I Have No Choice

October 30, 2023

I’m not looking forward to winter. Oh. I enjoy the winter woods and winter woods activities. What I don’t enjoy about winter is that it gets dark earlier. It’s a lot longer from sundown to putting my head down for the night. The ramifications of longer evenings are a tough reality inherent in this life-transition that has been imposed upon me.

Copious amounts of 86 Proof Puerto Rican liquor sedated me throughout last fall, winter, and spring of this year. Double shots. Straight up. Chase it with some beer. Often until one or two in the morning. And that last double? I would spike it with something to knock me out so I could go to sleep.

I’ve been off the liquor for several months now and drink very little beer these days. It feels great not waking up with a hangover and the other complications that come with drinking beyond excessively over that length of time. I’ve moved beyond that and feel no inclination toward it. This winter will be devoid of 86 Proof.

I’ve had to ponder a question a few times lately. The question? It’s one that pops into my head when I’m encountering people wherever I go. And I ask myself, “What would my life look like today had I gone about life in the much more standard and conventional way?”

There is a part of me that wants to be a little envious of setting down deep roots and staying in one place.

There can be a lot of good fruit in that. But my life has never been conventional or standard. I think that a lot of my unconventional modus operandi is associated with my childhood and youth. I experienced a lot of embarrassing rejection in the public-school social arena. There was a definite “has” and “has not” thing involved. Early on, I met the caste that I had been cast into. I developed my own coping mechanisms to deal with broader society and the issues it presented.

Oh. And there was the Hippy Movement and the British Invasion that brought a beat and sound to music that was spot-on for the age. It’s not that American rock bands weren’t cranking out some great sounds and great tunes. Those guys were doing an awesome job pioneering new sounds and lyrics that motivated people to live unconventionally. Sure. There were extravagances and excesses. I dare say that the extravagances and excesses housed within the way of life of these revolutionaries in the sixties and seventies can’t hold a candle to the extravagances and excesses that exist in this post-modern era.

Then there is that other part of me that says, “But what an adventure this life of mine has been!”

Good golly. I’ve lived in three countries and eleven states. I’ve seen things, experienced things, and lived things that the vast majority never will. A few of these things I pray never enter into the life-repertoire of another person.

I've been shot at twice and had knives pulled on me twice. I’ve seen the Northern Lights. Numerous times I’ve been amazed at the phosphorescence in the tail wash reaching as far as I could see while standing on the stern of a trawler at night.  I’ve been stalked by a four-legged cougar on the Cumberland Plateau. I’ve stared a large barracuda in the face at close distance while snorkeling off the Grand Bahama. It was dialed in on the flash of my Army dog tags that hung around my neck. I’ve drilled holes in three feet of ice and fished through them on frozen lakes in Canada. Once, in Canada, I skinned a black bear with just my pocket knife. The bear measured six-foot two from tip of nose to tip of tail. It made a great rug and conversation piece. Oh. There's so much more. 

Then along came Shirli in the fall of 1998. Ha. What an adventure she and I had together.

If I am going to be true to myself, I have no choice. If I am going to honor Shirli’s memory as best I can, I have no choice. I have to keep living the way I know how to not just survive but live and look forward to living. I have to keep living my life where the edge of uncertainty that is part of adventure is alive and present. That edge is an enticing lure. Its aroma is exciting. Especially for someone who has rambling fever in his soul.

 

My Eyes Still Leak

October 26, 2023

I am beginning to discover my own personal rhythm … my own personal groove.

At first glance, my life is seemingly without routine. A closer studied view reveals that, in my own personal groove, there is some routine that I have adopted and get along quite well with. And I simply do not get into a hurry anymore. I’m not running on that hamster wheel anymore. I did all that running. I don’t run anymore. Time schedules only very marginally have any place in this groove that seems to suit me to a “T”.

Everything changes. I constantly remind myself of that. We cling to the past. We hold it precious. In some respects, we are dutifully bound to keep the past alive … to keep it present … to keep living out the ramifications of all our past experiences. Our past experiences are the investments that have molded us into the image of ourselves that we are today. Everything changes continually. Yet, though we cling to the past to keep it present with us, and though the future is at best unclear, the great imperative is to keep moving forward into this future that is unfolding. No one truly knows what sunrise will bring on any given day.

I’m digging deep inside of myself these days. A lot of what I’m doing, a lot of what I’m writing in this journal, is simply the fruit born of my own self-psychoanalysis in an attempt to better grapple with the realities that now surround me. Studying myself. Now that’s an interesting course of study. At the same time, the faith-factor motivates me to deeper levels of trust in the Unseen Hand that has been guiding and directing my life all these years of trying to know and understand the Divine Reality. So, in the mix of these two, I am very definitely on a faith-journey. Sometimes I think I know the direction the journey is taking. But I am a long way from being able to say “I know that I know that I know without a doubt.”

I miss Shirli every day and every night. How can I possibly not? And right now, after that long ramble to South Carolina to visit John and family, the missing is painfully acute. After near sixteen months of wrestling with this reality … sixteen months that at once seem both an instant and a lifetime … my eyes still leak and there is still a heaviness in my soul that is seemingly inescapable.

More than one person has told me, “Well, you’ve just got to get over it and move on.” I think that is the most ignorant thing anyone could ever say to a grieving person. You don’t get over it. You don’t move on. You learn to accept it and work through it so you can function and get along at some point on the backside of it.

It’s four in the morning. Sleep eluded me at two. I’m meeting a dear friend for lunch today. I had hoped to be well-rested.

 

Going Fishin'

October 25, 2023

It’s hard to let go of things. It’s healthy to let go of things.

The last time Shirli and I camped together was on the occasion of my sixty-eighth birthday at Open Pond in the Conecuh National Forest.

Shirli wanted her own tackle box. I bought the green one for her not long after we moved to Alabama from New Jersey and outfitted it with a few things for her. That green box became our shared grab it and go tackle box when we’d go camping or fishing. On our last trip camping, Shirli noticed that the handle was broken and ordered the red one for me as a birthday present when we got home. Both of them have been sitting here all this time waiting for me to make the contents transfer.

I couldn’t do it. Then I went through a season where I didn’t want to do it. That side of me still didn’t want to do it because, like never before, I knew it would evoke memories and emotions. It did that but it is now done. 

When Shirli and I began downsizing at the blue house in Fairhope, when it came to certain stuff, she would say, “Take a picture of it and move it along.” Her voice and words echoed in my mind. Picture taken. I thought about putting the green box in the back room and dealing with it another day. Cradling it with one arm like a baby, I walked it out to the big can and deposited it.

There are some hard things associated with this life-transition.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. I’m doing it. I’m taking up fishing again as a pastime. I’m also thinking about taking up fly-tying again. I really enjoyed tying flies and still have all my kit. I need to check my fly-head cement. It may be set up by now. I need to attempt tying a fly to see what challenges my dexterity and vision present at this stage of things. Streamers and larger stuff should be no problem. Those tiny hooks might be a little testy. Oh. I still have my waders too. Nice ones at that.

So, I’m going fishin’ with a brand-new tackle box replete with its own set of precious memories.

What I’m seeing of me these days reminds me of myself before I took that bad moral turn in my teens. What I enjoyed then is still what I enjoy now. It is in and through them that I am best able to return, as much as possible, to the innocence that I knew in my childhood and early teens rambling the woods, fence-rows, and field-rows of that little hardscrabble farm where I was reared.

Not only so. The woods became my “safe-place” when I was little more than a child. I learned that there are very few things in the woods that can hurt me as a person physically. I also learned that there is absolutely nothing in the woods that can hurt me as a person emotionally.

The woods are still my safe-place.

 

 

 

 

Something Of A Vision-Quest

 October 24, 2023

The miles traveled behind me far exceed the miles I have left to travel. How do I maximize and milk the most out of them that I possibly can?

Now that’s a serious question that begs an answer.

Reality is what it is. I can’t change reality. I have to face reality for what it is. I can look back over all those years, even to photos of myself in diapers, and attach times and dates. Looking ahead? None of us know the day, hour, or circumstances of our final Rite of Passage. How much of life do I have left? I do not know. Therefore ...

I started a letter to him last evening. The last time I wrote was not long after we received Shirli’s cancer diagnosis. We had been out of touch for a few years. I received a reply from him a couple months after Shirli died. I had hoped to work him into my rambling even if it meant having to get another passport. His reply was mostly a burst of vitriol on a number of subjects. He then informed me that he had changed and for me not to bother coming to see him.

I’m not surprised. Shirli and I watched him isolate himself over the years. Not just geographically out on the edge of remote Canada. More so socially and quite dramatically at that. But it still hurts. We had many great conversations on many subjects … from faith to fishing, we had it all covered. We had a lot of good laughs laughing together over our own antics. We hunted and fished together. He and I go back to 1999 out on the NW Kansas prairie. I can only feel for him and pray for him. I know the stories of the throes he endured in his career of pastoral ministry that prompted him to leave it behind and move into a lifestyle of seclusion devoid of boards, councils, and outright mean church folk.

Outside looking in, it would appear that the most I am doing is planning and going on rambles. Honestly, there’s not a lot planning goes into these rambles. They are quite spontaneous. And I always travel with an Atlas. Hah. [Don't tell Google Maps.]

There is a part of me that would definitely like to have some kind of flexible plan in the going forward department. But I don’t. And I feel no urgency to rationalize some program of steps that may or may not work out like I thought they would. Life has enough disappointments already and I’m still recovering from the emotional bludgeoning that I’ve been through. My emotions, although they are now in something of a different and unfamiliar realm, are still heightened. I have to pay attention that I do not allow emotion to override reason and make decisions that will come back to bite me on my arse.

On the inside looking out, I have begun something of a vision-quest. The initial thought of it came on the way home from South Carolina. No. I’m not brutalizing myself before having my breasts pierced to hang from the sacred tree at a Sundance. But I need a divine visitation and a little insight into where I’m headed where all I can see is fog.

 

They Pissed Down My Back

October 23, 2023

It was already well passed one in the afternoon when I mustered enough motivation to drive into town. Wasn’t a “want-to”. It was a “had-to”. Important and timely papers requiring my signature to be notarized. Signed. Stamped. Mailed. One less thing to be sucking on my mental energies.

It was a craving. Of all things, I had a craving for a #1 Whopper, fries, and a Vanilla Crème Soda. I’d take it to that memorable park, sit where we sat, recall soul-warming memories, and take my unhealthy lunch outdoors. So, I did.

It’s interesting to me. Those few months ago it was so difficult to revisit places that evoke memories. Now? It’s not so difficult these days.

When the flow of memories come to stir these depths of emotions that I never knew before Shirli died, I feel so detached from this world and everything going on in it. It comes and it goes, but, at times, I’m not even aware of the wind in the trees or the traffic on the streets. The experience adds an interesting touch to the surrealism inherent in this unfolding life-transition. There is, very definitely, a deepening spiritual aspect involved in this. And, like the other facets of this rock being chipped away at by forces that can’t be seen, it can’t be forced or manipulated to suit my own personal preferences and fancies.

I have to write. There is no way around it. Writers write. I’ve been doing it, in one form or another, most all of my adult life. I wrote some really dark poetry in my early twenties. I was living a really dark life and way beneath my human dignity back then. I still have those poems in a folder. That folder has made every move that I have made since I was in my early twenties. Imagine that. That’s a lot of moves. One of them was going out-of-country into Canada. One of them was returning in-country to the States.

This journaling thing?

I’m just talking to myself. Hah. That’s something that I do a lot of anymore and, for the life of me, I can’t tell you when, this side of July 4^th last, that I started doing it. Between talking to myself, with Shirli, and with Jesus, I’m saying something all the time to one of the three of us.

Canada. I loved living in Canada though it is not my home and native land. I loved that church. I loved those people. I gave myself to them as fully as I knew how. New people were coming to church. Three years in, the power holders in the church pissed down my back. So, I moved my wife, two small children, and all our personal effects back to the States. We landed in Virginia for a while before relocating from there to Fairhope. That was a good long while ago. Where did the years go?

 

 

 

My Affections For These Mountains

Ramble Log - October 11, 2023

It’s really peaceful sitting here beside Tumbling Creek after a day of meandering my way here and an overnight last night at the horse camp. Ah. There’s something about the sound of a babbling stream. It’s a sound that never grows old to my ears.

How far to get here today? I don’t know. How long to get here? Pretty much all day.

I was on the road at eight and got here at four. 

The drive was a good one with a lot of time on secondary roads seeing the side of America that I love to see. At least until I got close and tried using my GPS to guide me in. Talk about a ride in the mountains that it took me on. I backtracked and found my way in after stopping and asking directions at the local hardware store. Shirli and I were here only once and that was quite a while ago. And I missed the first turn the first time because they tore down the BBQ shack on the corner and built a bank there in its place. Talk about screwing with your important landmarks.

It's supposed to rain tonight so I didn’t set up my table. It’s a no cooking night. It’s amazing how simple the maintenance of life can be with a few basic items in my little pantry. I hope it does rain. The road in was really dusty and Fred could use a rinsing. Oh. And I like the sound of rain on the roof. Not only is it a comforting sound. It evokes memories of the home that I grew up in. It had a tin roof and no insulation in the attic space. You heard the rain on the tin roof. Music. Music to my ears.

I love these mountains.

Why do I love these mountains the way I do?

It’s deeper than the fact that Shirli and I played up here quite a lot and together developed emotional attachments based on common experience. These mountains, rivers, creeks, and streams were home to some important ancestors of mine way back there. Shirli found three Cherokee grandmothers back there in my ancestry on my maternal side. I knew of one. Shirli found two more. My affections for these mountains are a genetic connection. Some of my ancient ones lived and reared families here. I feel this place like I feel the drums at a pow wow.

I hate that Dyck can’t be here. Cuz Dyck Tracey. [Does anyone know what his real name is?] What an interesting individual to talk with. It was that stroke. He’s a fighter though. We all know that he wants to be here in his van with his dog “Lacey” instead of laid up in that facility.

I spent a few minutes visiting with Julie when I pulled in. She told me who was already here and mentioned that there aren’t as many of us anymore. I just nodded my head and thought to myself … How many empty chairs do I have in my life now? 

 

I Need To Feel The Drums

October 19, 2023

He was sitting in the corner booth when I walked into the café.

I’ve been gone for a while and the girls at the café miss me when I go off on my rambles. So, I let them know when I’m leaving and come walking in the door soon after getting back. I love seeing their smiles and the twinkle in their eyes when my boot heels come clonking through the door.

He was an ex-con and hadn’t been out long. Late forties or early fifties. He still had his dang near “skint” prison hair-cut. That skint head helps control head lice in the pen. They find other hairy places though. Tats? None on his face but plenty enough on his arms. There was a darkness in his eyes. He was constantly scanning the room like a scared rabbit. I sat a few tables away and facing him. Not out of any fearfulness of the character. It was simply that he was the only “non-passive” in the room. It’s just something engrained in me from my way back. He’s got a hard row to hoe ahead of him. God bless him. Maybe he can beat the recidivism rate. Thirty-nine percent go back within three years.

I was thinking about Paul on the first leg of my drive back first of the week. Everything that he held dear changed in an instant when he got blinded by the Light. Then he went into the seclusion found in solitude for three years. Imagine that. Three years alone in the desert being taught by the Holy Spirit.

This life-unfolding transition thing is really hard for me. I have no personal frame of reference in my repertoire of personal life-experiences to draw upon. It’s not like that initial “seeing the Light” conversion experience that we have. But it is definitely a deeper conversion of sorts thing that’s going on in me. In all the craziness of this surreal experience, I have to stay mindful of the spiritual significances as I’m guided toward such an uncertain future that, in my vision, is completely socked in with fog right now. Life, for me, has become a very "in the moment" daily affair.

It's a quiet and shady spot to sit. I drive by it several times every week. I pulled in and parked there today in that cemetery and simply sat and prayed the Rosary. Awesome. Purely awesome. It took an hour to pray the Rosary. There were a lot of long prayerful pauses. Meditating. Contemplating. Worshiping. I think it is a Baptist church cemetery. I hope they’re not offended.

I need to feel the drums. It’s been a long time.

They are really coming on with the new pow wow arena at the Creek rez. It became our tradition to go to the pow wow Thanksgiving Day after we moved to Alabama from New Jersey. Shirli and I rarely ever missed going and only stopped when her knees started going bad and walking became such a painful chore for her. 

I’m thinking about going to feel the drums and watch some of the dancing. Yeah. I know in advance that it will be emotionally challenging. Significant “firsts” are what they are. And to sit there at the pow wow without Shirli physically sitting beside me will be a majorly significant first for me. 

Maybe I need to borrow somebody's emotional support dog for the day or take along a lady day-companion that pleases my senses. Nah. This first, like so many of the others, is, as Whitley sang, just between an old memory and me.

 

Human Touch Deprivation

October 18, 2023

This journal is becoming something of a good friend to me. It’s a multi-layered beneficial thing. This has always been my experience with journaling.

One of the interesting things about journaling, as opposed to writing a sermon, topical article, term-paper, or thesis is that journaling simply follows the ebb and flow of things. I don’t have to stay on topic and work to a conclusion, though there is value in such. This journaling, however, allows me a lot of liberty to chase and collect some of the thoughts that occupy my mind-space these days at this stage of this crazy life-transition that I have been plunged into.

In journaling, I can embrace and entertain my emotions. I’m writing more out of my soul these days than I am out of my head.

I was thinking about some of those truck drivers on the Interstate this morning on my way to take care of some things. I couldn’t help but to wonder how many of them … well-passed the common retirement age … are still behind the wheel because the road is all they know and the road is all they have. How many of them have no one waiting for them at home after the run? So, they drive … they turn up the tunes and drive. Making the miles and making the money with no one at home to call their “honey”. The miles, the log book, the speedometer and tach, and the occasional Lot Lizard become their life. 

Yeah. I get it. I’ve never really thought about it before this morning. But I get it. At least I think I get it. I, at least, get some of it. I am, in some ways, doing the very same thing they are every time I pull out on a ramble. I'm not looking for Lot Lizards though and encounter them everywhere I go. And it doesn’t have to be a long ramble either. A two-hour drive in the country on a beautiful day is generally well worth the cost of the gasoline. Especially when you have someone beside you smashing the passenger seat enjoying the ride with you. Those drives turn into picnics in the small-town parks in the quaint little towns where you’ve never been before. Memory makers.

It's only recently that I have begun to see just how emotionally unwell I became after Shirli died. It was plenty obvious for me to see how physically debilitated and physically unwell I became. Mirrors don’t lie. They may not tell the whole truth. But they don’t lie about what you see of yourself. When you are in that deep and dark hole, you can’t accurately see where you are. I didn’t start seeing where I was really at until I started snatching and grabbing and climbing and finally some ray of hope started shining through. Recovering to where I am now has been anything but easy. The recovery is not over though and, in some ways, will never be over. Not as long as I have my memory.

I don’t know if there is such a malady by name as HTD. That’s what I call it. I’ve got it. I’ve got Human Touch Deprivation full-blown at this stage. Ah. Google “touch starvation”. I hate it. I hate it with a passion. And here I am damned nearly seventy years old just now beginning to realize the importance of human touch. And wasn’t that a hell of a road to get here. Hah. It busted me up. Yeah. It busted me up real bad. 

 

Ah. Ingrid?

Ah. Ingrid?

I almost married Ingrid. When I close my eyes, I can still see us standing close together in the lamplight on that little footbridge in the park, totally taken by each other, when I asked her to marry me. She didn’t even think about it before saying yes.

Ingrid was thirteen years my senior with a twelve-year old daughter and a ten-year old son. She was 34. I was 21. Her daughter’s name is Susan. Her son’s name is Robert.

I don’t remember Hoop’s first name. His last name was Hooper. Fellow Military Policeman in Bad Kissingen, Germany. Hoop was tied up with this beautiful young German girl. No. I don’t know if she had hairy armpits. I never saw them. But she didn’t shave her legs so there is some wiggle room for speculation. I don’t know what became of their relationship. He probably knocked her up, moved on, and left her to deal with his genes. Pretty common scenario created by servicemen overseas.

Ingrid was this German girl’s aunt from NYC who was in-country for the summer. They wanted to take her to the Schweitzer House … a really nice upscale German food and beverage establishment … and asked if I would be her blind-date.

That blind date turned into something akin to a Summer of Forty-Two for the two of us.

[Huge disclosure coming up here.]

When I joined the Army, I was running away from Fairhope. I was running away from myself and a world that I was largely responsible for creating. I was a three-time high school drop-out, had had a brush with the law from hanging out with an older scoff-law one night, and had acquired a heavy dose of sub-culture mentality with the emergence of the hippy movement. [Don’t bogart that joint my friend … ] I was also a late bloomer and still a virgin when I enlisted in the Army, knowing full-well that enlistment meant a chance of seeing Vietnam.

Vietnam? The idea didn’t scare me. Honestly, there was a part of me that viewed it as a chance to be shipped home as a local hero who finally did something good. Fortunately, the President issued a recall before my Basic Training was over. That virginal status in life didn’t make it through Basic Training. It was a three day break half-way through Basic Training at Fort Knox. That status in life change came about with the help of a twenty-dollar prostitute in Louisville, KY at the downtown Holiday Inn.

Ingrid needed me and I needed her. We fell deeply in love.

I had reenlisted not long after arriving in Germany. I figured what the heck. Reenlistment bonus added cash to my pocket. Three hots and a bunk. Laundry service. Medical. I didn’t see it as a bad idea at the time. Several months into re-upping, the idea lost all appeal. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I got screwed over a few times in ways that left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Sometime before first meeting Ingrid, I had begun working on a plan for a medical retirement of sorts. It was an easy plan that simply involved exercising and entertaining my propensities. I was surrounded by and enjoyed the tools that were needed to pull it off. I just had to keep failing the program. With the readily available alcohol and hashish, it was easy to keep flunking the program.

Ingrid knew what I was doing. We had talked about it.

My Lieutenant, someone who knew me quite well, also knew what I was doing. In fact, he’s the one that privately mentioned it to me to begin with. West Point grad who was a really decent human being. He knew how I had been screwed over and screwed around. Pulled from the road for no reason and assigned to the arms room. Pulled from the arms room and assigned to the motor pool. Pulled from the motor pool and assigned to a clerk’s job at the MP station. All in about twelve months-time. None of those jobs remotely resembled my Military Occupational Specialty.

I hated to see Ingrid fly out on her way back to NYC. But the plan had worked and I had finally been approved for a discharge. She would fly home. I would fly home. Then I would fly to NYC.

Ingrid miscarried about three months after she got home.

I never made it to New York City. There’s more to the story. Something about a plane and train ride that got in the way.

 

Ramble Log - October 10, 2023

Ramble Log

October 10, 2023

It’s so peaceful here.

The drive didn’t take as long as I thought it would. I left later than I wanted to. Unless I’m going to some scheduled appointment or function anymore, it takes a lot to get me into a “morning rush”. Still, I arrived just before three. It was a beautiful drive. Ten minutes to rearrange things into night mode and I’m kicked back inside Fred caressing the keys of this laptop that I have plugged into my solar powered vehicle-house system.

That little system was a great investment. Having it along on our camping trips, whether modern or period-correct for reenactments, meant A-C power went with us to keep our cell phones charged and to power Shirli’s CPAP machine. The folding panel is a 100-Watt Renogy that came with a built-in charge controller. The 400-Watt Wagan pure sine wave inverter draws power from a 122 amp-hour deep cycle marine battery. It’s just a Walmart battery that’s done a lot of camping and supplied necessary A-C for Shirli’s CPAP for some eight years now.  That battery has doubled in price since I bought it. Even at that, I seriously doubt that I will ever go lithium unless they outlaw lead-acid batteries.

Sure. It’s emotional being here. When I camped here in the horse camp back in May, it was quite emotionally painful. Sure, there is a sense of sadness being here … an emotional stirring of this reservoir of memories of camping here with Shirli. It’s not debilitating though, as it was when I was here those few months ago howling and weeping for days. The memories are now pleasantly sweet and heart-warming … striking me in that different realm of emotions that I am now experiencing this far along in this life-transition.

This trip has a multi-leveled emotionality about it.

I’m camping my way to South Carolina to see my step-son, John Jr., and his family. Enroute and returning, I’ll be spending a few days at a van-dwellers get-together. Shirli and I sat in on that camp years ago. [What year was that? It was definitely Pre-Kodiak tent. We were still camping with the orange-colored Coleman.] We always wanted to go back to that camp but that never happened. Life has a way of happening to divert us from things we would really like to do. This will be the first time I’ve seen John and his dad since Shirli’s funeral. I’ve not seen Pam and the grandsons in a longer time. That must have been around this time in 2021, just before the Red Sea parted, and Shirli and I moved into the shack beside the track.

So, I’m conveying a box of photos and a few items of memorabilia that Shirli wants John to have … stuff that is irreplaceable that I would not dare mail or ship. Isolating and boxing those loose photos, albums of carefully arranged photographs, and memorabilia involved looking through those albums. My goodness. There wasn’t an utter fall-apart. I did, however, come to a point that I had to simply walk next door and visit with my neighbor for a little while before I could finish what I was doing.

I have no cell service here. It bothers me a little that I can’t call out. I’m so off the beaten path that I can’t even send a text. At first, this aspect that’s inherent in my rambling, bothered me. There was quite a bit of anxiety associated with it. There’s still a little associated anxiety. I am, after all, solo and off-grid. Solo. Off-Grid. Two things that don’t quite seem to meld with life in the 21^st Century. 

I’m the only soul here and so far off the road that I barely notice the sparse vehicular traffic.

I couldn’t help but to wonder about Ingrid and her two children as I made the drive up.

Turtle Point

October 8, 2023

It was an unplanned spontaneous thing.

I planned my trip to the gym to coincide with being able to talk with my fitness coach. She’s a great gal that I’ve grown to consider a dear friend. I keep her apprised of my rambles so when I’m away for a while she’s not wondering if I’ve fallen into a hole or something. It’s a courtesy thing that I extend to a few dear ones.

There was a day, not so long ago, when it was extremely difficult for me to revisit places that Shirli and I visited together. Some of those places are absolute necessities as a matter-of-fact part of life … like our doctor’s office or the grocery store. We did all that stuff together. Other places are much more matters of the heart … the pleasant memories deposited that upon recollection or revisitation both dampens my eyes and puts a smile on my face. Yeah. It's kind of crazy.

I try to get out and do something every day. Go somewhere. See something. Do something other than listen to the ticking of the clock. Ah. I’m quite comfortable here in this little ram-shackle house beside this short-line track with its daily slow-moving train. It is my sanctuary. It is a little shrine that contains items that evoke pleasant memories of Shirli. It also triples as a studio for me. When I’m off on a ramble I always look forward to coming home. It’s no longer painful to come home. Home is no longer that place of brutal emotional pain that it was for so long. Developing and deepening relationships have found a definite place in always looking forward to coming home.

Shirli and I discovered Turtle Point after moving to the tiny house in the woods. We stopped in a couple of times before Tracy, Shirli’s sister, was here from Long Island in January of 2020 just before the huge Covid Calamity. We took Tracy to Turtle Point on one of our ride-abouts.

I visited with the gals inside when I got there. Though open to the public, it belongs to the school system. School children were there for a class. I didn’t know if I could be there or not with a class being taught in the indoor classroom. They told me it was perfectly fine.

It’s rather bizarre how I can be totally alone without feeling as though I’m alone.

Memories. Little things not thought of for years simply float out of the recesses of the back bays and bayous of my mind and the experience is just as real as the moment in time that captured them. It’s like taking trips back in time. I felt so close to Shirli and Tracy as I slowly meandered my way along the boardwalk that leads to Big Escambia Creek.

I didn’t see her, but just out of sight in the understory, a doe set off that blowing alarm that they use. She ran a short space and stopped to repeat the alarm. She did this three or four times. I figured it was a mama with a fawn or two and she was calling them to safety.

I sat for a long time at that little observation bump-out by the creek. Emotional? Yes. How could it not be. Utter emotional fall-apart like the so many that I had when the hole was dark and deep? Nah. Nothing like that.

Though going out was a slow mosey, coming back in took even longer.

It felt so good to be there. I didn’t want to leave. I felt like I was there with Shirli and Tracy and they were sitting with me and walking with me. I talked out loud to Shirli and I talked out loud to the Lord expressing my deep appreciation for their love and kindness toward me ... love and kindness that have fashioned me into the person that I am today.

Oh. I talk out loud a lot anymore carrying on one-sided conversations. Maybe this is one of the consequences of sleeping solo and waking solo. I don’t know. Maybe I should Google that. But what I do know is that dialog in conversation with people, especially with people who you can be transparent with, is vitally important to a sense of well-being and wholeness.

Not the best photo but the one I have of that beautiful January day.

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

Feeling Roots

October 5, 2023

I’ve not lived what I think of as a sedentary life. What I mean by this is a life settled in one place for years and years on end. My life has been so polar-opposite to this that I cannot begin to imagine the feeling of the rootedness that develops from being in one place so long. There for a long time, I longed and hoped for that. Each move I made, I hoped that it would be that “long-time” home. But it never was.

After so many times of saying “farewell” to people and starting over with developing relationships in another environment, a self-defense mechanism kicked in. I refused to set roots. I refused to allow myself to get emotionally intertwined to the point that tender emotions were affected when I told people that I was moving away. It was almost as though they were just there by happenstance and never really mattered at deeper levels. That self-defense mechanism kept me from hurting. It’s not that I didn’t care. I just grew weary of hurting over and again.

Shirli, early on in our relationship, is the one that broke me of the tendency of being so quick to slip into my developed “default mode”. She simply would not allow it. It would be so easy for me to do that again. But I refuse to. A huge part of my loving life these days comes from my willingness to feel what I’m feeling as I feel it.

The thought occurred to me as I pulled out and started home … “By doing the things that Shirli and I loved doing together, I’m doing the things that I love to do.”

I had to go to Bay Minette this morning to drop off some insurance papers at the collision repair that will be repairing Fred. When I got in behind the wheel, I looked down into my little pantry and made a mental note. After tending to matters in town, that mental note came into play … “There’s everything you need down there for a picnic lunch at Ft. Mims.”

There are multiple levels of something special about that place. It was good to be there again today.

Oh. Doing the reenactments is fun. But there are other things that supply deeper meaning this far along in my reasoning. I can’t sit or walk there without seeing the faces of so many people I’ve been around at those [and other] reenactments. Some of them are still around. Some of them are now dead and gone. Shirli included. I can’t help but to remember the shenanigans of camp life after the spectators had gone home and the deep personal relationships with people that grew and still grows. I am a better person because of all of it.

It’s crazy how people surprisingly enter into our lives and become significant contributors toward the give and take of life. A real heart-melding takes place, one that creates a heart-bond. I think it no coincidence. Nor a coincidence that I’m beginning to feel roots.

That Little Footbridge

October 3, 2023

Love does not end with the physical death of a dear loved one. However, it does change. Not suddenly. But it does change as life does its thing and unfolds the way it does.

It’s not that we “get over it” and “move on” with our lives. I think, in some ways, we never get over it and move on. Life is just not that simple. The past follows us everywhere we go. It’s part of who we are and wake up to every morning … this side of hell or not.

Every fresh opening of each new petal of life reveals new dimensions and windows of opportunity to peek through.

With the opening of each petal, I find myself both amazed and baffled in the same breath.

I have gotten to be quite spontaneous where this business of going and doing things is concerned. No great amount of thought goes into it these days. I often tell people that I’m like a goose anymore. I wake up in a brand-new world every day. Sometimes I’ll go several days without any mindfulness at all about what day of the week it is. Except for a few important items, I am no longer bound by the calendar and ticking clock.

The thought came to me this morning as I pleasantly drove the back roads to spend a little time with my daughter and son-in-law. The thought was to take the other road on the way back and stop at Splinter Hill Bog. It’s one of those special places for me. It’s one of those places that Shirli and I frequently visited to watch and feel the seasonal changes.

How many times? I don’t know. Except in the brutal heat of the summer, we were always off somewhere enjoying the changing of the seasons and mining precious memories.

The first time is always different. Floods of memories fill a realm of emotion that I’ve never known in my life. It’s hard to describe how these floods of memories cause me to feel. It’s a strange dual-natured thing where sadness and sorrow are revitalized but mixed with generous measures of thanksgiving and joy. And, I suppose, it’s an emotional realm that can only be entered through the gates of the deep sorrow and pain caused by the death of a dear loved one.

There is a little footbridge down in that normally wet bottom. That was my destination. Maybe three-quarters of a mile to get there? The trail goes farther after crossing the bridge. It’s a pretty good uphill go of it into some piney rolling hills. With it still ninety degrees in the early afternoon, I didn’t want any of it.

The whole walk had a hallowed nature about it. Though I was entirely by my physical self, I was far from alone as I casually moseyed along soaking in the sights and sounds that surrounded me … the birdsongs, the contrast of colors of blooming wildflowers, and those ever-fascinating bug eating pitcher plants … all of it under a beautiful blue sky with a few white puffy clouds floating along to who knows where. Oh. And all of that interspersed with me talking to the Lord [and to Shirli] about one thing or another.

I stayed on that little footbridge for what seemed to me to a long time. An almost overwhelming sense of peace and tranquility captured me. It was almost enchanting. I felt so close to everything that I can’t see with my natural eyes. I needed to be there. I was supposed to be there. I had to be there. It was an appointment that I did not make. It was an appointment made for me by a Hand that I didn’t see.