The Road Through Oblivion

I just spent five hours driving from Anacortes, Washington, to Portland, Oregon, and I'm struggling to remember something about the trip. I don't do long drives alone much anymore, perhaps because the time is filled with little more than background noise, creating few memories and much lost time.

On this trip, A cop was directing traffic around a stalled 18-wheeler in Anacortes.

I heard the guy from Breaking Bad interviewed on Fresh Air. Later, I played some vintage Paul Simon. Still Crazy after all These Years left me morose.

I pulled into line behind a silver Prius at the gas station on the Swinomish reservation. After he'd filled his tank, the driver gave me a friendly wave, probably because I drive a Prius too. As a group, I think Prius drivers are constantly amazed that anyone chooses to drive something other than a Prius, unless maybe they need a truck.

I took the scenic route to the interstate, down a back road and through Mount Vernon. There was a train of seemingly infinite length blocking the road in Mount Vernon. The growling wall of a thing rattled and squealed through the heart of town for a nearly 15 minutes while the drivers of cars and trucks bound for Seattle and Portland and the Mount Vernon Food Co-Op stared vacantly at traffic lights shining red in all outbound directions.

When I finally reached I-5 and turned south, past Dick's Restaurant Supply, I had a flashback of the Christmas when I gave my mother a set of restaurant-quality chef's knives. She said she had always worried about what would happen if someone broke into the house and attacked her with one of her old knives. “Lord knows,” she said, “the newspaper would have reported I was killed with a blunt instrument.”

As evening came I fumbled with the MP3 player and the radio. The windshield wipers were on sometimes, off more often. Mostly I just drove snake-eyed, nothing registering but unexpected movements.

I vaguely remember glancing at the Space Needle and the Tacoma Dome, and reflecting for the thousandth time about how awful the residents of Federal Way must feel about living in a town named “Federal Way.” Puyallup may be pronounced as if it refers to a malodorous whallop in the face, but at least that name has color and history. As for Federal Way, I suspect nobody showed up for the naming committee meeting.

At 9:30 p.m., about 20 miles north of Vancouver, Washington, I called Susan to let her know my progress. She was still up and sounding fresh. She let on that she was a little pissed that I would be spending the night at our condo in Portland. She'd already staged it to make the perfect first time impression on the girl friend she's bringing down to see it next week, and she reminded me to put everything back exactly the way she'd left it.

The condo did look nice when I opened the door a half-hour later. There was, however, an unfortunate shell necklace laid around a bucket-sized candle in the middle of the small dining room table. I stared at it for a while, but left it alone.

So as not sully the kitchen, I walked down to the corner McMenamins for a late dinner. The server dropped a brochure on the table promising that I would become a “Cosmic Tripster” if I got my McMenamins passport stamped at every McMenamins in the world.

It's an intriguing idea. I wonder what I would remember.

Killing an Old Tree

The soggy, gray winter finally gave way to a weekend with crisp blue skies and scattered flowers, and I decided that it was finally time to take out the gnarled old eyesore of a tree that lived by our winding driveway.

I'd left it standing when I cleared the brush away from it, hoping it would leaf out and be more attractive when it had more room, but it had been stunted and maimed by battles with choker vines and encroaching brush, and its branches remained twisted and bristling with bare, misdirected twigs.

The trunk was little more than a foot in diameter, so I went to the shed and pulled out an ax rather than a chainsaw, thinking it would be good exercise.

My first blow with the ax stung like I'd struck a rock. Neglect had dulled the cutting edge of my old axe so that I might as well have been swinging a baseball bat.

I couldn't find a file or stone to sharpen it with, so I drove up to Browne's and picked up a ten inch bastard cut file. I laid it on the counter and told the clerk, “I want this little bastard.” She took my money without a word and tried to avoid eye contact.

My attack with the sharpened ax felt little different. Each blow stung right through my heavy work gloves.

I put my body into it, starting with my hands split on the ax handle, building momentum with my shoulders as I came around, until my hands slid together and I whipped the ax head into the cut.

One hundred blows cut a notch halfway through the tree. When I stripped off my sweatshirt, steam rose off my skin in the chilly air.

“Where is it going to fall?” Susan asked.

I shook my head. The tree was so twisted and gnarled that I couldn't even guess where its center of gravity lay. I'd notched it on the side facing the house, parallel to the driveway, but there was no safe bet.

Another hundred chops and I could no longer see what kept the tree standing. I stepped back to look at the damage I'd done when I heard the wrenching sound of the old tree giving up. First a crack, then the crackle of wood fibers stretching and breaking and then the screech of a huge, rusty hinge as the tree majestically leaned farther and farther away from me. It hit the ground with a soft whomph as the tree's branches cushioned its fall, then it settled with a sound that could have been a sigh.

The old tree looked even more tired, twisted and wizened at rest than when it stood. Looking at it, I felt pangs of sadness, rather than triumph. The tree had fought its way through its youth and finally been shaped into a caricature of what it might have been, had its life been easier.

My back ached, my hands throbbed and I could barely raise my arms, but I'd made promises to Susan and if I was to keep them I needed to start cutting it up right away.

But when I tried to fuel up my chainsaw the fuel cap cracked and came apart in my hand. At that hour there was no replacement on the island and the thought of plugging it with a rag conjured images of a motorized Molotov cocktail.

I called my friend Pete at his home on the upper half of the island, and he promised to bring his chainsaw with him when he came over for our early Sunday morning run.

In Sunday's morning chill, we ran the winding trail through American Camp, across its prairie and down to the beach. As we ran along the shore, a promising rim of blue appeared on the horizon, separating the flat, gray sky from the flat gray sea.

I called a break on a long uphill stretch and while I caught my breath, Pete talked about his 92-year-old uncle with an eidetic memory. He said his uncle remembers names, dates and places of family events that happened even before he was born. Until the past few years, he'd worked in a Sonoma Valley vineyard and grew tomatoes he sold under the label: “The World's Best Tomatoes.”

Pete wants to write a fitting eulogy for his uncle while the old man is still breathing. He does a lot of family eulogies. He has a gift for it.

After we finished our run, Pete pulled his chainsaw and a half-gallon of chain oil and a container of fuel mix out of the trunk of his car, and made sure the saw started before he left it with me.

When he drove away, Susan set the table with a plate of eggs, sausage and chunks of the warm, crusty bread she'd baked while I was running. After we ate, I put on work clothes and walked out to cut up the tree. It looked sad and uncomfortable at rest, an old soldier no longer able to stand his post.

Pete's chainsaw growled and chewed through the wood, sputtering now and then like most seldom-used machinery. Once, the saw got pinched and I had to open the case to reseat the chain, but I forgot to tighten one nut when I put it back together. The nut vibrated loose when I started back up and the chain to flew off track again in a spectacular explosion of unmuffled motor noise. The nut itself fell off and disappeared into the thick layer of bark, pine needles and wood chips around the old tree.

I scavenged a compatible nut off my own chainsaw and finally got back to work. By the time I cut the last section of wood, I was moving in painfully slow motion; a parody of the old man I pretend not to be.

When I was still in my full youthful gallop, I'd marveled at how slowly and steadily my father, and his father, worked their truck gardens. Now I saw their hands picking up the stacks of wood as I loaded the old tree's dismembered body into my battered pick-up and drove it the short distance to our burn pile.

Susan still fairly danced around, raking up the fallen branches and the accumulated winter's blow-down from the big Douglas firs and hemlocks on our property.

After I showered off the sweat and saw dust and tossed my clothes in the washer, I drove over and returned Pete's saw while Susan stayed home to tend the old tree's funeral pyre. On the way home I picked up burgers at our favorite pub and we sat on lawn chairs and ate while we watched the fire burn down.

Now the day has ended and the orange glowing embers and the last flickering flames in the burn pile look like a melting jack-o-lantern.

Susan is still attending the fire, sitting with her e-reader, sipping wine in the smokey warmth of the gnarled old tree's smoldering ashes. From time to time Marv, our black Lab, gets a nose full of smoke and snuffles and sneezes, reminding us that he is curled up just a few feet away, invisible in the liquid darkness.

Finally, I defer to the chill and my aching back and leave Susan and the fire for the comfort of the house.

The morning will bring a new day, curious to see if we can still to stand our posts.

Death Makes a Courtesy Call

   Death stopped by last night to see how I was doing. It didn't touch me, it just paid its respects and reminded me that we are scheduled to meet professionally within the next few years, so – you know – I should probably be getting ready, burning all the embarrassing stuff, making sure everyone knows where the will is, think seriously about funerals and final arrangements.

    It occurred to me that I'll be 65 years old later this year. Susan and I just got back from an event in Palm Springs where we hung out with retirees who, to a person said, “There's no reason to be here if you don't play golf.”

    I asked one woman, part of an older couple who was worth a few hundred million dollars, how she'd spent her day.

    “Busy” she said. “I was up before 6 a.m. this morning, walking my dog on the golf course, then from 8:00 until 9:00 I worked out with my personal trainer, then I played 18 holes of golf with two girl friends and one of their daughters, then we had lunch out, and by the time I got showered and took a nap I had to start getting ready for this event.”

    A male guest noted that he tries to get out on the golf course early every day. “I like to finish up by 11:00 or 11:30 A.M. so I have the rest of the day free."

    These are good people who were successful in their business lives, wise (or fortunate) in their investments, and generous with their philanthropy. I admit to being jealous of their financial freedom and ability to literally save lives and make dreams come true with their wealth. But confronting them for a brief period of time, surrounded by people who are desperate to “facilitate their philanthropy” was a little unsettling.

    I'm angry with myself for not seeking more insight into their world and their comfort level with their lives.

    When death stopped by last night, the thing that immediately worried me was what if Susan died first. I really have no clue about putting on a funeral or a memorial service. I doubt, at this moment, that I could compile a list of invitees. One used to be able to grab the Christmas Card list. I suppose these days you just post to the deceased person's Facebook friends.

    From the time we got married a quarter century ago, we always said we wanted to go together. Tonight I imagined the logistics of one of us dragging the other's pain-wracked body out to the berm by the pond where the frogs serenade us in the spring, having a final kiss, then calling the Sheriff to come collect our bodies, hanging up and fulfilling our suicide pact.

    Of course there are the logistical problems. We don't own a pistol, we'd have to arrange to have someone look after our dog, and since we don't get cell phone coverage out here in the sticks, I'd have to get a long cord so we could bring the base station for our wireless phone out onto the deck so we'd be able to call. And what if, after one partner is dispatched, the other realizes we forgot to hit send on the email to our family, so the surviving spouse has to run back into the house, finds the computer is off, then discovers that it has to finish 44 updates so please don't turn it off or unplug it . . .

    This whole death thing seems less scarey than annoying.

    But but death will come. No way to know when, but at my age it's easy to figure out that it will be sooner rather than later. I certainly hope I don't end up being one of those 110 year olds who shows up on the news gumming birthday cake and saying the secret to life is eating legumes, drinking a glass of whiskey every day, and never masturbating.

    On his 90th birthday, Studs Terkel told Garrison Keillor that when he was young, he had wondered who the hell wants to live to be 90. “Now I know,” he said. “It's every 89-year-old I meet.”

    Well, the time has come to think about it, the time to deal with quantity versus quality. My health and money may run out at different times. What happens when I can't feed myself, deal with my own bodily functions and it's clear that I'm not going to get better? I wonder whether I'll recognize when I'm starting that final glide path, further and further down, until I reach that truly hopeless spiral into death's arms?

        In his final days, my father was aware of it and it made him mad. "I'm not finished yet,” he said. He still had things to do that he'd been planning for a long time.

    I wonder if many of those wealthy, aging retirees in Palm Springs feel that, somehow, they have finished.

    Someone told me Palm Springs's nickname is “God's waiting room.” It seemed like it a pleasant enough place to wait, if you are finished.

Good Dog

Marv, his black fur smooth as velvet, lays his warm head on my lap and looks up at me.

Mark Knofler plays the Sultans of Swing, backed by the chorus of frogs in the pond outside my library window.

Marv smiles at me as I scratch behind his good ear, and he rumbles contentedly when I cup his soft graying jowls in my hand and tell him he is my favorite dog in the world.

Diana Krall croons Let's Face the Music and Dance, and Marv sighs and ambles over to his bed and curls up, positioning himself so he can watch me.

Maybe I'm good for another pet, maybe a moonlit walk, maybe just a smile and a sense of belonging.

Whatever he wants.

And Marv is thinking, whatever he needs.