Chapped Hands

I have stood with my back against the insulated exterior of an ice house at night

and felt its warmth.

Heard the muted voices of friends within,

The dry cold of dark on my face

and the grand expanse of night sky above and forever.

Every breath becomes part of consciousness
as you trace its icy progress toward your lungs
and observe its ghostly remnants as it escapes and enshrouds.

I have opened the door, welcome

and walked into a convivial air

of warmth and shared purpose.

Stood confidently on a wafer of pressed wood

and known the satisfaction of every need at arm's reach.

With scant reminders of the everyday world.
Where balance is often achieved by throwing the full force of your mass
Wildly in another direction

I have perched with lithe wand of fiberglass cradled on my fingertips

and waited.

Attached by a line to a world that begins

In a circle that is definite and known

then fades through a cylinder in a sparkling flash

to rest in mysterious ether, alive.

Time stops in the hypnotic fluctuation
Between the warm patterns of the past, the close detail of present
And the vagary of the future.

I have felt the distant tug that stirs primal memory

and paused, exhilarated, anxious,

before giving my tug in return

Heard a hungry chorus of encouragement

and for a moment,

held life and death in my chapped hands.

Cubs Hat

He put on his Cubs hat.

He loved that Cubs hat.

He bought it on a whim while on layover on his way to Uzbekistan. He wasn’t a Cubs fan, but he liked the nostalgia in the voices of people who told stories about them. And, he liked the way Greg Maddux looked in the hat in the sports page. Neat, competent, happy.

He didn’t understand at the time that certain expectations came with wearing such a storied cap. St. Louis fans would bark derision at him when he passed. Complete strangers would ask him the score to a game that he didn’t even know was in progress.

Worse, it took him some time to realize these events were associated with the hat and he was unnerved by the intensity of emotion contained in these encounters.

He was still befuddled to have his personality assumed by his clothing, but at least now he knew the source and it wasn't enough to stop him from making the hat a part of his daily wardrobe.

Marty wore it so often that when he pictured himself, the hat was part of the picture. It fit so comfortably, it was an almost seamless part of his head.

And how better can you describe love?

A Zebra's View

The zebra gazed alertly toward the open plain out of one of its eyes, while the other rested lazily on a giraffe drinking clumsily from the watering hole.

“You’re neither as lithe nor as chic as you think you are. Your knees are knobby and you drink too much and you’re just as ignorant as you look.” thought the zebra.

He was highly self aware. He knew he had a bit of a paunch, that his hair was bristly and that he sometimes looked and acted a bit like an ass. But of course, all zebras did. He aspired to nothing more and nothing less. He judged his neighbors critically, but un-aggressively. The hyena was obnoxious, the wildebeest a boor, the gazelle was vapid, and the lion was arrogant.

The only animal for whom the zebra carried any animosity was the elephant. It was jealousy, he knew. Lumbering and large and possessed of quiet, but lethal self-confidence. The elephant had a host of ways it could destroy you and each seemed the more dangerous. He could trample, clumsy but efficient; he could gore you unexpectedly from right or left with those beautiful, hard, sharp tusks. And the memory! He seemed never to forget. His ears and nose and teeth were cartoonishly large, but somehow he pulled it off to look noble and imposing and beautiful.

Though the sky was clear and bright, there was a sudden, air-shattering crack of thunder. The animals of the plain started and ran three paces in random directions, tense and alert, straining to discover where the danger came from.

But not the elephant.

The elephant, without cry or moan, shuddered and fell elegantly to its side, crashing and bouncing once, never to move again.

It may have been the fall that killed him, thought the zebra, for what else could it have been?

Eating grass and living in a herd does very little to hone a sense of irony. And so, the zebra, along with the other species, returned warily to their meals without appreciating the otherworldly drama that had just unfolded. The instinctive rule of the plain was that if you were not the immediate prey, then you were safe, at least for the day. He took only the slightest notice of the small, ungainly animal that approached the dead elephant slowly. “Ridiculously thin hide”, thought the zebra, flicking flies with his tail and wandering slowly away to take a drink.

On Vacation in Banff

The day I took this was declared a rest day, which mostly meant that we didn't drive anywhere. I took advantage of the family sleeping late to try for a hike that would exhaust me. I chose Mt Rundle, which was right across the valley from our hotel. The guide book listed the trail as 14 km with a 1700 foot elevation gain. So much for rest. I left at 6:30, got coffee and was on the official trail by 7. It took me 2 and a half hours to get to the summit, but I was rewarded by the sun just beginning to come over the mountain in front of me and have it warm my back on the return trip.

I had walked in silence on the way up, but as I was tired and hurrying on the way down, I went with a low volume iPod accompaniment. I met several hikers coming the other direction, each asking what to expect ahead, each thinking they were the early birds on the trail. About ¾ down, I saw a couple ahead of me taking it slow and enjoying the vistas. I was only about 5 yards from them, just around a quick turn in the trail when they first noticed me. The woman in the lead jumped and made three quick, loud claps.

My backcountry friends know what that means.

I was next to her in two more strides and clearly saw in her eyes the fear of a person who believed she was about to die.

Distracted by the scenery, she had mistaken a lumbering, dirty, stinking, humming American for a marauding grizzly bear.

I guess that's funny.