Tonight marks one year since I last watched television. That was also the last night spent in my bay home. I’m glad I made that decision, and happy that I stuck with it. It is a very unconventional way to live, and was not always easy the first few weeks, but the absence of TV in my life has made room for much better things. Of which I plan to write more soon….
If you ask me what I did today, and I answer that I spent it mowing, we may not have the same thing in mind…
…but Saturday my mother turned 85. Now recovered from cancer, she is back to living like a woman many years younger. Almost 65 years ago she became my first and greatest blessing. As I often tell her, whatever is good in me I learned from her; all that is not good in me, I learned on my own.
As a boy growing up in a small Texas town, I rode for countless miles on an old single-gear bicycle. My friends and brothers and I spent the long summer days pedaling around town and far down country roads. No cell phones; we were untrackable. Our only directive: be home by dinner time or go hungry.
We pointed our tires toward any place we wished to go, and we stopped there until some other destination came to mind. We carried BB guns or fishing poles. On occasion, we brought home to our bemused mothers a jar of tadpoles or crawdads, dead water moccasins, baby birds, kittens.
Never since have I known such freedom and lack of care, nor am I ever likely to again.
But in what is surely an impulse partlty driven by the memory of those days, I bought a bicycle three days ago, a basic Schwinn with tough knobby tires, and have started exploring the rough country roads that begin only two blocks from my house. The same joy and freedom returns as if it has only been waiting for the roads and wind and the music of bike tires on dirt.
Not everything is the same. Reading the bike’s user manual – the first fozen pages of which warn me of the dangers and perils of misusing this terrible machine – I came to this picture instructing me of the proper way to armor a child before they venture forth:
They left out snake-proof shin guards and kitten-proof gloves. My friends and I, through hundreds of miles of boyhood wanderings, wore exactly none of those things. We would have ditched them as soon as out of sight. Nor will I wear them now.
I quit reading the manual and threw it away. Freedom is best enjoyed unburdened. Even a child knows that….
…so much time. Since I was a young man I have traveled many thousands of miles to reach wild places, in which I hiked & slept in a small tent with lightweight backpacking gear. Days were few on each trip, and I always had to hurry home to work.
Time opens before me now like a road that rolls past the horizon. It waits only for me to go and follow. A tent and camp stove just won’t be sufficient. So I got a wild idea to buy this:
The crazy thing contains a queen bed, kitchen, full bath, table & sofa, solar panel and batteries, generator, heater and AC, water tanks, and more gadgets than I have yet learned. All sitting on the truck like turtle shell.
For the first time in my 65 years, I can leave for anywhere, at any time I wish, and come home only when I am ready. (A freedom I am still having to learn.)
First decision: where to point myself and go first….
To my aurophile friends, I introduce the newest member of my family, Lizzy.
Boisterous, affectionate, daring & adventurous, she is a joy to have around. After a few weeks in her new home, she is fitting in well with her many adopted brothers & sisters. Her youthful playfulness & insouciance ease the sorrow I feel over losing Charlie & Gummie last month (more about that later, when I can write about it without pain).
Now retired for a year, I feel a need to write here more often. Lizzy is a fine way to begin…
Throughout this year I have written nothing about the election. I have thought much about it, but kept those thoughts to myself and to a handful of closest friends. With very few exceptions, I have voiced my electoral choices to nobody, and I will not do so here. But this morning I thought of a few things I would like to say about this contentious election, and the hours in which to say them are growing few.
These are one-off notes, written quickly and without revision; they are not in any way a narrative or an argument. Importantly, I name no names here, and avow no side; I will make that claim silently tomorrow, with a ballot. For what they are worth – and worthless perhaps they are – these are the only and last words I expect to write about the 2020 American election:
For no reason except to share and to remember. November scenes from my little corner of the bay…
(NOTE: the last and best photo, of an osprey with a fish in its talons, was taken by friend and neighbor Chris Kuhlman.)
A pair of Spotted Sandpipers woke me this morning. Not from sleep – such tiny, quiet things aren’t up to that – but from a conscious, insentient slumber. After 24 years living by Galveston Bay, I sometimes get distracted by the tedious and drab routine of chores and schedules, such that I neglect the quiet and unassuming beauty that surrounds me every day. Shame on me for that.
Stepping outside this morning with a cup of coffee, I saw the two birds bobbing among the rip-rap, hunting for breakfast. They are small – just over 7 inches – and subdued in color, making them easy to overlook, especially against the grand palette of the bay and the multitude of larger, showier birds.
Actitus Macularius
But one behavior always catches my eye: they bob their tails up and down. Nobody knows why. Spotted chicks start bobbing soon after hatching and carry on for the rest of their life. Ornithologists call this “teetering.” Indeed, when they really get into the swing of it their whole body teeters from bow to stern, like a tiny feathered see-saw.
Nicknames are sure to follow such odd behavior. A few of them: teeter-snipe; tip-tail; teeter-peep. My favorite is “teeter-bob.” I didn’t make any of those up.
So where was I? Oh yes: morning; coffee; a mind already distracted by the tasks lined up for the day. And a pair of teeter-bobs….
As soon as I saw them, the engine of my day, already accelerating, sputtered and went off the rails. Forgetting the chores that were bedeviling me even before I had woken, I retrieved a camera and began taking photos of my teeter-bob neighbors (photo/video montage below). Which lead me to notice the clear water, wide beach and low tide that follow the first fall north winds. Which in turn alerted me to the soft, polished marble surface of the bay on a rare windless morning. And then an osprey whistled in the sky, a pandemonium of parakeets dramatically announced their arrival at my bird feeders, and the dawn haze vanished to reveal ships moving in the channel and small sailboats searching for a breeze.
For the rest of the day my gaze and my attention turned bay-ward. As it does every day here, light, shade and colors modulated minute by minute; waterfowl zigzagged across the horizon or floated by; sailboats raised sails, their colors catching fire in the sunlight as they tacked, then darkening as they jibed.
Tonight, thinking back over the day, I fret over the tasks left undone on a day when they really needed doing. But I can’t bring myself to regret it. Today I let myself once again be enchanted by the wonders that first brought me here and which have kept me here for more than a third of my life.
Today I was happy. I was – as much as I can be these days – carefree. And I owe that to a lowly pair of teeter-bobs. Thank you, dear little friends.
Sunday afternoon I was offered the opportunity to dust off the old 1905 Hendersons and pipe a tribute to our veterans. Our city organized a fine ceremony in their honor, held at the beautiful Veterans Memorial just around the corner from me, and they asked if I would play a fitting tune. It was an honor to have a small part in the ceremony, in the company of honorable veterans on a splendid fall day.
Now normally I don’t care to share photos of me. I don’t belong to the selfie crowd, and the world doesn’t need more photos of old bald guys. But friend and neighbor Chris Kuhlman, a professional photographer and videographer, took a few photos that demonstrate his talent.
tejaslibertas 