Autumn for better or worse, is here. For many people in these parts it’s definitely ‘worse’ but not everyone, not always, and certainly not me, although maybe it should. I lost my father in September, 18 years ago. That is a very long time ago but in some ways it feels like yesterday, and even after all these years I think of him in some way every day. Yes, he’s gone away now but maybe part of him is still here too; I sure like to think so. In early September I remember us fly fishing for cutthroat trout in the Wigwam, wading the river in sneakers and jeans with water was so cold I couldn’t feel my feet. We went all day anyway, lunched on bully beef out of a can, using a Buck pocketknife to hack off bite sized chunks with slices of rye bread, mozzarella cheese and French’s Mustard. The sun was high and the hatch seemed never-ending and after it was over, we put on dry clothes and sat around a roaring fire and warmed our bones with sips of Drambuie while talking baseball and bears. I still go back there you know, back to that campsite with the big cedars at the bottom of the canyon. There was an old washed-out bridge with a nice pool just beyond, and sometimes right before dark I’d go down and just watch the river run. Yes I go back, like a lot, but now it’s only in my dreams. The evening is crisp, the water cold, and my dad and his best friend Jimka are waiting for me by the fire.
Last year on the day he died, September 22nd, I stepped out the front door a little after 7am to let Bodhi go about his business and there in the long grass on the other side of the driveway was this enormous black bear. “Jesus Christ,” I bellowed. The fat fella, not at all worried about me and my blasphemy, looked me up and down before casually waddling off into a grove of cottonwoods. I meanwhile waddled the other way right back into the house. “There’s a very large black bear outside,” I blurted out to Max.
“Oh.” she said, “okay.”
“Yeah,” I replied, “this is freaky, but my dad died on this day, and all of his friends used to call him Black Bear” (he was a big man, Italian, dark skin, jet-black hair). We paused. Okay so like surely this was all a coincidence, right? Of course, of course, like what am I even suggesting here, but . . . was it? Probably, but you know what? I am going to believe otherwise.
Autumn for better, most definitely!
For you see, the pageantry of brilliance we normally associate with Autumn is not only sourced from Mother Nature, although that in itself is of course spectacular, but also the people in our lives that we share Nature with. One of my most indelible of memories is that of being in a goose blind in Northern Alberta at sunset while thousands upon thousands of Canada geese flew high overhead, blocking out what remained of the light, and all of them talking at once, creating a chaotic symphony of honks and horns deafening to the ears. Of the others in that goose blind, I am the only one still walking this earth. I think about that often this time of year, and so when I hear that honking in the sky above, I always smile and take a moment to remember those no longer with us.
Autumn. God. Damn. Eh?
Indeed!
SNOWFALL WARNING! For real. October Long Weekend, Canadian Thanksgiving, my birthday, and ten to twenty centimeters of snow. Yesterday I puttered around the yard in shorts and today I’m rummaging through the shed in an effort to locate the snow shovel. In these parts though, with Fall we expect the unexpected, and the unexpected is here; brace yourself! Change is afoot . . . so I think I’ll have a cup of tea and wait.
I’m turning 58 and I often feel like I’ve spent my whole life waiting for something and sometimes finding it and oftentimes not, but as I get older I’m more and more okay with not finding what I’m looking for because maybe it isn’t ever meant to be found . . . and for me that’s a change.
“You can change the story, any time, isn’t that nice? Our memories change and we’re not believing the same crazy things when we were ten or having the same prejudices we had when we were 20. We keep on changing. And it’s wonderful that our faults become kind of advantages.” David Byrne of The Talking Heads
We learn from our faults and change as we learn, never quite getting to where we want but always where we need, and occasionally we even have the wisdom to know that this is a good thing. I like that.
Autumn, it teaches us.
If you truly want to know a person you should think of the world as it was when that person was twenty – Lucien Bonaparte
Does this resonate with you? Complicates things a bit, I think, but then again we’re complicated, aren’t we? Now I am going to say it’s more like twenty-ish, plus or minus two years, but you get the picture. My particular era, mid to late 80’s? Just fabulous, an impressionable time like no other. Me at twenty? Complete idiot, still not sure how I lived through it. Intense shit, rogue humanity, crash and burn, AFGE (Another Fucking Growth Experience). But we move on, learning continues and it’s not always so painful or dramatic. We just evolve, and 38 years later I am 58.
But the 80’s are still in my life and always will be, mostly because I’m pretty sure my Soul spends the majority of his time living back there – long hair, loud music, no fucks given! We reconnect most mornings to get our groove on over 5 am coffees and it’s of course the full spectrum – Van Halen, Bon Jovi, Iron Maiden, Huey Lewis and the News, Men At Work, Sheena Easton, Motley Crue, Whitesnake, David Bowie, David Byrne and The Talking Heads – if it’s 80’s / Gen X then it’s on the menu. I ‘rock out’ and wonder what in Hell is wrong with me that I’m up at 5 am ‘rocking out.’ My Soul and I meet again later in the gym for a little headbanging while we pump and yeah, it’s glorious.
We are also the last of the feral children and like to be left alone. Back then we had nobody to talk to about things like anxiety, addiction, mental health, etc. etc., we didn’t even know what that was – if you were fucked up, you figured out how to fix it, and in your own way too, which usually was quite creative and not always the best. And it left scars that we fellow Gen X’ers can see all too easily. It makes us who we are right now and makes us very different from Boomers, Millennials, Gen Z, whoever. What was the World like when you were twenty?
And what does this have to do with Autumn? Yeah I have no fucking idea, this stream of consciousness thing just kind of ran away on me and here we are and I’m tired and should probably go to bed.
See you in San Jose Del Cabo!