A Sense of Place

[Published in the Journal of the Santa Fe Writers Project - http://www.sfwp.com/a-sense-of-place-by-richard-little/ ]

A Sense of Place:  Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

    …round apples glowing red in the orchard and the rustle of the leaves make me pause to think how many other than human forces affect us . . . . I respond - how?

        Virginia Woolf - "A Sketch of the Past"

   

 

            There has to be an end to this hellish descent. Six miles so far in first gear over washboards and gullies, sometimes careening, then skidding to a stop and sending a cloud of dust and rocks over into an abyss.  Next, an open stretch across a bench several acres wide.  Maybe there will be an easy down grade from now on, but no, the road narrows and plunges into a funnel yet again, and the creeping and tumbling and inching down begins anew.  My uncomplaining truck clutches and shifts and brakes and wants to test its tipping point, so on we go.

 

            The worst patch of impossible road I can recall, and another six or seven miles to go and another thousand feet down.  I’m in northwest Colorado – Dinosaur National Monument -- high on the Uinta plateau above the confluence of the Yampa and Green Rivers.  I was told this would be worth it, a descent into Echo Park, the Center of the Universe; that the veil between earthbound reality and the eternal world of spiritual truth is thinner there than anywhere.

Truman Horton

 

 

Truman Horton

1922 - 2014

My friend Truman Horton liked poems.

 

            "A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute Saloon,
            The kid that handles the music box was hitting a jag-time tune . . . ."

            "When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the                                       glare,
            There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty and loaded for                                               bear."*

Or,

            "There are strange things done 'neath the midnight sun
            By the men who moil for gold.
            The arctic trails have their secret tales
            That would make your blood run cold."**

            I had occasion to re-read these great Robert Service works while preparing for Truman's funeral.  They've stuck in my mind off and on ever since the time I listened to him recite them - the time he asked me to tickle the ivories in the background while he read. 

            "Jag-time"?  Do people "moil" for gold?

 
Indeed they do.  For most of his ninety-one trips around the sun, Truman loved poems -- and reading and good writing -- because he loved words.

            Truman would say, "So and so's as happy as a sand boy."
            Me, after hearing this many times:  "Ok, Tru, so what's a sand boy?"
            Truman, thoughtfully:  "Don't really know.  Somebody that's happy."

I looked it up this week: It means exactly that, and it's been around since the eighteenth century!  Once, he bought me the collected works of Walt Whitman.

            The other day we were talking about dogs.

            Truman:  "We had a dog growing up.  His name was Slick."
             Me: "Slick?"
             Tru: "Yeah. We got him from Slick Willis."
             Me: "Wait a minute.  You named the dog after the guy you got him from?
             Tru: "Yep."

You can't make up dialogue like that! 

            We'd arrive at his and Mary's house and find him up in the woods above the creek weed-whacking and cutting brush.  Later, he'd put the usable branches against a big granite rock black with soot, split some logs, and start a fire where we'd roast hot dogs and make s'mores -- the smoke disappearing up into the trees. 

            Maybe he never outgrew the teenaged boy who hopped freight cars going west during the Depression, slept in hobo camps, and scrounged a piece of fresh pie when he could.  This was before he got himself educated and eventually retired after an engineering career on the Pacific Coast. 

            Truman wanted to build a boat, so he did.  From scratch.  He wanted to sail it to Hawaii,  so he and Mary did.  Twice.  They built their own house.  For twenty-five years he was the go-to guy at his church every time something went "clunk," from the belfry to the basement.  He wrote his memoir.  He was married to the wonderful Mary. 

            I loved him.  Lots of folks did.  Sail on, Truman Horton!  If God wants to hear a good story, Truman's his guy.

* The Shooting of Dan McGrew

** The Cremation of Sam McGee

Pharma

Warfarin to keep my blood from thickenin',

Flecainide to keep my ticker tickerin'.

Losartan keeps my BP low,

Atenolol blocks betas, my pulse to slow. 

EmergenC and Cold Snap start my day.

Airborne later keeps colds at bay.

Acetaminophen, chlortrimeton,

Lunesta at night - I'm good 'til dawn! 

It's not I mind taking all these pills

For one or another assorted ills.

But I sometimes wonder as each is popped,

What would happen if I stopped! 

Would I start to exfoliate,

Perhaps explode, self-immolate?

We'll never know, it's safe to say,

'Cuz I live life the Pharma Way.