September 2nd - September 6th

September 2, 2005

One thing I won’t miss about my life here is the long, dusty, rocky drive out to Grants Pass. Once out of the shade of Dutch Henry’s woods, the road is strewn with fist-sized rocks and layered in about an inch of gray dust from days of baking in the sun and the churning tires of my car and those of the men caretaking out at the castle. Even rolling along at 20 mph, I can’t help but rouse a huge wake of Steinbeckian dust. A look in the rear-view mirror, and I get a sense of what the Okies saw when they parted the curtains and glanced through their filthy kitchen windows. And like the Okies’ kitchens, the inside of my car and everything piled on floor and seats is covered with a gray, pollen-like coat, and to touch anything leaves a fingerprint. Then to touch my nose leaves a brown mark of dirt. Forty, and I look like a kid when I see my face in that quadrangle stuck above the dash. Half-way there, going in either direction, I can feel the dust infiltrating my nostrils, eyes, ears, mouth. I wonder how many ounces—nay, pounds—of Josephine county dust I’ve consumed this summer. Forty years old, and eating dirt. At least as a kid I did so of my own volition.

And the bumps. Driving the Whiskey Creek road feels a bit like playing a video game, a test of hand-eye coordination: how to find the smoothest track, how to avoid the biggest and sharpest stones and limbs, the worst washboard ruts. Whole CDs play through and begin again, the tracks skipping over the bigger bumps, and I’ve been oblivious to the music so intent am I on dodging holes, washouts, ruts. Teeth rattling in my mandible, eyes shaken sore, neck stiff from clenching, I drive unblinking even as the flecks of dust jab at my sclera. My shocks groan. My struts squeak and bounce. Ruts like a giant’s washboard, logging debris, razor-edged stones darting the road edge like teeth, and an hour or so later, when dirt and rubble finally give way to a kind of half-asphalt, I’m exhausted not so much from the hour behind the wheel but from the intensity of my road gaze, my gamer’s concentration. The one consolation in all of this is that the road gets progressively better the closer I get to Grants Pass. Finally, a half-hour or so from Merlin, the roadway blazes with the familiar comfort of yellow stripes and solid pavement, and I accelerate a good 40 mph. Through Galice, not really a town but a handful of outfitter stores, rafting companies, and riverside homes. Through Merlin and its strip of convenience and antique shops, feed store, post office. Onto 1-5 South for three miles. And then I flick my right turn signal and I’m there: Grants Pass. No apostrophe.

Today I drove my car through an automatic car wash while in town. I wasn’t so stupid as to think my car wouldn’t get just as filthy after my drive back in the afternoon; I paid the $5 just so I wouldn’t look like Pigpen every time I opened a door or brushed against the car’s invisible paint while I ran my errands; $5 just so I wouldn’t leave fingerprints around the door handles.
During my stay in said town-sans-apostrophe, even as I did laundry, visited the dark-haired beauty at the coffee shop, got on WiFi, bought groceries, and drank Dutch Brothers iced chai, the trip back loomed like a dust storm, like human plight itself, so that when the time finally came to head home, I almost got on I-5 south, toward California, to go pick peaches like the Joads in shady groves and drive the smooth, paved roads of the growers. I had a cooler full of food on ice, a bag full of clean laundry. I could have done it. I could have. But I didn’t. No, I clutched the wheel like twin joysticks and turned north to begin the game again. Heading back, of course, the bumps, ruts, and dust get progressively worse.

Thus, I sit here in the La-Z-Boy with a headache and the taste of dust on my palate, despite having showered and eaten honey-slathered grilled pork chops, garden-grown tomatoes with basil and vinegar, and warmed leftover homemade apple pie with Ben & Jerry’s vanilla. My breath smells of the Whiskey Creek road, and everything I see is tinged with gray. But I have a fridge full of seltzer, a dresser full of clean underwear, an empty trash container. I received a nice hug from the dark-haired beauty upon my departure from the Tee Time Diner; an acceptance of a poem by Alimentum, a journal devoted to food literature; a fresh supply of Chemex coffee filters, compliments of my father, who made a special trip to The Coffee Exchange in Providence to get them; more classified ads from my pal Stan Flood; and many kind blog comments and welcome e-mails from family, friends, colleagues and students.

What’s a little driving?

Did I ever mention that the fire’s out? It has been for a week now. Often I’ll catch a whiff of burned forest, but it’s just the wind. There’s no more smoke. Here’s a view of Rattlesnake Ridge sans smoke. Note clouds. I’m liking the clouds:



September 3, 2005

It’s 1:58 AM and I’m sitting in bed with a bowl of cereal (amaranth flakes in soy milk) feeling the warmth of the propane lamp on the back of my neck and listening to the night’s one long, twittering whistle, which every now and then pauses like a coach catching his breath. The bird clock ticks. The lamp hisses. The spoon taps the bowl. I am awake because Gus the Dog saw fit to spring from the bed at 12:20, woof through his nose, climb atop the large maroon chest in the other room, and bark through the window above it at whatever scented creature (most likely mammalian) happened to be passing the cabin. My usual routine is to get up and close the windows to seal out the scent, rebuke him for waking me, click off the flashlight, and go back to bed where within minutes I feel the familiar, welcome bounce of him at my feet curling into a quiet breathing heap. Tonight, though, I left the bedroom window open for the crickety whistle, the cool seeping. Unable to sleep, I got a bowl of cereal. And Gus the Dog, rather than rejoin me, has taken up a sentry post on the living room couch. Even now he snorts at some other or the same presumed threat to our late night peace. These nights I don’t fall back asleep all that easily. Tonight I tossed side to side playing scenarios of future days, envisioning scenes that won’t come to pass. They never do as we work so hard to imagine they will. So, some pages in a book to tire my eyes, distract my projecting thoughts, my worries dark and shriveled like the raisins in my cereal only not as sweet. No, not sweet at all. When I get up to put the bowl in the sink and brush my teeth, I’ll close the windows, quieting the whistle and letting the nocturnal creatures pass in peace while we sleep.

I woke at 7:45 to an overcast sky. Yes, the weather pattern is changing slowly but surely. I think it will rain within the next week or two. That will settle the problem with the dust on the road.

A near tragedy this morning! I usually prop my glass Chemex coffee beaker on a tripod-like stand atop the wood stove so that my second cup is every bit as warm as the first, maybe even warmer. Well, walking past it I must have nudged it with the sleeve of my robe (I didn’t feel anything) and there went the pot, tumbling onto the iron stove and then the brick footing, spilling coffee into the wide lip below the stove door and onto two of the big square bricks. I thought I heard glass crack and shatter, and my heart stopped. I rely upon my Chemex like a pacemaker, and I left my reserve pot in storage back in New York. Miraculously the pot was unbroken. Not even a chip, not even a hairline fracture! This after a three-foot tumble onto iron and brick. I’ve broken two or three of these pots merely tapping them against the faucet in kitchen sinks. Perhaps the ghost of Dutch Henry himself cushioned its fall. Tomorrow I’ll pour a bit of black coffee over the deck railing as a libation. Thanks, you old murderer!

Gussie, wanting to come out on the deck:


I finished an ambitious poem today, one I’ve been working on since hearing about Hurricane Katrina. It took shape as a double sonnet, which is its present title.

Double Sonnet


The equivocal eye has come and gone,
gale and rain minced the faith we each depend
upon. Another storm has met its end,
blind to wreckage, utterly overthrown
by its own gyrations. Cities lie prone
as lakes. The sun, as if nothing happened,
strews from its azimuth countless diamonds
on the signed canals, plays like God’s trombone
a warm and silent jazz, a sine qua non.
Onto half-submerged mansions gulls descend
to vie with anhinga for dividends:
flotsam in the deluge like stepping stones.
And in their tiny, eager eyes is shown
in miniature a scene to apprehend:
what the dove might have had the world been manned
so long and been so ruthlessly outgrown.

Where I tune in, two thousand miles away
in the undestroyed Pacific Northwest,
my hand-crank radio seems strangely apt.
On NPR familiar voices say
what they can to keep listeners abreast,
the general theme being: people adapt.
My own storms seem like showers, a spring day.
I put a fool’s trust in the old beau geste
of time and place. Tomorrow can’t be mapped,
unless by miracle or righteous way
we’re warned, like Noah, who at God’s behest
measured cubits while the thunder clapped.

September 4, 2005

I’ve decided that fly fishing is a myth. Have you ever seen anyone catch a fish on a fly? I haven’t, except in A River Runs Through It, and we all know Hollywood can perpetrate any lie. A few years ago I fly fished in Yellowstone (Wyoming and Montana) and saw huge trout in the water eating stoneflies, and no matter how many times I cast the exact sized fly their way, they wouldn’t budge. I’ve fly fished in western New Jersey and the Catskills of New York, two prime trout areas, and have never caught a trout on a fly. Today it was cloudy and cool, so after lunch I packed a bag and went to the Rogue toting fly rod and box. Brother Bradley, the Fishing Guru of this place, claims that the “half-pounders” should be in the river by now. A passing rafter confirmed this, saying the river guides have been catching four- and five-pounders. (Why they’re called “half-pounders” if they’re four- or five-pounders is beyond me; it’s an Oregon thing, like the way Oregonians say “good on ya!” to mean “nice going!” or “right on!” as a response to just about anything. The latter is repeated for emphasis: “Right on! Right on!”). So I fished a few of the places Bradley told me to, starting at my beach and working my way upriver. An hour of that, and then Gus and I walked about a mile down to a riffle called Doolog. Forty casts there and I renamed the place Poolog, and called it quits. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m the world’s worst fly fisherman. If you don’t know anything about fly fishing (you may want to remain that way), you cast a weighted line rather than a weighted lure. The lure, the fly, weighs nothing. Some lines float, some sink. Some flies float, some sink. Unlike a spinning reel and rod, which I can cast about a hundred feet with one hand and standing on one leg while patting the top of my head with my free hand and whistling “Dixie”, with a fly rod I’m lucky if I get the fly out 25 or 30 feet using all my concentration. It’s a little like golf: it’s not how hard you swing the rod, it’s all in the technique. One of my college housemates, Slim, lived up to his nickname. He was as short as I and skinnier, and he could drive a golf ball farther than anyone. He’s a pro now at the country club my brother superintends. I bet if you gave Slim a fly rod, he’d cast that hook twirled with feathers and thread all the way across the river and catch a lunker steelhead on the first cast. Not me. So, knowing I’m not really going to catch anything, I’ve used my recent outings to the river to practice casting. Today I only hooked one willow tree while backcasting. That’s pretty good. And I made a few casts that felt and looked just right, the line shooting straight out and uncurling, a sweet little ripping noise as it shot through the guides, line and fly landing on the water with grace. When this happens, I’m always sure I’ll catch a fish. But then I don’t really know what to do. The fly zooms in the current and when the line goes taut the fly arcs across the middle and toward the shore. I give little pulls. I try to copy Bradley and curl line in my left hand. Sometimes the fly looks like a little fish darting across the current. But it invariably floats 30 or 40 feet downriver and back to my shore without a nibble, and then I’m stuck with having to get it back out there. I pull line, yank, whip, flick, release line. It’s so much damned work, I’m exhausted after five casts. I know the Fly Fishing Guru is reading this and shaking his head and wishing he could come out here and show me that fly fishing isn’t a myth, and I suppose this is one of my motives for writing this entry. In the meantime I’ll try not to get discouraged. I’ve communicated my worry that I’ll be the first resident in 13 years who didn’t catch a steelhead, and the Fishing Guru assures me I won’t be. In the meantime, I maintain that fly fishing is a myth begun to make spinner fishermen look lazy. Good on ya.

I’m going to miss the hundred-year-old apple trees out in front of the cabin. I’ve looked at them so many times since I’ve been here that I’ve forgotten how impressive they are. One former resident, Steve Edwards, told me in an email that he fantasized about chopping them down when he was here, he was so sick of looking at them. I may have been close to that sentiment in August, but not now. I love the way this one grows sideways out of the ground:



September 5, 2005

Labor Day today, right?

I had ants in my pants all day in anticipation of tomorrow’s parting with Gus and the beginning my journey east. I couldn’t focus for long on any one activity, and so engaged in many. Among other things I: arranged a new manuscript of poems for the New Criterion book contest, wrote an epigraphical poem to open the collection, decorated a walking stick (using blackberry juice) I carved yesterday,

tried to make a painting on a square sheet of Masonite-like material I found in the mudroom, reordered the poems in the manuscript, took Gus to the pond, packed, napped, gathered stuff from the solar dryer and garden, cooked dinner. And after dinner while we were out playing in the yard, I saved this very fat praying mantis from Gussie’s snapping teeth:


I was just saying to Frank Boyden two weekends ago that I hadn’t seen any praying mantises out here.

Here’s Gus wondering where his plaything went:


It’ll sure be strange to walk the streets of Manhattan on Friday night.