[Note: I'm going away for a week, camping in the San Juan Islands with my family and friends. Before I leave, I thought I'd share with you a piece I wrote in 2006 about an experience I had there. Hope you enjoy. -- dn]
A family of barn swallows has built a nest in the peak of the roof at the front of the rangers’ cabin at San Juan County Park. You can hear them chirping away when you sit on the bench there, taking in the view of Smallpox Bay. Every now and then one of the adults swoops out, gracefully, over the bay and back.
It’s still early evening and the bay is glassy calm when Fiona and I come down from our campsite to use the phone. We talk to her mom (who is still back at home, getting ready to join us the next day) a little while, and then Fiona spots the baby swallow.
It is huddled on the ground in the space between the soda machine and the rangers’ cabin, chirping, answering the calls from above but clearly unable to become airborne and return to its nest. Fiona wants to pick it up and pet it and comfort it, but I explain to her that if we do, it will smell like humans and its mother will reject it and it will die. If we can find a ranger, I tell her, maybe he can find a way to get it back up there without a human scent.
Just then the chief ranger, a kindly, middle-aged man named Joe Luma, comes down from the campsites and Fiona runs up to implore his help with all the urgency a five-year-old can muster. "Joe! Joe! Come quick and see the baby bird! It needs our help!" She leads him around to the soda machine and he bends down to examine it.
"Okay," he reassures her. "I’ll get out the ladder and we’ll see if we can’t return it to its nest." He stands up and smiles, somewhat winsomely, because he has done this before and knows what the eventual outcome will almost certainly be, regardless.
He beckons his longtime assistant, Ron Abbott, and they go about fetching the ladder and a box to put the bird into on its return trip to the nest. Not far away, I see Ron’s cat, a friendly black-and-white fellow named Vinny, playing in the rushes near the bay. Cats will be cats, and cats eat birds. But Vinny evidently hasn’t clued in to the presence of the fallen swallow.
Fiona is happy now that Joe and Ron have gone to work on her behalf, and we go back to our campsite, where she regales her little troupe of friends with the tale of how we rescued a baby swallow. They are all appropriately impressed.
The next morning Fiona insists we go back to the ranger station to check on the baby swallow. We can hear the family chirping away in its nest, and the nestling is nowhere on the ground, so she is satisfied that it has been saved: "See?" she says. "It’s back home in its nest now," pointing up at the chirping nest.
A little while later I see Joe and Ron inside the station and poke my head in. Joe smiles ruefully and checks to make sure Fiona is out of earshot, then tells me: "We put that bird back up in its nest, and it was back down on the ground in twenty minutes. It was still there when I went home." Of course, it was gone in the morning; whether it was Vinny or one of the wild animals that populates the park — most notably a family of black foxes — that finished the job, we’ll never know.
But of course, we don’t tell Fiona or the kids this. The nestling’s fate is one of those adult realities: that in nature, beauty is intertwined with death, love with cruelty. Those charming black foxes survive by eating, among other things, fallen nestlings.
Children will learn this in their own good time; death and life and its cruel ways will intrude on their lives eventually, and so we do what we can to shield them from it when they are young and the world is still sweet and beautiful.
Death, however, is not always so kind to those of us doing the shielding.
****
Joe Luma and Ron Abbott are the kinds of fellows you like to have as park rangers, especially in a place that draws as many children as San Juan County Park. They’re older men who like people, and they love the park and having people use it. Especially children, for whom its twelve acres on the western shore of San Juan Island are an open chest of nature’s treasures.
I have been camping here every year for the past fifteen, sometimes on multiple visits over a summer, as I will be this year. Many of the rangers the county had hired in previous years had been young men who seemed not very interested in the people using the park, so I had never gotten to know many of them. I’ve only gotten to know Joe the past couple of years, though he has been here four, but camping here has become remarkably better in his tenure as park manager, and most of the credit belongs to him.
Some of it, though, also belongs to Ron Abbott, who I’ve gotten to know rather well over the six years he’s been a ranger here. I first met him back in the spring of 2000 when I got a wild hair and decided to bike out to the island during one of our periodic "surprise" warm spells in April. The day I rode out was sunny and warm, and I was the only camper there that day. But that evening a wind kicked up across Haro Strait and right through my open campsite, and suddenly the view was too cold to take in. Rather than huddle in my tent, I wandered down to the ranger station to chat with the new ranger.
I don’t remember what all we talked about, but I liked Abbott right away. He was in his early fifties, curly red hair and a beard, medium height, with square wire-rim glasses, straightforward countenance, and a ready smile. I never asked too much, but he seemed like someone who had been through his share of rough patches and was out here piecing his life back together. His job doesn’t pay especially well, and it’s isolated back here. But he always seemed happy.
Certainly, he worked hard. Every time I saw Ron he was cutting brush or fixing a piece of equipment or chopping wood, or just patrolling the grounds and checking to make sure everyone was fine. He saw himself as a real steward of the park, I think, and the park showed it.
Just this spring, Ron and Joe together built an eighty-foot staircase from the upper bench of the park down to its lower second beach, following a plan that Ron had devised. Previously, you had to shimmy down an increasingly slick set of rocks at one end of the beach to reach the pebbly beach, and doing so with children could be risky. Now, you can just walk your kid down a freshly built set of Trex stairs.
This is great news for us, because we brought a whole load of youngsters — mostly five- and six-year-olds from my daughter’s school, along with their parents and siblings — to the park last week, just in time for one of those marvelous sunny weekends you dream about when you make plans in the spring. We use this second beach a lot, since it is ideal for beaching and storing kayaks, and heading out onto the water quickly, especially if killer whales should appear.
The park’s main feature is a massive open grass field that faces out over Haro Strait, and it is visible from most of the campsites in the park. So parents can simply let their children go run and play and still keep an eye on them, though many of us are content to simply sit out on the edge of the field and watch kids play while we watch for whales too. At the open end of the field lays a giant fallen Madrona, trimmed and aging, transformed into a gigantic wooden jungle gym for kids of a broad range of ages.
[Movie trivia note: This park was the site of the exterior shots for the Nicole Kidman/Sandra Bullock popcorn chick flick Practical Magic. The ancient Madrona was still standing in those shots. Proceeds from the shoot paid for the park's brand-new bathroom.]
As far as many of the kids are concerned, though, the chief draw is out there in the water: the whales. The endangered southern resident population of orcas prowls these waters frequently in the summertime, and your chances of seeing them here are better than most places in the United States. Lime Kiln State Park, about a mile and a half south, is actually the best place to see them up-close from land, because they like to come in right next to the rocks there sometimes; when they come by County Park, they usually pass farther out, beyond the rocky little island that serves as a home to peeping oystercatchers about 200 yards offshore.
This all changes, of course, if you have kayaks, which we do, including a couple that are designed to accommodate children. Over the years I’ve learned how to spot the whales’ approach from a ways off (on weekend, the activity of whale-watching boats is a dead giveaway), and so we often set out from the beach in time to watch them. We get close enough for a good look, but we try never to get too close or interfere with them.
On Saturday, they started showing up around noon, and they kept coming by periodically for much of the afternoon. We took most of the kids who wanted to go — which was all of them — out to sample the water and for some to see the whales.
At one point, we observed a behavior I’d only heard about previously: logging. A female named Slick — designated J16 — was lolling for long stretches at the surface, in some cases three minutes or longer; most of the time, orcas are constantly submerging themselves after they surface. Accompanying her was her fast-growing calf, a seven-year-old named Alki, or J36.
Alki (whose sex is still unknown) was playing with its mother, lolling upside down, its pectoral fins in the air; sometimes as it came up behind her it bumped its nose playfully into her side, at others it swam out ahead by a few feet and spyhopped, checking out its surroundings and spouting mist over the glassy surface of the water.
What they were doing was what we all like to do on hot summer days: lazing. There was a powerful northern current that the rest of the pods were taking, and these two were just enjoying the sun and letting the tide do the work.
Riding with them, we were more or less doing the same thing. The current pulled us steadily north, and the only time we dipped our paddles in the water was to pull back if it looked like we might come too close to our companions. Fiona’s friend Felix was seated before me, and his father sat in the front; I had out my hydrophone, and the speaker sat in Felix’s lap as we drifted along. The orcas were vocalizing a lot; it wasn’t as chorale-like as my last listening, but it was magical nonetheless. The beatific, awestruck look on Felix’s face said it all.
At last, after drifting for what seemed like a dream’s worth of time, we found ourselves about a quarter-mile south of Smuggler’s Cove, so I pulled us out of the current and close to shore. We promptly caught the backcurrent there, and it pulled us back south almost as eagerly as the main-channel current had taken us north. It made for an easy day’s paddle, and while we didn’t exactly drift back, we scooted back to camp with such ease that it still seemed like a dream as we pulled up to the beach.
Days like that, for me, make life worth living. There is something immensely rewarding about connecting kids with nature, letting them taste and smell and feel the real world, the one that they can never get from a video or computer program. When you do that, you pass on to them values that words cannot communicate. These values were passed on to me the same way, and I believe that some of these children will one day pass them on to theirs. So I am participating in something timeless, and that is inexpressibly satisfying.
This is how nature, the stuff of life in its raw form, so often appears to children. Beautiful, dreamlike, the source of so much awe. And for most of the day, I was swept up in it, drifting in it, soaking in it like Slick.
And then the evening came, and with it the other side of nature.
****
A couple of bicycling campers, who had initially set up their tents in the hiker-biker campsites, decided they didn’t like the noise in the adjoining open field that evening and moved their tents and bikes down to a grassy knoll outside of the camping area near one of the overlook benches. Stuff like this rankles old-timers like myself, who know that the park’s resources are carefully managed because they are used so much and can be easily run down.
More to the point, I knew that they really rankle Ron Abbott, who was relentless in keeping campers relegated to their designated sites. But he hadn’t been around for awhile and I knew he would want to know about this development, so I moseyed down to the ranger station to give him a heads-up.
Ron’s living quarters comprised the back half of the ranger station, and the door to them was to the right behind a gate next to the community woodpile. I could see there was a light on inside the home, and I leaned my head over the gate and called out his name.
"Ron?" No answer. I looked to the left of the gate and into the yard and froze.
Ron was lying there on his back. One arm was slightly raised in the air, and one leg was slightly askew. At his feet was a wheel with a crowbar jammed into a half-peeled tire. Vinny the cat sat next to him, his feet together, as if he were guarding him.
I said something — "Oh shit!" or "Oh God!" or maybe both, I can’t remember — and ran into the yard and knelt next to him. The skin on his arms and legs was a pale gray, his face was purple, and his eyes stared blankly into space. I felt his wrist for a pulse, but there was none. Still, his body seemed warm.
I ran to the phone and dialed 911. After hearing me out, they said EMTs would be arriving shortly. It’s about a 15-minute drive from Friday Harbor for even the fastest vehicle, though, and after I hung up I knew I had to do what I could for him.
I quickly checked on him again, tried some chest compressions, but I could see it was useless. I cursed the fact that I had never taken a CPR course, got up and ran out to get help.
I was lucky. I had barely made it across the parking lot before finding someone — a middle-aged woman coming up to the group camp from the bay below. Her name was Anna Stern, and she was there with a group of 4-H kids. I told her, breathlessly I’m sure, what I had found, and asked if she could help.
"I’m a nurse," she said, and we took off running back to Ron’s yard together. Her husband and son, having heard the story, took off to find more help.
Anna and I began working on Ron, repositioning his body, turning him on his side to drain the esophageal fluids, and then on his back so Anna could apply mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But she couldn’t get a seal on his mouth, so I got a quick hands-on lesson in how to do it and began trying to breathe life back into my friend, while Anna went to work giving him chest compressions.
I think I gave him about ten breaths, and each wheezed back out effectlessly. Then two of Anna’s friends, both nurses themselves, showed up, and the one who had been a nurse in Vietnam took over. I stood up and backed away, looking helplessly at those blank eyes.
It struck me then, as it often does at funerals, how little the body that is left behind actually looks like the person we knew. Life, the thing that animates us, gives our bodies, our faces, a character that vanishes when it does. I knew that Ron was dead because he was not there anymore; his spark had disappeared as tracelessly as a baby barn swallow.
I realized that my wife would be wondering where I had gotten off to, so I told Anna I’d be back as soon as possible and ran back to my campsite. I called Lisa over to me — loudly, I’m sorry to say — and then told her as quietly as I could what had happened, and to keep it quiet. I didn’t want a word of it to reach the children.
The other parents heard it all as well, and quietly took over watching Fiona while Lisa and one of the other fathers, Adam Peck, ran back to the ranger station with me.
By the time we got there, the nurses had wrapped Ron in a blanket, and one was telling the EMTs on the radio that this was a coroner’s case. The EMTs arrived soon afterward; Lisa went back to put Fiona to bed, and I stayed to write out my statement for the sheriff’s deputy.
****
The EMTs told me later that evening that they figured Ron had been dead about an hour when I found him. This was small consolation, really; and I’ve since come to ponder how it is that EMTs get by emotionally when they lose someone they’ve been trying to save. No matter how one rationalizes it, there is still some guilt there, and it will haunt me. For how long, I don’t know.
I do know it was a good thing I had gone down and found him. If I hadn’t, he’d have laid there overnight, and no amount of guarding from Vinny could have kept all the various wild animals in the park away. As it was, his body was tucked safely away by the sheriff’s deputies before nightfall.
They’re not sure whether it was a heart attack or an aneurysm that laid him low. It seems likely that whatever it was hit him quickly. My friend Bob Leamer was felled a couple of years ago by an aneurysm that took him like a Mack truck. Sudden deaths like that are terrible because we don’t get to say goodbye; but then, lingering deaths in which we can give our farewells are in reality much more likely to be source of enormous suffering. There are certain advantages to going out quickly like that.
Still, it is a tremendous jolt for those left behind. I’m not nearly as affected by it all as Joe Luma, and the rest of the county parks crew, who all knew and loved Ron far better than I. And I was equipped, perhaps, better than others to handle finding him, since I have years of experience covering death in all its grim countenances, including several far more horrible than this. Still, I’ve never been the first on the scene, and it’s never involved a friend.
The children in our group, as far as I know, never caught wind that anything bad happened that weekend. If they had been older, perhaps we might have said something; but five-year-olds have enough on their plate without having to deal with something like death.
So the rest of the weekend went in similar fashion; balmy days, visits from whales, kids playing in the grass and on the beaches. I think everyone knew I was hurting, but burying myself in the innocent world of five-year-olds, in those circumstances, was a good recipe for sanity.
I’m told that Ron’s family back East is having the body returned to their care. The American Legion post in Friday Harbor, where Ron liked to hang out, is planning a memorial service, though it hasn’t been set yet.
I was down talking with Joe Luma, who was terribly shaken, the day afterward at the ranger station. He talked about how tough it was going to be running the park because he and Ron were almost a symbiotic team — they fed off each other, and picked up where the other left off. Mostly, he missed his friend.
I suggested he lower the park’s American flag to half-mast in honor of his friend. He looked at it and said: "I thought about that. But then I wondered if someone would object because it might not be exactly proper."
"Joe," I said, "there isn’t a soul on Earth who would object. And if there were, he wouldn’t be worth listening to."
So he did.
****
One of the peculiar ironies about the evening that Ron Abbott died was that, not only was it at the end of one of the most beautiful days of the year, it was capped by one of the most spectacular sunsets I’ve seen on the island this summer.
You have to understand: San Juan sunsets are a staple of travel magazines about the place, because they are so brilliant and gaudy. The photo atop this post was taken four years ago, but it is only one of many I have in my collection from this place.
The sunsets across Haro Strait, when the light and cloud conditions are right, are like grand performances from Mother Nature. They often begin with a golden glow spreading across bands of pink and blue, then deepen in intensity as the sun lowers itself on the horizon, creating intense bands of color and light that gradually phase downward into an intense array of beams as the sun drops behind Vancouver Island. A long-lasting glow then caresses the glassy seas for the next hour or so as a kind of denouement, finally subsiding in a soft azure as night descends and the stars come out.
So it was this night, and after sitting for a little while at our campfire, I wandered out to watch the final embers from the sun settle under the bands of clouds. I knew that Ron never lost his appreciation for these displays — it was much of the reason why he did what he did — and would have reveled in this one.
I am almost always overcome by a sense of peacefulness here, and that night, listening to the waves and watching the night descend, it washed over me like a soothing balm. There was an edge to it: I knew that even the soothing sea, like all of the natural world, could be as cruel as death when circumstances suited it. Here amid all this beauty there was death too. It was in everything as surely as there was life in it.
Life, and its beauty, are precious to us because they are so fragile and fleeting. We cherish living because we know that it can disappear in the wink of an eye. This is troubling to all of us — but it strikes paralyzing fear into the heart of a parent. Because, unlike the innocents we protect, we know too well that death can come in a heartbeat, and it can come even for those innocents. Almost as deep is the fear of our own deaths — not for our own sakes, but for our children’s.
One of the mothers in our group is a former extreme climber and adventurist who has climbed spires around the world and participated in multiple high-risk deep-sea dives. But the last time she tried a free dive, she panicked — because she began thinking about her children and what would become of them if she died. She hasn’t gone back and no longer climbs, either.
A couple of months ago, this same mother had held her youngest son in her arms at a city park and breathed life back into him after he had suddenly, and mysteriously, stopped breathing. He runs about with my daughter now at this park and we all bask in the glow of life he exudes. Yes, we know just how fragile life can be. And still sometimes, the baby swallow makes it back to its mother’s nest. Sometimes we are lucky, and sometimes we are not.
As the night settled in and the stars dotted the sky, I finally made my way back to our tent and got ready for bed. I went to my daughter’s bed, where she lay curled under her Disney Princess sleeping bag, and caressed her face for a little while, feeling the strands of her hair and the smooth skin of her cheeks, the delicacy of her little fingers. Then I climbed into bed with my loving wife, and I held her close as she slept for the next few hours as the scenes from the day — all of them, good and bad — played through my head.
Finally, at about 4 in the morning, I dropped off to sleep.
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Good Morning David and Firedogs,
Have a well deserved blast – love the San Juans
will alert the firedogs downstairs
Thank you, David. Have a lovely time on vacation.
Beautifully written.
My daughter is 6.5 and I recall the innocence she had around 5. But her uncle age 54 and her grandfather both died suddenly like Ron. She knows kids die also. Recently she asked her dad during a discussion of food chains what ate humans. He said: “Humans are at the top of our food chain.” Never to agree with anything her parents say, she replied “No we’re not! Bacteria are!” Boy, they learn fast.
A great book on death for kids is When Dinosaurs Die by Laurie Krasny Brown and Marc Brown (of the Arthur series). It covers all kinds of death (babies, grandparents, parents, accidents, war, etc.) It’s very gentle.
Let’s all honor the multitude of park rangers across this country. They work hard to steward our lands and educate our children about the web of life and help them appreciate the wonders of our natural world.
this comment can’t possibly do your essay justice, but here goes–
each word picture led into the next word picture and held my attention until the very last word……….rare.
then i had to dab my eyes, welled up from the bitter/sweetness of it all…….which is what it’s all about when someone says my plate is full……we have both on it…….
though hard for you, i’m glad you were the one to find him, working with his hands fixing something, rather than someone who didn’t know him and love him.
some of my favorite times of my life were picknicking and camping with my family in canada and michigan, mom and dad, sister, step-brother and step-sister……fine times.
Thanks, all. I wanted to give Christy a break before I headed out, so I thought I’d offer this piece up. It went almost completely ignored when I wrote it because folks thought it was a “what I did on my vacation” piece. Though I don’t do essays like this a lot.
Fiona just turned 7 and is getting some ideas of what death is about, but still in that child’s detached fashion.
Of course, I haven’t been eager to teach her. As I said here, they learn soon enough.
You can always tell the posts that have a deep impact upon the reader by the dearth of posts immediately afterward. People stop, read, and reflect before posting below.
Incidentally, this shot (run by TBogg the other day, really pulled me up on this subject.
Dave, what dmac said. Cubed and then some. Beautiful. Touching.
Amazing story Dave, thanks for sharing. A cup of perspective goes well with my coffee.
I’ve used this image since it first appeared the day after the incident. Have it on one of my anti-war signs and have it as a “cover” on the Congressional Candidate Guide. In both instances I’ve added a caption, “Next generation resistance fighter.”
Have a great vacation, David. And thanks for all you do, here and elsewhere.
Namaste
Well death for breakfast was a bit of a shock. Sorry Your ranger friend died. The good part is we all have a place in our mind that we can find to find happiness in…some folks more than others. Nature is a fine place even though you found displeasure with the inconsiderate campers. We are better suited for an agrarian life.
With the rangers active lifestyle it was a surprise is untimely death. Here we are interested in the greater good. When you insert us all in this “Sunset” their is a lot of heavy thought for the billions of humans and trillions of animal friends that all have that final ending.
My dog is starting to have difficulty moving about and I have to be aware of his coming sunset. Not something I want to dwell on but we all get old. Can be glad that he is living a full life and had outrageous amounts of fun. His nose, eyes and ears and love of people still give him great pleasure he is losing mobility but doesn’t seem to realize it. I kinda would rather celebrate life and enjoy the dawn of a new day with new opportunities. Your kids are fortunate to have such a thoughtful dad. And the Orcas are wonderful too. Earth: The Sequel may help us bring the ecosystem back although I think the urgency is obvious.
Ever see Grave of the Fireflies? It’s what I think about every time I think about what we’re doing in Iraq.
Way OT as I have not read and have to run: Did anyone listen to NPR Scott Simon this morning? I could not decide if I was listening to a paid reflection on behalf of McCain and his fairness…I am an NPR fan and have never heard such partisan pap. Or was I badly mistaken? Be interested in any other ears and opinions. Thanks.
Morning, everyone. The way my kids learned about death was through our raising livestock. Life in the barn can be very cruel at times and sometimes it was a case where through injury or illness, one of our kids at a far too young age, had to make the decision for the vet to end an animal’s suffering. On the other hand, they learned about ‘the dying’ part through my parents’ last illnesses; I think for them, the dying part was much harder than the actual end itself.
I have NPR on most of my radio time and I got feed up with TV and ended that. NPR is not so liberal except Amy Goodman which probably gives conservatives fits if they listen at all. Did not hear it.
Rayne,
are you still here ? damn, always miss you in real time by just a whisker
caught the mention of the new gig. hope all are well at chez rayne
if you’re up for it, would love to hear your thoughts on yesterday – click on my name and leave a note
No, I haven’t. Have to check it out.
Just sitting here re-thinking what to do between now and November. Got my own candidate (Samm Simpson, FL-10) to work for, of course, but think I’m not doing enough in other venues. The anti-war movement here has slimmed down to the hardcore who have been at it since before the invasion. We still see and hear the Road Scholars whose brains have taken a holiday but there seems to be little interest in the general population. Now that we’ve seen what the Dems are really capable of not doing I’m going to go back through Gandhi’s writings to see if I can find what he did in moments like this. Nobody’d give a rat’s ass if I went on a fast, so that’s out. Tigers are gonna get a lot of lap time this weekend while I research and ponder.
Beautiful words, beautiful story to start my day. I know I will think of this story today when I am working in my flower gardens and will be more appreciative that I have this day. Thanks for sharing it.
Our parks are of such high value to all of us here on earth and we need to stand guard of them from profiteers, oilmen…
I love the new “Planet Green” channel and am learning so many ways that I can recycle, reuse, renew and repair.
Have a great time David!
Southern Dragon – it is indeed a time to take stock of the players we have. I was discussing with selise yesterday, and we came up with two things to do immediately – give $ to the StrangeBedfellows ccoalition and send Obama an unsubscribe email with FISA in the ‘reason why’ box.
What to do further i’m open to suggestions.
I did that, and sent this message when they asked for my reason: The FISA so-called “compromise”. The reason there is a Democratic majority in the House and Senate is that we, the people of this country want a full accounting of what has been done to us by this administration AND ITS AGENTS, and so far, all we’ve gotten is more of the same dancing around accountability. Democrats endanger the Constitution and the Bill of Rights when they bow to this President and I’m beginning to wonder just how much of the leadership is complicit in this crime.
On our recent trip to Rocky Mountain National Park, we noticed a plaque and a bronze ranger’s hat attached to a boulder outside the Beaver Meadows Visitors Center. It was a memorial to a ranger who died there several years ago — a fitting tribute to him, and a reminder to all who come through the park of the commitment of those who serve to make it a pleasure to visit.
Thanks for this, David.
What a beautiful essay, David. Thank you.
good message, Lindy!
Thank you for a beautiful essay, David.
I’ve done a share of bird/baby bird rescue over the years. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Robins seem fierce to keep their young going, and to watch over them. Recently, I saw a Robin’s egg and then babies on the same day, the latter having hatched during my work day near their nest. They are so fragile and helpless at first, but they mature quickly and in just weeks are ready for flight.
The mother has no tail. It does not seem to hamper her flight or her ability to feed the little ones. I suppose she has survived some kind of battle in nature and will have tail feathers again.
Nature is a great teacher. Happy camping.
Let’s keep yelling our brains out!
Steny Hoyer: (202) 225-4131
Nancy Pelosi: (202) 225-0100
Maybe we should ask them if they’re enjoying their weekend after they decided to bring up the FISA bill for a vote to piss on their employer’s (the Americans people) rights? Spit.
Yes, and I was horrified. Simon, who used to be a halfway decent journo, was shocked, shocked I tell you that Obama has said that McCain would call him “black.”
Why the good Senator McCain hasn’t done that, said Simon sanctimoniously. The part that really made me nauseous was where he said McCain has such a stellar record.
Yeah? Why isn’t NPR reporting on the fact that McCain has illegally opted out of public financing and is even now law-breaking every minute he campaigns?
I wanted to scream and throw something. I thought of writing an angry response to NPR, but figured, Why bother? Even if they read it, they’d do so with the same smug, we-know-better tone universal to them lately. Instead, I will give to the Obama campaign the money that might otherwise have gone to NPR.
i’m off to post office to apply for passport, oddly enough. not because i want the means to leave a fascist state (really) but because my new daughter in law is from South Africa and we’re all thinking of a visit.
Mine at 28 was supposed to be a response to RevBev @ 14. I guess the toobz dropped out that part.
I’ve done those things and my reason in the unsubscribe was much more than just “FISA.”
When I first heard of, then read, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” on the PNAC site (actually I printed it out and still refer to it) I knew there was more involved here than Presidential or Congressional politics. When the Rethugs were talking about a “permanent Republican majority” they weren’t just spitting out rhetoric. They were serious. I thought then, and do now, that we were headed for a Roman style empire, where the Roman Senate rubber-stamped anything Augustus and his successors wanted to do. The actions of the Dems in the House, and probably the Dems in the Senate next week, have shown just how far advanced the concept has become. We no longer conquer other countries and make them colonies. We now invade them or stage coup d’etat, set up puppet governments and treat them as de facto colonies. We exploit their resources while the puppets exploit their people. The ruling class here are the sole beneficiaries of this militaristic foreign policy and the treasury of the people is plundered for that same ruling class, allowing the people to fend for themselves. That is the real truth of Bu’ush’s “ownership society.”
The overthrow of this empire has been my main focus since 2000. I had naively anticipated some help from the Democratic party but I now see how fruitless that anticipation was. So now I have to figure out how to do this without any help from the political system, although I won’t abandon it entirely.
When I refer to myself as a revolutionary it’s not to be flip or kewl. It’s the best description of what I want to do for our country. And I have not given up on my favourite two slogans.
“The only easy day was yesterday”
Never. Give. Up.
Hi David – remember Edward Abbey’s advice to be a “half-hearted fanatic” (google for exact quote) the point being that if you can get away and wrap your arms around the great big beautiful earth every once in awhile, though you may not win against the corporations, at least you’ll out live the bastards…
Yes they do learn soon enough. Enjoy the innocence. My child has been asking about death since she was 3! Didn’t really grasp the finality of course til later but her inquisitiveness about how things work also extends to death. So I ended up needing to talk about sooner than I had expected.
What a lovely essay. Thanks for all of it.
I live in Iowa now, but used to camp on Orcas every summer with my young son, when I lived on the West Coast. The San Juans are magical and I miss them greatly. Enjoy.
Very nice, David. Thanks for the thoughts, it is good to pause, take stock, and consider what is truly valuable in life.
npr complaint? write the individual show, then write to the npr ombudsman
http://www.npr.org/templates/c…..Id=2781901
i write to the pbs one, too…….compaints made it to the ombudsman’s column on the web a couple of times.
and david, forgot to say, i’ve raised baby birds two separate times……..50/50 chance of them surviving.
one time, had one, freddie, aaaaalmost ready to go out into the wild blue, and let him fly a little around the house…his siblings had already flown, he was the runt….it was one of the first warm/hot days, so, stupid me turned on the ceiling fan……..yep……just as i realized what i had done, whammo……he was allright, but had to nurse him back again……..then he died anyway……..that’s why i didn’t have kids. baby in the bathwater kinda thing……
another time a guy i worked with found a nest when he opened a telco cable closure, this happens a lot…..didn’t want to just dump them onto the ground so he brought them to me…….i raised them in my truck while i was working during the day and then took them home at night…….two big bosses were standing in front of my truck one morning during an inspection, and they heard bird chirping coming from my truck…..uh oh…….i said i split up my lunch hour all day long every hour and a half to feed them……..i did, really….one of them knew me really well, so they said it was ok, but the other boss couldn’t believe i was raising baby birds, i later worked for him and he liked to bring it up…..they lived…….during lunchtime at a park, one of my coworkers and i tossed the birds back and forth to get them to fly…took a few days….they did great! but only 2 out of the four made it, and eyedropper feeding is not fun, and it’s nasty and they flip it all over you and everything around you……and they crap . a. lot. lotsa bedding towels. don’t recommend it.
very nice essay. I haven’t been to the San Juans since I was a child, but I remembering loving it up there. I try to spend some time each year on one of the other Channel Islands Nat’l Park islands in CA, which are also beautiful in a very different way, and isolated. The sea life is simply magneficent.
thanks david. that was a beautiful tribute to a dear man. have fun camping.
celebrating the solstice i met for skinny dipping before dawn with friends and then a potluck breakfast in skirt, sweatpants, fleece and my pink boa. merriment and lots of hugs, kisses and love all around. happy solstice everyone.
I don’t have the attention span for that. i read the Orlando Sentinel and watch Fox news.
One last comment – that Permanent Republican Majority chilled my bones, too. i knew what they meant. with all the unsubscribe emails, i hope Obama gets a clue. i’m still convinced the Dems have some threat hanging over their heads. i think it has something to do with ‘Bush’ and ‘bomb’ and ‘iran,’ but that’s my conspiracy mindedness kicking in.
dmac – bless your heart – tossing the birdies back and forth to learn ‘em flying! too good!
David, thank you for a wonderful step back from nasty politics and a view of why we are here. for the kids.
Phoenix Woman has a new post upstairs…
Beautiful essay David.
A couple of years ago, a barn swallows built a nest in the corner of the ceiling of our front porch. Everyday, we would sit out and watch the parents feed the babies and guard them….One morning, I heard the parents screeching wildly…I went around the corner of the porch and looked up, and there was a rat snake curled up in the nest, having just eaten all of the babies….We were heartbroken, but that is nature….hard to take, but we are it and it is us…there is no separation between it all.
I kid. Very nicfe post. I really never had much of nature growing up or even now. You and your daughter are lucky. i guess I should try to see to it that my kids don’t wind up like me this way. So far I haven’t. Tim Russer’s recent death made me think many of the same thoughts about how fragile and fleeting life can be.
Dave, thank you. Ron would have appreciated your tribute.
When I was learning to white-water kayak my husband took me up to the Kern River area, to the Rancheria run. It’s a shallow class 2 meander with a few riffles. Down in the picnic area there are a couple of strong currents but it’s mostly flat and wide and kids wade and swim there all the time.
We were waiting in the parking lot for our friends, one of whom happened to be an ER doc. I had wandered down to get a look at the river and I saw a clump of people, all Spanish speakers, moving from area to area, calling someone. Several of them were getting hysterical as they couldn’t locate the person they were searching for. I found out they were looking for a 14 year old girl who’d gone swimming shortly after eating breakfast. I grabbed my husband and we went searching with them; he went left with a group, I went right with another.
Our group found her floating face down in a strong current, her white tennis shoes trapped in a pile of rocks. We brought her to shore and I began CPR while the others ran for the parking lot to get help. As soon as our friend arrived he took over the CPR. By then it was clear she would not come back but we continued until first the ambulance then the Life Flight heli came and transported her to hospital.
I can raft, I can face the river but I can’t sit in a kayak, I can’t eat corn chips (her last meal) and I never go a year now without renewing my CPR cert. I’ve used it 5 times in the last 20 years. That sucks, but it beats standing around feeling useless.
Namaste, Dave.
david,
i’m sorry for your loss. i didn’t know ron, but i do know san juan county park. it’s one of our favorite spots on earth, and you beautifully described its comforting character.
you say you don’t write this kind of essay often, but maybe you should. it was exceptional.
When I realized the post was on death, I almost stopped reading. But I couldn’t. What a beautifully written piece.
Today is the one year anniversary of my husband’s death. He died very suddenly at 56 of a heart attack. We were married 30 years. I came to wake him from a nap before dinner, and he was gone. I did the same things – tried to revive him – but it was too late.
Today is a rough day for us here. My daughter (22) and son (19)and I are still getting our heads around it and trying to get our feet on the ground.
Life is so fragile its freightening. Death is so final.
My mother used to say, “To honor the dead, take care of the living”, so that is what I do.
Thank you Firedoglake and everyone here for the refuge you’ve given me over the past year. You didn’t know you were helping me, but you were.
my heart goes out to you and your family.
Thank you so much. The tears are coming down my cheeks as I write this. This is the first time I have opened up about this online. Todays post allowed me, almost made me, share my loss. I can almost feel a weight lift off of me. Thank you again.
janetplanet and family, you are in our thoughts.
Thank you very much. I am at a loss for words right now.
David, Your beautiful essay provokes tears and wonder at the give and take of the natural world. Thank you so much, I love your writing. I had a temporary irrational fear of flying alone (just the take-off and landing parts) while my children were in their elementary years. I would chant under my breath, “please don’t let my children grow up motherless” … until safely parked at the terminal.
SouthernDragon — share your thoughts later after your research, and pet the tigers for me.
Janetplanet, my thoughts will be with you today, and my heart is very full.
We hope to see you here often.
Janetplanet -hugs and kisses to you and your family. what a terrible loss. Peace to you all.
Thank you all. The people here are very kind.
What a beautiful essay Dave. Camped there long ago and found it breathtaking.
Rev. Bev, I heard Scott Simon too and could not believe the partisan nature, have found that more and more true since Bush admin. started but always wonder if it is just me. It is fundraising time AGAIN and as my coffers have taken a huge hit, my discretionary giving needs to be very selective and each year when my re-up time rolls around I wonder if it is time to choose some other place– but so far I relent– as long as Dan Schorr and Terry Gross are on I will need to give support. But, yes, the partisanship is not even subtle there anymore. how sad not even to have this one media source untainted– it means I can not trust any longer the reports — maybe I never should have. Layers have been peeled from the eyes these last 8 years, and quite painfully needless to say.
Thank you so much. I was shocked and irked. Im going to write NPR that hope am assuming that Simon is on the McC team/payroll.
My heart is with you. One doesn’t really recover…the whole rest of life is different in my view. One day at a time has become trite, but sometimes it is the only way to push on. Take it easy on yourself as well.
Good piece Dave.