Your'e Fired!

9:45 AM, Tuesday 9/15, Starbucks (I’m an addict, I admit it) in Prineville OR

Spent the night high up in the Ochoco National Forrest in central OR. Not an “official” campsite, but clearly a spot where humans hang out; nice flat creek bottom, brook chattering softly in the background, huge lodge pole pines looming into the dusk. No tent tonight, just a tarp under the stars. A nice hot cup of Lapsang Soushong (enhanced with some special medicinals, some of which were harvested only days before in Yellowstone) and a cup o’ noodles (I’m partial to Maruchen), comfy warm jammies (including a knit cap- it gets pretty damned chilly in the high desert at night) and I snuggled in to stare into the infinite star field, totally free of anthrogenic light pollution. And let me just say; it’s REALLY freakin’ infinite, y’all. In a mind blowing sort of way. Got me to thinking about my place in the cosmos, which got me to thinking about niches; the observation, from both a scientific and spiritual perspective, that all living things seem to have a special place, a unique assignment in the great ecosystemic web of being. A “job” of sorts. For a simple, commonplace example, rabbits; the rabbit’s job is to provide food. To be more brutally precise, to BE food, for a wide variety of predators. The populations of Canadian lynx and snowshoe hares follow the same wavelength; lot of hares = lots of lynx food = lot’s of healthy lynx litters. Too many lynx eating too many hares = not enough hares to support that many lynx, and hey-presto; not so many healthy lynx litters. So lynx and hare share a workplace; they maintain each others optimal population. Not consciously mind you. At least, I don’t think they think about this a lot. So, meditating into the star field, the question emerged; what is my –our, human’s- niche? Kind of a stumper for me.

So what is our job, exactly? Yeah, yeah, to obey our genetic imperative, to make more of us. But that’s true of every living thing, a universal autopilot driver, not a unique assignment to our particular species. Just where do we “fit” into the ecoweb? Have humans, by dint of evolving our big fat neocortex somehow escaped nature’s job placement mechanisms? And if so; is that a good thing, or a not so good thing. Here’s a thought worth pondering: if humans suddenly vanished from the scene (and it sometimes feels like we’re working at ensuring that happens, with our propensity for developing –and sowing- the seeds of mass destruction) it would not really effect much lasting change in the workings of planet earth. Life would quite happily go on without us. But if ants, on the other hand (according to E.O. Wilson) were to suddenly vanish, WE (homo sapiens sapiens) would be in serious trouble, because ants attend to a variety of vital ecosystem functions without which the whole machine as we currently understand it would eventually collapse. Now as thing go, what would probably happen is other critters would eventually move in to take over the ant jobs, but the point is that we humans seem sort of dispensable. Which, when meditating into an infinite star field, is not at all that hard to imagine.

Then the mice visited. The tarp I had spread was crinkly- noisy, and though I was quite motionless on a dead-calm night, it started to crinkle, unbidden.  I said (calmly, but aloud); “Hey. Who is here with me? This is my tarp, you know.” No answer. When it happened again, I was ready with my light, and was able to identify my visitors; deer mice. So I took another shot at opening a conversation, explaining that I understood I was the guest in their home, thanked them for their hospitality, and assured them that I meant them no harm but that I did expect the same from them; no biting, and no sharing of parasites. This triggered a long-ish explanation (from me, not the mice) of Lymes disease and the Black Plague, which obviously required a quick primer on European history… Anyway, they (I’m pretty sure there was more than one, though I concede that I only saw one, and one very fast mouse might have accounted for what I was hearing) seemed reassured, and started to converse with me; little squeaks, as god as my witness, little, chittering squeaks.  And they began to venture away from the relatively safe edges of the tarp to go galloping (I could now discern their footfall rhythms in the crinkling) across the central plains of my tarp. AND the mountain of my recumbent snuggled in self; parump parump parump, right across my (thickly blanketed) legs. Every now and then they would  pause to speak to me again; they clearly wanted something. I recalled some words from the poet/essayist Gary Snyder, about, in fact, the role of humans in the world (and I paraphrase wildly here); that while the deer faster, the wolf a keener hunter, the bear stronger, all the animals nonetheless loved us, because they loved our stories and songs. But by this time, I was getting really sleepy, so I said; “Mice, I would sing for you, but I’m very tired and need to sleep now. They squeaked, and galloped across my chest. So, though very tired, I started a halting, breathy, sleepy rendition of Stan Roger’s ballad The Northwest Passage, my standard singing-out-loud-in-the-hallowed-cathedral-of-the-wilderness tune. As always happens, once I get going with that song it energized me, and by the time I finished I was in full throttle. Which prompted a couple of coyote packs to start a ruckus in the surrounding hills. (I couldn’t quite tell if they were applauding or complaining- I don’t speak coyote all that well yet.) Which brought me back to pondering niches, which prompted me to remind my mice about their job, warning them that to hang out here in the open with me might not be such a good idea after all. Which got me to thinking about cougars, which are as fond of the Ochoco as I.  Which prompted me to explain to my mice that I had decided that I had reaped much benefit from the star field, but was now going to relocate to the sabbaticalmobile for the rest of the night. Which I did.

And this is my answer to the existential question posed by the stars: our "job" is to see, to understand, appreciate, and remember, in stories and songs. To be “the sentient ones”, the ones who can see both into the future and into the past, to use that great, long vision to do what we can to keep things in balance. Poetry, in other words, is our primary responsibility to the world, maybe even the cosmos. Poetry, and stewardship.

Hmmm. I guess I must be….. a SOCIALIST!!!! ARRRRHHHHGGGG!! GET HIM! BURN HIM!! (Presumably after I’m “taken down” with an expert shot from an assault rifle. sigh.  If there was a god and I were he I’m afraid I would be inclined to give bears the gift of poetry, and fire the whole lot of us nasty, stupid, selfish humans. Make us ants for awhile maybe, to remind us that it’s NOT, after all, all about us.)

Ok. Time to go fishing; this time for real. I can’t for the life of me imagine why fishing in the high DESERT (ie: places with little or no water) in September was so unsatisfying. But I’ll make the wet side of the cascades today for sure, find a river, maybe the Deschutes, maybe the McKenzie, maybe the Willamette-dammit, then; look out trout!

Here's a bunch of random images from the drive to Ochoco…

These were actually taken the night before, on the road (in some cases literally) from Twin Falls ID to Ontario OR, where I spent the night at the quintessentially Americana-ish Oregon Trail hotel.  The proprietors of which are, of course, East Indian.  The resolution of these iPhone captured web-scaled jpegs probably obscures the signage, but the big red neon letters fronting the building spell FIREWORKS, an ironically apt title for the pic, I thought.

 Hunter S., annoyed at my fussing around trying to capture clever compositions, slipped off by himself to, in his words; "just enjoy the damned sunset."

Again, I apologize for the shoddy resolution, but this is, yes, the Bates Hotel, on the outskirts of Vale OR.  Note the freshly turned grave-site-like excavations....  I think I'll take a pass on their offer of "Pizza by the SLICE!"  FWEE-FWEE-FWEE-FWEE...
 

Who knew?  In a little east-central OR town of John Day once thrived a bustling Chinatown?  Evidently word of Oregon's 19th century's mining interest's need  for cheap labor reached mainland China, prompting hundreds of Chinese men to make the perilous journey across the pacific in the hopes of earning enough to one day see their families again.  This little building became the center of Chinese culture for these lost souls, offering letter writing, traditional healing, foods and other "things from home".  America really is a fascinating blend of cultures- which to my mind makes the anti-immigrant bile coming  from "real" Americans all that much harder for me to take.

 

Kam Wah Chung info link

My first catch on my new fly fishing rig: the powerful and elusive Semoltilus atromaculatu.  Sometimes referred to (disparagingly, IMHO) as a common "Creek Chub".  I assure you, I was as surprised as he was when he came whipping out of the water at my head as I reared back for another cast.  Considering the cost of gear, fuel, food, lodging etc. I reckon this fish comes in at about the price of gold per ounce.  He was, to ease your mind, returned safely to his home following this photo-call.

This caught my attention.  Route 26 between Dayville and Mitchell, east-central OR.  It's shoes; a shoe tree.  The field behind the fence you can't see is scattered with evidence that not every shoe toss successfully achieves the branches.  I was particularly impressed with the hip waders.  I attribute it to teenagers, likely from the same school district. I wonder if they knew they were guerilla artists?

Hunter S. digging the shoe tree.  He thought it was tre' cool.