One Snowy-gray Afternoon on the East ART trail

    When I wasn't able to ski last week, deterred by road conditions, I decided to hike the East ART trail instead. The trail was snow-covered, but it was lovely to walk in and out of the snowfall and to watch the dark clouds come and go. At one point I stopped on the trail to admire the Bishop Road draw, forested, narrow, and loden-green deep below me, while the gray cloak of clouds, hovering low over the mountains, spread the subtle undulations of subdued light into the afternoon.

    A small red-tail hawk was flying in slow gyres over the valley, the red tail gleaming as he banked and straightened. He gyred upward, then sailed towards me on a swing of the wind. Closer now, he circled upward again and then again in slow motion, disappearing in the mist, reappearing, and disappearing again, like a mystical reading in a seer's magic sphere.

    Oh, the grace of his flight in the gray silence of the afternoon!

    I was thinking I had never seen a hawk dive—had never witnessed Hopkins's "Oh air, pride, plume here buckle!"—when suddenly I heard a whoosh, as startling as a train whistle, and felt the air stir across my side as a crow dove to a landing near me. Pausing only a moment, he rose up and attacked the hawk.

    The hawk turned, struck back, and the crow flew back over the valley where I had first seen the hawk, the hawk following in pursuit, the smaller bird after the bigger one. Was it, "You can't get away with that, you bully!"? Was he seeking revenge? Do animals seek revenge? Can adolescent birds also be immature and quarrelsome? Do they, too, carry grudges? Why did the crow attack the hawk in the first place? Was this an old fight between them? Or am I misreading the whole episode, which was actually a game between hawk and crow, the way wolf pups bite and tumble in play?

    As they flew over the valley, the hawk gaining on the crow, the crow suddenly took the offensive, turned mid-air, and attacked the hawk, who flew off in one direction, the crow in another, the whole thing as silent and slow as a dream.

    Dd the hawk depart a sullen loser: "I'll get back at you another day"? Or did he give a cheerful, "See you next week for another game"?

    Oh, what do we know, what can we know, about the motives and psychology of hawks and crows?
   

My Sister's Birthday

     My sister Linda, if she were still living, would be 80 years old today. She died five years ago of Lewy body dementia, a terrible illness similar to Parkinson's except that it attacks the mental capacities more than Parkinson's does.

    Linda was a year and a half older than I, so we were very close as children.

We were the first two of five children and shared a bedroom until Linda went to college. We were so close that when Linda went to first grade, leaving me behind, I moped so badly my parents put me in kindergarten. (In those days, kindergarten wasn't considered a necessary step before first grade.) Our closeness lasted till she went to college and then I to a different college, and our paths verged. She got married while she was still in college, though the marriage didn't last much longer after graduation. After that she was a single working mother. She made her career as an occupational therapist for children, a profession she learned about through a Girl Scout field trip. She remarried after her children were grown, to a wonderful man who enriched her life until her death.

Years before her illness

    Her decline was gradual. At my niece's wedding she was cogent and active, just at the beginning stages of her illness.

Dancing at my niece's wedding (Linda, center)

Later she was put in a memory facility, a very nice place, with birds and plants on the porch and where I was able to take her for a walk in the garden when I visited.

Linda and her sisters

Later, though, when even that facility couldn't take care of her, she was put in a place with other dementia cases. I hated seeing my sister there. 

    She lived in Atlanta. I visited as often as I could. Mostly she knew who I was, and I often wondered how much of her incomprehension was because she couldn't understand or because she couldn't verbalize.

Linda with her siblings, several months before her death

The day she died my sister Laura, who also lives in Atlanta, was at the facility where she lived. One of the caregivers there told Laura that Linda wouldn't live much longer and suggested her sisters who weren't there could talk to her on the phone. I was so grateful to have had that chance to say good-bye to Linda. It comforts me to think she might have heard me, recognized me, and received the love I spoke through the phone to her.

    I went to Atlanta for her memorial service, which was held in the church she attended. At the reception after the service, person after person came up to me to say, "Your sister made such a difference in our lives. She helped our child so much." Over and over, I heard the same tribute. I had never known until then how revered Linda was in her field.

    Lewy body dementia is a terrible thing. I wrote the following poem when she was still in the memory care facility. My heart still aches for my sister.

Conversation with My Sister

Wind blows through a brain

hollowed out

by a disease of dementia

scattering the words

that then fall

in broken syllables

from her mouth,

garbled letters,

incomprehensible utterances

begun with vigor

sinking into mutter

as though the words were being sucked

back into their hollows.

If into the yawning absence

I drop a question,

response is blown to bits

that tangle on her tongue,

that she chews up and lets fall,

unintelligible crumbs of language

caught on her lips

spewed out with intent

but empty of meaning

and even when a phrase is clear

it makes no sense

her brain betraying her

by giving voice

to hallucinations and stereotypes

that have no roots in reality

though maybe the reality

of the brain hollowed out by disease

is too horrifying 

for words.

After the Snowstorm of March 27

     Oh, how the snow has lingered! We have had rain and warm weather for days, yet it was only two days ago that I was able to drive up the road at last, not quite to my house yet, but to the bottom of my driveway. There was that much snow. There are still large patches of snow here and there and eight inches of slush in places on the road, too much to drive even my Subaru through. 

From the top of the driveway

    The doctor had given me March 1 as a date for taking my first hike, but the snow came in on Monday and Tuesday, February 27 and 28, so I missed my scheduled hike on that date. Skiing is harder on the feet than hiking, but I wanted badly to get into the woods in the snow, so I put on my skis and walked in them—I wasn't skiing, just walking on skis—until twinges in my toe made me make myself turn towards home. After that I did a lot of quarter-mile walks down the road through the snow to get to the car.

    Last Tuesday the doctor approved me for all activities—skiing, yoga, hiking, whatever. I explained that I had had some pain when I walked through the snow on skis. "Kind of like you just had foot surgery?" he said and then approved all activities. "Just be careful," he said. "Don't be a knucklehead."

    Two days later I went skiing. Oh, how beautiful it was!

Mt. McLoughlin from the trail

The snow was good, but not great—crusty in places, heavy in others. My skills were likewise good but not great. I kept reminding myself not to be a knucklehead, but the snow and the trees and the mountains were so beautiful I skied for three and a half hours. I was in heaven.

       I was pretty tired when I got back to the car. It was more exercise than I have had for three months.            And it was superb.

Today Is My Father's Birthday

     It's hard to believe it has been eighteen years since my father died, shortly before his 99th birthday. He is still very much present with me. To honor him today, I post the following poem.

Dear Dad,

Thanks for telling me I was perspicacious and impudent

when I was three years old

and for the butel-rotten-lotten-gitter-wetter-cotter story.

I have loved language ever since.

Thanks for bouncing me on your knee

with the irresistible rhythms of "McGinty"

and reciting again and again "The Raven" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee."

Memorizing poetry is my favorite hobby today.

Thanks for reaching for the encyclopedia

at any hint of a question.

Would I have decided to get a Ph.D.in my sixties

if you hadn't shown me a curiosity for learning?

Thanks for explaining chameleons and terrapins

and that bees don't sting when they're swarming

and snakes won't hurt me if I don't hurt them.

Nature has become my habitat.

Thanks for all the adventures: camping in the Appalachian woods

Canoeing in the Okefenokee swamp

Car-camping from Georgia to Alaska with the whole family.

My life, too, has been rife with adventure.

Thanks for family council and discussing all those traits—

generosity, respect, loyalty, cheerfulness—

that made us think about how we behave.

Those words are still the foundation of my actions.

Thanks for the example of respect and tolerance:

Hiring a black man to work in your lab.

Saying about your children: you'd rather have a happy moron than an unhappy genius.

It's the basis of the way I treat people today.

Thanks for the example of good health and aerobic exercise:

running five miles every morning before breakfast

even into your nineties.

May I do as well at that age.

And thanks always for the humor.

The list is long, Dad, of gratitude.

Maybe you gave me these things through your genes

but I prefer to think you gave them through your teaching

because then I can thank you for consciously

doing for me what you did.

Snowed in Again

     Yesterday I walked through two feet of snow a quarter mile down the road, where a kind neighbor helped me dig my car out and get it up the last icy stretch to the paved road, ready for whenever I need to go to town. As I trudged home again, I was remembering another time, eighteen years ago…

    I was booked as a Chautauqua lecturer for 3:00 Sunday at the Applegate library. By Saturday I was already snowbound by three feet of snow. When I talked with Joan Peterson, program coordinator, by phone Sunday morning, we agreed to try to do the lecture if at all possible. I suggested I could ski to Thompson Creek Road, if she could meet me there. She expressed apprehension, but I said I would feel like a hero. "A hero is one thing," she said. "A martyr is another."

    I said I would make a trial run to see if I could ski the steep hills and would call her back.

    With the soft, deep snow counteracting the steepness, I was able to ski down the first hill. At its bottom three small fir trees stretched across the road, their dangling limbs frozen into place like a lace curtain. I crawled through the stiff branches, then skied down the second hill and up the slope to the snow-packed paved road, where Norm Young was just driving by in his four-wheel-drive Toyota Tacoma with chains on all four tires. He said the snowplow had stopped two miles down the road, at the county line, and that the road on those last two miles was "challenging with a capital C." He doubted that Joan could get up it in her Subaru.

    I skied to the mailbox, picked up the latest New Yorker and my mail (Rhonda, the mail carrier, had made it there on Friday!), and retraced my steps. The uphill skiing was slick but possible. I hoped I wouldn't be doing it in the dark.

    Home again, changing my wet clothes, I was sorry to see the New Yorker had fallen from my pocket. I called Joan to tell her I could ski down but wasn't sure she could drive up. She said she thought she could make it with chains. She and Christopher were still trying to disinter her car from snow, but she would meet me at 1:30.

    I had just time to eat lunch and pack what I needed for my lecture: my metal music stand for a lectern, my laptop computer, sixteen books (yes, all necessary), and a change of clothes and shoes so I wouldn't have to lecture in ski clothes. I slipped my arms into the pack. It was startlingly heavy. I clipped my boots into my skis and took off, but, unbalanced by the pack, I fell at once. Pinned on my back by the pack's weight, uselessly clawing at the air with my arms and legs like an overturned stink bug, I somehow managed to release my boots from the bindings. Using the skis as platforms, I twisted to a sideways kneeling position. The soft snow gave no purchase, but, swaying under the weight of the pack, I managed to stand. I made a successful second start, but when I headed down the first hill, I fell again. Finally I was skiing again, carefully and slowly. As I crouched to ski through the tunnel of snowy limbs, I thought, "This is the hardest $200 I've ever earned."

    Skiing over the rise of the second hill, I saw, to my surprise, Tuffy Decker, trudging, waist-deep in snow, up the hill with a cable over his shoulder, on the other end of which was a yellow Jeep, cock-eyed to the road against the snow bank, with two teen-agers inside and another man standing in the road. I recognized this as a rescue mission for my neighbor, Sylvia, who was, as always, anxious about being able to get in and out. Tuffy greeted me cheerfully and handed me my sodden New Yorker as we passed.

    By the time I reached the road, I was fifteen minutes late. Joan wasn't there, but Louise Nicholson was just skiing past. I dropped my pack under a tree and joined her to ski down the road a bit, thinking Joan might be stuck in the snow somewhere. We skied a mile without seeing anyone, then turned back, meeting, on the way, the Jeep and crew of Tuffy's now unsuccessful rescue mission.

    Retrieving my pack from under the tree, I shoved the books into two heavy plastic bags, which Louise stuffed into two mailboxes on the road. I left the music stand under the tree, put the computer in the pack, bid good-bye to Louise, and started up the hills towards home, slipping badly, side-hopping up the steepest parts, thinking, "Someone forgot when we made these plans that I'm sixty years old."

    On the way up I met Mike Hendrikson, coming down, plowing his long legs through the snow. Joan had called. She had been turned back by the depth of the snow on the unplowed road and was at the Alsenses' (warm by the fire, drinking coffee, nibbling cookies, chatting with Bob and Mary). She had wanted him to ask me, if he saw me, if I could ski down the road to meet her there.

    I considered the possibility for about five seconds.

    Finally home again, I changed my wet clothes and called Joan. She was glad I hadn't tried to meet her. She would call Gayle to put a note on the door of the library that the lecture had been canceled. We had done our heroic best.

    I was bone tired. I had skied that route four times, twice down, twice up. I felt more like a martyr than a hero. Weary beyond belief, I stoked the fire, made a cup of tea, and curled into bed to read a slightly damp New Yorker.