumes.
All kinds.
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I mean it's like: Those South Dakota so-called "hippies" really weren't much different from those
Cheyenne so-called "peace officers"! They were very similar fascist Ding-a-lings. It just goes to show
that you don't have to wear any specific costume to be a nazi.
But good folks stick out like a cup of hot coffee on an iceberg.
Don't they?
***
We met a slow-moving, quiet-spoken farmer in Iowa who sat scrunched up behind his steering wheel
like a collapsed empty feedsack and asked us where we were coming from and where we were going as
though he'd seen us around all his life and never had a chance till now to meet us. He thought all our
answers were funnin' him and that we were making everything up about the winter in Alaska and the
folks on Cortez Island and the hot springs of Idaho and Oregon. He admonished us that we should
speak the truth about things. He was sure we lived locally and were giving him the wildest answers
possible just to get his goat. In the farthest reaches of his imagination he couldn't believe our lives.
But he was a kind man -- there was no devil inside him like we'd seen in so many others. A devil has
to be nurtured daily or it dies. He was so wrapped up with farm and family that for all he knew the rest
of the world probably didn't even exist. His ten year old Chevy smelled like a chicken coop. I envied
him.
Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, always pass so fast that I rarely have specific memories of them. What a lot
of traffic! What a lot of smog! Workaholic industries. Smokestacks that stink up entire vast
communities. Black snow. Black slush in the streets. K-Mart opulence.
And sometimes we detected a pervasive social weariness, a feeling of boredom and resignation. But
worst of all was a sickness characterized by the sexual sickies who sometimes picked us up in
disgusting perfumed cars, whose every mannerism makes the skin crawl -- and we'd ask to be let off
long before the ride was up.
Finally, Pennsylvania and New York! And Massachusetts! Wall to wall suburbia, true, but further
from the congested cities the people we met manifested stronger, healthier attitudes.
Generally East-coasters seemed proud of their humanity. I remember rides with proud dads talking
about their kids, proud young men talking about their buddies at work; housewives dutifully trying to
manifest some principal of helping the downtrodden and abused; down-to-earth low income folks
wanting to help each other ascend the low economic levels by sticking together -- and occasionally a
cynical used car salesman in a sport coat, who believed in nothing and just picked us up because he was
curious as to what makes us tick -- though he believed nothing we told him. I doubt if he ever believed
anyone, lying was such a necessity to him...
Some of those guys are real dirtbags who pick up any woman they see hitching, even if they're with
a guy, and offer them money for sex. It's a sign of the times. Some people are just very lonely. Others
have sunk up to their ears in vileness.
March winter isn't so bad, cross-country hitchhiking like this in the east. Rides aren't hard to get.
Everyone has heaters that work. It's not necessary to take a cold ride in the back of a truck because a
good ride will pick you up shortly.
In some ways the East Coast is friendlier. Strange but true. Optimistic people who stand stoutly on
strong foundations. Their sense of humor is strong. Their sense of art. Their sense of compassion.
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Without those things, a person here is only half a person. Over the past year we'd endured the backlash
of a great dearth of those qualities in many of our fellow human beings. It felt good to be treated kindly
by some of those gentle folks who were so decent as to give us a lift...
In New England, they have a long Christmas and it isn't necessarily entirely over even in March.
That is not to say that they've no reason to lock their doors or that every ride is a good one, or that they
are inclined to invite home people like us who are stuck out on the road, for a hot meal, a shower, and a
warm place on the living room rug for the night -- or that some vipers do not lie in wait for the
innocent. No.
But where is there a perfect place?
Nowhere. Nowhere.
But there would be a warm hearth waiting for us in Vermont.
I was sure of that.
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THIRTY-TWO
GARDEN
Fluffy wet snow fell thickly upon us as we stood on an on-ramp in southern Vermont watching the
paces of a town whose name I never knew. It must have been five or six in the evening, rush hour.
Cars filled with brightly-garbed folks and pulled away from the hundred year old storefronts, queued
and choked the outward-bound avenues, on their way home. People eyed us curiously through sweeps
of windshield wipers, wondering who were these pilgrims, dressed in such strange leather clothes,
hitchhiking in the storm? We knew confidently, someone would be curious enough to pick us up.
That ride and a few others packed us farther and farther north, almost to Canada; and at last
graciously let us out into a frore fairyland bathed through gaps in the clouds in rich moonlight -- the
eerie and lonely northland forest. Here the highway was just a few tire tracks in a field of white.
Leaving us knee deep in moonsnow the driver maneuvered his station wagon on down a long side
road scrunching the new powder on his way to warmth and love. Snowflakes melted on our noses and
clung thickly to my beard and heaped atop our heads and on our eyebrows -- transmuting us argent and
ancient before our time.
No car passed at all and the tire tracks on the highway filled with snow and disappeared. When no
sign of the road was visible we trudged into the woods, wondering if there were wolves in Vermont. We
packed down the snow under a tree, crawled into our bedroll, and cuddled tight to keep warm.
Usually, the air warms up when it snows. On this night that wasn't true at all. The snow stopped
falling and the temperature dropped and dropped. We shivered all night and probably didn't sleep an
hour. After wintering in Alaska I'd thought we'd never again fear spending a winter night outside in any
of the south forty-eight -- but this early March night would ineffaceably mitigate that undue prejudice.
In the first glimmers of morning, we got up to an empty highway and, walking being better than
standing, we got our mojo working and got it gettin' on down the line. The crisp air burned our nostrils;
the vast steamclouds emitted obscured our vision.
Two silent, snow white miles later there appeared as if floating, a green, green Texaco station
centered in the vast virgin winterland like an emerald solitaire loose on a crumpled bedsheet. Frigid
north winds pushed us noisily through the display room door.
Two young attendants, happy for our company, welcomed us warmly, urged us to stay and dry our
clothes, and gave us coffee. A scratchy radio putzed top-forty into our numb craniums.
Iced-up zippers and buttons refused to respond to unfeeling, unbending fingers. But the lightningbolt coffee went straight to our feet to percolate upwards through every tiny frozen capillary, while
through the huge glass windows we watched the day begin for the snowed-in crossroads gas station.
The radio weatherman cracked the morning wide open when he remarked that the temperature in
Newport, Vermont had plummeted to fifty-four degrees below zero during the previous night.
We laughed. We were only twenty miles from Newport! After all we'd gone through to escape from
the deadly winter of Alaska -- here we were wandering through a wilderness of even colder
temperatures!
Forty wintry miles later, in a couple of easy rides, we walked onto the pristine land of Martian Folk's
Farm, MFF.
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***
Neighbors wouldn't call MFF pristine. They'd call it trashed. They'd call it occupied by a foreign
army. They'd call it a den of thieves. They'd call it Drug Town. They'd say an eruption from the bowels
of Hell had spilled forth its residents.
I suppose when your family has lived for ten generations in the bucolic farmlands of Vermont, it's
hard to understand young men and women who have been englutted by the mire of frenetic cities who
would pool all they had together to buy a patch of this pastoral serenity and live in shacks or tents or
even under a piece of plastic -- anything just to storehouse some of those otherwise unreachable
moments of hearthside peace. The cities from which the new residents had sprung had offered their
hearts nothing of any eternal value; but here on this forested land they might manage to create kind
poems of furrowed earth and planted seed and shared books and honorable fellowship in simple homes
to carry all their lives beneath their shirts long after they'd passed beyond this land. Such a poem might
contain a reason for existence, a candle for the void.
We loved this place, silly as we were. We loved the fact that couples who dreamed of homesteading
and could never seem to get any land, could arrive here with nothing and have those dreams made real.
We loved the paths that wound through the six hundred acres, thick with cherry trees and oak, small
rivers and many tiny streams, bogs and a pond. The paths that changed with the seasons.
Paths are more beautiful than roads. Paths are living things.
Moss grew on anything here, especially old wood; and the moss was the deepest color of green. It
grew in the cracks between logs. It covered boards and fence posts and the exposed roots of trees. It
had to be scraped off planks that served as bridges over streams for it could be slippery. It thrived under
the snow!
The browns of woods, the greens of moss were primary colors here in MFF. There was also the white
of birch and daisies and the red of roses, the orange of honeysuckle and Indian Paintbrushes, and the
muted opalescent blues of whispering creeks.
Food was abundant. Fish! Apples aplenty! Tomatoes grew profusely for the skilled hand. Corn took
more expertise in the northern three month growing season but the local farmers had fields brimming.
Blackberries covered all the land like a blanket. Mint and comfrey grew thick in scented fields that
would spice romantic walks as well as evening candlelight teas.
Breadbasket mushrooms grew wild, thick in the woods; a single mushroom was large enough to
become an entire meal for two people. And the Shaggy Manes were plentiful too.
Blueberry bushes hugged the rocky hill and children who were built lower to the ground and loved
their succulence squatted for hours and gorged their faces, stained their fingers, their mouths, their
bonnets, their blouses, and were generally happy. MFF began in the late sixties as a communecommunity. Unlike most of its contemporaries, with their petty dictatorships of oversexed pseudoholymen and preposterous personality cults, thriving on lucre and pretense and intimidation, exulting
self-deification, pigheadedness and above all, their great bearded wonder guru as the ultimate
culmination of all the above, (which took many lifetimes of reincarnation to achieve, so they say!), as I
say, unlike all that, MFF was an anarchy of poor hippies with few resources other than the primitive
land they held in common. The REAL magic...
Flute music and drumming rolled over the fields and melted through the cherry trees and joined in
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harmony the cacophonic gleeful sounds the children made playing near the shallow creek -- iced-over
in winter, wadeable in summer.
Rainbow dreams flow together wherever we harmonize our spirits. Music catalyzes, facilitates,
accentuates -- empaths... We have drum circles like our ancestors. We lose ourselves in rhythms.
We love to chop wood and make kindling and watch wood fires burn, sitting together, eating
popcorn, passing wine, telling stories, birthing kittens under winter beds thick with patch quilts,
birthing children deep within these covers and cozy warm woodfire cabins -- homes smaller than the
garages out there in the other world.
We love the kerosene lanterns that cast delicious shadows on every wall. How many "browns" are
there in such an evening cabin? Every soul will see art in this moonlight and lantern light -- and dream
inspired deams...
I loved the dreams here. We dreamed by night, and by day. We dreamed as we walked the paths in
the snow and found brown living roots of trees uncovered by passing feet. We dreamed as we skated on
the pond. We dreamed as we made love in the bushes. We dreamed as we ate our popcorn and watched
the stove fires. We dreamed as we watched our children grow. We dreamed as we watched our lovers
lay dreaming.
This place we had found for our most sacred dreams, was an illusion. Nothing on this Earth could be
as perfect as our dreams! Or maybe, our dreams were illusions... To believe in a dream! A Utopia! A
Brotherhood of perfect love! To dream of creating a land inside of America, free of America's selfish
laws....
But after what we'd all been through, didn't we have a right to see a few warm, good dreams? The
"world" would probably squash them eventually, because it reviled us for what they considered the
apostate nature of our heartsearch. They only saw us as unwashed hippies on drugs... But that was
hardly what we really were at all.
We loved this place because all our brothers and sisters here dreamed dreams too, and we couldn't be
considered weird here for having the temerity to intend to create together something we each saw in
our dreams.
People gathered at MFF from all points of the compass, stayed a couple years together, spread their
dreams around each other, and disappeared. There were a lot of dreams made real at MFF, and a lot of
water passed under the bridge.
Lo, there was a serpent in this garden, also. (Must all Edens have serpents?) He lived there and he
knew a great many things the dreamers never knew and didn't want to learn. We might never have
known he was there except that he had pride and he could not bear that we should not want to know
him for what he really was. And he watched us when we did not see him. We did not see him. We did
not know him. We only knew our dreams. We did not know he was deliberately learning our dreams by
watching us, so that he could be more like us, and sometimes he would get up real close and look right
into our eyes. I think he was trying to see where our dreams came from; they were so mysterious to
him! I think he envied us our dreams.
***
Owl and I arrived on that snowy day and walked the rutty half mile in towards the first house on the
land, Nick and Sasha's sturdy, woodsy home, a house I knew well. At one time back in 1973, Sasha's
sister Tris and I had been hay-rolling lovers. I was happy to know the spice that makes Vermont girls
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special.
So as Owl and I plodded the fresh snow, the land's unique aromas teased my memories and I found I
was remembering the way Sasha leaned across her husband in their station wagon one distant day as I
stood in the road talking to them. She'd leaned across him -- so elegantly -- and put her head out her
husband's window -- and smiled so maple syrup sweet -- and whispered in a husky secrety voice,
"Rom, Tris told me you have a really big cock!" She'd looked up at me with such neighborly eyes! As if
she'd just told me I had a real nice oil painting on my wall. I had stammered a dumb reply and turned
beet red. By the way she twinkled I could see she got a real kick out of catching me so off guard -- but
she never lost her composure as she continued watching my reaction for some time with her big brown
eyes.
Nick was a New England gentleman and Sasha was one of the finest women I've ever been fortunate
to know. So what if their hearts were plenty big enough to enjoy dragging a neighbor into their boudoir
from time to time? Well, I sure hadn't been ready for such friendliness. Knucklehead that I am, I didn't
know that at all. They had laughed to see my brain on hold -- and they drove off slowly leaving me
standing there in the road with my mouth open.
When the road turned and their cabin became visible in the pines, I felt my blood rush. It would be
so good to see them again! My heart bubbled over with more vivid recollections of their voices and
their laughter and our many conversations -- as though we'd not been gone more than a weekend -instead of three years. I hurried our pace to their door.
The miles had taken their toll; the past night had been oh, so COLD and the journey had been long to
bring us up these simple wooden steps. We felt an overwhelming emotion of coming home.
A community meeting was in progress when we knocked. As the door opened we could see the room
was full, full of pinewood smoke and ganja, and full with multi-colored woolen sweaters and coats and
hats, full with pale faces of people turning in their chairs to look at us expectantly, curiously.
And then they knew us. Old "friends" hello'd warmly and rose in amazement to see us again after an
absence of three years. They came at us as a group and merrily shook our hands and squeezed us with
bear hugs. And after introducing us to the new people, they bid us sit down with them and so we did -and passed wine and joints and swapped stories about the changes we'd all been through since last we'd
met.
The snow softly pattered on the roof and slewed whirling against the window-glass, busy callused
hands again and again fed the crackling stove-fire, reddening everything with earthy kaleidoscope
flickering flames, as the more constant amber glows of kerosene lanterns rendered rich golden hues on
the aging faces of hippie folks once thought extinct(!) we renewed acquaintances with our roguish old
hoopla-compadres.
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THIRTY-THREE
PECULIAR ABSENCE
The mid-seventies were big on bearded Vietnam vets hermitaging in the woods all alone whenever
they were in between women, belligerent and potentially volatile when drunk, thoughtful and
considerate when sober. Some of the people on the land were of that breed. Some of them were
gathered at the meeting.
Bush Butch was one. I'd known him for years. He now lived in a yurt that had been set up by a
culture-sister with whom he'd eventually moved in. After a few feather-flying situations she had fled
without looking back -- leaving him with her worldly goods. So a lot of people had it in their minds
that he had ripped her off. This thin man had picked up some bad habits in his young life. Yet, he also
was a lovable character in many ways.
Usually, anyhow.
Once in '76, he had tried to take advantage of Owl when she was still flipped-out from the ordeal
they had put her through when she first arrived on the land. I had to wrestle him and his rifle to get her
to safety. What peacenik hippie could feel very optimistic about the results of trying to wrestle a rifle
from a drunk Vietnam vet? But I'd do anything for Owl. I believe the reason that everything turned out
all right was that he was just too drunk to be effective. Either that or maybe I was his friend enough to
where he wouldn't do me any harm. Or maybe I was just lucky. Whatever the case, I believe a righteous
spirit enabled me to prevail.
However now that I'd returned it didn't take long for me to notice that Bush Butch seemed crazier
and drunker than I'd ever known him to be before -- and that wasn't good. But as he passed me the
gallon jug, he winked and heartily muttered: "Welcome Home, RobinTom and Owl, Welcome Home!"
And I thanked him and told him it was good to BE home and GOOD to see him, too; and I looked into
his good-natured eyes.
But, the Farm wasn't the same. Looking around us that first day, in the community meeting, the
changes were obvious. All the wonderful women were absent. All the couples who'd built the Farm up
from wilderness -- were gone! There were no children here at all. This place used to run wild with
children! Where were they?
"Where are Nick and Sasha?"
I was astonished to realize they were nowhere to be seen in this gathering that was taking place in
their house.
They told me Nick and Sasha were no longer on the land. They'd left their wilderness home and had
rented a place in Hill Lake instead!
Who would have thought Nick and Sasha would ever leave the beautiful cabin in the woods that
they'd so lovingly built? And why would they do that?
New people occupied their house! I could only hope they'd be as strong an influence as Nick and
Sasha had been. And who were they? They introduced themselves: Bimmy and his wife Mandy. In the
months that were to follow, we never got to know them very well. They were always carousing. And he
was pretty rough on her when he got drunk -- a sorry sight to have to watch. So we stayed away.
Frankly, couples that drink and fight all the time bore me and frighten me and mostly they make me
sad.
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Twinky hadn't left.
He lived in a beautiful little A frame up near Bush Butch. Twinky was another alcoholic, though.
Drinking helped him forget an event that had marred his life. His brother had committed suicide; hung
himself in a jail cell. They'd been close.
Twinky was smart and kind -- except when he was drunk. Then he was clumsy and sloppy. When he
was sober (or even half-sober) he loved to entertain his friends with home-cooked meals picked from
his own splendid garden, mint tea, home brew. He seemed to treat everyone as though they were... his
brother.
He played good guitar and sang emotional songs, more so the more he drank. Somewhere in his
broken heart, Twinky believed that he could have done something, something, to save his sibling.
Twinky was a man who could cry and before long, his friends around him would be crying too.
I was glad to see Twinky was still on the land.
We all loved Twinky.
Mudslide Mel was still there.
He'd got all his teeth pulled. He swore the smartest thing any of us could do would be to get all our
teeth pulled too -- and have an end to all toothaches, abscesses and dentists. He said that the mind once
freed of pain can at last give full attention to reading and learning and living. At that he took out his
false teeth and flashed a big toothless smile.
But there was one problem with his personal philosophy: the bottom row of his false teeth had
busted in half and he'd tried to glue them back together but the glue never held. Since he didn't have
enough money to buy new bottoms he had to just make do with the top row. Couldn't hardly chew a
thing that way was the problem, he'd say. So he mostly ate soup and mashed foods, and read a lot. He
was proud of his collection of books. He was different from the others in one way. When he'd get
drunk, he was still smart.
Mudslide Mel had a back-burner simmering love thing for Lorna Tune -- but over the years it would
mainly sum up to be just a real good friendship.
Lorna was an emancipated hermit lady who was very particular about her friends and loved her
privacy. She could be feminine and charming and pretty and witty when she wanted -- but she swung a
big mean axe and nary was a Rainbow-ragamuffin who weren't testy and timid in her presence. She'd
definitely be a good influence to have around MFF -- but unfortunately, she wasn't living on the land
either anymore.
She'd been living there in her deep-woods cabin for years -- probably longer than anyone. But
recently she'd bought a little piece of property near Newport and nowadays she only returned to her
cabin to spend a weekend very occasionally. For all practical purposes, she would never be around.
"Where is Cat?" I asked.
Now there's someone who would be a good influence for Owl! Where was Cat!?
Cat was a New England gentlewoman and a tender mother of two small children. She had the longest
nipples of any woman I'd ever seen. They must have been an inch long. More, I think. Definitely
Otherwise, her boobs were the size of small oranges. I think any man or woman who ever suckled as a
child will forever have a thing for breasts. I believe any human being who saw Cat's breasts became
naturally hungry. So where was she?
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Twinky answered my question. Unfortunately, Cat and her two babies had moved away from their
pretty, though tiny, geodesic dome, and would only rarely visit the land.
A month later I met Cat on Main Street in Newport and asked her why she'd left MFF?
She answered angrily:
"MFF has become the habitat of derelicts and wasteoids who are too selfish to do anything but harm
women. You'll never see me there again!"
As I looked around the community meeting for more familiar faces, one of the more noticeably
missing elements were the family of Wally and Marie and all their little blueberry smeared rapscallions.
Where were they?
I asked the people in the community meeting as we passed the wine and joints. Bush Butch answered
that one:
"Oh, Wally and Marie packed up their kids and everything into their big bus and hit the highway -goin' somewhere South, maybe Worcester!"
Gosh! I'd been counting on having the guidance of those old friends around us -- successful parents
who had some of that expert child-rearing wisdom to freely pass around -- especially the back-woods
renditions. We needed them near us to help us over the hard parts.
And they were all GONE!
"
Where is Brother Jack?" I asked observing a most peculiar absence.
Brother Jack had often said his wandering days were through forever. MFF was his home. He'd
swore he'd never leave again. Wherever he went, children trailed along. He loved kids. He loved people
-- as long as they were decent... He was a tall man, and strong as an oak. No one messed with him and
he was known to set wrongs right. He lived alone: a single man with a big heart... I would have liked to
have him around...
But they laughed and replied that Brother Jack was off wandering the world, trying to show folks a
better way.
He was gone too, darn it!
"Well, how about Hanna and Bugs?" I asked apprehensively.
Hanna and I had had the briefest of love flings once upon a time in 1973. We'd made love in her cave
beneath the ground. She was a tawny feline creature. I'd never forget the experience or her -- though
she'd probably forgotten it all long ago. Her mate, Bugs, had also been a sensitive wonderful friend of
mine...
Many were the stories about those two... They actually lived in that hobbithole beneath the ground.
Like rabbits. Hanna was tuff as nails. She worked outside nonstop on her garden and various projects
like some kind of female dynamo. One day she let it be known that she intended to create another
larger underground dwellingplace by burying the Ganja Commodore's defunct van in the stony earth.
She dug the hole herself. She pried out all the boulders with levers, carried all the buckets of dirt
herself, rolled the van into the hole herself, covered it up with dirt, all with no help from anyone else at
all. Then she fixed it up with a woodstove and pantry and quilts and moved in and lived there through
the winter. She only weighed ninety pounds.
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I had a Triumph 650 motorcycle when I lived at MFF in 1973. I took Hanna for a heck of a ride on
that bike one day, something I will never forget... But the memory of making love with her in her
hobbit hole was even more beautiful and something I will remember longer... She had been working in
her cabbage patch all that day and she was covered with mud and sweat and she had the tawniest
muscles I ever knew...
So naturally she was one of the people whose whereabouts greatly concerned me when I arrived
back on the land.
Where was the little Mighty Mouse?
No one knew. She was just gone.
And the Ganja Commodore was in Jamaica making Rock-and-roll.
Tim and Starla! How about Tim and Starla!
I looked around the community meeting again. Where were my good friends Tim and Starla and all
their children? They must be here!
Tim and Starla Roostik had built up one of the larger homesteads on MFF -- the biggest fields, teams
of horses, milking goats, chickens, a large two story house.
Starla was short and powerful and beautiful -- an amazing combination I've never since seen
duplicated. From morning till night she never seemed to stop. Whenever you saw her she would be
busy, chopping wood, cooking, milking goats, caring for her children... And there always seemed to be
a new baby on her hip.
Blond-haired, brown-eyed Tim was the most understanding man in the state. A Vietnam vet, a green
beret, he often drank alone, or plowed his fields for long hours alone with his thoughts. He was a very
sensitive human being.
One thing he and Starla did was rather amazing: They'd put on boxing gloves and fight for the sport
of it -- and to keep in shape. It was beauty to watch. Their friends joked that they coulda sold tickets
and got rich.
Tim was sly and skilled, but Starla was a lioness of hidden power and had the agility of a cat. She
could trick his guard and get to him and back him to the wall with a flurry of precise combinations that
had us all holding our breath. And punches weren't all pulled either. There were cuts and bruises which
afterwards must have made for special tenderness. In the thick, they rarely stopped for threat or pain.
(Though they loved to ham up the action by feigning decapacitating injury and suffering or blustering
virulent revenge -- to fake each other out).
They loved fighting. They could not have a fragile thing in their house or it would break. They
fought like love-birds... I've never seen anything like them two pugilists, laughing when they got in a
good one and gritting their teeth in sincerity when they were determined to even the points.
The collision of Titans occurred a couple times a week. The boxing gloves hung on the wall for all to
see and they regarded those gloves with great respect between times, a symbol of the strength of their
love. They were always ready at any moment for the next bout to begin.
So where were my good friends Tim and Starla and all their wonderful children?
"Oh they moved to East Edwardston...", a voice from the dimly lit cabin explained.
Tim and Starla's vacated MFF house was now occupied by a man named Arnold. He was a private
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man and he seemed to skulk. I tried to like him but he was different from the others. He seemed to have
no heart.
He sat in a dark corner of Bimmy's house during the meeting, whittling with a big knife on a piece of
stick. Every once in a while he looked up and scanned the room sourly and then returned to his knife.
"Well listen," I addressed the people assembled in the cabin, very few of whom we knew after all,
now that I'd had a good look around and the entire matter had sunk in. "Listen, We're about to have a
baby here and we've been hoping there'd be some other FAMILIES around to coach us on home
delivery and fill us in on things we might need to know, you know -- lady-friends with children and
plenty of experience in these things. Isn't there ANY of the old families here anymore?"
No. They'd all moved on to plastiker pastures, was the response.
"Well, what about Bartholomew and Tasha?" I asked. "Don't tell me they built that huge log cabin
palace and abandoned it! Where are they?"
"They're only ten miles East of here. But they never come by any more..."
"Well Gosh! Then we'll just have to go see them!"
***
We went to see Bartholomew. It hurt me to see him and his family living anyplace other than the
magnificent huge log home he had built in the forest of MFF. To see him renting a cockroach dump to
house his family! How could that be? Bartholomew and Tasha told us they'd moved their family over
there so the kids could go to school.
All six of their children had been born within those octangular log cabin walls. They had lived
embosomed within the all-permeating essence of cedar and fir and pine for several kingly years.
Now they lived in a fifty-year-old dilapidated regular wood frame house halfway between two tiny
towns -- and spoke exuberantly about the luxury of having indoor plumbing. (Except when it froze and
burst, or backed up in the sink, or overflowed the septic tank...)
They were raising pigs in the back yard, chickens in the garage, and had two Volkswagen buses in
their yard in various states of disrepair. To my way of thinking, all in all, this was an undignified urban
denouement.
But at least they weren't far away from MFF, so we could visit.
In fact, most of our old friends were within thirty miles. Once we got some sort of vehicle, we
shouldn't have too much trouble getting out to see them.
Bartholomew's attitude towards life was survival. The school system had figured his children would
do better away from certain disorderly influences at MFF and had put considerable pressure on the
family to move. They agreed that MFF was not fit for children. That bunch of drunken single men had
moved in, and in some ways, taken over...
Bartholomew chose wisely, not to speak too much about what was happening to the Land because, as
he said: "MFF's present tenants are now responsible, no matter what". According to the charter of the
Farm, the land belonged to whoever lived there -- for as long as they lived there. Bartholomew had no
right, he admitted, to suggest policy back there at MFF inasmuch as his family no longer lived there.
He was hesitant to speak of the way MFF was degenerating -- because he didn't want any of the bullies
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responsible for it coming out to talk to him. He made that much very clear to me...
There was more to matters than he was saying. He folded his hands and looked at them a moment -hard callused hands. He clamed up. He was obviously worried about something. He cut the visit short,
after urging us to find a house in town. He apologized that since his vehicles were incapacitated, he
couldn't give us a return ride over to MFF.
We stood in front of his house for several hours trying to hitch a ride. Hitchin' is a good opportunity
to examine the faces of the folks who live near you but whom you'll probably never meet. The science
of physiognomy grows on you.
From this study, of which I'd spent years in acquiring the knack, examining the faces that whizzed
and rambled past, I could see colorful Northland homebodies, involved ardently with their lives.
I saw the mothers instructing their children on some important advice:
"You hold the bag of groceries and sit still, all right?"
I saw the fathers running to and from their business or work place, often in suits.
I saw the young rascals running to pick up girls and barreling around with six-packs, waving us
peace signs out the window.
I saw the seniors delicately driving their smooth Oldsmobiles, gazing affectionately at the trees and
hills and the gently curving road, kindly humming hymns to the Creator and the Creation.
I saw piano tuners and plumbers and policemen and garage mechanics and secretaries and students
and firemen and salesmen and seamstresses and farmers and ministers and wood cutters and
veterinarians and army sergeants and furniture movers and nursing home attendants and tap-dancing
instructors and mayors and contractors and post office employees.
All meandered by us on the snowy country road. Some waved or smiled. Some didn't. They all
seemed like nice people. True, they didn't show any signs of wanting to have our muddy clothes or
questionable personalities inside their automobiles -- but that was their prerogative. It didn't make them
any less beautiful.
Eventually a hippie in an old truck pulled over and gave us a lift back to MFF.
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THIRTY-FOUR
HORSE SENSE
The vacant old log cabin did need a bunch of work. Also true, it was primitive -- but that's just the
sort of thing we'd been dreaming about for a long, long time: A simpler, richer, more wholesome, old
fashioned life.
Owl's eyes blazed when I told her this would be our home. She clasped her hands to her heart and
nearly danced. She touched the rotting logs as if they were gold... She ran around our clearing of trees
exploring every moss covered stump -- every bend in the little creek.
The logs had come unchinked. We filled the spaces with clay from the riverbank. The dirt floor was
too cold for our baby. I bought two by fours and one-inch planks and put in a fine floor, surprising
myself. Bush Butch and Twinky had been doing a little work on it before we arrived. The cabin's roof
originally was flat. They'd added a peaked roof but it was largely unfinished. Owl and I finished and
insulated it, put in two upstairs windows and a ladder and a large trap door between the upper and
lower floors -- and installed a large skylight in the roof made from a double-thick rear bus window. The
place was a dream come true. When cold weather came again we would be so warm up there directly
above the downstairs woodstove... Snug in multicolored patchquilts, kerosene lantern, arts and crafts
supplies... The scents of evergreen and cherry and cedar and fir permeating our lives. Everything was
sheer celestial.
A stream, six inches wide in the summer, flowed in front of the cabin. I dug into my stash of uncut
gemstones and votively threw a handful of India star rubies into the whispering currents: an offering to
the Earth Mother, a thank you from our hearts.
***
Two other couples were living in an A frame and another small log cabin nearby. Mitchell and
Sheila, and Buttons and his ladyfriend, Nina. Sheila was pregnant and she and Nina spent much of their
time together making preparations for the new arrival. The two men had become like brothers and they
spent a great amount of time together. Plans must be made; problems resolved. They were as serious as
a father-to-be and his good friend should be.
Now that Owl and I were there, Owl's pregnancy made MFF start to look like a baby factory again,
as it had been often over the years. But Sheila and Nina spent very little time with Owl. Unfortunately
Owl's unique emotional disorder kept them fairly apart from her. Young girls are often so cliquish...
Well, from my West Coast perspective easterners often seem cautious about making new friends...
But the residents of MFF certainly had sufficient reasons for exercising even dearer prudence than
others! There was some pretty shifty people lurking around! The circumstances that had alienated Cat
and Lorna and the other women and families were still slithering on the pathways. And Owl's first
experience with the land back in 1976 haunted us. But I had always looked upon that as an anomaly.
MFF was to my way of thinking a family place, created for people like Bartholomew and his family,
and Tim and Starla and their children, and now for Owl and me and our soon to be born child. An
occasional bad incident could happen anywhere, even MFF, but surely everything would ultimately
settle back down to the family purposes that were what the land was supposed to be about. During our
three years absence I thought it surely would have reverted back to a hippie family land, a little Garden
of Eden for us. It was disillusioning to find instead that bunch of bachelor renegades and two
isolationist couples who rather ignored us.
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I'd expected so much more for Owl here...I mean we'd come a long way and nearly froze to death
how many times? To get here??? To be among who??? But gosh, I still couldn't blame Sheila and Nina
for their standoffishness considering how freaky some of the MFF people were... And besides, I knew
from experience that after good folk had sufficiently checked a person out they could warm up and
stick like glue. That's what I hoped would happen.
We made some headway as the first weeks passed. Buttons and Mitchell and I had some good talks.
They filled me in on some of the strange people coming in lately from the big cities of the east. In some
ways it was more than I wanted to know. I mean it may not help one's peace of mind to know too much
about the uptight city dudes coming into one's small country community to barter speed for homegrown
and all the contiguous razz-ma-tazz: the burns, the rip-offs, the power trips... On the other hand, it may
prove handy to know enough about the goings-on to avoid trouble. What kind of lunatic would want to
do speed in a beautiful wilderness place like that anyway?! It was beyond me.
There's an entire rainbow spectrum of soul-differences in our lovely counter-culture -- everything
from absent-dormant-indifferent to that ever popular "love is everywhere" consciousness. I guess what
sort of person you are all boils down to whether your main priorities are newborn babies and tender
little mothers or dope dealers packin' guns, being tough, dangerous, and one step ahead. If only it
wasn't necessary for such opposite energies to share such narrow forest paths! Especially as seemed to
be the case those days in MFF.
This is where you get into the difference between the "open door" communes and the "closed door"
communes that made for endless debate and argument in that era. In the beginning, that is to say in the
1960's, as "Universal brothers and sisters", we did deeply resent the fact that one door after another
closed upon us when the judgmental society excluded us for their various reasons, because we were
black, or Indian or because of the length of our hair, or because we held unpopular political opinions, or
tried different religions, or because we'd traveled too far, seen too much, and got too dirty, and on and
on and on. So it was only natural that one of the first principals that mattered to us was that we didn't
want to end up judgmental like that. So we created our early worlds with "open door" policies: anyone
was welcome to come and share. Anyone. No one could be turned away -- no one could be asked to
leave. Most of the communes I saw in the 60's were like that.
Naively we'd expected the "open door" policies to result in a metamorphosis for people born of
misaligned and chaotic social stratas -- into a harmonious alliance of tender and receptive human
beings -- healed of all wounds, gentled of all aggressions, prospered by every willing heart and every
pair of helping hands.
But instead of that what we got for all our openness was infamous tyrants, terrorists, and ten
thousand bandits. They intruded into our heartdreams and violated our burgeoning families through
those open doors.
Our only option if we didn't like having to cohabit with a particular viper, was that we could pick up
everything we'd been working on for years (unless it was "communally owned") and leave our long
time bro's and sis's and find a life somewhere else. (Often to a shameful chorus of: "Well, if you are not
personally tuff enough inside to deal with yourself and Adolph too, maybe it's better for all of us if you
DO leave! Adolph has as much right to be here as any of us. Personally, I thought you were bigger than
this. I guess I was wrong. Your problem is that you think you are better than Adolph and better than US
-- because Adolph is our friend and more of a friend to us than YOU! So... Fuck you!!! Until you
change or cure your bad attitude, we don't even want you here anyway! Good fuckin' Riddance. Get
Lost!!!")
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That was what it was like in the early days -- the late sixties, early seventies. The more upgrade
communities were more sophisticated in their calumnies...
They sounded more sweet;
But if you failed their homogenization,
Or lacked financial dedication,
You carried your bags down the same silly street.
By the mid-seventies, the "closed door" policy with its "approval of the entire community after a
thirty day trial period", or some such qualifier, was the new criterion almost everywhere. By an ironic
twist of our gregarious human nature, we find solace in hierarchical bureaucracy -- and hope. We were
hopeful the new system would keep out drunks and thieves, maybe a few killers, too... In actual fact,
problems aren't solved so simply. Far more "Adolphs" found a fine-feathered nest in "closed door"
communities than ever had in the "open door" versions. Adolphs always do well in institutionalized
environments. Bad bureaucracies are like nests of termites -- they tend to eat the principal of humanity,
the natural woodwork.
The new "democratic" system didn't make life any better if someone backstabbed his or her way up
to the guruship or whatever and made it a point of harassing, intimidating and brow-beating anyone
who he or she sensed might threaten their gravy train. Once on the top of the heap, their careful choice
of who got into their select community soon stacked those pool decks and made the democracy a
pocket ball game to anyone familiar with the suave politics of upward mobility.
There was no lack whatsoever of sophisticated schemers grabbing their own pot of gold. Tyrants
usually have an inbred lust for intrigues and power trips, the finest schools and all that noise... With
their talents and resources they had no trouble circumventing the new standards -- like a game of
musical chairs with the chaos of finding a cat-bird-seat once the music stops -- from which to become a
council elder in a communal land trust. Know someone. Buy in with dope money. Discover the
producer's porch swing. Invent a way of making beer out of chicken manure... Then make everyone
buy it from you and drink it too. Or kick 'em out.
Con men worked their way up the echelons of alternative communities everywhere. Like everywhere
else, the good old bleeding-hearts mechanism was a time-honored favorite vehicle into the higher
realms of comforts, prestige and power -- easily mastered by any creep with an IQ over 50 -- the sweet
Draculas... The closed-door policies were like using a screen-door to keep out mosquitoes. The suckers
still get in no matter how fast you go through the door!
The closed-door systems did offer the advantage of corralling the ones with money and keeping out
the ones without, which in the end was what it was primarily used for.
In all probability there will never be a bureaucracy free of cancer. Adolph and his "National
Socialists" will always have a right to their "opinions". And once he or she has manipulated things to
become that tenable authority, the first thing they will always do is get rid of those types of minds
which threaten their exploitations the most. Starving artists and poets and philosophers only seem to
flourish in the open door communes. Their brains are too dangerous to the echelons of closed-door
communes. Their brains tend to see through crapologists and expose their schemes. Can't have that!
And besides, they have no money.
MFF remained an "open door" community. But only because the original charter stipulated that
premise specifically as invariable and unchangeable. So any shuffling around or expelling of people
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had to be done covertly, craftily. So in the ten years MFF had existed the land had gradually changed
and the original dreams for the land had become perverted. The ones in charge of the land had plans for
the land that didn't include "air-head Hippies" making babies and holding love festivals.
The prevalent methods used to transmogrify a land of loving brothers and sisters into a den of
thieves were cruder than those found among the more refined co-op land experiments. What happened
here was basic intimidation, threats, and gunplay.
The old community meetings, created to iron out the rough spots of daily existence for the founding
peace-niks (O sweet blindness!) --now compelled frequent confrontation between the meekest,
weakest, gentlest, most vulnerable -- and outlaws reeking contempt and malice. Mandatory attendance
made impossible the ability to abide unblemished and unaltered in the sanctuary of one's home.
Often we became entangled with the contagion. For instance, although hoody and saturnine dope
dealers were a dread and an abomination to many of us who lived on the land of MFF -- we all still
wanted to grow a little "homegrown"! But should that make us bad guys? No! Bad guys stick out like
sore thumbs!
Or do they? Not necessarily... Not if the bad guys are trying to pattern their attitudes after gentle
folk. Then, they don't stick out at all -- for they are camouflaged.
Yeah! MFF had become a hideout for bandits on the run. I eventually learned that there were even
some people living there who robbed gas stations in the middle of the night in other states and ran to
MFF to disappear and lay low. Some of these were so hot in their hometown eastern city, that unless
they found the perfect "hole in the wall" fast, they'd be caught by the police and sent away for a long
long time, and that's the sole reason they were tucked away snugly in the woodland community of
MFF. The poetry of the place was entirely lost on them. Except for some of the perks, like the
occasional beautiful free-love-thinking hippie girl who came strolling through with flowers in her hair.
There at MFF the badguys discovered six hundred acres of Vermont forest -- with readymade
habitable shacks complete with kitchens and wood stoves, sofas and tables. And all they'd have to do to
be eligible to trot around those paths and grab those luscious chickie-bushes -- was to grow long hair
and beards and memorize a few Aquarian Age phrases like: "Groovy man! What's your sign? It's
Karma, man! You chicks want to get high, get down, listen to some sounds? Heavy! What a drag!
You're blowin' it, man! ...That's where it's at! I'm horny but she gotta be a groovy sister or I ain't
interested! HIPPY PRE-VERT! Only plastic people wear underwear! Let's get stoned. I don't wanna
come down! People with sexual hang-ups! Up-tight! You are what you eat!..." Etc. etc.
They were small time city hoods. But they were smart enough to know a good thing when they saw
it. So they memorized our hippie patois in order to sound like us, grew beards and long hair to resemble
us, adopted mannerisms and attitudes similar to ours -- and gradually moved into MFF whenever a
place was vacant -- running out the original people whenever necessary with various manipulations of
subterfuge -- and mayhem.
Many of the people were so completely fooled that they never realized the scam that had ripped off
their land and their dreams. But to others of us it was clear as a bell.
I had formed my romantic visions of MFF while living there intermittently since 1973. The good
things I would remember forever. Now in 1979, the corruption and decay I found would leave deep
scars and wounds difficult to heal.
The first scar had of course occurred in 1976 with Owl's "reception party". Now we had returned -263
hoping to find the pendulum had swung good changes for "The Land".
I suppose my first twinge of realization came during the first few days. I was visiting with Bimmy in
his house (which once had been Nick and Sasha's) where everyone frequently gathered. I asked them
how "Morning Grass" was doing -- the little Mustang that I'd bought for Owl. When we left in 1976
we'd asked them to care for her little horse.
They looked at one another and didn't answer. Bush Butch stated flatly:
"Don't ask. You don't want to know."
I prodded him and he remained mum.
Several days later Twinky finally told me the story.
That winter had been very cold. During a storm, someone had shut Morning Grass up in an
abandoned van to give him some shelter -- but then he'd been forgotten. The van became an icebox.
There was no room inside for Morning Grass to move around and get warm. There was no hay.
Freezing and starving, he desperately tried to kick his way out through the metal doors -- but it was no
use. Finally, he'd broken one of his legs -- and frozen to death.
Eventually, someone checked on him and found him dead -- whereupon they all returned with
chainsaws and cut him up and ate him.
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THIRTY-FIVE
LAUGHING RIVER
I had no idea if Owl was five months pregnant, or six, or seven, or eight, or even nine. That's why we
were in such a hurry to get somewhere.
Many babies had been born in MFF homes. None of them had ever been born in hospitals. It was a
standard of our culture that we were reclaiming the way of birth of our ancestors, that parents delivered
their own children in their own homes. I wanted to deliver my own child back in Oregon but that
situation in Blue River would have been difficult so Mushmara had been born in a hospital. We weren't
parked behind a gas station in a redneck town anymore. We were deep in the forests of Vermont. Surely
this time I would be able to deliver the baby myself.
I discussed it with Tim and Starla. Tim shrugged his shoulders and told me, "So do it. We did. It's
safer than the hospitals. It's easier on the mother. It's better for the child." Childbirth in hospitals was
terribly ridiculous to them.
But the more I thought about it the more I found that I couldn't see the situation as risk free at all. My
head swam with worries. Bartholomew and Tim were incredulous that I wouldn't realize birth was the
most natural thing in the world. They had both delivered all their own children.
Bartholomew said: "It'll happen all by itself! All you have to do is stand there! Owl is strong and
healthy and young. There shouldn't be any problem! Do it. You'll never regret it."
I wouldn't have been so worried if only I'd had access to an automobile in case of an emergency. But
there was no reliable transport at all on the land. And the nearest telephone was a mile away. And there
wasn't even one MFF parent who had been through the home-delivery experience still living on the
land to help us out.
In my heart and soul I longed for the feeling of the child arriving in my own hands. But, this plainly
wasn't the safe thing I'd hoped for. And truthfully I wasn't feeling very sure of myself. I felt so stupid
that I had allowed the government to take Mushmara from Owl's loving arms... What if Owl or this
new baby were to come to harm because of me? What if I caused Owl to lose this baby, too? That
would be unbearable. I'd have sacrificed the most precious thing in my world.
The only alternative to delivering the baby naturally at home was to have a doctor and a hospital -and a medical bill of around two thousand dollars. I didn't have two thousand dollars and Owl would
not be eligible for any Medicare because she was not a citizen of the United States. I was determined
somehow to make sure Owl and the baby were safe.
The Canadian government provides free medical care for all its citizens. The United States lags far
behind the rest of the civilized world in that development. (The only other civilized nation that has not
created a comprehensive medical program for its entire people is South Africa. What a thought...
Another strange fact: More children die during childbirth in the United States than in most other first
world countries.)
We needed to employ some strategy. By playing our cards right, Owl could be eligible for Canadian
medical benefits. Since we were living only a half-mile from Quebec, it should be easy to see if Canada
would pay a doctor on this side of the border for caring for the medical needs of a Canadian citizen.
So a sly trip to Montreal got Owl her medical card and afforded us an opportunity to visit her family.
We stayed with her mother for two days. Things didn't go as well as they had the last time. I gathered
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from the vibrations that the other family members were of the opinion that we had previously taken
unfair advantage of Lise by staying too long under her roof, and they were pressuring her to make sure
it didn't happen again. However I greased the situation this time by providing ample food and we didn't
stay long. We just needed to stay long enough to get Owl connected with the Canadian government
medical insurance program. And we needed to use her mother's home as Owl's address to do that.
Her mother became all worried that we were doing something illegal. But it seemed to me that Owl
was a Canadian citizen and deserved to have her medical bill paid as much as any other Canadian. Lise
agreed that that made sense. But she remained skeptical.
The Welfare people weren't content to simply put Owl on the Canadian health plan. They had to
make sure she also had enough money for food and living accommodations. So they were setting her
up for the full range of Canadian financial aid.
It's an interesting predicament for an honest person to be in: to have to lie in order to provide some
necessity for someone you love. It feels bad. But sometimes there is no other way...
Welfare wouldn't give Owl any money at all or even help her with medical expenses -- if she was
married to an American. So we had no recourse but to have her say that she was separated from me and
living with her mother. But if we secretly got an apartment together and the welfare found out about it
that would be a problem. Maybe a big problem... The only way it could work would be if we were able
to keep my existence a secret until I found a job in Montreal. Then we wouldn't need welfare and we
wouldn't have to lie to anyone about anything anymore. But for me to get a job I would need working
papers from Immigration.
The welfare people were perfectly willing to give Owl a check. In fact they promptly gave her two
checks rather close together because it was the end of one month and the beginning of another. So all of
a sudden we had lots of money. Enough to get settled into Montreal if that is what we wanted.
Everything hinged upon whether or not Immigration would give me permission to stay and work.
So I straightforwardly went to see Canadian Immigration. But all I got was a run-around. A very
sullen Frenchman sat behind a big desk and watched me disdainfully when I entered his office. I
explained my circumstances truthfully and simply, hoping he would understand that I was sincere and
that our existence as a family depended upon the visa I requested. He took many notes and afterwards
asked me to return on the following day, which I did. At that time he emotionlessly told me that there
was no way I would be allowed to live in Canada unless I had filled out all the proper forms and
submitted them and was approved. Furthermore, Owl would have to be my sponsor and she would have
to be currently living in Canada in order to do that. And she would have to provide a work-history to
prove that she was financially able to support me in the event I failed to find employment. He did not
know how long it would take to process the paperwork but he thought it would be at least several
months. At this he glanced down at my application and suggested that I get a job while I was in
Vermont, although he was unsure how much that would help in my immediate situation because for me
to be even considered for immigration I would need a work history of at least two years... As would
Owl...
In other words he expected us to separate from each other for an indefinite period of time while the
batch of impossible paperwork was being considered. Perhaps years. And as unqualified as we were,
there was no way we could be approved. Imagine Owl all by herself and pregnant in Montreal! And
raising the child without me! With me just an hour's drive away, living in Vermont. It wasn't right. It's
wrong to separate a husband and wife, especially with a baby on the way... After all we'd been
through... Words can not express how I felt...
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So although we tried our best, there was no way we could do things nice and legally. It was a dream
we were to be denied all too often.
The clincher was that the officer said he could not allow me to remain in Canada at that time. He
gave me one day to pack up and leave or he would be forced to take measures to deport me. The next
day he telephoned Lise's home to see if I was still there. Lise told him I was gone. She didn't like lying
to him. She was fearful it would get her into trouble. So there was no place for us in Montreal anymore.
We returned to MFF and moved back into our cabin.
It was too dangerous for us to be going back and forth across the border to Montreal anymore. We
could too easily be separated. In the months that followed we were often very broke and we thought
lustily about Owl's Canadian welfare checks that were arriving at her mother's apartment. But we didn't
go up to get them. At least we had arranged for Canadian medical insurance to pay for her medical
expenses, even if she had a Vermont doctor.
In the town of Derby Line we found a lady obstetrician who agreed to take Owl as a patient and deal
with Canada for payment. Since she lived in the border town, her patients came from both sides. So, I
was happy. I had managed to arrange safe medical care through normal channels. Now Owl and the
baby would be in good hands -- and there'd be no bill collectors hounding me for money that didn't
exist.
The only real difficult part came later -- taking Owl to see the doctor every couple weeks. The doctor
was efficient enough. She was a good doctor and all -- but unfortunately she never really understood
Owl very well.
She told me she believed Owl was retarded. That really upset me. Owl's family had told me that Owl
got good grades in school and was quite a normal child in every way. I presumed that any doctor worth
her salt would easily recognize that Owl was suffering from an emotional disability which had been
caused by trauma, and which might eventually go away. So to have her tell me she believed Owl had
been born retarded was a real let down. Another disappointment was that I'd hoped to locate a doctor
who in the course of getting to know Owl on a regular basis could help us by writing reports to the
Eugene court that would strengthen our position and enable them to understand Owl better, so we could
regain custody of Mushmara. Unfortunately, this lady doc would not not NOT be filling that requisite,
and she eventually made me understand that, pointedly. How depressing...
The lady doctor was clearly one of those fortunate people who had never known adversity. She'd had
life handed to her on a silver spoon. Her husband was also a doctor and between them they knew the
cream of society. Owl and I were nothing more than a blight on her horizon, and she made us feel it
every time we stepped into her office. She couldn't stand our smell. It was the smell of woodsmoke and
the outdoors mostly. But it was also the smell of socks worn too many days and underarms that never
knew deodorant. Every human being she knew bathed every day and never wore the same clothes two
days in a row. We were used to bathing once a month if we were lucky. She didn't know anyone like us
and what's more important: she didn't want to know anyone like us. And she surely had no intention of
helping us get any child back by telling any court that we would make excellent parents. To her that
would have been the heights of absurdity.
As for communicating with Owl, she never really tried. But then, it must be hard for a doctor to have
any rewarding communication with a woman who never went beyond ninth grade and had been hurt as
bad as Owl had been. Only a "friend" can take the time necessary to get down to the core of a person
who has been through things like that. Or perhaps a doctor who has a special aptitude for such patients,
a natural love. Which wasn't her.
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But the lady doc took good care of Owl's pregnancy. That's what matters. She took that heavy weight
off our minds.
We were just such an unusual case for her. No other commune people had ever come to her. Hippies
normally did things for themselves. They delivered their own babies, cured their own colds and flu, and
even sewed their own stitches. She wasn't used to our weirdnesses: people who hitchhiked to the office
visits from thirty miles away, wearing strange leather garments, and talked about life from totally weird
perspectives...
But what was it like for US? Hey! It was a real trip coming from the primitive counter-culture MFF
society and entering the upper-class residence of that woman. There are few things more intimidating
to a couple of dirty ol' grubby ol' long-haired road runners than a fairly wealthy, successful, highly
educated, beautiful, young woman doctor who has to leave the room after sitting with them for two
minutes because to her delicate nose they smell so bad that she becomes nauseous.
The culture clash was actually nearly as disconcerting for us as it was for her. Sometimes it hurts me
to get a good square look at the sort of things I gave up when I became a nature-loving commune
dweller and a road gypsy. In fact, times like that I often find myself wishing I'd gone on to college so I
would have more to offer Owl.
Owl never complained. She rarely noticed moneyed things. In her simple equanimity Owl revealed a
deeper understanding than many others seem to have. She could not hold enmity or jealousy or
prejudice. There are plenty of people with fancy degrees who can't say that.
We hitchhiked thirty miles to the lady doctor's office every couple weeks for the check-up. She asked
us to "bathe" before we came to our appointments. Fortunately, there was a dictionary available in a
nearby library and we looked the word up and made a list of the things we'd need.
Asking around the land, we managed to acquire a giant old wok, large enough to sit in. We told the
land people we were going to use it for cooking up one of the dogs. If they'd known we were going to
use it to take baths, they'd never have spoken to us again. Actually, once upon a time the wok had been
used to cook meals for "The Hog Farm", a famous commune that fed many people at places like the
Chicago Democratic convention. (Where you may remember they ran "Pigasus" the pig for president of
the United States. I don't recall whether or not he actually got elected.)
We balanced the huge wok on bricks in the center of the floor downstairs. Then on the woodstove we
heated buckets of water that we carried up from the laughing little streamlet that flowed in front of our
cabin. When the water was nice and hot, we poured it into the huge wok. While one of us luxuriated in
suds, whoever had stove duty heated more water to pour on the lucky soaker's head and back.
We lived in that cabin for a year and that vat of hot water was our hot spring in every season. Owl
with her big belly made use of the thing far more often than me.
I watched her lose some of her worries in the toasty tub. My heart went out to her. This gentle
woman deserved her peace. Her nerves were soothed. I had made good my promise. It looked like we
had a home.
Our cabin was the picture perfect dream we'd nourished for so long. And inasmuch as the MFF
dwellings were spaced far enough apart as to be quite secluded from each other, we had our own
private world.
During May we put in the wood floor.
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An incident involving the former occupant of the cabin was often recalled... In trying to keep from
freezing to death one winter, he had resolved not to go outside until spring. The outhouse was only
forty feet away but it was too cold for him to walk that far. He was a typical transplanted citykid. He
had been raised with an indoor toilet, and that's how he liked it and that's what he expected of life. So
he dug a hole in the center of his living room floor and the cabin became his combination
outhouse/home. It is not surprising that he got very sick. Paramedics wound up carrying him out on a
stretcher. It's a wonder he didn't die.
Since then, no one had lived in the cabin until we came along.
***
The weather warmed so fast! Warm winds swept through the land, musical with the arrival of birds.
Snow melted overnight. Ponds merged and became lakes. Rivers and streams raged in flood.
At this time, everyone seemed pretty ordinary. Friends came avisiting. Ladies chatted with Owl. At
this point we as yet hadn't become fully aware of the dark side of things, and we were doing our best to
simply be gracious and thankful. We overlooked anything untoward, and in a fair attempt to start out on
the right foot even our more reprobate neighbors put on their best faces when they came knocking on
our door. And we put the hot water on the stove for tea, and they accepted the cup with backwoods
dignity and sat with us peacefully, and we sat and talked together and chose our words with care and
consideration.
Many of them were alcoholics who never went anywhere without a bottle if they could help it. But in
the beginning, drunk or sober, they came to us as New England gentlemen, and they made us feel at
home and vice-versa. We were never teetotalers. Sometimes we drank wine with them. We all sat
around our new home and watched the flames dance in the woodstove. We swapped stories. We hosted
some great little suppers. Life seemed pretty good...
June 2, 1979, Sandy Laughing-River was born in Sacred Heart Hospital of Newport, Vermont. We
brought her home the next day to our refurbished log cabin. Friends arrived to extend their happiness
and pass the wine. A pleasant day.
That evening, with the baby between us, we were excited! As Owl nursed our little blessing from
God I watched quite swept away with the wonder of life. What a good mother Owl was! Everything
would be all right now.
In the morning we heard a cacophonic melee outside and I opened the large window at the head of
our bed and looked out. The trees surrounding the cabin were full of birds! Swarms weighed down
every branch -- and they were all chirping their lungs out. All of nature was tuned-in to the newborn
child! My spiritual understanding grew two sizes larger that morning.
Summer began in earnest and everything revolved around the new baby. We set about making our
home more livable.
A year previous, an MFF baby had been hospitalized with pneumonia during the winter. But that
family's circumstances were not similar to ours. That couple (who were no longer on the land) were
said to have lived in a cabin that remained freezing cold for lack of a fire. Apparently the father was too
lazy or too drunk to ever gather firewood. The milk in that baby's bottle was said to have been frozen
solid every morning.
Not us. Lest anyone doubt our aptitude, we made intensive preparations to prove ourselves capable.
That summer we were already getting ready for winter! We insulated the new upstairs walls. We
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installed auxiliary propane stove with a twenty-five gallon tank of propane. We cut trees and stored up
plenty of firewood. Between the propane burners and the woodstove we'd never lack heat.
We stocked up on warm blankets and winter clothes at local thrift stores.
We purchased a Jansport backpack, brand new, for seventy-five precious dollars; big enough to carry
the baby wrapped in many blankets comfortably, zipped up. Quite an innovation if you think about it.
All this was done and ready even before the end of summer.
I hoped I'd have enough skills to provide amply for Owl and Sandy. I hoped to find a local job and
get a car or truck. After checking into the possibility of a job as a mechanic in every likely garage for
thirty miles in every direction and finding nothing, I figured we'd try to do something with our craft
abilities instead.
There were moneymaking cottage industries that might provide excellently for us -- manageable
right from our log cabin home. Leatherwork was one possibility, but we found no scrap-leather sources.
Jewelry seemed more realistic. I ordered $200 worth of rough Australian opals, India Star Rubies
and Australian blue sapphires by mail from the same trustworthy company with whom I'd done
business for years. I also ordered a selection of diamond grits for polishing. I no longer had the maple
diamond laps because they were back in Oregon with the Scout but I would be able to apply the
diamond grits to pieces of leather and polish the stones by hand.
Working stones by hand is a time-consuming process. But there was no electrical hookups at MFF,
and besides, I did not as yet have enough money buy the equipment for setting up a proper electric
lapidary shop. Electricity is not all that necessary. Gems were worked by hand for milleniums before
the modern age. Persistence and determination are always man's most important tools. Back in 1973 as
I had hitchhiked all over North America I had formed and polished gemstones by hand while sitting
alongside highways waiting for rides -- and I had developed quite a system as I wandered America
penniless with a pocket full of rubies and emeralds and sapphires.
This was my system: I made dopsticks from the branches of any handy tree. I flattened one end by
rubbing the stick against a flat rock. I used jeweler's wax to bond the stone to the stick. Then I held a
hundred grit carborundum wheel stationary in my left hand and applied the dopsticked stone to the
wheel in a circular motion with my right, spinning the stick between my fingers at the same time. With
my eyes closed I could feel the high and low points of the cabochon without even looking at the stone.
Every once in a while I would rinse the stone off and hold it up to the sky and check its progress. After
it was properly formed I would lay a sheet of 200-grit sandpaper over the grindstone and work the gem
further. Then 400 grit sandpaper. Then 600 grit. After that I would put some polish on a piece of leather
and finish the gem. Beautiful Australian opals are a soft stone with a hardness of only 5.6 and are the
easiest stone to do by hand -- though I've done number 9 star sapphires and star rubies that way, too.
It is true that it takes twenty times longer to do a stone by hand than it does to do it with modern
electric machinery. But you do what you can do with what you have and that's life. And there are
rewards for all your effort in fair proportion. I think so...
Everything would come in time. I tried to be optimistic. Realistically, no matter how I kept my nose
to the grindstone, this stuff might not pay off for awhile -- gems in impoverished rural areas do not put
food on tables. But I intended to have a good look around. Possibly I'd locate some local markets, folks
looking for special gifts -- or maybe we'd do some consignments up in Sherbrooke or Montreal! Yes,
we dreamed some gravy dreams. And waited for the heavens to open up and shower us with
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opportunities...
Ruby tastes on WIC program budgets. That was us.
I don't know why I should feel guilty for accepting some free milk and juice or medical services
from a government that routinely destroys surplus milk and wheat and corn. Farmers that own
thousands of acres get enormous subsidies and many of the largest are immune from taxation.
Logically, I saw no reason to listen to those people who condemn every poor person who receives
some food stamps to help feed a family. If the government didn't spend that money on the children
they'd just channel it into bombs and guns and crooked Savings and Loan companies instead. We may
as well nourish a child with a little bit of government money and make it do something good.
Besides, we'd never get Mushmara back unless we established good rapport with the local CSD. So
we introduced ourselves to the Public Health Nurse for the area and began journeying regularly to
Newport for medical checkups. After what we'd been through in Eugene, Oregon, we felt that social
agencies could be unfairly prejudiced against counter-culture families everywhere. So we met the nurse
and spoke plainly and straightforwardly with her to see what sort of person she was.
We were tempted to keep an enormous distance between the CSD and our new baby -- but I decided
we shouldn't develop a sociopathic complex about nurses in general because of what happened to us in
Eugene. And with the very limited helpers around, I wasn't above having the advice of a nurse on a
regular basis.
Well, it was plain to see this grandmotherly nurse only had the well being of children at heart. When
we told her about the tragedy in Eugene, she said the nurse there had obviously been insensitive and
unfair. She urged us not to be predisposed against all Public Health Nurses because we'd met one bad
apple. I could trust this woman.
She insisted that we allow her to arrange for WIC program free cheese, milk and cereal to be
delivered weekly to the land. Remembering the creep from the WIC in Springfield who'd been so twofaced -- spying on us and fabricating lies and exaggerations in court against us -- I was leery of any
WIC agency. But after I met the Vermont people, I came to feel they were just regular people doing an
especially good job helping others. They were honest and kind.
All in all, the Vermont social agencies were full of rural and homey folks whose principals were
beyond reproach. As time went on, we did have a few small disagreements but humans are not all the
same and differences of opinion are necessary. Anyway it wasn't as bad as in Eugene/Springfield.
***
As far as Rainbowland versus Babylon was concerned we'd arrived at the ends of the Earth now that
we lived in MFF, for there were no Old World authorities here unless someone brought them. The
police never came on the land. Once years before two cop cars came to the gate and were surrounded
by hippies with guns and told they weren't allowed. No police had ever tried again.
Customs and Immigration never came either. A Customs agent had once managed to drive through
an unattended gate. He was discovered and made to take off his shoes and walk out. His car was
stripped and turned upside down. As far as I know, they never returned either. Not that they couldn't
have mustered enough officers to make hash out of MFF. It probably just wasn't worth the hellacious
headlines in their erstwhile quiet local papers. And Vermonters were all sons of the great revolution
anyway. Inherently they had to respect those young revolutionaries who believed in their rights -- and
owned guns. For the most part Vermonters weren't chawing at the bit to kill longhairs. This wasn't L.A..
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But on the other hand the way they thought about us was: if those hippies don't like modern society
-- just let them ever ask for help and see what they get. Stares and shrugs: That was their way of getting
back at us. No sense risking their lives -- all they'd have to do is wait us out. Anything rotten tends to
crumble and fall apart from within. Just wait. And watch.
The land people preferred to have Rainbow's End free of Babylon's contamination. So MFF was
clearly a world within a world -- cut off from outside assistance. I broke an unwritten rule in accepting
the district Public Health nurse. For all the children they'd raised there, Tim and Bartholomew had
never allowed the Public Health Nurse to come around. They'd delivered their own children to remove
themselves the farthest possible distance from Babylon's minions. And they did not much condone our
fraternity with the world they'd left behind.
They held their ideals high. The truth is in our hands -- not Babylon's. So they said.
I wanted to believe. With all my heart I wanted to believe. And sometimes I did believe.
But Wally and Tim and Bartholomew and all the old timers had all knuckled under in other ways
hadn't they? They'd all left MFF. Any children born on the land now would have a bunch of bachelor
drunks as Godfathers. A nurse wouldn't be so bad compared to them. It would be different if the
venerable familymen had remained in control here... But they hadn't. If I looked around now, I'd see
only broken rotting angry lonely men left on the land. Now isn't that a splendid Rainbow? Good grief...
To put it simply most of the MFF residents were derelicts.
And, you know, I thought there was something really telling about the way they rarely spared any of
their precious wine money to buy dogfood to feed their own dogs! Those starving dogs ran the park.
They were always ravenous. They ran in packs among the trees and down the paths; they tore apart any
and all bags of garbage; they invaded any door left ajar, ransacked cabins seeking food. They were sad,
gaunt, savage, wild-eyed things, those dogs -- those dogs at the end of the rainbow...
Those dogs were the pure products of the men who owned them. They fought ferocious bloody
battles with each other, tore off ears and gouged out eyes -- over any pile of human excrement left
steaming in the mud or snow -- those hungry dogs that belonged to the people who'd escaped from the
evil world. Too bad.
Because it was just one of those things that made us skeptical we were actually in Heaven.
But no one and nothing is perfect. And the heart is manifest best by those who even so much as make
the effort to try. And so, through all this, one might still perceive some goodness.
And most of the land people remarked our familiness good-naturedly. After all -- babies are special
things -- sacred things. And they evoke feelings of warmth and awe even in hearts grown cold and
jaded -- hearts far removed from such laughter and tears. We could plainly see some of the reprobates
watched mistily as we meandered on our errands; graying noggins obviously dreaming of homes and
hearts lost in the nameless fog of time -- stories chained forever to their own silent depths. And yet,
here in the midst of them, in their redoubt of forgotten dreams, one more soul had been born into love,
a tender tiny soul -- with a place and a purpose, and as God wills, a mission. And they could not fail to
know -- they were part of this brilliance.
For there is but one heart in all the Creation. One heart. One.
How could they help but be moved by the ever-recurring miracle of creation? The babe and the
Madonna. So with the wisdom from the Source, they also had to choose whether to allow a Blessing to
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transform them -- or to hide their heads beneath a rock -- the age-old nitty-gritty decision of all men.
And in my own heart I heard angels singing -- an old rock song:
--"Wooden Ships on the Water, very Free and Easy, Easy the Way You Know It's Supposed to Be,
Silver people On The Shore Line, Let us Be -- Talkin' 'Bout Very Free and Easy.
--"Go, Take a sister by the Hand, Lead her Away From This Foreign Land, Far Away, Where We Can
Laugh Again, We Are Leaving, You Don't Need Us."
The Crosby, Stills, and Nash tune floated in and out of our lives as a shuttle through a loom -weaving the parents and the child together with summer winds and cherry wood and candle light to
make the finished fabric a robe of many colors.
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THIRTY-SIX
ELYSIUM
One day a pretty blond girl named Elizabeth wandered into our cabin and stayed. She had hitchhiked
alone from Virginia looking for the source of Rainbow rivers. When the last ride let her out at the gate
to the land, she hefted her pack and marched in to see what the notorious milieu of merry Martians was
really like. When she dropped out of the blue into the circle where the drunk's were passing around
their jug of wine they fell all over each other trying to get at her and she got scared. Fortunately for her
she could run faster than they could stagger or the same thing would have happened to her that
happened to Owl when she arrived at MFF for the first time in 1976.
Somehow the girl made her way to our log cabin. We gave her sanctuary while the drunks milled
outside our door pleading for her to come outside and party with them. We kept the door locked.
They gathered wood and built a fire ten feet from our door and passed their gallon until it was empty,
waiting for the blond girl. They were obviously irritated that anything or anyone would keep them from
their prey. Inside the cabin, alert and quiet, we ignored them. Among their kind of people there was a
saying that anyone who thought they were too good to party with them could go to hell, and they used
the opportunity to express that opinion to us. But the fact that we had an infant gave us a certain right to
privacy which even they could not totally dispute. And I used that fact to prevail upon them to take
their party elsewhere and give us some peace. It was after midnight when they finally faded away.
For safety's sake the young woman spent the night with us, sleeping downstairs. In the morning she
came up the ladder and sat on our bed and held the baby and we all got to know each other better.
Clearly, the baby and Owl and I were something natural and wholesome in an otherwise strange and
crazy land. We were more the sort of thing she was seeking. As the days passed she remained with us
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and she became the good friend we had been seeking -- and then some...
Owl and Elizabeth were always together, caring for the new baby, doing laundry in the creek,
cooking, sewing, talking. She was the first real sisterfriend Owl had had in years.
Elizabeth was tall with short golden hair and she had flashing blue eyes that reminded me of no other
eyes so much as Owl's own flashing brown ones. Her figure was lithe and exquisite. She was graceful
and soft-spoken and kindhearted. Personally, I thought God had sent her to us. Or perhaps the
Goddess...
Since the bed upstairs was the main baby area Elizabeth fell asleep there with us sometimes; and so
it wasn't long before we all began to sleep together every night, snuggly under light summer covers,
and...
To wake gently, to snuggle closer-Or to massage-Or to whisper ideas and dreams into each other’s half-asleep ears-Or...
To make --- love.
And very soon we were having some of the most sensational sex any of us had ever known -- the
good kind that lasts until the stars blend with the new morning and we laid back exhausted beneath the
skylight and watched the birds fly across the azure. For Owl and I, this was not our first menaje a trois.
However, it was the best, and it revealed clearly why since the beginning of time two women and a
man have always been a very... special... intimacy.
Owl had an aching need for friendship and healing. In Elizabeth, Owl found a sister who was closer
to her than silk, and at least as tender to her as I was; sometimes, I suspect, even more tender. Elizabeth
had balms that I had not -- intuitions I could not approach, sensibilities in new areas.
Our three-way sex life was thrilling. Elizabeth had the body of an Aphrodite and the voracious
sexual appetite of an Ashtoreth. Both women were beautiful to see, to touch, to be touched by. What a
wonderful thing it was for me...
More wonderful than this was seeing my Owl who had been wounded for so long and so deep,
respond to Elizabeth -- for Elizabeth could make Owl melt with her sweetness, and they would laugh
and laugh together... After being so ignored and abused by women and even by sisters of our culture
Owl finally had a real friend of her own; and not a fake one who made phony noises of sincerity and
then disappeared never again to visit or extend a hand -- but instead, someone real who shared and
listened and tried to communicate; someone who cared; someone who liked her as a person -- perhaps,
someone who actually wanted to really love her... Am I wrong, or is such a person rare in this world for
any of us? A pearl...
We were all very happy. I remember one evening how Elizabeth and I were sleeping on either side of
Owl and she was gently tousling our hair with her fingers. I remember... so many wonderful things...
Yes, We were as happy as childhood friends. But as adults, our orgasms rocked the log cabin to its
foundation and all the trees surrounding us...
And then again, sometimes the loving was as mellow as the hot summer wind pirouetting through the
cherry blossoms.
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In fact, that summer was, extraordinarily, hot. Oh Goddess was it hot...
Owl's given name is Elaine, so in effect, with Elizabeth living there too I now had two Ellie's. We
called her Beth. Her accent was southern and she spoke slow and thoughtfully; her blue eyes watched
everything. Owl's brown eyes and thick French accent contrasted and blended with Beth's like a
bouquet of flowers. Beth was part Cherokee, though you had to look hard to find a trace in her high
cheekbones and her deep concentration.
A menaje a trois that occurs as a fly-by-night whim is a far cry from one that forms as an enduring
friendship. With lovemaking as the tool, the Great Spirit sews together human beings as patches in a
great patch-quilt. The differing pieces become a beautiful oneness. We felt like a family.
Historians and artists have painted beautiful, mystical pictures of naiad sisters bathing in ethereal
pools of antiquity. We know, in the soul of souls, a timeless sorosis embodies women even in our
mundane modern matrix. Chained to convention, sisters find each other only too rarely in our world,
more the sorrow.
Owl and Beth found each other and a babe nestled between their hearts, and I was content with their
wombs as my pillows.
We lay together in the cabin amidst the trees and beheld the deep woods dance in the winds. The
large window extended from the ceiling almost to the bedding. The window was hinged and we kept it
open after dark so the cool winds could blow through to relieve the stifling cabin. In the evenings we lit
the kerosene lantern and put tapes in the battery-operated stereo. Evenings were mellow times in our
cabin in the woods.
We talked and read, and nailed and sewed, until Sandy Laughing River fell asleep, and then with a
zillion eternal lights twinkling through the skylight, we made love in the heat of the night, with the
blankets off and the side window open to permit the gentle breeze to blow across our hot bodies and the
flickering light of the lantern to turn deep night glances and sexual rhythms of starlit souls into
eternity's finest art.
Coincidentally, some of our besotted neighbors, quite industriously, took to gathering their firewood
in the vicinity of the rear of our cabin during those peculiar latenight hours -- albeit silently.
We eventually realized we were better than any television to them...
With some chagrin, the girls hastily sewed curtains and put them up. The curtains kept too much of
the cool breezes out, so we had to open them slightly sometimes -- after first scrutinizing the forest
beyond for furtive wood-gatherers.
This only brought them out of the woodwork (so to speak)...
Twinky was always the most pleasant of these honest workmen. He'd pop up from nowhere, (as there
were no paths there) and say:
"Excuse me! Don't mean to bother you! Just passin' through!"
Then he'd proceed to regale us with obscure information, like the proper mulching of tomato sprouts.
And he'd go on and on while we lay with our heads on our arms looking down from our window-bed
perch until finally he'd mosey on home. Other "woodgatherers" simply strolled through and seeing us
watching them, bid us a cheery "Good morning!" or "Good evening!" and went on their way as casual
as could be.
Between the double adventure of the new baby and the love-feast liaison, we were of capricious
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spirit and treated most things lightly, not to mention the men's occasional sly double entendres, though
some of those comments had a feral quality we did not pick up on immediately.
If only our love-feast could have lasted longer...
Sometimes, thinking back to how nice it was, I find myself feeling that something that beautiful
could last forever and it would be all right with me... Eternal fields of Elysium may exist in some
dimension beyond time and space. If so, I will know Elysium as home when I get there.
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THIRTY-SEVEN
NUTS
The end began when Beth came home to the cabin frightened and upset one day, and wouldn't talk
about it. She eventually told us what had happened.
One of the men -- Arnold -- had met her near the river alone and tried to have his way with her. She
didn't want his attentions but he wouldn't take no for an answer until she pulled a little knife which she
always carried. He told her he wasn't afraid of her puny knife and that guns were more lethal. This
fiend certainly had enough guns. But he let her go after saying a few more slimy things she wouldn't
repeat to us.
She begged me not to do anything, but the next day I went and told him she didn't want any part of
him. He was cleaning his 357 Magnum. He told me it was none of my business and to drop it. Other
men were there. The situation was entirely uncool. I knew I was as far out on a limb as a man could
get. I went back to the cabin.
Buttons and Mitchell and Sheila and Nina were our only other confidants. Sheila rarely came out of
her house. Nina, who ventured further, was propositioned by Arnold -- no big deal in itself but she felt
shaky. Buttons and Mitchell and I met in my parlor and discussed what we might do. We thought there
was a possibility that the gang of drunks were planning to attack our homes. However Buttons and
Mitchell hadn't angered them the way I had done by living and sleeping with two beautiful women.
After all, those men came from rough city street worlds where women frequently went to whoever had
the most muscle or whoever threatened the most mayhem -- and they must have felt like fish out of
water here in this strange hippie world where counter-culture women looked on their brutality as
something akin to slug-slime. No respect! It seemed so unnatural to them, so un-American...
So they fumed...
Then a few days later all of a sudden they all pulled up stakes and left MFF. What a shock! Was
paradise to be restored to our Promised Land? Had they returned to their hometowns to turn themselves
in and serve their time?
Days passed and we began to live freely and happily for a change. Then a week later, they all
returned -- drunker and more sinister than ever. And they had a strange young woman of about twentyfour years old with them -- with all of them. She was not a counter-culture person in any stretch of the
imagination either. She was just a really sad case...
She wobbled when she walked and sometimes she fell down and sat on the ground or the floor
cursing everyone. She wore dresses so tight that she bulged out everywhere, as though she had
purchased them when she was fifty pounds lighter. Her breasts would fall out of the low cleavage tops.
Her thick make-up was smeared grotesquely. Her arms looked like a pincushion.
In the beginning everything she said was incomprehensible and she seemed to retain nothing anyone
told her. She was on the land three days before she even managed to ask someone where the hell she
was. Later, when she had adequately focused on her new circumstances she began to hold better
conversations. She admitted freely to us that she was a prostitute. The rogues claimed they'd brought
her back to MFF to "straighten her out."
Buttons and Mitchell and me got together and we evaluated our options and decided that unless Clint
Eastwood showed up to do what was beyond our abilities, the only sensible thing remaining was to
greet them heartily and all have a pot-luck dinner together and let by-gones be by-gones... It would also
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give us an opportunity to discover what they were up to.
Everyone in the community came to the feast. Perhaps we all really wanted everything to be okay so
much that we really tried. I was very testy at first, fully prepared to gather up Owl and the baby and
Beth and depart at the first sign of bad vibes. But everyone was so mellow that I was able to somewhat
drop my guard. We made small talk. We built a fire. I purchased mushrooms and peppers and tomatoes
and a couple chickens in town and cooked up a chicken catchetori with plenty of tomato sauce and
spaghetti for everyone. (A vegetarian meal wouldn't have been appreciated as much and we were
capable of eating a little chicken on occasion...) Beth and Owl helped me cook.
We ate on the grassy riverbank. There were about 20 people of so. Practically every one of them told
me it was the best campfire meal they'd ever had. Afterward we broke out guitars and sang good old
songs. Wooden Ships reverberated through the forest like a summer storm. I shot the Sheriff rocked on
for twenty minutes. Knocking on Heaven's Door brought somber thoughts and went on and on too. The
inevitable gallon bottles of wine were passed round and round and round as daylight fled and the
flickering campfire flames mixed moving shadows with the wine-colored night.
We could have done without so much wine. I don't understand why it is that human beings put so
much stock in drinking alcohol until they become disoriented and mindless. And why do they call it
"having fun"?
That evening there was a sad comedy... Twinky took the opportunity to fall in love with the strange
woman. He courted her, fawned on her. He recited impromptu poems to her. She toyed with his
affections.
But it was booze that defeated him; compared to that whether she was willing or not did not matter.
One moment he would be mumbling incomprehensible poems to her and the next he'd be falling on the
ground unable to get up, reaching vainly in her direction with one pleading hand. Half an hour later
he'd be on his feet again, or at least on all fours, crawling over to where she was braced against a tree to
try once more to rekindle the magic fires of youth's lost love.
She could not keep her balance any better than Twinky. Sometimes they lay in the grass quite close
to each other, although they could never unite. Perhaps they dreamed of each other... I heard him call to
her, and say he loved her several times, although I had my doubts. Drunkenness tends to limit any
sincere emotions. More likely he was merely infatuated.
Once she toppled into the river and we had to fish her out. Owl and Beth took the baby home to the
cabin. I remained on the riverbank among the revelers, watching out for them, especially for the
woman who I feared would drown. Several times I walked her as far from the river as possible and
propped her up against a tree. Finally I let her lay on the ground and threw a coat over her. She seemed
to be down for the count. Bodies sprawled in the grass. I was the last one standing. It was very late
then, so I went home.
Early in the morning I returned to the riverbank to check out the scene. Twinky and the lady were
passed out ten feet from each other. No one else was around. She got shakily to her feet, wobbled
crookedly sideways downhill, and plopped into the river. I pulled her out and she passed out again in
the grass. Too much. I stayed until other folks arrived who would keep their eyes on her.
To know oneself, to stand strong beneath the full summer moon, to have compassion for those less
fortunate... I'll not be saying there was no enlightenment at all to be found in that land, but only that it
was a hard row to hoe...
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***
We certainly had reasons enough to remain apprehensive...
Buttons, with straight blond hair, was a lean young New England gentleman. He had a sincere heart
and was mild in his temperament and soft-spoken in his conversation. He came to my cabin to talk with
me a couple days later. He said that at one point during the party he had looked up on the hill above the
riverbank and been startled to see Bush Butch sighting a rifle down at the group. Afterwards Bush
Butch put away the rifle and came down and partied with everyone until the end. But the more we
thought about it the more we came to the conclusion it was a maniac thing to do, to be standing on a
hill sighting down the barrel of a rifle at a group of people.
Mitchell and Buttons were brothers in the true counter-culture sense of the word. They decided to go
in together on the purchase of a small pistol for their mutual protection. That's a strange thing for a
hippie to do. Hippies are supposed to be peaceful, gentle people who don't believe in hurting living
things, people who deplore that miserable world of guns and bombs and tortured lives. Yet, regretfully,
sometimes any man may feel the necessity to protect his loved ones and go get him a gun.
So they bought a cheap little 25 caliber automatic and plinked with it for practice. They hoped word
would leak out that they had themselves a gun now -- and that it would earn them a share of respect
from the desperados.
Personally, I thought getting a gun was going too far. Guns are hellacious things. I sure didn't want
no gun around me! But I knew way down in the back of my mind I was close to considering the same
move myself. Eventually I came to feel that if it actually ever came down to where Owl and I weren't
safe unless I kept a loaded pistol nearby at all times I'd rather just leave and go someplace sane...
The wiped-out lady, whose name I've forgotten, stayed on the land for a couple weeks and seemed to
be improving. Then she suddenly got a shocking message from home. Her five-year old child, whom
she'd left in the care of people she barely knew, had been playing behind a car in the driveway and the
driver had backed out without looking and run over her child, crushing both legs. So the lady left the
land and I don't recall seeing her again.
It is so strange to my way of thinking, to think of all the kinds of people who CSD sometimes let
keep their kids. I mean, like me and Owl's daughter gets taken away and we're sober and resourceful
people with a lot of love in our hearts -- and there's this drunken drugged up prostitute who leaves her
kid with strangers and the kid gets run over and she still keeps her kid. Where's the justice?
I don't really know why things are as they are. But truthfully I believe CSD workers prefer easier
jobs to harder jobs, unthreatening jobs to dangerous ones. That prostitute and all her cranky friends
probably constituted a situation no mousy social worker wanted to get too close to. Owl and me were
just easy pickins. I am an easygoing pacifist with no weapons. They could plainly see they could walk
all over me and I wouldn't be any threat to them. And Owl certainly couldn't defend herself well in
English, and she was very gentle and kind too. Why should they waste their time on volatile, drunk,
heavily armed, treacherous dope dealers, when a harmless counter-culture couple like us will score
them just as many points with no danger of getting bruised or shot? Messin' with folks like us is a hell
of a lot safer and it makes them look good. They can come on strong and fearless and make out like
they are the sole hope of a child. And the newspapers and gullible people of the world eat it up like
candy-coated chicken manure.
So anyway, the derelicts had dragged an addict lady away from her daughter -- leaving the child with
typically careless pseudo-humans whose neglect resulted in a tragedy! Whereupon, the mother had
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sped away to be with her injured child, leaving MFF forever, and in so doing she had left the drunks in
the lurch with no woman for them to use. How pathetic.
Naturally, their predilections brought them to our doorsteps wanting to party. Because two pretty
women lived in my home. We had to tell them nineteen times we did not want to party with them. We
begged off for the baby's sake. They urged us to "Bring the baby!"
"No. She needs her sleep. Thanks anyway!" we replied.
In the following days they became taciturn and muttery amongst themselves whenever we passed,
eyeing us like we were the cause of all their problems. Occasionally, since I had a little money and they
sold all their food stamps at two for a dollar to buy wine and didn't seem to need food, I would
ameliorate the crime of my sobriety by handing them five dollars to get them a gallon. It bought them
off. And usually it succeeded in getting them away from our door.
Mudslide Mel and Twinky were both good folks in spite of their unfortunate predisposition to
alcohol -- and we generally enjoyed their company. Sometimes, we invited one of them to have dinner
with us, and prepared a nice dish for which they seemed genuinely grateful. But we didn't want most of
the others anywhere near us if it could be avoided. If any of them "dropped by" while we were
entertaining someone else we changed plans and ate outside in front of the cabin instead of inside.
Inside was the baby's sanctuary.
Once, Twinky did get drunk inside our cabin after a meal. And we couldn't get him to leave. He was
lonely and hurting and crying. After a while, Beth walked him to his cabin and spent the night with
him. My idea. Dumb. Afterwards he thought she was his own angel sent from God to save his soul.
Beth never brought herself to sleep with him sexually. He wasn't her type, she said. But he thought
she was modest and virginal and saving herself for his proposal... So he continued coming over every
day -- drunk or sober, just to be near her -- which always caused her to leave quickly. Our privacy was
trampled. So at last I saw no other way but to confess to him that her going home with him that night
had been my idea -- because we all liked him and figured he needed someone with whom to feel close
-- and that Beth hadn't even wanted to go, but that I had talked her into it -- just to get our drunk old
friend Twinky out of our cabin so we could have some peace. Dumb again. He didn't need to know
that! He didn't believe me. He said I was just jealous. But then Beth told him, too. So he knew it was
true. After that he became deeply resentful that I'd manipulated his love life -- and thereafter our
friendship remained severely wounded -- probably forever.
I made a stupid mistake. I hope I learned from it.
Arnold was also still after Beth. He tried to snag her attention by appearing more and more macho,
cleaning his guns around her, talking trash. She ignored him, ditched him, insulted him. She's a
southern girl, and can get riled.
But he was determined to break her down.
He enjoyed putting us in a position of knowing too much about him. I couldn't believe he was really
that bad. I thought he was putting us on. Lot's of people make out like they're bad news so as to make
themselves big in the local scene. I figured he was one of those kind of jerks at first. I was wrong. He
was the real thing.
As the weeks passed we learned more and more unpleasant things about him. He hitchhiked over
New England, especially Vermont, with a loaded sawed off shotgun under his long coat. He openly
bragged among us about holding up gas stations late at night in other states. No, we sure didn't want to
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hear that stuff.
Then one day he got Beth off alone and threatened to harm me or Owl or the baby unless she came
over to his house -- and she gave in.
Beth came home the next day and explained everything to us and said she'd probably be leaving soon
because otherwise, she'd have to move in with him. He camped out at the fire circle in front of our
cabin, getting drunker and drunker and louder and louder with two or three others and stayed until
morning with their guns and their racket -- before finally wandering off to sleep. We hoped the worst
was over.
They slept off the drunk for two days and then all got together again, raising hell as ever.
Buttons and Mitchell and I had been talking. We had to keep them away from the cabin. Perhaps a
peace overture of some sort would work...
As was often our habit, we all walked to the post office together to check our mail. On the way back,
they usually bought wine and sat by the tracks. There was a favorite spot in the trees. I had totally
avoided those gatherings since the day they'd told us about their gas station robberies. I sure as shit had
better things to listen to and think about, with Sandy Laughing River in my arms. I had never been part
of such things and I wasn't interested in starting now!
But there I was with them in the clearing by the tracks. Everyone was here. Owl and Sandy, Mitchell
and Sheila (very pregnant!), Buttons and Nina, Arnold, Bush Butch, Bimmy, and a strange ugly looking
dude whose name I don't remember -- and Beth, and several others. It looked like a fair gathering to try
to work out the bad vibes. I took photographs all around to get people self-conscious about how they
were behaving. Actually, they turned out to be the best portraits I ever took at MFF.
We sat in the circle for an hour. I decided to play my ace and volunteered to spend a big fiver on a
gallon of the rose. (After which I would feel comfortable making our exit.) The store was only three
hundred feet from the clearing. I strode quickly through the tall grass up to the parking area. I had
almost reached the store when the shot rang out, and the screaming started.
I turned and flew back to the clearing. Long before I got there, I was yelling for Owl, hysterically,
adding to the frantic melee that was occurring on the scene.
Buttons was lying on the ground with Nina holding his head. Blood covered his pants.
Arnold stood with his 357 Magnum in his hand watching everything curiously. He kept saying:
"I didn't mean to do it. I'm sorry. The gun stuck in my holster and went off when I pulled it out!"
He said it over and over.
Had the bullet gone an inch more to the right Buttons would have been castrated. A foot to the right
would have got Sheila in her pregnant belly. A few feet to the left would have got Owl and Sandy. In
my mind, I felt certain, the thing had been planned out and executed perfectly, except that a slight
miscalculation on Arnold's part enabled Buttons to keep his nuts.
Arnold made a speech:
"When the cops come, everybody better tell them NO ONE KNOWS who shot Buttons. Just say a
stranger came out of nowhere, shot him, and ran off down the tracks. Say you never seen the guy
before. Say you don't know why he did it. And you don't know where he went. He musta been some
crazy bum. I can't let them know I shot him, even though it was an accident, because I have warrants.
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They'd send me away forever..."
Then Bush Butch slowly went around to each person looking them in the eyes and asserting with
deadly intensity:
"Anyone who tells who did this shooting, I will personally kill them! Is that UNDERSTOOD? HEY!
Is that UNDERSTOOD?"
One by one, everyone agreed.
They recruited Bimmy's old station wagon and put Buttons in the back and headed for the hospital.
The nearest one was just across the border in the Canadian town of Coaticook about eight miles away.
The wound was bleeding profusely. Buttons life hung in the balance. But the border guards refused to
allow them into Canada despite the urgency. Angrily they turned around and headed for the next nearest
United States hospital which was thirty-five miles east in New Hampshire. I wasn't with them but those
that were said the old car went as much as a hundred miles an hour. But Buttons arrived safely. He
received seventy-seven stitches in his wound and stayed for almost a month.
Immediately after the shooting Owl and I began to pack up everything we could carry, preparing to
leave at first light. We were of the belief that the shooting was deliberate and I thought we might be
next. We decided to go into Canada, the only easy-to-reach place I could think of where we could get
some help. We couldn't be wandering around aimlessly with a baby in our arms.
Beth bid us a tender Goodbye. There would be no way for her to accompany us to Montreal where
we would be among Owl's family. She hoisted her pack and stuck out her thumb heading south.
Nina mysteriously spent that night with Arnold. I never could figure out why she did that. I figured it
might have been her way of putting a damper on his insanity. It did not bode well for any of us if he
could exert so much power over people -- to shoot a man and sleep with his wife the same night. It was
abominable to me. In the morning she told us she was leaving MFF. But she refused to discuss anything
about her night with Arnold and just looked at the ground when we asked.
Mitchell and Sheila packed up and left too. They weren't sure where they were going but they
figured they'd make up their mind after they'd left. When no one was around they told me they didn't
want anyone on the land to know where to find them. They were plenty worried about Bush Butch's
threat. They said they were going to stay with family.
Owl and I waited until we got the news that Buttons was going to be all right, and then Owl and the
baby and I left our cabin with all we could carry and with almost no money and headed north, hopping
a freight to Montreal. All we had was sleeping gear, the Janson Pack for the baby, and another couple
bags of diapers and clothes.
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THIRTY-EIGHT
LOCKED OUT
Lise was happy to see Owl the baby and I come to visit her -- but she was genuinely sad to have to
tell us that we could not stay in her apartment. She explained that her landlord had gotten very angry
with her because we had stayed with her the last time and he would surely evict her if he found out we
were staying there again. So we went to Owl's sister Diane and tried to tell her and her boyfriend what
had happened down at MFF. The events were so complex that I had to wait until a next door neighbor
who spoke both languages could come over and translate for me. I asked if we could stay with them for
a week or two until I could get some money sent up or figure something else to do.
The fellow who was doing the translating didn't seem to have a full command of English and I often
had to try to explain something in several different ways until he got it right. And I wasn't always sure
he had it right. So it is doubtful whether Diane and Leo ever adequately understood our predicament.
It's just as possible they figured that any man dumb enough to take a young mother and a newborn baby
into a den of poisonous snakes like MFF seemed to be, was not their idea of good company. They asked
me if the man who shot Buttons might come looking for us? I told them I was sure he wouldn't. They
didn't appear convinced.
Everything costs money in Montreal. Quebekers are very conscious of money and they believe
strongly in working hard to get the fine things they want out of life. Leo and Diane's apartment was a
very pretty place. The floors were of polished wood. They had expensive looking rattan furniture, a
large color TV, and a fine stereo system. And they smoked good marijuana and hashish. Not cheap stuff
either.
But it is one thing to share your expensive smoke with a guest on one day and quite another thing to
share it day after day after day. And he was paying for all our food too. There was nothing I could do
about it. I fully intended to make it up to him soon but it was more than that as far as he was concerned.
It was the fact that I was the kind of person who thought I could live without working and that I
expected him to provide a roof and food for us. I tried to explain to him that it was deeper than that,
that it is not easy to just go out and get a job when you are from a foreign country and do not have
working papers, when you do not have references, when you do not speak the language, when you have
a wife who really should not be left alone... But it was just too much for Leo. If it hadn't been for
Diane's interceding for us we would have been out on the streets in two days.
We hadn't been to Montreal in a few months. We had mistakenly been thinking that Owl's Canadian
welfare checks had continued to go to her mom's address in our absence. That money would free us
from having to impose upon her relatives in any way. It would give us an economic safe zone from
which we might cogently plan what to do next. But Lise had sent the checks back...
A telephone call to the Welfare office indicated that the checks could be reinstated if Owl came down
to the office. They would be asking her where she had been during the previous several months. She
might answer that she spent a lot of time visiting with friends in Vermont... But Owl finds such strategy
difficult if not impossible.
Diane was adamant that Owl should go down to the office and get her money. Leo was practically
hyperventilating whenever he saw us in his apartment. Diane needed us out to restore peace in her life.
Owl was a Canadian mother in serious financial straits. She deserved that money. She had a right...
But NOT if she was married or living with a boyfriend. Because then the financial obligations would be
his. The only solution was to tell the welfare people that Owl was single and that I didn't exist. So I
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couldn't go with her to the welfare office. Diane went with her.
It went pretty well but still the checks were long in coming. Diane and Owl telephoned them every
morning and the answer was always the same: not yet.
Leo laid the law down. He didn't want us hanging around his apartment during the day while he and
Diane were at work. I got the impression that Leo thought we might get desperate and steal his stereo
and sell it or something like that. When two people speak different languages it is real easy to hold
erroneous perceptions. And our very lifestyles clashed terribly. Our wood-smelling sheepskin tops and
patchleather bellbottoms and big boots must have seemed audacious and incredible. They had never
known anyone like us... We were wild as the hills.
So they made us pack up and leave when they left every morning. And they locked the door. So we
had to find somewhere to go all day long every day, rain or shine. And that wasn't always easy,
especially with a small baby. Parks were our best hope. So if the weather was good I would leave Owl
and Sandy in a grassy park for a few hours while I used city buses to look for employment.
French Canadian people aren't quick to hire English speaking people who don't speak French. And
I'd have to be paid under the table because I had no legal papers to work in Canada. Legitimate
businesses don't want to fool with that. I was an illegal immigrant. And the way I looked definitely
turned them off too, especially if I was wearing my leathers. They'd just stare at me like I was from
another planet. Before I could even talk to anyone an interpreter had to be dug up. When they finally
figured out what I wanted and that I had no working papers they were sometimes downright angry.
But I kept trying. It would be so good for Owl to be near her family, if only we could find a way...
And so I continued to wander around the city streets looking for any job that would hire me for a day
and pay me under the table.
One construction foreman called the police. I only realized in the nick of time the real reason he was
keeping me waiting for so long. I quickly headed across the street to the park where Owl and Sandy
were waiting for me and we laid in the grass behind a tree and watched as a police car swerved into the
construction site.
The officer jumped out and went up to the supervisor who had detained me so long. I saw him shrug
his shoulders and both of them scanned the horizon looking for me. After ten nervous minutes the cop
crossed the street heading straight towards us. We tried to gather up our baby and walk away in another
direction but he called to us to stop. He told me he was taking me to jail. I asked him why? He was
very arrogant and angry. It was obvious that he did not like having to speak English with me. He kept
trying French and at first he quite refused to believe that I could not understand him. Actually it turned
out that he thought I was someone else, someone he had busted once. I guess I looked like that person.
When I showed him my Vermont driver’s license he got angrier. He thought I had stolen the ID and
he warned me it was a serious crime. He used his radio to check me out thoroughly. Police often refuse
to accept Vermont licenses as identification because at that time they still did not have photographs on
them. He said he'd give me one chance to admit it was fake and take it back and give him my real
identification. I just told him he was mistaken because it was the real thing. He had the central police
station telephone Vermont and verify it. We had to wait a long time while they did that.
He was very perturbed about the baby. The weather was cool and it had been raining lightly, more
like misting. He separated Owl from me and spoke with her privately. He didn't like her answers. As
usual she simply had to say ridiculous things. She told him she was from Mexico and I was her brother.
I had to jump in and explain her mental condition as well as I could. I told him we normally lived in
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Vermont and that we were up in Montreal staying with her family for a few days and while I was in
town I was investigating the work situation to see if it were possible for us to move up there. He grilled
us for over an hour before he let us go.
After that experience we couldn't return to that park for fear of seeing him again and it was the
nearest park to Owl's sister's apartment... So it was a really big problem for us, as to where we could go
during the daytime when Diane and Leo locked us out of the apartment.
Sandy Laughing River was too young to be bundled about homelessly. We were too vulnerable to be
walking around aimlessly with a tiny infant in our arms. We tried staying during the days in her
mother's apartment. That worked only occasionally. She was afraid her landlord would think we were
living there.
One day it was raining cats and dogs and we were out in it trying to find someplace dry. I
panhandled bus fare and we went to her sister's apartment. No one was there and the door was locked
like always. We waited in the hall. They'd be home in three hours. We sat on the carpet and held Sandy.
We changed her diapers. Talked to her. Talked to each other. Played with Sandy. Laughed.
Once in a while someone would come along and see us there and remark something in French or ask
us in broken English what we were doing there. I'd explain we were waiting for Owl's sister to come
home, that we expected her any minute. One woman came back several times to check on us. She was
concerned about the baby.
An hour passed. A policeman came walking up the stairs. There'd been a complaint about us.
Someone was worried that we might have stolen a baby! We assured him that Sandy was ours. He
thought he should take Sandy along with him to the police station for her own safety and well being.
We protested vehemently. So he finally went on his way. After he left we stood shaking in our boots for
another half-hour until Diane came home and let us in.
Later that evening Leo was angry that we had caused police to come to his door. He was worried
about his pot... Diane and Leo argued loudly in their room. Enough was enough! He didn't want us
there anymore. He stormed through the living room without even looking at us and went out -slamming the door behind him.
Diane told us we could stay the night but we would have to be gone in the morning. She was kind
but firm.
So we had no choice but to leave Montreal. If we could only have stayed a few more days Owl
would surely have at last received two or three months of back checks from the welfare, over five
hundred dollars, and with that we could have gotten an apartment or something. But every day they had
put her off again and again... And now we didn't have anyplace to stay in Montreal while we waited.
We'd have to do without that money. Funny how life feels sometimes: to be so close to something you
need so bad and see it slip through your fingers...
We had to leave Montreal. But where could we go? Where? With a tiny baby in our arms? Could we
go off hitchhiking cross-country aimlessly? No way.
The only thing we could do was return to MFF.
Maybe it would be all right. Maybe Arnold had been arrested for shooting Buttons. Maybe they'd
found his warrants and all his other crimes. Maybe he was sitting in jail and would never bother us
again.
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Anyway, with Beth gone, the guys may have mellowed. Or -- what if the shooting really had been an
accident? Maybe I'd just imagined that Arnold had deliberately tried to castrate Buttons and intimidated
Nina into screwing him. Heck! Maybe she wanted to screw him. Maybe they were all good people that
I really didn't know or understand. Maybe I had just over-reacting to the whole thing. Maybe I was just
sensitive because we had a new baby. Maybe I had just been paranoid.
All we could do was play it by ear. If the shooting incident was over and done with and they'd all
learned a lesson on mixing drunkenness and gunplay we might stay there. If not, I was thinking we'd
try living at that "Hippie church" over in Lake Hill.
It was always a sad feeling leaving Montreal. I felt like Owl belonged there. I loved that city -- even
if it was rough on English speaking people like me. Even if no one in it seemed to understand what we
were going through. We were just too different.
The bus south cost us each three dollars and change and got us to within ten miles of the border.
From there it was an easy hitchhike to the border and a short walk through the woods...
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THIRTY-NINE
PIGS
There was no fanfare upon our return to MFF.
Well, the place had always purported to be there for the "refugees of Babylon", and that description
always seemed to fit us to a tee. When they asked us where we'd been, we answered that we'd gone to
visit Owl's people and that now we were back.
We'd only been gone a couple weeks... We found our cabin much as we left it. But when we began
cleaning it up we made a startling discovery. The holster to the 357 Magnum with which Arnold had
shot Buttons -- was crammed in between the logs above the door in plain sight! At first, I couldn't
figure out why anyone would have put the holster there. And then the explanation dawned on me!
When Owl and I left right away after the shooting, I became Arnold's scapegoat. If police raided the
land looking for the gun and searching every residence, they would have found the holster in my cabin,
and they would have found me gone! Provided he could coerce some of the others into going along
with him, there was a possibility he could pin the shooting on me!
I doubt if it would have worked. My friends would not have let him get away with that. But if there
was no one on the land but him and his confederates the subterfuge might have succeeded.
However, the police had never come -- in fact, they'd barely looked into the incident at all. Any
affairs that occurred at MFF were headaches they'd rather forego.
So I gave Arnold back his holster and told him where I'd found it. He acted surprise and wondered
how in blazes it had got there!
Aside from the holster incident the land was peaceful. The summer was hot. People stayed at home
inside where it was cool. Buttons was due to be released from the hospital soon and everyone was
excited to see him. Most of them spoke of the shooting as a terrible accident.
Mudslide Mel was still our friend as much as ever. Together we drank coffee and conspired ways to
get Arnold off the land. He stated confidently that all we'd need is a concerted action to get rid of him.
He believed there were enough people that wanted Arnold to leave who could get rid of him by force.
But the plan was too desperate and never came off.
And Twinky... Well, Twinky was still mad at me about Beth -- but I had high hopes he'd wax
charitable soon. He and I sat in his A-frame and discussed things coolly. We considered taking up a
collection and sending Arnold to Mexico. But even if we did that he'd just return someday, probably in
a matter of months, if not weeks. No sense wasting the money.
Bush Butch seemed to have forgotten everything about the incident and especially about what he'd
said about what he'd do to anyone who told what happened. He came to us and apologized for whatever
little he remembered.
"It was just a bunch of drunken foolishness. I don't know what I'm doing or saying half the time
when I'm drunk. I'm sorry. Let's all just forget about it and be friends."
Well, I didn't entirely believe him. But his conciliatory remarks made our return easier.
Mitchell and Sheila and Nina were staying with friends off the land and were looking for a place to
rent a long ways away from MFF.
We visited Buttons in the hospital. The seventy-seven stitches were slowly healing. He wanted to
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believe the shooting had been an accident. When I pressed him, he looked square at me and said that's
the way it would have to be. He had told the police what Arnold had said to say: that a stranger had
come up for no reason, shot him, and ran down the tracks. He and Nina and Sheila and Mitchell had
decided that when he was released they'd rent a couple houses near each other in a town a hundred
miles away, near relatives who would help them all get started. They planned to get regular jobs and get
on with their lives. We were welcome to join them, but no one else on the land were to know where
they were.
Maybe we would do that. But we'd need to save some money to rent a house. And I did not feel
entirely secure about leaving Owl and Sandy home alone while I worked an eight-hour day somewhere.
She still spaced out sometimes. I had to be alert, double-checking things regularly. And if any nosey
neighbor developed an attitude towards Owl while she and Sandy were by themselves it could bring
down the police and Children's Protective Service and even Immigration, with me unable to be there to
protect them. In view of those possibilities our joining up with Sheila and Mitchell and Buttons and
Nina just wasn't feasible.
Our cabin in the woods was all we had. If only the bad guys would leave us alone we'd be all right
there.
The sanctuary of our cabin was a blessing compared to the chaos of Montreal. We were happy to be
inside those log walls again, cooking supper on the log fire in front of the cabin, listening to our tapes,
snuggling with the baby in the loft with the windows open and a cool breeze blowing through.
What a good home this should be! How beautiful were those mossy logs, so snug in the warmth of
the wood fire! I looked at the big wok leaning against the wall, our funny bathtub. Through the skylight
I watched the birds riding thermals and diving through rolling clouds. I'd built that skylight with my
own hands... That meant something. I looked at the rootbeer-colored creek in front of the cabin -- the
creek we'd named our daughter after. I looked at the easel nestled in the corner of the cabin. I'd made it
of birch limbs. My Grumbacher oils and camel hair brushes lay piled beside. An empty canvas stood
waiting. What wonderful inspirations came to me on this land! This was our log cabin home; the only
one we'd ever have...
Oh! If only we could stay!
We had nowhere to go... Maybe if we just stayed here a little longer... Later maybe we could get a
place with Mitchell and Sheila and Buttons and Nina. If only we could just last here for a little while...
So, the cabin was our home again. We avoided Arnold and he avoided us.
Two other couples lived on or next to the land that I haven't previously mentioned. The memory they
instilled in my heart is so sore it is hard for me to bring them forth.
They were "interesting" people -- trappers and hunters. They weren't exactly a criminal element, but
their decided dislike for vegetarians and "hippies" sometimes manifested in cunning manipulations.
Their daily attitudes were beyond ornery, and caused us much grief.
They watched with undisguised displeasure as we returned. They would rather have had gangsters in
their backyards than New Age vegetarians. They considered the land to be their own personal nest egg
if only they could ever manage to run all the hippie-dippies off permanently. There was even some
random speculation that they might have conspired with Arnold to terrorize us off the Land, promising
him some of the spoils in return. Of course, that was merely conjecture.
A large geodesic dome had been a landmark of the community for many years, a whole Earth
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remnant of the early days, a center for what little of that old energy remained, a focal point: the kind of
place which might attract some vegetarian family to move into MFF and raise goats and develop a
small homemade yogurt industry or a yoga center, or a solar power enterprise, or who knows what. And
that was something the trappers wanted to prevent at all costs. While we were in Montreal, they burned
down the geodesic dome -- because "it had termites".
I tried to talk to them about it. They didn't like that. They eyed me like I was a beaver caught in one
of their traps.
***
Soon it was the end of the month of August. Sandy was almost three months old. She was healthy
and strong and smiling a lot and she liked music. We delighted in her every discovery. As a family we
were embarked on the journey of life and doing pretty well considering. --Considering that the people
of MFF who didn't like us were a real sandbur in our shoe, and avoiding them wasn't always easy. But
in times like that I think of what Omar Khyyam said about remolding the sorry scheme of things nearer
to the heart's desire. I was young enough to believe in such things.
When Buttons was released he and Mitchell and Sheila and Nina came by the land to say goodbye
and to gather the last of their belongings and then with a whoop and a holler they were gone.
The remaining "people" planned a shindig that happened to coincide with my birthday and they
advertised in the local towns by putting flyers up in stores. The flyers described it as "a gathering of the
people". They expected thousands over several days.
They had an ingenious plan on how to feed all those people and turn a profit at the same time. Three
large hogs weighing well over a hundred pounds each were purchased from a local farmer. They
brought them to the land in a truck and bang-bang, shot them dead and gutted them and hung them by
their rear heels and built fires under them. Someone was supposed to keep turning them so they would
get cooked evenly.
The sky drizzled all day long. No one could be found to stand out in the cold rain and hand-turn the
spits. The pig's bristles should have been scalded off before they were hung up but apparently no one
knew that. So the disgusting smell of burnt hair reeked the air. As the day progressed the stench became
so overpowering that those few people who came to the gathering stumbled around in the muck, with
their noses twitching and left feeling ill. The sort of counter culture people who are most usually
attracted to communal Gatherings out in nature are vegetarians. The last thing vegetarians want to see
is three dead stinking pigs hanging in a meadow. It evokes apocalyptic visions in their hearts.
Most of the MFF people walked through the festival area and took a look at the pigs burning in the
pouring rain and then turned around and went home again and stayed there where it was dry and warm.
Any hardy soul who remained out in the rain and stench trying to "party" was in a dismal element
indeed. Booze, the great fortifier, lured a few of them and kept them soggy and drunk as skunks.
Owl and Sandy and I remained in our cabins through the long night. Occasionally we heard a
gunshot or a loud series of hoots and hollers. The wild sounds of drunken insanity split the darkness.
Drugs of various sorts had been added to the alcohol. The ruckus never let up.
In the morning I took a walk around the land and found the hogs still hanging, burnt crisp and black
on one side, pink and raw on the other. Pork doesn't keep long unless it's refrigerated, especially in
summer. The carnage was gruesome to behold. The odor was straight from Hell. The "brothers" were
still stumbling around with their wine bottles and guns, holding each other up from falling over, not
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successfully enough to keep from becoming very muddy, and uttering incoherent epithets to the
Universe at large.
It was advertised as a three day affair, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So the drunks partied on, more
and more frenzied as Saturday progressed. They staggered reckless and rakehell over the twisting paths
and rutted roads, with their weapons loaded and cocked, pushing and shoving each other, shooting their
guns into the air; shooting at trees, shooting at signs, shooting at cans...
Some of the visitors didn't even get out of their cars, even though the clouds rolled away and the day
began to clear. They just watched the drunken outlaws staggering and waving guns and whooping it up,
and backed out and left.
The drunks saw them as potential revenue getting away, and staggered around the cars, falling down
on the fenders and trying to open the doors to argue with the absenting people that they ought to get out
and party.
" Hey BROTHER! What's wrong with you, man? Hey SISTER! Come on back! What's the matter with
you? Come ON! This is a PARTY! Don't you want a BEER?"
As the weather cleared more vehicles pulled in. The drunks remained in the parking lot now, waiting
for each new arrival, offering the visitors assistance in carrying their cases of beer, sticking ugly
smoking chunks of seared pig stuck on the end of Bowie knives through their car windows.
"Go on! TASTE IT! It don't taste so BAD! Hell, I eat it! Watch! We got THREE BIG PIGS roasting
just up the road! PLENTY FOR EVERYONE! Did you bring some BEER? Got any DRUGS? How
about a few bucks? We'll go on a beer and wine run! You can drive us, Okay?"
Practically everyone rolled up their windows and locked their doors and drove back out as fast as
they could. Still the drunks made out like bandits. By the end of the day, they had collected quite a
stash of six-packs and jugs of wine. And they'd also managed to score a lot of money from people too.
Their pockets jingled.
All told, probably less than forty pounds of the pork were ever eaten. The dogs got an entire pig
when an untended spit tipped over in the mud. That made the drunks angry and they argued loudly
about who was responsible for the loss and went violently among the dogs kicking at them. But the
dogs were meaner and quite willing to fight for their spoils, and so the drunks had to abandon the pig to
them.
As evening came on they were hooting so savagely and firing their guns randomly into the air so
often that I became very worried that one of their bullets would find it's way into our cabin, or that the
mob of crazies might even decide to force-in our door and have it out with us for not participating in
their revelry.
We had to get out of there.
So, once again we packed our bags and hitched away from MFF. We hitched south ten miles to visit
the Christian community of hippie-looking people who had been installing themselves in the nearby
town of Lake Hill.
Their airs were God-Almighty weird, and in the past we had for the most part, avoided them. Still,
some of the things they believed in were similar to some of the things Owl and I believed: sobriety,
work, agriculture, clean clothes, kindness, charity.
BUT there was an ineffable vibration coming from their elders that we couldn't quite put a finger on
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-- yet it could be sensed by any empathic person: a kind of nameless, indescribable ---- crapfulness.
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FORTY
SUNDAY SOCIAL
I don't remember the name of the place. I don't want to. I have a mental-block. I refuse.
I could probably go to a telephone and get the name from information because they're still there.
Hard to believe, but true.
A couple years after we left I picked up a magazine at a newsstand and gasped. All their children had
been taken away by CSD. The church's leader had fled to Portugal (of all places!) with children that
were not even his. Their rightful parents, ex-members of his community, were up in arms wanting the
children brought back and telling the media all sorts of horror stories. The FBI was crawling all over
the church's Lake Hill properties. The entire nation read about them in Time and Newsweek and every
newspaper of any size. There it all was, in black and white. And to think! We had been right smack-dab
in the middle of that crap! Yeah! We had left the frying pan of MFF and dove right into another fire of a
different sort of insanity. And to top it off, we had stayed for just one month -- only to be kicked out
because we weren't Holy enough to beat-up on children... Yeah, that's what happened.
Oh God! This is how it went...
***
Trudge. Trudge. Knock. Knock.
Babe in arms, we waited on the steps of the pretty house.
Warmly greeted were we.
Do pious men with warm-hearted smiles and gracious, joyous women, smelling like fresh-baked
cherry cobbler, and dressed perfectly in every stitch and ribbon, give you goosebumps and make your
heart surge?
Maybe not. For some of you, perhaps it just doesn't happen like that. I, unfortunate bookbiter that I
am, keep expecting an ending to this travail, not unlike the one in Flaubert's posthumously published
Bouvard et Pecechet, one of my favorite books, where after wending their lives through innumerable
ridiculous tangents they at last come face to face with a tiny church in a snow storm and the gentle
heart-filled people entering there, and the quiet reader finds himself Gregorianly enchanted and
overwhelmed with uncontrolled tears. More the sorrow when the ending doesn't comes out like the one
seen in the heart. And more the sorrow too, that everyone doesn't envision such happy endings. I
however, had an old country Norwegian gramma who was in the habit every day of her gentle life, of
dressing much like these folks -- and on that august August afternoon, amidst their wondering eyes and
musical hearts, I could not help but be swept away with an ancient heartsong.
We were hurting -- and here we were holding hands with angels at Heaven's very door. Or so I
believed...
Kick me for the fool I am! But show me two hundred people that look and behave closely to those
ideals that remind me of my grandmother and grandfather and I, alas I, nudist-hippie-pot smoker,
dreamer that I am, will jump through hoops, and give up my last zoozoo -- just to enter in...
I know what peace the old church may bring into lives. Many is the time such visions of grace had
caused me to think I could even become a minister. And there we were surrounded by all those pretty
people hugging us and smiling at us and saying sweet things our hearts longed to hear so much... Had I
been waiting long for this chance to nest in the tree of life? Oh! My heart leapt.
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So, I overlooked some things...
These people were... sort of... peculiar... They were Tennesseeans -- run out of Tennessee -- who had
migrated enmasse to Vermont, ostensibly, to do missionary work.
Sorry. Ever since 1973 when I had a personal experience with a Tennessee cop who deliberately put
me in an isolated cell with a giant redneck pervert who beat me to a pulp in a shower and jumped up
and down on my skull with both his booted feet, I've often thought (admittedly unkindly) of Tennessee
southerners as generally being kind of... vindictive and prejudiced and premeditatedly dangerous -Andy's Mayberry not withstanding.
It's not that I've not had good friends from the South. I have. But, I'll never forget the depth of
vicious depravity I personally had deployed upon me in Tennessee, by the good folks. It is hard to trust
after such incidents... Sometimes I look deeply into people's eyes and wonder what secret evils they
may have hidden behind their luminous orbs...
Some of the Tennesseeans that had relocated in Vermont sure had a mean streak, too. The first day
there we saw one of the men kick and beat his dog brutally while forty of those supposedly Christian
adults stood around and watched -- not one of them moving an inch to put a stop to it, nor so much as
saying one word of compassion for the poor creature, nor in any way deprecating the "elder" who was
committing the atrocity. I looked around at each pair of eyes for any sign of sympathy for the
defenseless animal. I could discern none. At the time I put it down to a misunderstanding on my part of
their unique society. The casual conversation afterwards reflected that dogs and other beasts had "no
souls" but must be taught respect for man's dominion. Those words were spoken from the mouths of
the "elders" as though descending from the unreachable heights of a holy mountain. Apparently I
beheld a Divine Strength unadulterated by... by compassion... Yet, sometimes those same people were
capable of turning on fabulous fountains of tears if it meant bringing in a new member who had lots of
money...
Oh well.
Years afterwards I would often reflect that for that group of Tennesseeans to ascend to the quaint
northern state of Vermont, (which has rarely been known for anything but gentle homebodies and
poetic churchgoers) to do missionary work, is a ludicrous and disgusting thought.
Let's go on.
There is an old Vermont folk saying:
"If it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and smells like a duck, and quacks like a duck -- its
probably a hippie suffering religious delusions". It seemed to apply here. Here we had two hundred
people that you and I would swear were "hippies" except that they carried Bibles, sang hymns, and
bought lots of local real estate with cash money. You had to get real close to tell the difference. But
once you got close to them it was easy to see there were all kinds of ways they were different from
hippies. Among other things, they were missing cosmic consciousness, the impishness of free love, a
commitment to alternative holistic lifestyles, and that raw spirit of ancient wandering adventure.
We had already vaguely met the community. Sometimes when we hitched between Newport and
MFF, Owl and I would get stuck in Lake Hill and end up going into their natural food store, where we'd
drink tea and talk with them. Like I say, I thought they were interesting and in some ways kind of
marvelous. And they reminded me of the Christian families of my youth -- a sweetness I sometimes
missed deeply.
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But I never cared for having anyone trying to force a religious ideology or attitude on me -- and they
were always more than a little overpowering so we basically had kept our distance. But now we needed
them...
As we stood there on their doorstep that first day with the memory of the stinking pigs and the wild
gunfire at MFF fresh in our minds, we still didn't necessarily want to join up with any heavy-handed
southern Christian group -- but considering the situation we were in of having nowhere else to go I just
hoped they would accept us, and I figured that if they did I would somehow overcome my reservations
and learn to love and respect them in spite of our differences. The creature comforts sure looked readymade and perfect for our new baby. And there were good ladyfriends for Owl, (No, nothing like Beth);
and there were plenty of sober and intelligent brotherfriends for me, which ought to be a pleasant
change.
Ever since the unforgettable experience of living in Joshua Tree's "Thompson's Ranch" commune in
1968 I'd wished I could find another similar group of gentle counter-culture religious people who
seriously tried to live together and truly love each other. But, my particular flavor of Christianity was
terribly hard to find. The Thompsons's Ranch Christians after all, had been nudist, and communal, and
non-materialistic, and peyote visionaries, and there were even elements of free love. Among the
Thompson Ranch dwellers I had personally witnessed a miracle. And that experience set me on a
specific path for life. I was getting tired of never finding anything that came close to what I was
looking for.
This Lake Hill community had fired up those memories and hopes again; and in spite of the fact they
were way off in a different league from my Thompson Ranch roots -- they did remind me of my normal
Norwegian ancestors and the Lutheran church of my youth. And we really needed some family-type
friends -- non-alcoholic, non-smokers -- folks who really loved...
So we had our heart in our hands those first days...
Oh, I'd probably fall for it again; it sounds so good, even now! It can't be helped. The heart has needs
too, and cries to be filled.
Why is the seeking so hard?
So, I decided that although they were not quite the same thing as I saw in my own persnickety heart,
I would really try to make it work, anyway. Perhaps if they could bend their ungodly astringencies I
could put a halter on my psychedelein razz-ma-tazz...
Sure...
They wanted us to stay for a month on a trial basis. Then they'd vote on whether to accept us or not.
Immediately they brought us into a large house full of gentle people and gave us our own room with a
real bed and chest of drawers rug on the floor. And there they were apologizing to us profusely that it
wasn't more.
Other mothers sat with Owl and Sandy Laughing River and broke through some of the layers of
silence Owl had around her. What a wholesome influence... Each of them had given every material
thing they had in the world to the community. They committed their hearts as well. All for God. Such
sacrifice cannot help but create spiritual beauty.
I guess being around them caused me to start digging deep and trying to root out my own
imperfections.
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It was so easy for me to blame every ill that had befallen us on a reprobate spirit in my soul. (As
though Nixon and Johnson and napalm and genocide -- and the lifepaths I had taken as my reactions to
them -- were my fault. As though the police and Immigration had mistreated Owl and Sandy and Mara
because my intention to keep us together as a family was immoral and wrong-headed. As though God
thinks bearded men are out of style. On and on and on.)
Maybe at first I just wanted to make a good impression. But, real soon I was praying from the depths
of my heart for God to make me a better person in order that I could give Owl and Sandy something
better than I'd managed so far.
--"Bless my life Lord! I've labored too long in darkness and chains! God, Only you and Owl could
know how heavy this burden is! Please, give us a home for Mushmara and Sandy!"
I was resolved that if this were to be the time and place where our life took the turn for the better and
became wonderful -- then so be it!
And I wanted to believe that the community had the saving grace that could provide the solution
we'd awaited so long. I quickly began to believe that I would change almost anything in my life so as
not to be found wanting by that family.
Moreover, we hoped that if things worked out here, we could go back into court and get Mary
Morningdove returned to us. Immediately I began looking into that. Mushmara was always an aching
thought in the back of my mind...
But when I talked to the "elders" about it they cautioned me to go slow. After all, we'd not yet been
accepted as permanent members. Besides, as it turned out they'd had some CSD problems themselves
and they didn't want my efforts to add any coals to their own fires. They didn't elaborate on their
difficulties with CSD and I thought they were exaggerating, because their community was the ultimate
in child raising as far as I could see. What possible problems could they be having with CSD? For the
most part, it was pretty obvious that they were good mothers and fathers, if not in every way, then in
most ways.
I had to probe carefully to find out what had happened but eventually I pieced it together. Apparently
the easy going people of the Vermont Children's Services Department simply thought it was cruel of the
Christian community to break a hole in the ice of the winter lake and to immerse, and baptize, a
newborn infant in freezing water.
Personally, I don't see any sense in it either. But then again none of the children got sick because of
it. It probably made the child stronger and healthier in the long run. I still wouldn't have done it. And I
can understand how the Vermont Children's services got upset about it.
CSD also had to force the church to keep orange juice in the house for the children. The community
had formerly considered orange juice to be "an unnecessary luxury". Kids must have vitamin C. It's not
a luxury. It's a necessity.
And before we'd ever arrived there, CSD had already come to grips with them on these issues -they'd come in with sheriffs and police and taken away all the children! The government hadn't
returned them until the elders agreed to their demands. Thereafter, the kids got orange juice every day.
Another of the problems the community faced was the same abrasive feeling suffered by any town
when what appears to be a large "cult" moves in and buys a whole mess of property. All townsfolk saw
when they looked at these strangers was a pack of ducks with a lot more money than average -- and a
king-sized barf-bag full of hokeyness and pretense. There were some harsh words.
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But what those hairy churchfolk really were was a hodge-podge assembly of tall hopes and classic
dreams -- being honky-doried by a few slick southern operators. Almost everyone that knew about
them thought of them as a "cult"...
In Lake Hill in 1980, anyone could buy a nice old house, in town, on some pretty property, with
good plumbing and electricity, for five thousand dollars. The Christian group picked up ten or fifteen of
those houses and also a couple of nice farms on the outskirts.
The new Bible-toters also operated some storefront businesses: a cafe, a chainsaw repair, and an
herb-drying operation.
That's a lot of sudden strangeness for such a laid-back little Vermont town! Old timers would gape in
utter disbelief when southern church-hippies in all their folderol strutted down the boardwalk to the
market.
A large focal point of the community was a big red barn which the residences on the edge of town
were slowly encircling. Sunday Services were held in there on the refurbished hardwood floor,
followed by Christian dancing in the spirit. Circle dances! Everyone in their finest clothes, clapping
hands, and praising God; something quite different from your conventional church service -- very
beautiful and emotionally moving. We liked that. God's children should dance!
Below the dance floor, were Sunday school and nursery areas. I encouraged Owl to help care for the
children there. She needed the experience and close contact with the Christian mothers and the kids.
After church, Sunday afternoons were slow homebody times. Friends from the different houses went
to visit each other. It was a little bit of the old south, unchanged for two hundred years -- the Sunday
Social: old fashioned visiting and genteel conversation; iced lemonade served by the fastidious women;
well-mannered children at our feet.
The last thing I needed was for all this silver platter hospitality to be too good to be true.
But how could it help but be?
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FORTY-ONE
STUPIDER THAN USUAL
Owly was so sensitive! Often, rather than deal with any strangeness around her she would simply go
into our room and hug her baby close and be quite satisfied with that tender ineffable communication
common to mothers and babies everywhere. All those beautiful English-speaking people, so clean and
proper, and graceful, and so perfect in their etiquette -- were intimidating to her, after all the difficult
living she'd been through. So it's only natural that she wanted to get off away from them sometimes.
Plus, it's clear to me that she far outstripped me in intuition. She in no way, saw that Christian
community as a garden of forget-me-nots as did I. Perhaps the reason for that might have been because
she saw some goings-on in the Sunday nursery of which I had no inkling.
So for many reasons she liked to spend time in our room with Sandy rather than out socializing in
the community. Some of the elders were affronted by that. They approached me and asked me to
reprimand Owl for being glum and distant i.e. distant from the good people who were our benefactors.
In my heart I believed Owl and her baby needed time alone together, and I didn't agree with the elders
that she was being unique or even anti-social. But I was hardly in any position to dispute them and
anyway I was committed to trying to conform myself, to make the necessary changes. It's not an easy
thing to do.
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So I would go talk to her, and because she loved me she would do what I asked and bring Sandy out
from our room, and she would make an effort to be sociable with everyone.
Sometimes, she was naturally at home with them. At other times she just wasn't. Elders were
sometimes seen standing in groups, repeatedly looking in her direction, and whispering. I'm sure she
noticed. She looked uncomfortable. It didn't seem very nice of them. But not having been raised in
Tennessee, I supposed I had a different concept of good manners.
Perhaps Owl's reticence was a snub... I wasn't sure. I began to worry that she was deliberately
throwing a monkey wrench into the works. Though why she would do that I could not quite
comprehend.
The situation never improved.
Owly was constantly getting into trouble. Breastfeeding the baby was one on-going problem.
The elders sat with Owl, encouraging her to rethink for herself and come to her own conclusions:
Should this sacred bit of motherhood, breastfeeding, be done amidst groups of people -- in front of the
husbands of other women and in the presence of impressionable young children?
Or should it be a private thing -- exclusive to bedrooms and private areas?
They'd sit with her patiently while she thought through all the bits and pieces of the quandary,
patiently waiting until she was ready to give her answer.
Invariably, she felt they wanted her to speak the truth from her Edenic heart, and so she would
answer them: that breastfeeding a baby anywhere at all that the mother chose should be perfectly
acceptable. No special place or circumstances were necessary at all: truth from her heart. That's what
they asked for, that's what she gave them.
This answer was not what they wanted to hear, and it upset them terribly. So they came to me and
compelled me to go and reason with her -- to talk some sense to her.
I pled with her is what I did. I went to Owl and pled with her to tell them what they wanted to hear
and I asked her to please not nurse the baby in public.
It's a French thing, to hate hypocrisy. The human body is beautiful and holy but mankind's twisted
vision of his own species constitutes a universal hypocrisy that underlies the core of zillions upon
zillions of intertwined dementias affecting all of earth's civilizations and all her generations. Some say
it is the result of man's fall from grace and expulsion from the garden. Marija Gimbutas, the foremost
woman archeologist of our day explains the true origins of the fall in exquisite scientific detail in her
books. But one could hardly expect any members of the Lakehill Christian community to have known
such truth...
The Kurgan slaughterers of Edenic paradise shaped modern man's nonmatristic mind resulting in all
the nonsensical and unhealthy traditions held unthinkingly in common today -- right down to the
perception of a mother breastfeeding her child as being something immoral -- so twistedly typical of
the patriarchal dictum our Kurgan ancestors bequeathed us. Those who really know the true Creator
love the perfect shameless beauty of the Garden and the Mother in its center. If they don't know it they
are part and parcel with the hypocrisy of the ages.
Owl's eyes smoldered but she told me she would do as I asked. It's also a French thing to lie with
equanimity if someone intimidates you into doing or saying something in which you don't believe.
She had no intention of believing their warped dogmas. God gave mothers breasts for children.
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There is no holier thing. If any human insists on looking upon a woman's sacred essence as dirty and
chooses to hide it in shame, so much the sorrow for their twisted souls. Pure and simple. Of course, she
never said any such thing to them in so many words -- but I have a fairly good understanding of where
her heart is in these matters.
In her primal and simplistic view of the creation, she cannot imagine God's Universal Love to be so
complex that an endless gang of robed illuminatae should be required to paraphrase and reformulate
her own heart-directives to fit their schemes. That's one reason why the world sees her as
schizophrenic. Because with all her soul she simply loves a baby and with all their souls they adulate
ridiculous power-hungry men. Her soul lives in a different world.
She is an important piece to a jigsaw puzzle. They are a puzzle that is missing pieces. But they are
the wrong puzzle.
And the women of the patriarchal world are matriarchal at best, which is no better. They adapt and
survive by proselytizing the twisted patriarchal nature which holds the world in a trap: a world vitiated
with misogynists conspiring collusion of the natural woman, eroding the primitive pure essence -making women slaves to the male-created abstract. From time before reckoning psychiatrists and
lawyers and all their multitudinous minions have inculcated modern women to angrily espouse the
male-deifying dogmas. Women blindly obey the machinations of unseen oppressors who over the ages
have imprinted set responses deep in culture and in mind. The andocratic witch-doctor manipulators
have disembodied women from their hearts, have always threatened to throw her children into the
Tophet fire unless she agrees to go along with their priest programs -- whatever it takes to force her
obedience. Today's Tophet is aggregated pyramided powers whose origins stretch back before the dawn
of time. Today they enmesh the writhing Earth with uncountable layers of insanities.
The Great Mother of thirty thousand years ago is an outlaw today.
It is a simple thing to observe the beatific nudity of a free woman's breasts beyond the pale of that
preempted humanity... Gaudily clad, phobia fettered, modern woman retains the glimmering spectre of
her glorious ancient motherhood -- her predawn cosmology. But the sophisticated world scrambles the
ancient Mother's goddess-mind -- depersonalizes her, desensitizes her, devalues her, and repudiates her.
Where she does not rebel -- she is extinguished. If she has never learned to rebel -- she never opens
her eyes.
Living in hotsprings and other nudist areas, within the spaceframe of our ancestors, Owl had further
removed her blinders and muzzle and collar. Now she rarely fit anywhere. She was too natural, too
gentle. Too kind. Too loyal. Too enraptured. And sometimes, maybe -- too angry and hurt.
When contemporary women look at Owl sometimes it's like looking into a mirror that separates them
from their own foibles; they see no make-up, no guile, no affectations -- and they feel challenged; and
they respond by attacking her. Social workers and other career women often seem to look like they
could bite her. And at a word from the calculating men above them they will gladly attack her and
maim her and take her children -- just to hurt her as much as possible.
The taste of blood appeases ten thousand annoying hungers -- for the atavism is upon them: they
have reverted to Moloch and their fancy clothing once more becomes the waiting lurking shadows
where they conceal the truth that they are wolves.
The only unnatural thing about Owl's personality is that sometimes she cringes terribly like a person
who has been kicked a lot. Because they've been pretty cruel to her sometimes.
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***
While Owl was incurring wrath for "forgetting" to nurse our daughter in private, another problem
came along, to be handled much like the first one.
The elders insisted Owl should always wear a bra.
Now, I thought everyone knew that bras weren't even invented until a hundred years ago. That leaves
almost one thousand, nine hundred years of Christian women wearing nothing of that sort, (and nursing
likewise.)
The bra was obviously an invention of a sly lingerie salesman to make himself money in an intimate
area. It probably began as a salesman's joke, like selling refrigerators to Eskimos! Custom fitting frilly
fabric to sweet breasts! What a pleasant tavern-to-tavern job!
Whatever! Owl was coaxed into wearing a bra to make them happy.
On another occasion she got into trouble for wearing a skirt without a slip, while dancing in the sun.
Seen from the right angle the dress was translucent. She was asked to go to her room and put on a slip.
Sometimes, after grating moments of this sort she was embarrassed and confused and sat in our room
with the baby and didn't come back. It was noticed more and more. So the elders decided she wasn't to
be allowed to mope. She must take her place in the community.
So, we were forbidden to be in our room during the day unless she was nursing the baby. I like my
private moments, for thinking and planning and playing with the baby, and sharing a moment with
Owl. It mattered enough to me that I allowed myself to ask them to reconsider that decision. But they
didn't want a probationer arguing with them about their edicts and I was soon persuaded to comply.
It got more difficult for me as each day passed. Only a very bad puppy would be so impudent as to
argue with elders but some of their philosophies were atrocious. Like the way they regarded blacks.
There were no blacks in their church. According to the Tennessee elders blacks were God's rejected
goods, Noah's son Ham's cast off descendants, permanently branded with the dark color because of
ancient sin. Or some such garbage as that. They explained it all so sweetly, like southern syrup... And I
was supposed to just listen and not say anything...
Things weren't looking as rosy as at first.
One of their industries was drying herbs to sell. I worked in the drying room. Later I helped in
agriculture, preparing a field. I don't mind working; I had no real problem in that regard -- except I
wasn't used to being away from Owl and Sandy Laughing River. And I worried a lot about how Owl
was handling things without me to intermediate. There was room to worry. When I got home, the elders
frequently asked me to speak with her about things.
One elder in particular bothered me. He was the spitting image of a southern California hood I'd
known in my youth -- an unscrupulous con man. I couldn't help but feel weird whenever he was
around. I tried to assure myself that an illusion was getting the better of me -- but it did no good. The
fellow was the head of our house and he was often quite overbearing with Owl. He could have been the
same creep come back to haunt me for all I knew.
For some reason, this particular "elder" remained in the house during the days, drinking tea and
relaxing. He did "executive" work I was told... My intuition was nagging me and I didn't feel
comfortable about leaving Owl alone with him in the same house. But there really wasn't anything I
could do about it. At least, I wasn't sure if I should do anything. After all, what crime is there in bearing
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a resemblance to a detestable person? Except that this "elder" wasn't very nice either. And was I just
imagining things -- or did a con game seem to be happening around us? Getting to know the others, I
began to hear more stories about the sizable personal fortunes they had donated when they'd joined...
Owl and I had nothing to give. At least those who gave substantially seemed to end up having a
voice in the community. We certainly had no voice. They just gave us orders.
Three weeks after we arrived the elders took back our nice room with the sunny windows and gave it
to a member in better standing. We were moved into a dark and dank unfurnished cellar hole with no
windows, formerly a storage area. The new room didn't seem healthy for Owl or Sandy, especially with
winter coming.
I really tried talking with them about the way they had put us in the basement. They were getting
aggravated with my complaints. They quoted some scripture to me: "They shall receive according to
that which they hath..." reminding me I had made no great contribution in joining as had others;
therefore I was not deserving of any special privileges or living accommodations.
"--It's true that we haven't brought money or property to give to you -- but our baby needs warmth
and sunlight and I'm sure the scriptures remind us that if anyone harms one of these it would be better
if a millstone were hung round their neck and they were flung into a lake!"
The verse just popped into my head...
The elders glared silently at me. So, they made a new rule: I was no longer allowed to speak at the
table. I repented of my arrogance and accepted it as graciously as I could muster. But it soon became
clear that they intended to prod me a little to see what I would do. They began speaking about me and
Owl and Sandy right in front of us as though we weren't even there! We ate quietly and said nothing in
response as we had been told. It seemed quite unkind to me. They apparently relished my frustration
and began going further. They said that they did not consider couples to be married in their eyes until
they were married in their church. AND the elders had to approve of the match before they would
marry anyone. And then they conversed casually about how they didn't feel that Owl and I were made
for each other. I couldn't believe my ears. My dander was up and I couldn't keep quite any longer. I
broke in and told them Owl and I had survived countless storms together sheerly on the strength of our
love. I tried to tell them about Alaska...
The elders weren't listening. They were fuming angrily. The head of the house smashed his cup down
on the table! He seethed venomously, reminded me in a loud voice that I wasn't allowed to speak at the
table unless I was spoken to directly by an elder. I told them I'd keep quiet as long as they didn't
profane the Holy Spirit of my marriage. They stared at me dumbfoundedly.
For a time they seemed to let the subject drop. I, for one, hoped all the bad vibrations would dissolve
and be forgotten and we'd all get back to developing a holier relationship together.
But when I returned home from work in the fields the next evening I discovered that in my absence
some of the elders had continued to talk at Owl about those things. And worse than that -- I began to
suspect that one or another of them were thinking of her with something other than "brotherly"
thoughts.
I'd walk into a room and discover one of them had his arm around her shoulder while talking to her
in a syrupy voice about God's divine plan for her or some such elegant facetiae. He'd look over and see
me and in his next breath he'd rudely belabor my shortcomings. They'd go into another room or out on
the porch together and I'd overhear him talking to her about what a shame it was that such a beautiful
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child as Sandy Laughing-River had to have such a father as me. It seemed to me as clear as a bell that
they wanted to break us up so they could wed her to one of the elders that had come into the
community with money and property, but wifeless. And they always made sure to insult me whenever
Owl was around to let her feel the force of their condemnation against me.
I, of course, was expected to accept everything any elder said without qualm or balk. They
continually stressed that only through humbly listening to the elders would I ever raise myself up and
become acceptable. Well they were right about one thing anyway. Shortcomings. Oh God! Why am I
such a gullible lunkhead? My gullibility was my biggest shortcoming. (As my own mother used to tell
me so often!)
The wandering-eyed elders kept coming up with new ways to give me some chore to do -- anything
they could think of that kept me away from my wife and daughter. One day when I was working in the
field I was told that it woke up the whole house when I had to get up so early in the morning -- so, the
elders had decided that I should begin living in a different house a couple miles away where my early
morning rising would not effect people. But Owl and Sandy would remain where they were...
I told the elders that was totally unacceptable. Well, they said they didn't know what to do with me
since I continued to remain flagrantly obstinate to their decisions. But I told them we'd simply leave if
they tried to force that plan on us. We didn't exactly know where we'd go -- but we'd sure find
somewhere. They backed off then, temporarily. But quite a heated discussion went on about it for
several days. I had put my foot down.
Owl is a pretty thing. It plainly galled them to see her with me, so devoted and loyal. One of the
bastions of their power structure was men and women conditioned to side with the community against
their spouses when called upon -- and Owl and I weren't going along with that program. The love we
had for each other was a rebellion against their authority which might spread to other susceptible
members if it was allowed to continue. They told me straight out that they were worried that our
rebelliousness might cause other couples to slip from the fold. So they were determined to portray us in
such a light that no one should see our marriage as anything but a sham. Since they did not recognize
any love except that which had been sanctioned in their church our love had to be proven to be
unnatural and unblessed.
The fact that I am eleven years older than Owl gave them ammunition for many of their diatribes.
They impugned openly that I'd sort of been an old hippie reprobate scoundrel lying in wait for a sweet
young thing, and that I'd captured and debauched Owl when she was too young to know better -- and
had dragged her off through all the alleys and gutters of America, destroying her in the process, never
caring a whit about her, but only for my own selfish sensual gratification.
It's hard to eat supper at a communal table when that sort of conversation is going on, especially if
the things are being said under the guise of holiness -- and the person being so insulted isn't even
allowed to respond, supposedly to teach me a lesson in humility. For the most part that snakeshit was
confined by a special rule to the half-hour or so after dessert while the table was being cleared by the
women and the dishes washed.
Owl looked on as they bantered their evilness back and forth over our heads. I could feel my neck
redden as I silently endured their contempt. They watched my reactions as they spoke. Their solemn
eyes sparkled with... amusement.
Finally I reached the limits of my endurance (as they knew I would) and I broke the rule and
defended myself by asserting that
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Owl and I loved each other, that we were married in the heart of God, and that we were devoted to
each other -- and to our children. I added to this the words, "What God has joined together let no man
cast asunder".
Oh man, were they outraged! The fur flew -- that I would dare to insult their dinner table by breaking
their simple rule! And how impertinent of me to quote Bible to them -- since they were (oh so
illustrious) elders and I certainly was NOT! And since I did not know God yet -- and they DID! And
since I wasn't saved yet (and might NEVER be) -- but they certainly, most assuredly were saved indeed!
And that I was surely bound for the FIRES OF HELL -- unless -- unless -- unless I realized what they
were saying! Unless I realized that they were only trying to help me. And Owl. And poor little Sandy
Laughing River...
Blech!!!
Once again, they forbid me to speak at the table or ever to confute with an elder! They reminded me
angrily that they did not want to listen to my ignorant drivel!
Oh, we sure had fun; what can I say?
Sometimes they told us things like, if we didn't want our baby, WE COULD GIVE HER TO THEM!
They got a kick out of watching me squirm while they painted a pretty picture: They'd raise Sandy
Laughing-River in a beautiful home and she would have the best of everything and grow in the bosom
of the Lord. Then in the following silence, while awaiting my answer, they'd look at me with sweet
southern sugar-eyes...
--"Well, How about it?..."
So I'd tell them to get serious and talk real. And at that they would look at me wide-eyed, totally
flabbergasted by my unreasonable impudence! They'd respond indignantly that they were absolutely
serious! Icing on their cake: They'd ask us to admit to them and to OURSELVES that we didn't really
love Sandy Laughing-River! -- And to admit that in our hearts we knew the truth -- that: they DID love
her. Oh, so much...
Well, Good Golly, Gosh Almighty! Friends like that are hard to find... Aren't they?
Soon they began taking Sandy to a nursery area to spend the day with other children. --But Owl
wasn't usually allowed in there. They explained that it would leave Owl more time to do her rightful
share of work in the community.
Before long Sandy Laughing River was constantly in the arms of one of the nursery mothers and the
elders began to tell us that children were to be raised communally, to know all the women as their
"mothers", and all the men as their "fathers". Nobody had mentioned this to us before and we didn't
much care for the idea, at least not the way they were doing it. They said Owl could move to the
nursery house, permanently -- but not me. So, in order for Owl to be with Sandy more often she'd have
to separate from me!
Slowly but surely they were setting fire to our toes and the flames were working their way upward.
***
We'd been there a month. It was a Sunday morning and the entire community was gathered in the red
barn church. The musicians were playing gallantly and many of the people had organized into the large
circle of dancers that took up three fourths of the floor space. The rest of us sat on chairs and on the
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floor off to the side. Owl watched the dancers and stood up and started moving her feet in place -- and
then she danced out into the circle. When we'd first arrived they hadn't had any problem with her
dancing with them and she really seemed to get enjoyment out of it. It made me feel real good to see
her doing something that made her happy. But this Sunday they told us that only accepted church
members were allowed to dance. It was another new rule. They were obviously changing the rules from
day to day to keep us off balance. So when Owl started dancing one of the elders told me to go out on
the dance floor and tell her she wasn't allowed, and to bring her back to sit down.
I told the elder, "I think you better go tell her because I haven't the heart. She loves to dance with the
others so much and it seems she needs to dance to ease the emotions that have been building up lately."
But he ordered me to do it; so I went out on the floor of the red barn and told Owl what he'd told me
to tell her, which, of course, made Owl angry and hurt. She seemed very sad as we walked back to our
seats.
As long as she watched the dancers her feelings would be hurt and I wanted her to feel better so I
suggested that she go downstairs and help-out in the nursery. She went and I resumed surreptitiously
trying to look up the women's skirts as they twirled to see if any of them were brave enough to not wear
underpants. This old hippie nudist Goddess worshipper was feeling more and more rebellious every
day...
All of a sudden, a hullabaloo broke out downstairs, angry yelling and chasing, knocking things
down. Everyone stopped dancing. The commotion got louder. Accusations were hurtled, loud and
shrill. I thought I heard some familiar French swear words...
Male elders flew to the door and rushed down the steps. There was more yelling followed by the
noisy clattering of many feet on the stairs. The doors flew open. People poured out into the church -and in the middle of the obstreperous bunch was Owl, shaking off the many hands that tried to hold her.
They all came straight to me -- demanding that I deal with my wife -- Immediately!
Oh Glorious... Little me to deal with Earth Mother. That's what Owl was then -- the furious Mother
Goddess of thirty thousand years ago -- hair disheveled, potentially lethal arms and hands akimbo, eyes
blazing muliebritous primordial lava.
And I'm supposed to do her justice? I'm supposed to have a talk with HER? All I wanted to do -- was
kiss her beautiful feet!
"What happened?" I wanted to know. Everyone answered at once. The full story finally was heard
above the turmoil.
A large fat woman named Rose was in charge of the nursery, as usual. "Spare the rod, spoil the child"
was the first commandment there. She carried a switch of willow and used it freely and not sparingly.
Owl, avoiding trouble, played with the children and sometimes soothed their wounds with whispers
-- and occasionally was reprimanded for this "indiscretion".
That particular morning, Rose had been whacking a baby, not even a year old, off and on for the
entire morning, to "get the devil out of him". Several times she laid heavily into the squalling, terrified
child. Finally, unable to tolerate a single moment more of such cruelty, Owl had unleashed her fury.
Owly tore into that pig like an enraged mother goose -- pushed her so hard into a wall that we heard
the thud upstairs -- knocked the large woman quite senseless -- took the willow stick out of her fat
fingers, broke it in two -- threw the pieces into the terrified round face -- and proceeded to yell into the
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woman's larded ears in no uncertain terms and in two languages exactly what sort of creep would so
abuse a baby!
Rose cowered in a corner mumbling frightened incomprehensibilities.
Now, they were all in front of me -- and the men were mad. It even appeared they were mad enough
to do us bodily harm. They were slithering in front of my face like uncoiled rattlesnakes -- ready to
strike...
They hissed at me to think hard about everything because after church there would be a special
meeting in the grass outside, for everyone to attend and decide what to do about us.
"Owl better be willing to give a complete apology to Rose and everyone else at that time!" they
threatened and stomped away.
Then the music began again and everyone returned to the dance in the big circle. I hugged Owl,
trembling, confused -- wondering somewhere inside myself if I could still straighten everything out
with the community -- and at what price?
All of a sudden Owl pushed me aside -- and flew out onto the dance floor -- into the circle -- and
began to dance.
A large bruiser of a brother/elder stalked up to me and ordered me in tones as ugly as his soul to get
my wife off the dance floor.
I told him flatly that I could not.
"She isn't listening to me anymore! She's in her own world..."
He turned and made his way through the swirling circling dancers, and came up behind Owl. He
whispered something to her and tapped her on the shoulder.
Quick as lightning, Owl turned and decked him brutally and cleanly with two punches.
He just lay there on the floor, moaning, and looking stupider than usual.
In the confusion I managed to get Owl to walk outside with me. Fifteen minutes later everyone filed
out of the church, cheerfully, for the most part. I had an honest feeling that many of them secretly sided
with Owl in their hearts.
Some of men weren't happy though. Not in the least... Once again, I got the feeling you get just
before a drunken barroom explodes in violence. Two husky elders stood on either side of me. A third
put his nose nearly touching mine (Tennessee style) and hissed through his clenched teeth:
--"IF you stay, there will be some changes. WE do not recognize YOU as married! THEREFORE you
have been living in SIN. You and Owl must live in SEPARATE places. You may see each other ONLY in
the natural context of meetings as between any two UNRELATED people in this church. And as for
your daughter Sandy: She will be raised separately, BY ANOTHER FAMILY. -- BUT -- BEFORE any of
this: Owl must give Rose and everyone else here a COMPLETE apology and CONVINCE us that she
WILL make a sincere effort to mend her ways and OBEY the rules! Have I made myself CLEAR?"
They waited like cocked weapons inches from us, self-satisfied with the resounding vindication of
that oratory. But their threat was met with a long silence from us, and so they demanded Owl's apology
again.
I looked at Owl and back to them.
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Then, I told them firmly that I had spoken with Owl while we waited for them to come out of the
church and now I clearly understood what had happened in the nursery -- and I assured them that Owl
would NOT be apologizing to anyone -- nor would I.
"Personally", I told them, "I applaud what Owl has done and am genuinely proud of her. I love her
all the more for it. In fact this is the happiest moment of my stay here among this preposterous
assembly. Seeing you learn something nobody else but Owl could teach you! You have deserved this
lesson so very much, and for so long! We've chosen to go. Goodbye!"
Amidst the tumultuous swarm we gathered up our baby, ensuing a short wrestling match and tug-ofwar with several of the men-folk who menaced us all-the-while with their very best Tennessee glares,
imprecating empirically through clenched teeth. They followed us like a lynch-mob. We struggled to
our room and threw our clothes and other possessions into a couple of gunnysacks.
Forcing our way back out through the melee, we walked off down the road.
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FORTY-TWO
SHELTER FROM THE STORMS
To where do homeless people safely hitchhike with a baby in their arms in the month of October in
New England when one of them is subject to deportation if she is caught?
If you haven't figured it out yet the answer is that there is nowhere that is safe, no highways, no back
roads. Zip. Nada. We weren't so dumb as to wander aimlessly through New England in winter with an
infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. We'd do it as a couple if it were absolutely necessary. We'd done it
many times before. But with a baby? Impossible.
We returned to MFF. Although we still felt that MFF was an impossible place for us to live too. But I
was thinking that if we could manage to just stay there rather quietly for a week or even only a few
days it would give us enough time to get it together for another attempt to live up in Montreal. We were
practically broke again and I was thinking that Owl's Canadian welfare checks must have been
accumulating at her mother's house. If so, that would be the nest egg we'd need to get a cozy and warm
apartment for the winter. How sweet it would be for Owl and Sandy to be near Owl's family. It sure
seemed like the most logical path. It hadn't worked the last time. But maybe this time it would.
Our log cabin harkened us; our feet hurried across the little wooden bridge. It felt so good to be
home! Even though we sadly knew it was only for a short while. We loved that cabin! There was no
dwelling more beautiful even in Montreal. Warmer, yes. More beautiful, no. A little sweeping and
arranging and the warm bed made up under the beautiful skylight and a hot meal cooking on the stove
and it was as if we'd never left.
We let the people of the land believe we were there to stay for the winter. But after only three days
we slipped across the border and boarded the bus, which took us to Montreal.
Owl's mother was happy to see us. She held Sandy and talked to her in sweet French baby talk. She
didn't want to think of herself as "grandma" for some reason and I knew better than to slip up and call
her that, but she loved Sandy Laughing River. I wished I knew her language to speak with her clearly
about many things. But we did well enough. At one time she must have been a beautiful young girl like
her daughters. Time seems to change such things. A woman of forty has her memories and memories
can be harsh. Her divorce when Owl was five years old had not been followed by another significant
other.
Lise sighed as she rocked in her rocking chair, intricately knitting socks with three needles. She
looked down upon her fine work, her mind far away perhaps. Sometimes she looked up at Owl and me
and Sandy and she would smile and her eyes would twinkle. She liked our company. But she had lived
alone for so many years, and she was set in her ways, and could lose her temper. But who doesn't?
There were a mixture of magazines and periodicals on her end table, some Catholic literature, some
French romance magazines. They gave me some clues to her inner self. Yes, she had once been a girl
much like my Owl. I could see that...
I watched Owl and her mother talk back and forth animatedly. Lise asked questions and Owl became
very thoughtful as she answered. Owl's eyes sparkled with clarity. She did so much better here among
her own people. This was where she belonged. Where we as a family belonged.
I would do things different this time. I would not stupidly present myself at Immigration like a lamb
for slaughter. If anyone asked I would tell them I was merely a visitor to Canada and that I did not
intend to stay. Americans do not normally need visas to visit Canada and technically they may stay for
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as long as six months. I just wouldn't legally be allowed to work. But under-the-table jobs do exist. I
would eventually find one. I would certainly not be the only foreigner in Montreal forced to live in
such an underground manner.
And if we were careful it would mean we would have a warm apartment together and be a normal
family. What an enormous change in our lives that would be! What a transformation for Owl! For her
to be able to see her mother whenever she wished. All that worry about her having a mental disability
would evaporate when her natural roots were restored. And for Sandy Laughing-River the
transformation would be equally beneficial. She would have a doting grandmother to help raise her. I
knew in my heart this was the best thing we could hope for. Everything hinged upon those government
checks.
So imagine how I felt when Lise told me she had sent the checks back again! Didn't she realize we
would need them if we were to get an apartment in Montreal?
"Well," she shrugged, "Marie Elaine and Yhu ware note Heer Tom! Hyu ware gone!" She struggled
with the new language she was learning.
Then she looked at us with urgency and reminded us that the situation still was the same, that we
were not permitted to stay overnight in her apartment. Because the concierge would evict her! Where
else could we go? She suggested we try to stay with Diane and Leo again. I dreaded asking them. But
what was our alternative? Lise phoned Diane.
The result was better than I expected. They would let us stay -- temporarily -- however we'd still
have to leave the apartment in the mornings when they went to work and the door would be locked. It
was October and there were snow flurries in the air. We'd be outside all day long in winter weather. It
didn't make sense to me. How could they put us outside with a baby? I intended to really try to reason
with them.
Leo greeted us warmly. He seemed to have forgotten how angry he'd been when we'd last seen him. I
brought some homegrown from MFF and he was very interested in that. It was almost comical. He
loved weed. We smoked into the night and laughed and talked with sincerity. But all our pleasant
talking and smoking didn't serve to change the fact that in the morning we were turned outside again
and found ourselves walking nowhere in particular against brisk autumn winds...
How desperate we were! We had one, and only one, option open to us, and that was those welfare
checks. They were the only thing that could possibly alleviate our situation. But Lise had been sending
the checks back to the welfare office because she was afraid of keeping them, afraid she was doing
something illegal. Maybe she was right about that. But poor people justify bending such laws so they
can survive. At least the poor people I know do. But not Lise. She was afraid she'd be cut off welfare
herself if she helped us. But we were in dire straits...
Owl's sister Diane was firmly convinced that all Owl had to do was appear in the welfare office and
the checks would be given to her. So I let her take Owl there to try to get the money. And at first it
appeared that the checks would be given to Owl without a hitch. They amounted to about five hundred
dollars.
So it was up to Diane because Owl wasn't likely to get her story straight and of course I couldn't be
present to help. It probably wasn't easy for Owl to say where she and Sandy Laughing River had been
and why they hadn't cashed the checks when they had come to her mother's apartment, and why the
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checks had been sent back. She couldn't say she was living out of Canada, because she couldn't get
Canadian welfare while living in the United States and she couldn't tell them she had a husband or she
wouldn't be eligible. So it would have been difficult for anyone to explain things adequately. The
welfare worker was supposed to believe that Owl had been living for the past several months primarily
in her mother's house with the baby -- other than occasional visitations to friends in Vermont. And that
story was hard to validate. It was a simple story of a Canadian girl with a baby who needed her welfare
checks and the social worker wanted to give her the money -- but she was just not quite sure enough
about things to release the checks.
So while the checks were hung up in the system we had to remain with Owl's sister absolutely
penniless for over a week -- which was probably one of the most unacceptable experiences of my life.
They let us in during the night and turned us out during the day and locked the door. Until those checks
arrived we could be nothing but miserable refugees with a baby in our arms, desperate for a home,
hungry, cold, frightened by every passing police car.
Every day it was the same thing: either Diane or me would take Owl to the Welfare office and Owl
would come out again, empty-handed. But the checks were coming, the caseworker said. Tomorrow.
Just be patient.
So we made plans for those checks. We searched the want ads for apartments in our price range and
used Diane's telephone in the evenings to call up and speak with the concierges. During the days we
took the city bus and the subway to look at apartments, and we walked many tired miles with Sandy in
our arms. Rain and puddles turned to snow and slush. Many were the times we arrived at Diane and
Leo's apartment hours before they got off work and lurked in the warmth of the corridor trying not to
be obvious and not always doing so well at that. We'd gotten in trouble that way the last time but
sometimes we had to chance it regardless. It was so cold outside. We had nowhere else to go...
One day we met a lady who was a concierge of a large apartment building many miles from Diane
and Leo's place. She showed us a small apartment that would do fine and the price was perfect. But of
course we didn't have the money to move in yet. But we really liked it a lot. And the neighborhood was
very nice. There it was, our perfect home, so warm! As we walked away the falling snow added
urgency. We needed those checks!
That night Diane and Leo argued violently again. Diane was all upset. She told us she felt sorry for
us in our predicament but she didn't think she should be expected to let it ruin her relationship with her
boyfriend -- so we would have to leave in the morning and not come back.
The following afternoon we made our way back to that wonderful little apartment and I laid our case
before the lady conceirge. She listened seriously. I promised her we'd have the money in just a few days
and pleaded with her to let us move in right away, reminding her that it was so cold outside and we had
nowhere else to go. But she would have none of that. How disheartening. Now we had absolutely
nowhere to go and it was snowing snowing snowing snowing.
What a feeling! A baby in one's arms. A husband and wife walking through the streets of a huge old
French city with nowhere to go. And the weather getting colder and colder and colder with night
coming on...
We walked several blocks while my mind churned sluggishly with the cold trying to force a solution.
I'd been there so many times before, in that place where the weather is cold and inclement with
nowhere to go. I'd come to know that usually nothing develops other than what a person creates from
his own initiative and ingenuity. The streets of Montreal looked bleak. People in cars with heaters
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going full blast peered anxiously out their windshields. We'd seen their looks before. They had nothing
on their minds except getting home. We didn't even register on their brains. And there was no one on
the sidewalks, no one sitting on steps with whom to engage a conversation and casually mention that
we were unfortunately unaccommodated for the night, to therefore be welcomed and supped and
spoiled with courtesy -- if I spoke the language, which I didn't. The cold wet snow had driven them all
inside. We were alone with our problem, walking slowly, with Sandy bundled warmly and hidden and
cooing in the backpack.
An idea was working its way forward into my conscious mind. It was something I would never
normally do. To accomplish it we would have to break a law. Yet I knew it was not immoral to break a
law to provide warmth and shelter for one's family. But if we were caught we would have a difficult
time making that fine point stick.
I had noticed that the conceirge hid the key to the apartment under a vase. We made our way back
there carefully. If we were caught going up the stairs I planned to say that I thought I had dropped a
scarf and was returning to get it. But no one saw us. I found the key and we let ourselves into the dark
room. We kept the light out and made no noise at all and spent the night cuddled warmly in our
blankets on the carpet. I remember thinking that it hardly mattered inasmuch as the apartment would
soon be ours. How could it matter?
In the morning early we crept out, relocking the door behind us, and putting the key back under the
vase. We left the building silently and quickly. We felt stronger from the good night sleep. I felt like we
had been saved from whatever would have been our fate if it had not been for doing what we had done.
It was a great relief to have gotten away with it clean.
Now we went to see about the checks in high hopes. Maybe we could move into that apartment that
very day! But the checks were still not ready...
Winter days are short that far north and soon the day had passed and darkness was upon us, and we
were not in any better situation than we had been in the night before and we had no better ideas on how
to keep warm. We made our way back to the apartment and stealthily slipped into the room and slept.
In the morning we were gone again very early.
And once again the checks were not ready, and once again the short day passed quickly and in the
evening we again found our way into the room and slept.
It was morning but it was still dark when the door to the apartment suddenly opened and the
conceirge stepped in with a man I had never seen before. There were mutual gasps of astonishment and
shock. I dressed in half a minute and stepped up to her to offer an explanation. Before I had uttered a
word she turned to the man and told him to go call the police. They spoke French but I recognized that
word. I believe he answered that he was not willing to leave her alone in order to do that, so he stayed.
And that gave me my chance to say whatever came into my head.
I told her how desperate we were. I tried to make her understand that we did not have any other place
to go. Listening to my own voice I thought I sounded half-hysterical. Maybe I was. She watched me
with big eyes.
When it was her turn to speak she calmly made me to understand that these matters I had spoken of
were not her problems and that she had no intention of concerning herself with them or us. We each
must take care of our own lives and if we are not able to do that, here she shrugged and gave me a look
of unmitigated disassociation. It's a French thing, very exasperating, and at times frightening. Which
brings to mind how frightened I was. We had been caught in the act of actually breaking a law. I could
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be deported forever. And probably would be if they called the police.
I made sure Owl was getting herself dressed and ready to go. I myself gathered together our blankets
and rolled them up in record time even as I was still trying to make the woman understand our dire
need to steal a warm place to sleep. As I spoke the woman kept looking at Sandy Laughing River, and
the man still had not left to call the police. She urged him to do that again. But still he would not go.
She spoke to me.
"I feel sohrry for thees poor babee. I do not feel sohrry for hyou. But for the babee I dhoo feel
sohrry. This is nho whay to kare for so yhoung an hinfant."
I assured her that we agreed. "It's just that we are waiting for money which has been promised us
and it has not arrived yet! And it is very perplexing. Because we do not have anyplace to sleep until we
get that money! It should be here today!"
She watched me speak without batting an eye. When I finished there was a silence. Then:
"Okay Misseur. What will yhou dho now? Yhou will go hout hinto the fhreezing streets to find thees
monay? That is oll hright for hyou and thees lady I ham sure, but what abowt thees defenzelass shild?
Do hyou not theenk hof thees shild?"
"We love her so much..."
"No Misseur, I think yhou do NOT luff hare. If yhou did luff hare hyou wood take bettair care of hare
than thees!"
"But we DO. You don't understand what we have been through."
I sensed that the worst had passed. The concierge was at least talking to us intelligently, or so it
seemed...
"I have an idee, Misseur. Why not do hyou and thees lady gho fin hyour monay and lheave thees
poor shild with me. I weel tek care of hare unteel hyou comb bak. It ees too khold for a poor shild
houtside now. Yhou need not worray! I wheell tek good care of hare until hyou ratairn."
No. I could not do that. She did sound sincere. It wasn't a bad idea. I just couldn't do it. I showed her
the Jansport backpack and how we put Sandy inside all wrapped up in many layers of clothes. She was
not convinced. We gathered our things and made our way passed them and down the stairs. As we
opened the outer doors splashes of freezing rain and snow hit our faces. The woman was looking at us
intently from the staircase. Maybe we could do it for only a few hours. We'd get the money and return.
This would be a good way to get to know the woman who would be our landlord. Maybe.
I consulted with Owl. She couldn't understand what I was saying. She refused to let my words make
any sense. I took matters into my own hands, took Sandy from the backpack and brought her up the
stairs to the woman and gave Sandy to her. "We'll be back soon," I said.
"Hit ees a wize decizion Misseur," she replied. "The shild weell be here in my rhoom when yhou
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ratairn". She pointed to a door on the lower landing. I had to practically push Owl out the door. We left
the building with Owl flooding me with questions.
We walked two blocks against the icy wind. Owl's eyes were burning into mine every time I looked
at her. "When har we goeen bak to get Sandee Tom?" she asked again and again.
The street was narrow. Owl was walking behind me. It didn't feel right. A child is supposed to stay
with its parents. It just did not feel right for me to leave Sandy with that woman. I tried to reason with
myself. It's for the best... It didn't work. I looked at Owl's sad eyes. I knew I couldn't do it. We turned
around and ran all the way back.
The woman was in the room with Sandy. We hurried in and picked up Sandy and made fast
apologies and hurried out the door with her and ran down the street.
***
The checks still weren't in but Diane and Leo allowed us to visit with them that evening and use
their telephone to search the want ads for apartments. I was excited when one lead especially seemed to
be perfect for us. It was a wonderful apartment near the cross streets of Beaubien and Papineau. And it
had a heated swimming pool in the basement! And it was only two hundred dollars a month. The
swimming pool was an important factor to me because I wanted Owl to practice swimming every day.
Because ultimately I expected we would end up back in Carrington Harbor or some such place making
our living from the sea and I wanted Owl to be a good swimmer by then. Everything depended on those
checks.
Diane was quite exasperated about the welfare department taking so long to give Owl her money.
She wanted us to get our own lives together. That morning she had telephoned the caseworker and
asked her what in blazes was taking so long? Her pointed rhetoric had worked magic. She told Owl, in
French of course, that it was settled -- tomorrow the checks would arrive absolutely for sure! The social
worker had promised. And so we really got our hopes up. We would finally have our own apartment!
We'd be safe in Montreal!
But that night Diane and Leo argued louder than ever about us until Leo ended it by throwing a piece
of rattan furniture across the room. Diane told us to leave quickly.
"But where can we go?" I asked.
She suggested that we try to get the Salvation Army. No thanks. I'd rather sleep in a sleeping bag in
the trees than surround my loved ones with derelict winos.
So they put us outside in the hallway and locked the door behind us. Outside the weather was not
bad. It was not snowing and not even very cold. Here and there were thin patches of snow. But most of
it had melted during the day.
Where to go? Where? We were outdoors people. We knew if all else failed we could spend the night
under the stars without much difficulty, even with Sandy. So we went looking for somewhere to roll out
our sleeping bags and blankets for the night. We expected to get the checks in the morning and move
into our own apartment on the following afternoon. I was almost certain this would be the last night we
would have to rough it.
I'd already checked out a place just in case of this eventuality -- a beautiful expansive park full of
trees and shrubs a long bus ride across the city. We rolled out our bedroll beneath an oak tree on a hill,
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and put the baby between us and snuggled up and went to sleep.
Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning we were awakened by Montreal police who had noticed
our bedroll while patrolling the park. When they discovered there was a baby with us they were
indignant and angry. It didn't matter to them that we had ample blankets or that the baby was happy and
well nourished and much loved. They claimed their only motivation was that they were very worried
for the safety of the baby.
They made me hand Sandy-Laughing River to them, threatening me with violence if I refused. Owl
was crying and we were pleading with them to listen to us, to just look at the baby and see that she is
healthy. But they insisted they had to take her to a hospital to be checked and make sure of her
condition. So they took our baby away. But they didn't arrest us.
The police ushered us out of the park and let us go. If they had taken us to jail I would surely have
been deported in the morning when the government offices opened and they exchanged information. Or
maybe they didn't have to wait that long. Maybe someone was on night duty in that office. In that case
the police might be ordered to locate me again right away and detain me for deportation. And that could
happen at any minute. They'd have no trouble finding us if we were standing on those lonely dark
residential sidewalks with all our bags. We had nowhere else to go. And I was afraid that in our frantic
mental condition we might make a scene and some frightened resident would telephone the police. We
had to do something. There were no buses running so late and we were in no condition to walk through
forty residential blocks. We were sitting ducks. The next cop car that came along would probably have
orders to arrest me.
We had to get off the streets. The night was cold now, very cold, and my teeth were chattering, and
we were so miserable about Sandy being gone that we felt like screaming, felt like we were losing our
minds. If only we could crawl into our sleeping bags somewhere, behind a wall or in some bushes. We
walked around looking for a place like that, but didn't find any.
The vast park was the only place that would work but we were surely tempting fate to return there
after the police taken away our baby there and run us out already that same night. Plus we'd have to
walk across a vast expanse of grass and snow to get to the trees, during which we'd be very vulnerable.
But there didn't seem to be any choice.
We ran across the wide field as fast as we could and returned to the exact place in the trees where we
had been sleeping when the police had found us earlier. We laid out our sleeping gear and covered up.
But we could not sleep. I had to stay awake to keep alert in case the police returned. I had an escape
route planned. We clutched each other and lay there wide awake whimpering like beaten children until
the black sky took on a tint of blue.
I was just about to get Owl up when I heard voices. The cops were coming back. We gathered our
gear and skittered behind a large bush just as they came into sight. When they passed we ran. I heard
excited voices far behind us indicating that we'd probably been spotted.
We raced through the park as fast as possible and made it to the streets again. A few blocks away a
city bus was sitting in a dark culdesac with all its lights on waiting while the driver started his day with
a steaming cup of coffee. He told us he wouldn't be rolling for another half-hour. We sat low in a rear
seat and I held Owl against me with her head on my chest and tried to think of something to do,
watching through the windows for any sign of police. The bus driver asked us if we were in any
trouble. I told him no, just new to town and a little cold. He went back to his coffee and newspaper.
Eventually he put the bus in gear and we rolled through the waking city.
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I don't know how we got through that night. Our baby was gone. Our arms were so empty. Our lives
were so tortured. So Tortured.
***
Many families have to hitchhike and camp out with their children at one time or another. Over the
years I've seen hundreds of them beside the highway and heard a boodle of horror stories from mothers
and fathers who were terribly harassed by police during such an exigent excursion. The amazing thing
is the fact that they don't get threatened and endangered by people who pick them up -- No. The villains
of their stories are always the police or CSD.
Cat told me this story in Lake Hill one day: She didn't have a car running and she had to hitchhike
across several states with her eldest daughter to visit the grandmother. The little girl was around five
years old at the time. Cat is a good mom -- and a veteran hitchhiker. Her children never lack anything.
She provides a good home; cooks well. She's artsy-craftsy and intelligent. She just didn't have a car, is
all. So they hitchhiked.
They'd been getting good rides and meeting wonderful folks, (one of the pleasant advantages of
hitchhiking) and for all purposes, having a splendid day. They stood together in the sunlight and the
fresh air hitching -- when a cop pulled up.
The cop began to berate her cruelly. Cat weighs less than a hundred pounds. The officer probably
exceeded two hundred. Acidly belligerent, he preyed upon her. She answered all his questions
truthfully, with her daughter clinging to her skirts. He bullied her for half an hour till she thought she
would faint from fear.
The officer then began to question the little girl:
"You haven't eaten anything today, have you young lady?" he asked in a sugary sympathetic voice.
She didn't answer, so he asked her again. And twice more.
Finally, the little girl took fire and glared and hissed:
"Yes, I did. My mommy fed me! OATMEAL!" Brave child. Daughter of a road momma.
Sometimes, when the car is broke down, you must hitch. But you don't need a snake in the grass like
that cop. There's too many snakes in this world.
Reprooven in his attempts to see evidence of neglect, the officer eventually left Cat and her daughter
alone -- and they stumbled numbly off the on-ramp to a gas station. There she took her daughter into
the ladies room and closed the door. When she was safely out of sight she broke down and shook
uncontrollably for many minutes.
She told me this story adding that she would never ever cross-country hitchhike again with her
children.
A policeman should be able to clearly see by looking at all the sleeping bags and the packs and the
food that a child is in good hands. Some of the clearest thinking people I've ever known have
hitchhiked and camped with their children. Things of this sort represent a culture clash but that's no
reason to take away people's kids.
Hippie children aren't up for grabs! --Even though governments would have the public believe those
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children were better off when they were removed from their homes.
***
So they took away Sandy Laughing-River. And one result was that when it was combined with all
the other on-going trauma in our lives we were both probably going through some sort of nervous
breakdown.
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FORTY-THREE
PINSTRIPE GRAMPA
They took away Sandy Laughing River, those staid and salient servants; the golden grain they kept
and bid the chaff to fly, out among the tombstone buildings of the morning city, windy cold cement and
granite; freed, mortling, culled, riven, we stared bleakly upon the pullulations of a scatter-whipped
useless planet of jumbled dying dreams. The morning sun cracked its shell and lashed unmoted
blinding brilliance upon us, two lovers joined in auto de fe, blazed to ash.
"Sandee? Sandee? RhomTom! Where is Sandy? Rhom! They weell geve uhr bak? When? Rhom!
When weell they bring bek uhr babee? Sandeeeeeee!"
Owl cried out of control.
Numbly, I heard her words echoing in my own pit of grief.
We'd gone through so much to bring ourselves to the point where we could finally have our own
apartment in Montreal... We'd nearly frozen to death hitchhiking to Vermont, and while waiting down
there we'd lived amongst those hordes of miscreants -- all just to make the arrangements so Owl could
live near her family, near a mental health clinic, amidst Quebec's sensitive family-oriented culture, near
life-building business possibilities -- jewelers to buy my gems and markets for leather garments. Or
perhaps once we got our Scout back we could live in the Quebec countryside and make our living by
selling cordwood! Wouldn't that be grand? And there was also the possibility of continuing our
educations... Owl would do so much better if she could go back to school for a couple years. Me too.
And at last I'd learn French -- and Owl and I could communicate like never before. Healing and Growth
at last! This day dawning was supposed to be that day... This day dawning was supposed to be the day
we'd finally receive the money that would give us our start in Montreal. We'd already found the
apartment. This day dawning should have seen us laughing together in celebration of our good
fortune... instead of drowning in a nightmare...
I telephoned the police but they had no information for me. I telephoned the Human Resources
department but couldn't get hold of anyone who knew anything about Sandy's whereabouts. We had to
sparechange money to make the phone calls because we were flat broke. And every number we called
gave us two other numbers to try. I was a very desperate sparechanger that morning. With my miserable
face I must have appeared like a leper to people. I certainly felt like one.
A miserable frightened leper -- because I knew that at any moment the police would surely connect
with the Immigration department and discover that I was not even supposed to be in Canada. Then
they'd come find me. They'd surround us and put me in handcuffs and take me to jail and deport me.
Once a person is deported it's a big crime to reenter the country, punishable by prison. I had to avoid
being deported at all costs.
I conceived a vague plan: if we got on an intercity bus and headed for the border and returned to
MFF I'd be safe from deportation. And once we were there we could get the Vermont Public Health
Nurse to corroborate our story that we lived there in a nice little cabin and that we were taking good
care of our child. But we had no money to take the bus to Vermont. But those two checks were waiting
for us in the welfare office! We telephoned and verified it and yes, the checks were there waiting for
Owl to come pick them up.
So we took the Metro to the Welfare office and Owl got her checks and we went to a bank and
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cashed them. Then we headed for the bus station to leave town. Owl had no idea why we were at the
bus station. I'd tried to explain my plan to her but she couldn't seem to understand me. I bought two
tickets to Coaticook where we would have to disembark and take a taxi the remaining eight miles
south. We boarded the bus and sat way in the back. Owl turned and looked at me and asked me,
"Whare har we goeen Rhom?"
I told her we were going to Vermont. She just looked at me with big terror-filled eyes. We sat for five
minutes while the bus filled with travelers. Owl was in such pain I could not stand to look at her.
I doubt if I can explain what happened next. To say an overwhelming emotion and realization swept
through every fiber of my being is a true statement but all words are inadequate.
They had our daughter Sandy Laughing River. And I was leaving the city. Leaving our daughter with
them. Because I was afraid of what Immigration would do to me if they caught me, afraid of jail, afraid
of losing Owl. Was I going to leave Sandy? The bus started to back out of the parking space. I jerked to
my feet with Owl's hand in mine -- pulled her up the aisle to the front of the bus. The bus driver was
angry. I told him we had to get off. We hit the ground running.
I didn't want people to see me crying but I couldn't help myself. The funny thing though was that it
wasn't entirely from sadness that I was crying. I distinctly remember a feeling of what could only have
been some crazy sort of emotion like almost happiness at my core, a feeling of relief that I had made
the choice to get off the bus, relief that I could not leave Sandy no matter what, relief that I would not
be dragging Owl away from her baby.
I had a new plan. I shook myself and my head cleared slightly. There was a way we could flip our
swamped ship of dreams back upright. If we moved into that apartment the police would understand
the circumstances that had caused us to sleep in the park -- then they'd surely give Sandy back to us...
Maybe Immigration would understand too. We had to try.
So we went to the landlady to give her the money. She told us she had already rented the one we
originally had wanted but there was another one available for slightly more money, $250 plus the
cleaning deposit. We paid her, and moved in. That is to say we threw our sleeping bags on the bed.
The apartment was one large room with a bookshelf separating the sleeping space from the
combination kitchen and living area. A window over the bed looked down five stories on city traffic.
The heated indoor swimming pool in the basement, free for all the tenants to use whenever they
wished, was such a nice feature. And $250 per month was very fair. If Sandy had been there with us
we'd all have been dancing for joy to have such a home -- but she was not. And so this dream-home for
which we'd planned so long was a bare and empty thing, four walls, a window and a sink: a cage, a
hole... We became very sad again. Very sad... Our wet eyes seemed to fill the room with water enough
to choke our lives away.
On top of everything else for some reason I seemed to have chosen that moment to become sick
again. It began while we were walking to the apartment and it came on fast. I had to sit down while the
landlady filled out the receipt. By the time we got to the room I could barely stand. I fell upon the bed
and could not get up again until the next afternoon, which was a Saturday. I bought some Contac cold
pills to try to beat back the illness. And I spent ten dollars in quarters trying to find out where Sandy
was being kept, but everyone said I had to wait till Monday morning. I nearly collapsed at the pay
phone and barely made it back to the bed in the apartment. I slept another 24 hours without waking.
A pall permeated every atom of the walls. Sandy's laughter was missing from our lives. Where was
she? What kind of people were caring for her? The poor darling! She must be wondering where we
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were... What an ache! What a surging morbid pain! What an inferno of dreariness! As I slept Owl sat
silently on the bed and watched the walls.
We listened to the tinny sounds of our portable radio -- any be-bop at all as long as it wasn't lonely
songs. The traffic of the noisy city avenue rumbled along far below. And our ears picked up stuff from
every direction around us -- the voices and scufflings of the multitude of other human beings going
about their lives in the cubicles and hallways of this large complex. What a lonely room...
Between paying the rent and the cleaning deposit and buying a little bit of food, we were nearly
broke again. On Monday I was still very weak but I managed to make it outside and down the street to
the payphone where I spent what money we had left trying to find someone who could tell me what
were we supposed to do now? When could we see Sandy again? What was going on?
My phoning seemed to be getting nowhere. Dejectedly I walked back up the street to the building
and up the stairs to our pad.
Owl was gone.
***
I rushed out the door. I searched every floor. I walked around the block and into the stores and parks.
I returned to our room. She had not returned. Sick and weak I collapsed on the bed. She returned in the
night and I held her close to me. We could not talk. When I awoke in the morning she was gone again.
And she remained gone all day.
In the afternoon I went out looking for her, checking nearby parks. Then I walked to the subway and
looked there. I rode the subway from one end to the other and back again, watching the people on the
platforms. Homeward bound in the rain, I passed and looked at all the thousands of watercolor faces,
listened to their incomprehensible voices. What a beautiful city to be lonely in -- feeling like a common
valueless stone in a bag of precious jewels. I felt like a beaten dog to have to panhandle money from
those lovely people for the Metro and the telephone. I prayed a small prayer as I ran up the stairs to our
apartment: "Please let her be there..." But she wasn't.
I lay on the bed and passed in and out of sleep. I was still very sick. Hours passed. Dark shadows
crept across the room. Finally I turned on a light. The bare bulb revealed the glaring emptiness that
surrounded me. I lay there listening to the city outside, far below, far away. Would the night never end?
The next morning I went to see if her mother or sister had seen her. I couldn't even tell them the
things that had transpired because of the language problem. I was distraught. They were perplexed.
They hadn't seen Owl.
"Whare eez Marie-Elaine, Tom? Whare heez Sondee?" they asked brokenly.
I shook my head and told them goodbye. I'd let them know if...
I wandered all over the city, old Montreal, the waterfront, the little island shacks near her mother's
house.
I returned often to the apartment. On the third day I came home to find her purse on the bed! --But
she was nowhere to be seen. At least she had come home! I sat waiting all afternoon -- and all night.
She did not return again. In the morning I went out looking. The landlady told me she'd keep her eyes
open and let me know if she saw Owl. She gave me that look French folks give cuckolded Americans.
And I wondered about that. I wondered what was going on with my life? Was this a life?
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I telephoned the Children's Services office often about Sandy, keeping in touch. I didn't tell them
Owl was missing. If the court were to discover Owl was gone, they'd be less inclined to return Sandy to
me alone. We were given a court date.
A week passed. I was hanging up "missing" posters in the subway when a fellow in a concession
stand recognized her photograph and told me he had seen Owl wandering around there just an hour
previous. So I flew around the terminal crazily for a while and suddenly -- there she was -- standing in
old dirty clothes amidst the bustling masses of Montealites scurrying past her to their destinations. I
watched her for five minutes undetected. She just wandered aimlessly. All alone. When I went up to her
she seemed shocked but happy to see me. I asked her if she wanted to return home. She answered yes.
She said she'd returned once but I wasn't there. I knew that.
***
A court date was quickly set for the beginning of the week. The court receptionist was an outgoing
and kindhearted gentlewoman. That was not something I'd expected. She chatted warmly with us and
listened sympathetically to our story. Was she perhaps in the wrong nightmare? We rechecked the
number on the door to verify this was our court.
No. We weren't wrong. We simply were having the rare good fortune of making the acquaintance of
a woman who was naturally inclined to do whatever she could to help people. If the idea were ever to
catch on -- the world would surely change for the better!
What we had here was a friendly and intelligent and unbiased and helpful court receptionist! Only in
a French land is such a strange thing possible! She'd not been dehumanized by autocratic machinery,
nor demuliebrieted by overbearing pressure of self-important males. Nor was she bored, nor caustic,
nor prejudiced. She was just a pretty French woman doing a difficult job fairly, and kindly, and even
compassionately. Words aren't possible to describe it -- you'd have to see it to believe it. What a
pleasant change from what we'd endured in Oregon!! A tiny current of hope began to flow in our veins.
But before we were quite ready to break out the animal crackers and teddy bears we were yet to
gnash our teeth. For it was then that we met the Children's Welfare department representative. He was,
to our horror, the exact opposite of the gentle woman at the desk.
He was cold. And aloof. And he sneered without trying to conceal his animosity when he spoke to
us. He did not have the vaguest notion of what sort of dreams we followed, nor was he interested.
When we tried to tell him -- his mind wandered to other things. We were just a couple of flies landing
on his bread and butter.
He strongly resembled Jaba the Hutt of the Star Wars movie, the giant alien Slug/potentate. They
could have modeled Jaba's effete malice-exuding personality from him. Maybe they did.
He was a giant fat thing. At least six foot four, weighed not less than four hundred pounds, spoke
English with a biting French accent, and was black as coal. And he used his color as a bashing hammer
against us. My intuition has been around the block, and it left no room for doubt that this hammering
had been his main tool in upward mobility.
I've had many black friends and dated pretty black women. Most of my nieces and nephews are halfHispanic. I have shared rent and a thousand campfires with black friends and I consider them my true
brothers as much as anyone of any color. I have never been prejudiced. If this repugnant social worker
had been white, it would have been easier for me to dislike him.
Coldly, he brushed aside our good intentions. Bluntly, pointedly, he told us we shouldn't have
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children. Disinterestedly, he informed us he would recommend to the court that our daughter, Sandy
Laughing River, absolutely not be returned to us, not ever -- not to people like us.
His spiritless, absent-hearted way of talking had Owl fading into the woodwork. I looked from her to
him and back, incredulous. This man eyed us with utter contempt and hatred. He didn't try to hide it.
He never smiled. He never said a kind thing. This man was an alien bloodsucker.
But that was just my phenomenal intuition. My rational mind told me clearly what was really
happening -- I'd seen it before. He was intent on using this opportunity -- to punish some white people
severely, leisurely, calculatingly; as a child might pull the wings off flies... The truth was in his eyes
when he looked at us.
I tried to forget my instincts. I quelled my fired-up imagination. I laid the issues of our lives before
him. Let's get serious here. Let's put aside our garbage prejudices, our angers, our prearranged
conceptions. Let's really see each other. Let's talk about Sandy and let's talk from our hearts...
Oh yeah, he leaned way back and stared emotionlessly at me as I spoke. This city man didn't like our
passion for primitive lifestyles. He wondered aloud if a cabin with an outhouse were a proper place to
raise a child (as if electricity and running water and plastic credit cards had been around since the
beginning of time.)
I could forgive his ignorance, but not the insolent way he implied that only he knew all the correct
answers. By his careless demeanor, I knew that he usually got away with his tortures.
It is a pity I met him in Owl's homeland. In my heart I wanted to associate everything connected with
her as part of her gentle heart and loyal spirit. I wish I had met him in the bowels of New York City, or
in the pits of Las Vegas, or in the dearth corridors of a Missouri jail. I sure didn't want to ever see a
beast like him in a position of social authority in a beautiful French world.
Old Jaba was polluting something sacred.
***
After Mary Morningdove had been taken away in Oregon, I'd formed a strategy on what I could do if
the same thing ever happened again. It centered around photography.
We purchased a Kodak Instamatic camera before Sandy was born -- and took pictures of everything
we felt might ever be necessary to prove our aptitude at child rearing to a Judge in a courtroom. Just in
case...
We photographed the mossy log cabin, and ourselves hard at work with hammer and nails putting in
the new hardwood floor; we photographed a lit burner of the propane stove heating up a bottle of milk,
and the cheery dancing flames in the wood stove -- with a pot of tea on top; we photographed the
cordwood with the saw and ax on a field of sawdust; and we photographed the quart bottle of Orange
juice that never emptied before it was immediately refilled and the pantry full of good food. We
photographed hot steaming healthy meals on plates. We photographed good friends like Buttons and
Nina and Mitchell and Sheila standing in front of their simple homes.
And we photographed Sandy Laughing River constantly: being fed, being diapered, being cuddled,
sleeping peacefully in Owl's arms, held by me, sitting beside the little stream.
We had at least a hundred good photos organized in a scrapbook, and we had brought this to the
courtroom.
First the court had to resolve whether it had jurisdiction, since Sandy was born in the United States.
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Since Owl was Canadian, the law stated the child was a citizen of both countries, at least for the time
being, and could be legally be held in Canada. The Judge had scarcely began to explore these questions
when he was informed there was someone waiting to speak with him on the telephone concerning this
case.
Thanks to the kind receptionist, I'd used her phone to call long distance to the social worker/nurse
who'd been working with us in Vermont for several months and had visited us in the cabin on some
occasions. She understood our predicament and was quite prepared to tell the court that we had been
industrious and loving parents and had filled all our child's needs -- and that we had even sought out
and listened to all her advice. Further, once I got her on the phone and explained the urgency of it she
was willing to remain on the telephone line as the court proceedings began, in hopes of talking to the
Judge then and there.
The Judge was very much surprised to hear that this unusual phone conversation was waiting for
him. Disregarding convention, he asked that a telephone extension be brought up to his bench -- and he
sat right there and talked at length with our Vermont social worker.
Now this Judge was an amazing fellow. At first I didn't know what to think of him.
He was a silver-haired gentleman with kind eyes and he wore an old fashioned pin-stripe suit. He
spoke English graciously and with utter respect. He won us over instantly. (He was exactly the sort of
man who would have chosen such a sensitive woman to be his secretary, too.)
Finally he put down the receiver and silently looked around the courtroom. A warm and friendly pair
of eyes met ours and lingered a moment in reassuring communication. Then his gaze continued on and
fell upon the giant city sewer rat in the dark suit who sat off to one side glowering. The Judge set his
jaw and asked the case worker why he'd not bothered to inform the court that this family had indeed
been working with a social agency and that that agency had some good things to say regarding this
couple?
The Jaba the Hutt look-alike whined that his caseload was so full that he had not had the time to
investigate those things. Sounding bored, he went on to say that from what he'd gathered concerning
our lifestyle after interviewing us, he strongly recommended against returning the child. He added that
he did not foresee the development of any criteria likely to change his assessment. However, he asked
that the court set a new hearing date -- at least a month away -- to give him time to study the case
thoroughly.
The Judge listened astutely to this evaluation. Then he sat silent thinking it over for a minute before
turning to us. In amazingly kind tones he asked us what were our opinions on this entire situation. He
urged us to speak frankly and not to be intimidated by anyone in the courtroom. Neither were we to
worry about legal technicalities or protocol since this was an informal proceeding.
"--Especially after that phone call!" he chuckled.
I told the Judge that we held a lot of stock in the natural immunity that breastfed babies are known to
have over bottle-fed ones, and that Owly's milk would painfully dry up if the separation were
prolonged. Also, that Owl, herself a gentle daughter of Quebec, was slipping through my fingers. She
wouldn't talk or eat. Previous to this, Owl had never been separated from her baby, even for a minute.
Heartlessly keeping her baby away from her for another arbitrary, useless month, was worse than
pulling out her fingernails. Finally I told him if it were up to this social worker, who treated us with
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such utter contempt, to decide whether we were fit parents and should have our daughter returned -then these proceedings were useless, since he'd already stated he would never want to see that happen
-- even though he knew very little about us.
The Judge addressed me:
"He does not decide those things, Mr. Ollamh -- I do!"
At that, the character skewed uncomfortably in his seat and glared gloomily. I thanked the Judge for
relieving me of that worry.
The pretty receptionist, to whom I'd already shown our photos, went up and whispered in the Judge's
ear. He got very alert and asked if he could see a certain photo album if I had it with me.
To which I replied that I'd brought it along for precisely that reason. He motioned for me to approach
the bench to caption the photographs.
He put his glasses on and bent over the album flipping two or three pages and perusing the
photographs diligently.
Suddenly he sat straight back in his chair and exclaimed flabbergasted:
"Pardone Messieur! But these people ARE NOT WEARING CLOTHES!!!"
The courtroom burst into laughter. Actually everyone was clothed adequately in most of the photos
but scattered through the album there were indeed some quite nude photos of Nina and Buttons and
Elizabeth and me and Owl and others.
"Excuse me, Your Honor," I explained quickly as soon as the laughter and commotion in the room
died down enough to where I could make myself heard, "these are home pictures of hot summer days
in our community where nudity is casual and commonplace. I am sorry if it offends you. If you look
close, you'll see nothing pornographic about them. They are merely people going about their lives. We
don't believe the human body is a dirty or an unholy thing to be hidden, especially in hundred degree
weather."
The Judge shrugged and smiled,
"Oh, it is all right, Messier, I was only just a little shocked. I did not expect it!" and he urged me to
go on and tell him the meaning of each picture. We took our time and he asked many questions.
At one point he turned in his chair and looked over his shoulder at his pretty receptionist, raised his
eyebrows and asked her:
"Did you see these photos?"
"Mais oui!" she affirmed, smiling back impishly.
He turned back to the book and then back to her again. He seemed to be saying something to her
with his eyes. She was beaming.
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The courtroom was laughing heartily now.
He motioned good-naturedly for the room to quiet down. I found my seat beside Owl. Seriously, the
Judge asked her what she thought.
Owl spoke a little to the Judge in French. She was obviously broken up. There'd been no laughter in
her this day, nor for several days previous. The Judge was extremely tender to her, as compassionate as
if she were his own daughter.
Owl wanted her baby. That was clear. Nothing else mattered to her. Now the courtroom was sober
and gentle. All eyes seemed to look at Owl with understanding.
The Judge addressed Jaba:
"So, you are requesting that the court keep the baby away from these parents for a month or more at
least while you clear up your caseload and do some research?"
"Yes, Your Honor..." the cochon replied blandly.
The Judge looked at him a long moment before he spoke these words icily:
"I will give you THREE DAYS to bring me SOLID EVIDENCE that their baby daughter should be
kept from them. At that time -- YOU HAD BETTER HAVE SOMETHING SUBSTANTIAL TO SHOW
ME, MESSIEUR! This court will meet again in THREE DAYS! Court is adjourned."
Jaba looked like he'd shit his pants...
I spent three very hope-filled days in our apartment.
But Owl could not be filled with any such illusion. Only the presence of her baby back safely in her
arms would bring back any good emotion. She looked like a zombie, and I could barely console her.
She was a bag of bones. There was nothing in there.
Once many years before, in heavy trauma, on Wreck Beach, I'd found her sitting naked in freezing
rain. She had been sitting there for hours. She was ignoring her body, ignoring the pain, the rain, me,
everything. Just staring over the waves, to the horizon, where the stars met the liquid, moving, mass of
her emotions, the sea. She had made no response at all when I picked her up and carried her along the
beach to our campfire. She was like that again, now. So I just held her.
Three days must pass. Three long days full to the brim with hours and heaped with selfish minutes
that could not be hurried by a mere mortal's anguish.
Then, maybe, I could tell Owl, "Here is your life again, my love. Will you share it with me?" Or
else..... Or else.....
***
Our day in court arrived. The creature had nothing on us. The Judge smiled kindly at us and banged
his gavel loudly.
"Case dismissed!"
We took Sandy home.
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FORTY-FOUR
PREDATORS AND PREY
Montreal wasn't going to work out for us. Two weeks rent remained in the apartment, but two things
made it necessary that we leave. First, when we brought Sandy home the lady concierge told us she felt
that our room wasn't big enough for a family and she was especially perturbed about there being no
crib. My reply to her, that babies as young as Sandy are safer sleeping with their parents, was met with
intolerance. She told us she wanted us to leave as soon as the month's rent was up. Secondly she said
some government men had come to see her asking questions about me while we were gone. They said
they would return. She didn't like any of it and she told me so. They must have been Immigration
officers.
Even if I somehow managed to convince Immigration to allow me to stay in Quebec, which was very
unlikely, and even if we managed to find some other place to rent, which wouldn't be easy, there was
still another threat just as dangerous to us: That heartless caseworker had tasted our blood. My every
intuition told me he would be hungering to find some reason to reinsert himself into our lives. And the
next time we might not be so lucky.
So we decided to forget about the money we'd laid out for the rent. We packed our bags and returned
to Vermont. At least no one could take Sandy away from us there.
There was nowhere else to go. Winter was coming on fast. We had to hole up. Maybe Tim and Starla
would have some ideas -- or Nick and Sasha. There had been rumors that some of the worst
troublemakers would not attempt to winter in MFF's primitive abodes. So, the land might be safe for us
after all.
***
Like bears preparing for a long hibernation, the people of the land were busy trying to insure their
own survival. They may have seen our return as a few more aces in the hole, as once again, they
seemed to treat us fairly decent. Perhaps they figured we might be good for five dollars in a winter
emergency.
The industry of laying up firewood kept them too busy to make trouble, too. And when all that was
done, their warm cabins had far more to offer them than the fleeting glory of making Hell for their
neighbors. It was cold outside! They stayed home.
Children's Welfare was not overjoyed about our renewed intentions to winter in the cabin. They sent
the caseworker to check out our preparations, which she concluded were adequate; although she didn't
approve of "the neighborhood".
Sandy Laughing River remained healthy. That in itself must have verified our abilities as parents
because the weather began to turn arctic. We had a foot of snow early in October.
Looking back, I think CSD was nuts to request our presence thirty miles away each month for
medical check-ups -- knowing we had no car and must hitchhike those thirty miles in each direction.
Standing on an isolated corner with a baby in a backpack, even though she was wrapped up warmly,
simply should have been avoided if common sense prevailed. However, we abided their better
judgement (?) and made it work.
The trips never harmed Sandy in the least. She was a strong little rosebud bundled up inside the
Jansen pack; she never even got the sniffles. Her parents had no pack to crawl into though. So they
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sometimes got a leettle frostbitten, but that's beside the point.
Then the Welfare folks decided we also must hitch to parenting classes twenty miles away, twice a
week. One lady who also attended the classes gave us a ride much of the time. We found the classes
informative -- but to a limited extent. They didn't teach us anything we didn't already know. Basically I
thought it would be a good idea because it would provide us with some associates other than the MFF
menagerie.
Those folks had little in common with commune people or hippies though. They were town people
and small farm folk and they didn't want to associate with our kind. Vermonters can be close-minded.
It seemed nine out of ten of them came from homes torn by serious alcohol problems, where
brutality was just a part of life and where their children were allowed to chain-smoke cigarettes at age
fourteen or younger.
Yet they found it beyond their ken to accept a couple of peacenik strangers who smoked neither
tobacco nor drank (much) alcohol, nor ate meat. The fact that we lived in notorious old MFF clinched
matters for them. Well, I can't blame them for that, considering how the place had deteriorated from
what it had once been. It was no secret we wanted to get out of there -- even though the pristine beauty
of MFF was remarkable and we were warm enough and well provisioned. Nonetheless I assured them
we'd be out of MFF as soon as something else came up.
Unfortunately, the women in the parenting classes really made Owl feel unwanted and she gradually
slunk back further and further into the corners to avoid their hoi polloi attitudes, leaving me to deal
with Sandy by myself. It's just the way Owl is. She freezes up under intimidation. She stops talking.
She stops thinking. She won't take an active part in anything that's going on. This is a recurring factor
that would plaque us often. At least I came to understand it and compensate. And I hoped that being
around other mothers she might lose some of her self-consciousness and melt a little. With a little help
that might be possible.
The women misconstrued this entire scenario as representative of the regular state of things for us,
preferring to believe that Owl rarely diapered or washed or clothed Sandy or cooked for her or even
held her. They figured that I always did those things in her place. In truth, at home Owl did most of
this, and quite well, too. But of course, as the group leader told me, they had no way of knowing that to
be fact. They didn't believe it either.
I wished with all my heart that Owl could develop a more diplomatic way of dealing with uppity
Anglophile women, but wishin' don't make it happen. Eventually, we just stopped going there. Who
needs the abuse?
We drew ourselves into the land and into our heated cabin and we snuggled under our bounteous
quilts. As we lay we watched the heat ascend from the kerosene lantern to melt away the snow from the
skylight glass, to reveal the irenic winter moon. Wandering among the constellations were gilded tufts
of clouds ablaze with glimmering gold. Sometimes a lonesome satellite plunged dutifully across the
field of stars. We were three pairs of eyes unabashedly peering into the naked eternal creation, and the
starlight seemed to be pouring like waterfalls into our souls.
In the morning, lying on our stomachs, we looked through the side window upon the land. Snow
cloaked her like a virgin in white. Yet when gunshots crackled through the crisp winter air we were
reminded that she was not. There was blood on the snow.
That winter the trappers killed every single beaver, of every age, in every pond, on or even near the
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land.
I could not keep myself from trying to do something to stop the carnage. I went to talk to each of
them. Some listened silently, others smugly. Yet others argued each step of the way. They all said the
same thing: it was none of my business and it meant forty bucks per pelt to them -- desperately needed
winter dollars.
And they told me to move if I didn't like it because they intended to continue to do as they pleased so
if I had any further opinions on the subject I should keep them to myself. And go piss in the wind while
I'm at it...
MFF wasn't supposed to be like that. It was supposed to be a place where children could grow up
amidst the abundance of nature and at every age we could commune with the blessed wild creatures in
all their beauty. My understanding was that the land of MFF was purchased with that object in mind.
But on the sacred trust of that land, trappers were murdering its blessings... And they really deeply
resented my interference. What I didn't know, was that they were plotting to teach me a lesson about
messin' with them.
Lesson day was snowy and warmer, the perfect day for a walk in the woods to go see the frozen
pond. Our pairs of Goodwill skates clanked their runners, slung over our backs, as we shluffed through
the snow, making the first tracks on the winter morning landscape. We waved as we passed a trapper's
cabin and saw him out chopping wood. He didn't wave back. We didn't let his sinister vibration ruin our
morning.
At the pond, we took the baby out of the warm nest of blankets in the backpack and Owl changed her
diaper while I tried to clear some snow off the ice, a job too large for one person without a snow shovel
to do effectively. Nonetheless, we did skid around a little on the skates and say silly things to each other
and to the baby and have some laughs for a couple hours. After which we schluffed back home again,
happily.
At our next meeting with the Children's Welfare worker in Newport she gloomily intoned to us that
she had received complaints from other residents of the land about our lack of parenting abilities.
The main castigating report was that we'd left our baby alone in a freezing cold cabin with no one to
watch her, and had carelessly spent the day ice-skating a mile away. Witnesses were willing to testify to
that fact in court in case the agency decided to take the child away while looking into the matter. Our
denial and protests were brushed off unbelieved.
"Why would they lie about such things, Mr. Ollamh?"
The medical exam revealed once again, however, a very healthy baby and so the issue was dropped
at least for the time being, with the admonition that nothing like that be reported again. I resented that
my explanation of the baby being unseen in the backpack hadn't been enough. The Welfare people
seemed to want to believe the worst. Apparently someone had done a good job of convincing them of
our negligence.
It could have been none other than our trapper neighbors who had denounced us. They wanted us
gone, but first they wanted us wounded and hurting. Just like the beavers with their broken legs stuck in
the iron jaws of their traps. The dire craving to watch creatures suffer must be concupiscent. You could
see it in their eyes.
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And it was their eyes that I watched when we took the baby in the backpack to their cabin to show
them how we had carried her that day, as always, in the cold weather. They listened -- but they wouldn't
retract their story. They said they didn't know the baby had been in the pack that day. They looked right
into my eyes and stated they didn't believe us when we said she truly had been. As though I made it a
habit of lying.
They also told us we weren't welcome in their cabin anymore. Cold calculating folks. Smug folks
with guns and knives and cruel traps -- people who enjoyed the sight of blood.
It's hard to live where people hate you and are a threat to your family. It isn't like we could just hang
it all up and pop up to Montreal and offer ourselves on the employment market. Immigration would
deport me, separate us, and Jaba would be knocking at Owly's door with a slobbery gloat on his face,
drooling all over our baby.
It was possible we might go to another Quebec city though -- like Sherbrooke for instance -somewhere outside of Jaba's territory. Immigration might even let me stay... We'd have to try that in
spring though -- not in mid-winter!
We looked for a regular apartment in Lake Hill and Newport but there was nothing available in any
price-range. We were stuck in MFF for the winter and there was nothing to do about it but dig in, watch
our step, stay at home, and mind our own business.
In this way, the winter months passed.
The fact is, we were snug as three cherries in a fruitcake. Our bed was just above the downstairs gas
and wood stoves. One solitary lit burner kept the upstairs cozy -- around seventy degrees. And in the
worst weather the wood stove got the place so hot we had to open windows to cool down.
We had several cassette tapes including every Donna Summer album and some vibrant Barbara
Streisand. Owl and the baby and I ate toast and marmalade and drank tea, read books, busied ourselves
with crafts and happily listened to the stereo. We piled up used alkaline batteries in the corner. Some
brands could be partially recharged a few times by warming them in the oven.
We watched the snow fall through the window; sitting in the bed, all wrapped in blankets. Inches
above our heads, the patter of falling snow lulled our worries. The best of times were those when the
quiet and the beauty overwhelmed us and the entire world seemed at peace.
Some good things were happening. The Lake Hill dentist was a good thing. Our teeth were so bad!
We had infected abscesses: five of them between the two of us. And a lot of other cavities. We needed
some teeth pulled and others needed root canals and others needed fillings. The government-subsidized
dentist did our root canals for $25 each and filled each cavity for only two dollars. Wow! We visited
him a couple times a month until all our teeth were fixed.
The other really good thing that happened was that we managed to get permission for Owl to be in
the United States. Many papers had to be filled out in the little border station that was only a mile away
from us through the woods. The papers were going through. Soon Owl would become a legal resident
of the United States. At least there was one less worry on our minds.
Our winter for the most part was passing happily. We had each other. Sandy was growing, laughing,
learning. Owl knit and sewed clothes for her. Sandy sat in our laps and helped.
Our adversaries were too busy keeping warm to bother us. Besides, after all they'd done to get rid of
us and we were still there, I believe they gave up for awhile!
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Too bad we didn't have our Scout, stuck in that Oregon field three thousand miles away across the
continent. Or a warm vehicle like the Jeephouse! Then, we could have effortlessly ranged far and wide
looking for a better living situation. But that just wasn't in the cards.
As it was, we hitchhiked a hundred miles to see Mitchell and Buttons and Sheila and Nina and their
new baby. It was good to see them again.
Mitchell had changed with the birth of his son. Or was it the fear of violence following him? He
vehemently expressed doubts that the shooting had been anything more than an accident -- but in the
same breath he wondered incredulously why we remained in MFF?
We spent the entire day talking about the way Arnold shot Buttons, pooling our thoughts...
Was it possible that Arnold was some sort of a CIA James Bond type wacko with a license to shoot,
maim, mutilate, terrorize, intimidate, rape, and spindle any commune dwellers or peaceniks, who might
be hiding out in the northern Vermont woods?
After all, their egos had been mightily bruised by the peace demonstrators who'd brought an end to
their undeclared war in South East Asia, and of course, an end to the Nixon presidency, too. I seriously
wondered if that were the real reason for the shooting.
Arnold simply seemed too brutal and devious a man to be hanging around hippies, unless there was
some other reason than "hiding from the law". Something was fishy. Why was he never questioned by
police while hitchhiking? How could anyone blatantly hitchhike everywhere with a sawed-off shotgun
under his long coat or a 357 magnum strapped to his hip and never be discovered and detained by
police? Especially, with his supposed outstanding warrants?
The only way I could see it to be possible was if the police all knew him. Could he be a plant, set
among us to blow the place apart, starting with the women and the families, which were, of course,
obviously the center of our existence?
Arnold had the same seething under the skin attitude as the FBI men who'd taken me away in
handcuffs from my mother's house to prison for war resistance in 1971. They seemed so alike... The
same eyes...
Since I never found out for sure one way or the other, I'll probably wonder forever.
My theories scared Mitchell bad -- though Buttons shrugged them off. Buttons said, "It doesn't
matter. We're gone forever. Just never let him know where we are!"
Mitchell didn't want any part of MFF invading his new family. He told me that if I couldn't just drop
it and start considering the shooting as an accident and stop stirring up trouble, I wasn't welcome
around them anymore.
I can't blame him. I knew as much as he did how important it was to keep the bad vibes away from a
baby and mom. I was only sorry that it appeared that I was the bringer of the bad vibes that time.
We returned to MFF and actually tried to see things Mitch's way -- as if the whole thing were an
accident after all. It sure would be a hell of a lot easier for us if the malevolence we feared turned out to
be just our imaginations.
My mind contorted to the task of seeing Arnold as innocently accused. Stupidly, I even went up to
him and admitted that I'd thought he had done the shooting on purpose -- and how Mitchell had
straightened me out on it. He just looked far away into the distance and said, "If I HAD shot him on
purpose, do you think I'd still be HERE?"
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Maybe. Maybe not...
But I agreed and laughed and went home thinking the boogy-man nightmare was demolished.
Before long I though I returned to my original way of thinking. I took off the blinders that I'd forced
myself to wear at Mitchell's request. I had to face reality. Arnold had certainly hid the holster above my
cabin door to destroy us. He shot Buttons to rid MFF of all of us in one clean sweep.
Or did he?
Maybe...
Probably...
All I knew for certain was that I didn't want Owl and the baby near him and his guns. Innocent or
guilty didn't matter.
Why should we need drunken wild gunfire near our cabin? Or a robber for a friend? Why should I
force myself to consider any man who could do these things to be innocent of anything?
Mitchell was wrong!
***
Things got heavy again after Christmas. There is just something natural about the way drunks like to
pollute the New Year. Things were getting maximum rowdy. Acclimatized now, they camped
themselves round our cabin, got up a fire, and made an abominable racket. They refused to leave.
Arnold's sawed-off shotgun never left his side those days. I began to worry that he was planning
another drunk "accident" involving me or Owl or the baby. I wouldn't put anything past him.
Everything became too much. Owl was frightened and the baby was crying and we just were
watching the door expecting them to break it down any minute. If only there was someplace we could
go until the "party season" passed!
Frankly, we were really scared. Arnold's shotgun was belching fire and lead and the drunks were
becoming more rancid by the second. There came to us a moment of realization: for the baby's sake any
place would be safer than MFF, at least for one night. But where?
We packed our bags and walked to the Country Store, I telephoned Tim and Starla and made a
desperate plea for their assistance. Tom thought I was unduly paranoid. He could not comprehend the
danger. Besides, he expressed that his homefront was going through some changes -- now wasn't a
good time.
Bartholomew had no phone. We walked and hitched ten miles to his home and told him our
circumstances. He responded that staying overnight there was out of the question. He was short on food
and space -- and something I had not been aware of before -- his wife could not understand Owl in the
slightest. In fact, I was surprised to discover Bartholomew's wife was avid in her dislike for Owl. They
offered to take Sandy off our hands though. Now, I was shocked. Et tu Brute!
They could not give us a ride anywhere. Their vehicle was out of gas. We walked away down their
country road with snow beginning to fall heavily.
We hitched a ride into Lake Hill. By the time we got there the sky was pourin' down snow by the
buckets-full. We needed help. We found our feet walking in a loathsome direction -- towards the
damned "hippie church"!
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After what we'd been through with that sinister clown-factory, it hurt my pride bad to go to them for
help again -- but, damnit, I didn't know where else to turn. We stood in the snow looking at the solid
wooden door desperately trying to come up with some other alternative... God, what a thoroughly
ignominious feeling. What utter degradation to be paupers begging on their doorstep. Could we
possibly ask for their help with dignity, without having to manifest any absurd contriteness? Oh, they'd
like that wouldn't they...?
Forlornly I wondered if God had brought us back with some purpose in mind? If so I was totally
unprepared. I would bend. Perhaps I could forgive them. Whether Owl would forgive them was up to
her. It was so cold... I knocked on the door.
One of the nicer people opened the door and smiled out at us inquiringly. There always were a few
nice people there... She warmly let us inside and then she disappeared into an adjacent room where
there was some sort of meeting going on. Presently one of the ogres ambled out and pontificated his
face within inches of ours (Tennessee style...).
"What do you want?" he sleazed.
Humble pie really tastes like shit. Why do they call it pie? Why don't they call it humble shit?
While Owl changed Sandy's diapers, I asked him for a warm place to sleep; a floor would do. I went
on to assure him that we would leave in the morning and bother them no further. We'd had to leave
MFF because of the gunplay and now with the blizzard and all...
The man told me they were having a business meeting and would discuss my request afterwards.
Until then, we could sit there in the anteroom.
The meeting dragged on for a couple hours. I had a hunch they were deliberately prolonging it to see
us squirm. As I sat there I thought about this church. Whenever I'd told them about Arnold and the
shootings, they'd never said anything about his forthcoming eternal perdition as one would expect from
the likes of them; in fact, the elders told me outright that they thought I was lying to them. Few things
irk me more than being called a liar.
But the most peculiar thing of all was that Arnold and the others who carried guns and admitted to
doing armed robberies in other states and coming to Vermont to hide, often spent the night at the
"hippie church" in Lake Hill -- and were never turned away. Indeed, they were fed and clothed and
treated like gentlemen. If this church was so holy, why did they cater to those drunken thugs?
Was it possible that they had hired Arnold to run everyone off the land so that they could take it
over? There had been some fear of exactly that: Six hundred acres of pure beauty were enticing stakes.
But, how could anyone know for sure? Years later when I read about the stash of arms discovered in
the "church" and the FBI getting involved, I would remember my inklings.
The meeting was finally over. After praying and hugging, slowly walking to the door and parting into
the evening snow flurries, only a few elders remained. Their attitudes now changed hue, no longer
gentle and southern-hospitality-sugary, as they'd been a moment previous. Turning to us, they became
gloaty and insulting.
They asked us whyever would we come back to them? And: wasn't it obvious we were not welcome
after the way they'd expelled us previously?
Not wanting to make them mad, I didn't correct them by reminding them that we had left on our own
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volition. I did say, that it was water under the bridge and perhaps we could all make some heartfelt
reconciliation, at least for one night. I reminded them there was a blizzard outside and explained we
had left MFF because of gunplay near our cabin.
I especially referred to Arnold; the one who had shot Buttons last summer. They told me once again
that they didn't believe me -- that I was lying about Arnold shooting Buttons. I didn't get mad. I merely
told them I wasn't lying.
They said flatly, blizzard or no blizzard we wouldn't be welcome there.
I could hardly believe they would put us out in that weather. Then the bastard vouchsafed slyly that
our baby should not have to be punished because the parents were sinners -- so we could leave Sandy
Laughing River with them for the evening. He said they would take gooood care of her.
Sure you will, I thought. And imagine us trying to find her in the morning! Fie! No Thanks.
We knew how to keep her warm enough, blizzard or no blizzard. It wasn't like we hadn't been in a
winter one hell of a lot colder!
We walked out into the pitch-black night, all the darker until our eyes became accustomed, because
the house had been so well lit. Clouds hid the stars and moon. We couldn't see a hand in front of our
face. We tied each other's scarves, leaving a slit for our eyes, and walked along. As the snow swiftly
covered us with a layer of powder, Sandy cooed softly from the Jansport pack on my back.
I'm too thick skulled to learn lessons on the first go-round. I felt embarrassed and angry and tough -and right. Yeah, I know. I shoulda never gone back there for any reason under the sun... I couldn't have
expected anything other than what we got. They were incapable of giving anything better anyway.
Mercymongers. Assholes. And me! I was as bad as them. I had willingly lowered myself to their level
one more time.
We were better off walking in the snowstorm together free and decent than if we'd been accepted into
that poisonous company. Good Riddance. Out of sight, out of mind.
But where were we going to go?
We walked along the highway through town. I had sixteen dollars.
There was a motel. Where'd that come from? I'd never noticed it before, but there it was. We went to
the door. The business-like Vermont lady said a room would cost twelve dollars for the night, and be
out by ten AM.
She made me glad there was more to life than just my hippie peers. Otherwise we might be dead.
She didn't want our souls or our life's savings or our baby. She just wanted twelve dollars. Capitalism
works!
We showered and snuggled in the warm sheets of the real world. "Are there really people who sleep
in this clean silky warmth every night?" we wondered as we nestled in the soft, soft bed.
We'd drifted off to dreamland when the pounding shook us awake. The door was shaking. I sat up in
bed and looked. The door shook again.
"Who's there?" I asked in disbelief.
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"The police. Will you please open the door?"
I scrambled out of bed and slipped on my pants. I opened the door. Two snowy black-leathered
policemen entered. I shut the door.
"We've had a report of a baby being mistreated. Do you have a baby in there?"
"Yes. My wife and I have our daughter with us. I assure you she's healthy and safe."
"Yes sir. Where is the child?"
"She's sleeping right there with my wife... They're both pretty tired..."
"Yes sir. But we have to be sure. We'll have to take her with us and have her checked by a
physician..."
"What are you saying? There's nothing wrong with Sandy! Who told you otherwise? Elders from that
creepy church?"
"I'm sorry. We're not allowed to divulge the source of complaints."
"Oh! So anyone who wants to get someone in trouble can freely phone any social agency or police
department and use them to cause people grief and terror?"
"No. That would be illegal."
"Well, I assure you that's what's happened here!"
I went and picked up Sandy and brought her over to the police. She looked at them peacefully. She
was snug in her homemade flannel pajamas and blankets.
"Look! Does this look like an abused child?"
The cops looked at her close.
"No, she seems quite healthy to me. Would you mind taking off her diapers?"
I did as they requested.
"She has no rash. She has no cold. I'm sure it's obvious there are no bruises... Good gosh!"
"Yes. I really don't see any difficulty here, after all. What are your plans, Mr. Ollamh?"
The conversation had taken a more reasonable tact. I discussed our situation truthfully with the
policemen and they, in this case, didn't seem entirely without sensibilities.
They eventually retired leaving us to finish our night in peace.
The next day when we checked out we discovered it was the hotel owner who had called the police,
not the hippie church. She said she loved children and hated to see them in the hands of people like us.
I left her with a few blistering remarks of my own.
We returned to MFF and found things much quieted down.
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Maybe they felt a pang of quilt that they'd driven us off in a snowstorm, but the folks of the land
seemed to mellow considerably -- for a little while anyway.
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FORTY-FIVE
PREDATORS AND PREY CONTINUED
The winter months trudged on by.
Mudslide Mel and I had some pleasant afternoons swapping stories of other times and places and
especially past days at MFF when families were the first priority and when all the wanderers of the
roads met there and discovered the sweet life of hippie communities.
We sat in his warm bungalow in the cherry thicket, drinking coffee that had at least been through the
grounds once or twice. Mel read prodigiously and was proud of his collection of books. He even looked
distinguished in his reading glasses -- for a back-woods hippie.
We laughed when we recalled the gallon of juice me and Owl had made of boiled apples and brown
sugar and given to him as a parting present when we left in '76. He was supposed to drink it fresh but
he didn't know that. After it had fermented for days and days and days he finally got around to cracking
it open. Phew! He said it was surely the worst tasting, most vile smelling liquid he had ever known.
"Oh, my God! You were supposed to drink it fresh!" I remarked when he told me. "I hope you
dumped it out!"
"Hell no! It was a gift from FRIENDS! Besides alcohol was scarce on the land. I shared the bottle
with Twinky. He drank most of that gallon! I had a few cups myself and after them the rest went down
easier. It weren't bad if you drank it fast and held your nose... Hell! We thought that's the way the damn
concoction was meant to taste! We cussed you out with each gulp. Better believe it!"
He had me rolling on the floor laughing -- all the more because I knew the story was gospel.
One morning in a snowstorm I discovered a bleeding leg sticking out of a snow bank. I dug and
pulled -- and out came Twinky -- totally incoherent and gonzo. I carried him up to his A frame, laid him
in on his bunk, wrapped blankets around him and fixed him some hot tea.
He'd gotten so drunk he couldn't find his way home, then he'd fallen through the ice up to his knees
in the little creek, cutting his legs in so-doing -- and lain sprawled on the side of the path all night. It's a
wonder he hadn't died. Lucky he had anti-freeze...
Funny guy. He maintained he would have been all right if I'd left him alone. He was still mad about
Beth. Probably always will be...
There were worse vibes. The baddest came from the trappers. The trouble was, they were infecting
others.
It was the nasty old telephone game again... They were calling up the border station and asking those
officers why Owl was allowed in the United States? --And telling the officers that no one liked her and
that she had serious mental problems. The trappers didn't like Frenchies. "Frogs" they called them.
We'd been waiting for Owl's Immigration papers to be approved. And we'd thought it was just a
matter of time. But they called me into the border station to review the papers I had submitted. If I
intended to sponsor her I was supposed to have a regular job and a regular home and money in the
bank. They gaped at the blank places on the form. They wanted to verify with me that I didn't have any
job or job history or normal residence. They were scrutinizing me like I was an insect. At the end of the
interview they said that unless the papers were approved Owl would have to return to Canada. And they
added that they didn't see any hope of the papers being approved. So they wanted to know where Owl
was because they wanted to talk to her. I told them she was away visiting friends for a few days. They
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told me to send her in to see them when she returned. Sure.
When a week passed and Owl didn't show up the Customs station asked the local police to check her
out. As we were leaving the dentist two patrol cars stopped us and took her inside a car with them to
interrogate her privately while I stood holding Sandy on the sidewalk. When they released her she was
shaking like jello.
They were as rude as any cops I ever met in downtown LA or in Tennessee, or the panhandle of
Texas. They were hoodier than Tuscon's and that’s going some. I'd never dreamed New England, and
especially Vermont, could have such characters.
A few days later the cops stopped us again. This time they became aware of my abrogated prison
sentence for protesting and resisting the Vietnam War:
"We got us one of those COWARDS that wouldn't fight for his country. Spread 'em scum bag!"
Owl watched as they manhandled me.
Then they took Owl and Sandy in their patrol car and asked her ugly questions for an hour while I
stood aching at the curb.
They wondered how and why we traveled over the continent so much. I suppose they figured I was
some sort of active communist agitator -- someone that had escaped the United States Justice system
once and whom they now hoped to kick around a little until they could find another reason to give it a
stab.
I tried to tell them we just wanted to settle in the area peacefully and become members of the wide
community of Northern Vermont and Southern Quebec -- but everything I said just irritated them more.
They watched me as if I were a rodent in their hen house.
When we got back home safely to our cabin we shut the world out behind us when we closed the
door. The logs of our home were brown and smelled of pine. The frost on the windows was crystal
winter art for our pleasure. Sandy played with her toys and watched her mother with big blue eyes. And
Owl watched her with gentle brown eyes. Never had I seen such love. Never had I known such love
existed. This was OUR world...
A Customs officer mailed us a request to come in to talk to him immediately. I telephoned and set the
date off a week, hoping the weather would warm up to where we could travel with the baby.
Over the following days they were on us like crabs -- every time we left the land. They watched for
us whenever we walked out to the post office to check our mail. I couldn't take Owl or Sandy with me
on those walks anymore. Cops and Immigration officers stopped me nearly every day and asked me
where she was. I said I didn't know... They wouldn't leave us alone.
Whenever I went to get the mail I avoided them by keeping myself in between several of the other
MFF residents and hoping the cops would have a hard time differentiating one bearded rascal from
another. But once I happened to get off a ways by myself and a cop passed and spotted me. I ducked
into the trees behind the post office while he spun his car around. From there I ran from bush to bush
and tree to tree until I was safe again on the land. After that I didn't even go out to check the mail every
day. They prowled the entrance to the land stopping residents and asking them where we were.
This situation was not in any way healthy for a delicate young mother like Owl -- nor for Sandy or
even for myself. We had to do something. They were intent on separating us. There was no two ways
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about it. They were going to take Owl and the baby away from me and drop them off in Canada. They
were going to take Owl and Sandy away from me... They were going to take Owl and Sandy away from
me!!!
It was obvious that our life in Northern Vermont was finished -- forever. Forget any plans of making
Vermont our home. Never would that be. Our only hope was escape and we'd have no hope of doing
that successfully until the weather warmed. A lengthy hitchhiking journey with a child to Arizona or
California would be as stupid as sticking our heads in a bear trap. But we had to think of something!
Wandering Robin returned to the land. I hadn't seen him for years! He told me about a place he knew,
an old Vermont commune that had been around since the 1930's -- a strange place that was supposed to
be based on children rather than adults. Owl and I resolved to hitchhike there. If it was like Wandering
Robin said maybe the people there would be the gentle friends Sandy and Owl deserved. How
wonderful it would be to be surrounded by people who loved children and put them first. Our hearts
ached for such a dream to become real at last.
Getting out of the Park unseen took some cunning. Owl and Sandy hid in the trees near the road
while I hitched a ride. The cops were primarily looking for her, not for me, so it was relatively safe. But
I didn't want to talk to them. We had good luck. A car pulled over to give me a ride and Owl and Sandy
scrambled out of the trees and we all managed to squeeze in.
In Newport we telephoned Tim Roostik at his job and told him about the way the cops had been
messing with us and asked him if he would give us a ride a few miles south where hitchhiking would
be safer. He said he wouldn't be getting off work till after dark and invited us to spend the night at his
place and we'd get an early start in the morning.
Tim and Starla were two of the heartiest people I have ever known. Eating supper with them and
their children was an event. Chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy. The children were full of stories,
happy. Starla asked the kids school questions while we ate, mathmatics and history; when they
answered correctly Starla beamed at me. "See how smart they are?" She was a proud mom.
Starla was pretty -- and sexy too. Her voice was whispery and her eyes were hot and limpid at the
same time, and they tended to linger deliciously. She was a mother hen to her children, full of love and
concern, and to her friends she was a beautiful sensual woman who stirred their deepest emotions.
After supper we smoked some of Tim's fine homegrown pot and talked until I couldn't keep my eyes
open. I asked where we could roll out our sleeping bags. They were adamant that we should sleep in
their own bed and they would sleep in blankets on the living room floor. It was too much for me. They
were just too kind. I hugged them both dearly and thanked them from the depths of my heart but I
could not take their comfortable bed from them. No way. That was just too much. I rolled out our bags
on the floor and disregarding all their protests Owl and I crawled inside and closed our eyes for the
night.
But sleeping proved to be difficult. I heard their bed rockin' and rockin' in the other room and Starla's
passionate moans left nothing to the imagination. She seemed entirely unable to stifle them, or she saw
no need to. I was wide awake. Every nerve in my body was awake... Owl giggled.
So for well over an hour we listened and felt the old wooden house tremble and watched the silk
shadows from the starlit window drift across the strange room. Owl went to sleep.
I heard my name whispered. I rose on one elbow. Here they were, Tim and Starla, like two little
children, crawling out to me on all fours! And talking softly so as not to wake Owl (Because Owl
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seemed too fragile for this...) Whispering exuberantly, Tim was saying:
"Come on Rom! Come to bed with us!"
And Starla, her eyes smoldering like coals glowing in the hearth, was saying:
"Wanna fuck me Rom? Come on to our room! Let's have some fun!"
Tim had my shoulder in his hand and they were both looking at me like something wonderful.
I hesitated and looked up at him and told him:
"Dear friend Tim, I must confess to you that I haven't a bi-sexual bone in my body..."
Whereupon he laughed gently and responded:
"Ha! I haven't either! STARLA WANTS YOU! Let's party!"
Still, though I wanted Starla then with a glowing passion, I couldn't accept this wonderful invitation
-- and I was ashamed that I couldn't. I begged off.
Now having dreamed of the torrid possibilities of that evening for many years since, I understand the
suffering of those who have been too timid in such a moment! Alas, when we are young we fear strange
beauty -- when we are older and wiser we wish we had grasped more!
I guess I was afraid of the dark. My loss. They gave up easily; bid me good night sleep, turned, and
crawled on all fours back to their bed. I wonder if I've described it as beautiful as it was?
In the morning Tim drove us a fair ways south without a word about the night before. We hugged
him warmly and he drove off leaving Owl and Sandy and I standing on the roadside watching his car
disappear down the snowy highway. It was good to be alone again. Sometimes even the warmest and
best of people seem to encroach too dearly into other's lives...
The weather was a little cold for hitchhiking. We found a cafe in a small town. I thought we might sit
in there drinking coffee and find someone going our way but a large part of the day passed with no
bites. Late afternoon found us back on the road again as night approached and we still had many miles
to go. We would have to find somewhere to sleep.
There was a little town off the highway a quarter mile. We walked in hoping to find an open cafe but
there was nothing like that. We did pass a beautiful old stone church covered with ivy and I wished it
were the old days when travelers could count on a church like that to give shelter. Strange how the
world has changed. There was no one about in the tiny town. There were no stores or cafes, no reason
to stick around. The temperature was dropping perceptively as evening approached and we were
exhausted. We returned to the highway.
There were some head-tall bushes, a long row of them. We found a place where we could crawl in
and not be seen. We rolled out our bags and blankets and went to sleep. We were more tired than we
realized. It was more than fatigue; it was all the stress we'd endured lately at MFF. The bedding in the
bushes was very warm. Sandy and Owl were at least as tired as I was. We slept long after the sun came
up.
The day was so warm! Snow melted all around us revealing the golden grass. No one knew we were
there in the bushes. We didn't get up at all. We had a large jug of orange juice and a bag of precooked
food. The day passed and night came again. We slept deep and long.
In the morning I left Owl and Sandy in each other's arms in the warm bedding and went for a walk
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into the town for half an hour to search again for a cafe or store. But there wasn't one. I was feeling
somewhat disoriented after the thirty-six hours of sleep. When I returned to the bushes the whole place
looked different with the snow all melted away. I searched up and down and could not find Owl and
Sandy and our little nest in the bushes! There were still a few little patches of snow among the golden
grasses and it all seemed trampled as if deer had been walking all over the place. I couldn't find my
own path or any sign of the opening into the bushes. I remember being so confused; it's like a blur.
As I was looking a police car came along. That's a blur too. I think he told me to move on. I was
afraid to tell him about Owl and Sandy sleeping in the bushes. He checked me out and drove away and
I went back to looking for my family. An hour passed and I still hadn't found them and the cop
returned. He parked and watched me.
He must have thought I was looking for stashed weed or something. He ordered me to get going. I
had no recourse but to tell him I was looking for my wife. He didn't care. I think he didn't believe me. I
wondered if she had gotten up and walked into town looking for me. I walked into the town and looked
around. No sign of her. I returned to the bushes and called for her. No answer. The cop returned again,
watched me a few minutes and drove away. I ran into the town again. No Owl. No Sandy. I ran back to
the bushes and called. Still no answer. I began to wonder if Owl and suddenly taken Sandy and left me,
just hitchhiked away alone. That wasn't possible was it?
The cop pulled up beside me. I asked him if he had seen her walking. He was sullen, grumpy. I
described Owl to him. He looked very disinterested; he was obviously getting angry. No he hadn't seen
her. And he was fed up with me. He said it was beginning to look like he was going to have to take me
to jail. WHOA!! Then I'd really be lost from Owl and Sandy! I was freaking. Then it was one of those
moments when my guts take over and I gave him a rather emotional piece of my mind. It was God
energy. Or Goddess energy. Whatever it was it stopped him short, at least momentarily. He drove off.
My brain felt burnt out. I didn't know what to do. Maybe she was walking down the road. But which
way? I stuck out my thumb and started walking. If she's walking down the road looking for me I have
to catch up with her. She could be three miles ahead. Plus I've got to get away from that cop before he
takes me to jail! I walked about half a mile before something stopped me. Where the heck was I going?
Away alone? Was I crazy? I stood there letting everything sink in. This wasn't right. I turned and
walked back to the roadside bushes and looked up and down the long rows. Any minute the cop would
be back. I was praying.
Suddenly a realization swept over my mind. I realized I was facing the wrong direction! I was
looking in the bushes on the wrong side of the highway! I crossed the road and went a ways further and
there was the path -- and there was Owl and Sandy still sleeping!
We gathered up our gear and walked hurriedly along the road trying to thumb a ride; Sandy nestled
snug under Owl's coat. I held Owl's hand and pulled her along. We were almost running.
We had to get away from there before that cop came back. But it was an old slow highway on a cold
dreary morning and there were no cars on the road. Then out of the blue one came along and I waved
my hand at him, probably too anxiously. But he pulled over and we scrunched in as fast as we could. It
was providence. Soon we were miles and miles away from there.
The commune consisted of a group of buildings occupied by very few people. A man and his wife
were in charge. He was upset when I told him I had never read anything he had written. He thought of
himself as an important author. Truthfully I had never heard of him. He was a communist and he had
created the commune in the 1930's. So he had been there a long time, like over forty years... And the
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place was famous I guess in some circles.
I told him truthfully that my wife and myself and our daughter desperately needed a safe haven to
spend the remainder of the winter and that's why we had come. He said it wouldn't do. He went on to
vilify me with a stern discourse that went on for about an hour. He said he was concerned about Sandy
Laughing River. He said we should give her to him. I lost my temper. From that point on I knew it was
hopeless that he and I would ever get along.
His wife lived on the land too. They were separated. It was a strange situation. They totally stayed
away from each