One Man’s Mountain — 12.0 — — Treewrap Cottage, River District, North Eugene, Oregon, USA
“And we’ve all had a broken heart
We’ve all closed down a few good bars
Take a look around, y’all, tell me I’m wrong
Ain’t the whole wide world just one big country song?”
Just before the election I drove northeast from Darwin through the bowl of Death Valley and on up through central Nevada. It is vast and lonely out there and I only stopped for gas and an occasional fast food burger handed to me through a drive-in window by a youngster wearing blue plastic gloves. My intention was to avoid people. Central-north Nevada and far Eastern, Oregon made it easy. The landscape is dry and spectacular and mostly undeveloped. Lonely cows and lonely coyotes. It has become a season of loneliness.
Loneliness and terror. I drove over the Cascade Mountains and then down through the McKenzie River Valley. Only a few weeks before climate change winds had blustered in from the east and lightening struck from above and a wild fire moved down the valley at something like 200 miles per hour, maybe more. It burned both sides of the river from Blue River west (downstream) to Nimrod. What it left were charred dead trees and the remnants of people’s homes. A blackened chimney and hearth where there was once a timber-framed house. Some of my favorite places were gone. Vie’s Homemade Pies and Heaven’s Gate Cottages. The library in Blue River. All disappeared into whispering ash.
I came home to Eugene so I could vote and work on my house. The presidential election terrified me. The fact that one single person could have such an adverse effect on my country and that many of the people in my country worshiped him and might actually re-elect him…well, that created the most frightening Halloween in recent memory. Now it is days after the election, a decent person has won the presidency, but the specter of one single deranged man still hangs like a black cloud over my country, and I know he will light the entire place on fire if he can… just to save his tortured ego.
Okay I’d like to find my sense of humor again. It’s a little hard right now. I’m somewhat homeless after things didn’t work out for me in Darwin. I’m having to deal with high blood pressure and a heart murmur. It’s nothing I can’t handle, I get that. I’m doing good work for good people, I’ve got my older sister taking excellent care of me (she’s lent me her cottage, Treewrap, which I had forgotten about even though I built it for her many many years ago. I guess there’s some humor in that…) I ride my bike a lot and soon I’ll be traveling again.
Find a warm sunny spot to finish writing a story. The story that won’t end. Even though I know the ending. It’s a mixed bag of sorrow and loss, happiness and new beginnings, a save-the-world sort of story.
Leaves you with a little smile. And a broken heart.
