A Tree of Jays

Posted on February 9, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

No brigadier throughout the year
So civic as the jay.
A neighbor and a warrior too,
With shrill felicity

Pursuing winds that censure us
A February day,
The brother of the universe
Was never blown away.

The snow and he are intimate;
I ‘ve often seen them play
When heaven looked upon us all
With such severity,

I felt apology were due
To an insulted sky,
Whose pompous frown was nutriment
To their temerity.

The pillow of this daring head
Is pungent evergreens;
His larder — terse and militant —
Unknown, refreshing things;

His character a tonic,
His future a dispute;
Unfair an immortality
That leaves this neighbor out.

Emily Dickinson, The Blue Jay

From time to time, I have noticed the odd blue jay in the pines that front our house.  Their color is distinctive, and their appearance is all the more noticeable given their size, raucous cry, and energetic investigations of all things piney.  Their relative scarcity makes them all the more attractive.

Ours are Steller’s Jays.  They don’t chase the smaller birds as crows do, but are sociable, but inquisitive, neighbors.  They spend most of their time in the pines, rarely alighting on the ground.  In the pines, their movements are quick, assertive, and somewhat manic, and they constantly fly among tree limbs and between trees.  They always seem to be pursuing an imperative goal during their visits, one no doubt associated with food for I have never seen them nesting nearby – at least not prior to yesterday.

Yesterday, Helen and I began what we hope will become a regular morning walk.  We have been constantly promising ourselves we would start walking as shared exercise since my December retirement, and yesterday all of our available excuses finally ran out.  So, we suited up as a walking duo for the first time: Helen reassembling her walking gear from her last solo trip in early December; me assembling for the first time a combination of new and old athletic gear into something resembling an ensemble (assuming gear with an inconstant University of Michigan theme so qualifies).

We walked down our driveway to one of the paved lanes we share with our neighbors, and began a truncated walk up and down its length.  We observed homes and wilderness alike, chatting about the apparently new neighbors who are having an old friend’s house remodeled to taste and who have not yet moved in, the large vacant tract to our south which is owned by that same old friend, and the state of the weather, both current and prospective.

Strangely, we saw no humans on our walk, other than a passing van-driver delivering new carpet to the neighbors behind us and a painter going into the home being remodeled.  Neither was close enough to speak to us and only the carpet deliveryman gave us any attention, and that only for the purpose of steering around us.  However, Beau, the three-legged Siberian Husky belonging to a further neighbor, gave us all of his attention, barking at us from behind his fence in what Helen advised was his usual practice and offering dire warnings and unfriendly advice as we twice passed in alternating directions.  He deigned to cease despite our friendly entreaties.

After passing Beau the second time, and just prior to reaching the juncture of the two private lanes serving our neighborhood, we heard raucous screeching originating from a pine just off the lane about 20 yards in front of us.  At first, we were certain it was starlings, for they abound in all seasons and the noise was such that it only could have originated from a congregation.  Starlings’ choruses are so constant and incessant as to not have any discernible meaning; their choruses seem to be nothing more than a statement of existence aimed at the world in general, but at no one in particular.

When we arrived at the tree, we found to our mutual surprise that it was, instead, a flock of blue jays seemingly complicit with Beau in offering further warnings and advice about the danger of invading another’s domain – in this case the environs of their tree.  Their screeching continued throughout our investigation of them and until we were 20 feet or so beyond their tree.  There were at least 6 large jays in the pine: all in constant motion, all unified by warning voice and assertive manner.  Their screeching was as full of menace as was Beau’s barking, causing me to conclude that we must have stumbled upon a communal nesting tree.

Upon our return to the house, I borrowed Helen’s bird book to identify and read about  Steller’s Jays.  Helen’s book offered insight on such items as coloring, range, habits, and desired environment, all of which corresponded to what we’d seen. For it was a book of facts.

The book offered nothing, however, about the possibility of a shared sense of community and possession among Steller’s Jays.  As I reflected upon the Tree of Jays and Beau’s vociferous defense of his realm, I realized that each was protecting a home just as I would mine.  And this realization made me wonder whether their sense of place is as expansive as mine: whether either jay or dog appreciates our shared environment as much for its beauty and tranquility as for its sustaining properties.

I have no real insight into the ability of jays and dogs to appreciate beauty in the land; I only know for certain that they are of that beauty and, as such, are appreciated by me, each in a particular way and each for what they are.

I look forward to visiting with the jays and with Beau on future walks and am pleased to have made their acquaintance, and I promise faithfully to honor their mutual threats by staying well clear of the boundaries they each so avidly guard.

Even so, the jays are always welcome at our house.  Beau?  Beau can stay home.

Posted in Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | 1 Comment

Companies of Friends

Posted on January 20, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

When I die, let them judge me by my company of friends
Let them know me as the footprints that I left upon the sand
Let them laugh for all the laughter
Let them cry for laughter’s end
But when I die, let them judge me by my company of friends

Danny Schmidt, Company of Friends

There is something in me that hates public recognition, something that amounts almost to a phobia.  One of my former partners once got up on stage at a firm retreat in front of several hundred people to say something nice about me and I, sitting in the front row and unknowing he had planned to do so, had an almost unconquerable urge to duck under the table in front of me to avoid being noticed.  The only reason I didn’t was a fortunate realization that I would be making an embarrassing scene if I did, and that my behavior would be highly visible and inexplicable to everyone else.  I had to sit there and take it, something far harder for me than facing off against the government over the draft those many years ago.

It doesn’t pay to ask me why this is, since I hardly understand it myself.  I have no idea whether it’s genetic or something learned at my mother’s knee.  I’ve often thought about why I am so bothered, but have been unable to find any real answer.  I’ve gotten a bit better about dealing with it, but I suspect my friends, if they were reading this statement in congress, would look at one another and smile, knowing that any improvement I might have achieved is only one of degree.

On the other hand, there is nothing so pleasant for me as meeting with friends in a convivial atmosphere and sharing the stories that frame a friendship – especially the oft-repeated stories that remind you not only of the initial event from which a particular story springs, but of all its previous communal retellings in which you shared and the memories of where you were and who you were with during those retellings.  For such things only happen when you are with family, and close friends are a family earned – not a family designated by genetics.

I enjoyed the company of such a family last night, one originating from my life at work.  Helen announced last weekend that she had arranged a dinner to celebrate our anniversary.  Since our anniversary is January 1 and since we typically avoid being out and about on nights when the moon is metaphorically full, we usually celebrate our anniversary on some other date.  I found it a bit odd that she had simply made a reservation at a particular restaurant without discussing it with me first as is our custom, but I didn’t really question her announcement since the restaurant involved is one of our favorites and the waiting time for reservations is significant.

When we arrived, we were greeted politely by the hostess, who then proceeded to show us to the basement.  Since the basement is without view, I came close to telling the hostess that we wanted to be seated upstairs with the rest of the adults – but, fortunately, I held my tongue.  For when we arrived at the bottom of the stairs, I found myself among a roomful of friends, each of whom holds a special place in my heart; each of whom has helped define who I am and doesn’t seem to care whether or not I learned everything I should have from their particular means of informing my life and beliefs; each of whom is graced with a sparkling laugh and equally sparkling eyes.

I was caught wholly unaware, but instantly found myself looking forward to the evening instead of dreading the occurrence of an occasion.  For I immediately recognized I was among friends who not only understand my foibles but are resigned to them.  I knew I could laugh together with them about my eccentricities in the way only a family can – openly, unashamedly, convivially, happily, and mutually.

So began one of the most pleasurable events of my life, one of the kind you recall easily; one of the kind that truly graces a life because of its relative scarcity.

As the evening unfolded, I came to realize this was the second such grace note to my life that I’ve enjoyed in the last month.  At the end of December, I was equally surprised by a close-knit family of friends, a company bound together by a shared interest in the arts and a strong affection for one particular artist.  The larger part of this group turned up to celebrate my retirement, unexpectedly and unknown to either Helen or me, at what had been billed as the annual Christmas/birthday gift sharing with our friends Tom and Carrie.  While Tom, Carrie, Helen and I were celebrating Helen’s and Carrie’s respective December birthdays and the spirit of Christmas in Tom’s and Carrie’s living room, the  company members were quietly assembling in the back of the house – all with the goal of ushering me into a new phase of life with laughter, sincerity, conviviality, and joy.

Only after I inadvertently discovered the rest of the company in Tom and Carrie’s back hall while on my way to use the facilities, did I realize the meaning of some of the incongruities of scene I had already noticed- the extra leaves in the dinner table, for instance, that had momentarily puzzled me when considered in contrast to the placement of only four chairs, and the long, congratulatory paper runner down the middle of the table that had been so lovingly prepared by hand.  And so began another such evening as last night, an evening in the company of friends – nay, in the company of family.

I would have retired long ago (or used the facilities more often) had I understood it would lead to such joyous evenings.   After all, what are friends for if not this?  In fact, I may go back to work and retire anew in a year or so if I can be certain they will give me a second send-off.  Or, better yet, perhaps I will become a serial retiree.

I wish I had Danny Schmidt’s facility for lyrics, but I do know enough to appropriate and recite them when the time is right:

“Every moment has a face
Eyes of purpose, lips of place
To know and speak of only grace
And to make right the time

* *  *  *

The only gift that’s handed down
Is the gift to grow from muddy ground
So plant your feet and place the crown
And make right the time.”

* Danny Schmidt, Make Right the Time

 

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A Winter Canvas

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

Humptulips County is frost-bound.  No form-stealing blankets of snow for us: just intricate rime overlying every living or inert thing, as if each were a piece of furniture adorned with lace doilies or antimacassars.  The temperature is near freezing; the sky is cloudless, open to infinity at night and lit by a pale candle by day.

This winter demands my closest attention, for frost, while delicate appearing, is  capable of the most amazing intricacies and tough enough to rule the moment.  A frost-bitten landscape is one whose canvas reads equally well from a distance or from close up, for each detail is graced from within by even more intricate detail, yet is complete within itself.  This is a landscape of still lifes; everywhere I look are individual works of art and the whole is of a kind.

Such moments are fleeting.  The strength of frost is in the expansiveness of its lacy network, and its lace disappears quickly with the least application of heat or rain.  Unlike snow which melts slowly and clings stubbornly to north facing hillsides and shadowed dells, frost is lithe and quick – here one minute, gone the next.  But while it rules, it rules with an iron hand, sapping all living things of flexibility and somehow rendering brittle even the gravel on our drive.

Posted in 'Tis a Puzzlement, Humptulips County | 1 Comment

The Qualities of Grace

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

There is beauty in the unusual, both because of its startling qualities and of its inherent uniqueness.  Sometimes the unusual is simply the ordinary turned inside out, such that, upon first viewing, nothing seems amiss until matters are put into context.

Winter’s unusualness is similar to that of photographic negatives: colors are inverted and otherwise normal objects take on an appearance similar to that of a pair of socks worn inside out.  For in deep mid-winter, the absence of color and detail becomes foreground material rather than the stuff of background, and spacial realities must be relearned.

Humptulips County has not yet arrived at winter’s depths, and we have had no snow.   Our weather forecasters merely dream of the pride of place a good snowfall offers  them, and, for the moment, restrict themselves to noting its absence and hinting at possibilities.  Thus far, winter has been content to nightly rime our gravelled roads and the puddles along their verge with the apparent goal of crunchy mornings and melodiously dripping afternoons.

Nonetheless, we have had a few very cold nights, with the temperature dropping well below freezing.  I awoke to the results of one of these earlier this week to find each needle  of our many pines sheathed in ice.  The crystallized needless gave the early morning that fairy tale quality mankind strives to imitate by use of outdoor Christmas lights; a quality even more precious when applied by nature.

Mornings such as this come rarely enough to qualify as unusual, but frequent enough not to garner the sort of undivided attention they deserve.  For one is wont to give perfunctory appreciation to their gracefulness, seeing them more as a reminder of the season than as a moment of profound beauty.  Regardless of how you see such mornings, their time is fleeting, and it is this very transience that makes them worthy of longer and deeper contemplation – for the quality of grace is never sustainable.

But the morning in question turned truly unusual as the day warmed.  One particular pine lies directly opposite our living room window and it, too, was bathed in ice crystals.  As Helen and I, breakfasted, showered and dressed, sat discussing our plans for the day, I came to realize that rain was falling from a pale, but otherwise sunny, cloudless sky.  On closer inspection, I noted that rain was only falling under the pine in question: rain caused by the nearly simultaneous melting of each icy, needled sheath.

If there had been wind, the tree might have shaken itself free of crystals.  But there was no wind, and the tree did not seem to be the actor in this piece.  It was if each icy sheath was in communication with every other, and they all decided to abandon ship – or tree – in a moment of communal cognition. There seemed to be something in the sunlight activating the moment: something more intelligent than mechanical; something more intuitive than chemical.

And so we enjoyed this small, but magnificent, musical for all of the ten or fifteen minutes of its duration.  It was played just for us, occurring, as it did, outside our window – far enough from the road as to be visually private, and quiet enough to be heard only by an audience of two.

Thus was our morning graced by the moment, and so it is that my memory is graced anew with recollection.

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Hello World!

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

I just returned home from signing the final papers related to my retirement from a 43 year legal career.  The event itself was nothing to speak of – just me, my assistant, and an office manager sitting around a desk that had been mine in an office emptied of meaning and memories.  The very sparseness of this scene was somehow appropriate, for I am well content with the service I gave to others and have a strong sense of closure.

As I returned along the highway leading to home, I noticed that the taller trees near my turnoff had roped and drawn low-hanging clouds into an embrace.  Some treetops were lost to mist; others stood clear in the wintry light.  This is a common winter’s sight in Humptulips County, one whose very ordinariness is belied by that certain, sweet variety of melancholy which declares: “You have come home.”

And so home I came: home to a country where the trees seek the company of the clouds on mid-winter days; home to a world where nature weaves its magic no matter the petty state of a man’s concerns; home to a life in which I no longer need to focus upon the concerns of others and have ample time for contemplation of nature’s concerns and of the basic rhythms of life.

Posted in 'Tis a Puzzlement, Humptulips County, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | 2 Comments

Lessons In Humility On The Farm

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

Life on a farm – any farm (whether or not in Humptulips County) – has the capacity to teach many lessons.  Take humility, for example.

Since the garbage man usually arrives early, our habit has been for me to take the garbage to its designated pick-up spot on the road upon my customary earlier departure for work.  We save a trip to the road and back in that way, with the only down side being my having to handle a usually full garbage can in office dress.  The Farm’s garbage days are usually on Fridays, but garbage day falls on a Saturday this week.  This week’s garbage pick-up was delayed due to the occurrence of Christmas on Tuesday, last.  In rural America, distances are such that routines are altered for holidays and no one would think of complaining.

And so, inevitably, I failed last night to take the garbage to its designated pick-up spot on our road – a fact I recalled last evening only after I was in bed.  Therefore, this morning at 4:00 A.M., before ascending to the library to begin writing, I put shoes on my bare feet, donned a coat over my pajamas, and loaded the garbage can into the back of my car.  I then drove that car – a Lexus SUV – down to the road to leave the garbage to its destiny and to pick up yesterday’s mail.

If only the Lexus manufacturer could have seen me then!

This morning’s trip was a routine form of humility upon which I have often pondered.  Farm life somehow renders the brand of a vehicle irrelevant to the task.  You work with the tools you have when need arises, and whatever purpose a tool may have been designed to serve is easily forgotten when you realize it will easily fulfill an alternative need.  Succinctly stated, there is no such thing as a “luxury vehicle” on a farm.

But I have “enjoyed” far more humbling garbage moments than this morning’s turn, such as the two or three times our garbage received a free ride to my office because, while musing deeply upon some mesmerizing subject or other, I forgot to leave the garbage can at the road and blithely passed on.  You might well think that having to travel the distance of a football field from the house to the road would not be conducive to garbage amnesia, but, if you thought that, you would be wrong.

On those occasions when our garbage hitched a free ride to town, Helen would cheerfully call my office to inquire whether the garbage had traveled well and to remind me that I should take the garbage can out of the car upon returning home and return it to its customary non-garbage day home in our garage – for the simple reason that by the time I finally returned home, the week’s garbage day would be a thing of the past.

Sometimes I remembered to do so; sometimes she had to remind me again.

Well, I will never do it again! That I can unconditionally promise, because last Friday I retired from practicing law and I won’t be going to the office again on any future garbage day.  Therefore, the only question remaining for consideration is this:  Where will I be going the next time I forget to leave the garbage at the road?

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The Elasticity of Time

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

Time is a strange affair. I swear it’s elastic: the past is sometimes far away and at other times near-to-hand; the future is generally unknowable, but always informed by what we comprehend of our past. In time’s elasticity is the very source of its fascination, for it is endlessly interactive with the very vessel which contains and gives it shape – the cognitive mind. Each of us constantly attempts to re-write the past to suit our present needs and mental images; and each of us constantly seeks to control the future through our present actions and beliefs. And to the extent that time can be said to have no meaning absent interaction with cognition, we are far more successful in these attempts than would be otherwise suggested by the concept of “fact”.

In theoretical constructs, facts are supposedly immutable. But outside of the scientific world, many so-called “facts” are, in reality, shapeshifters. While a given “fact” may have had one meaning in a prior incarnation, it may well assume a subtly different meaning in another to become a fulcrum from which the courses of a life, both past and future, might be altered. Mind you, such shapeshiftings are not lies. Far from it. They are merely the result of fusion, of the interaction of a cognitive mind’s current chemistry with the factual substances which give it form and content in the first place. And in this manner, time demonstrates its elasticity – time, and time again.

Does “time” have a meaning outside of a cognitive mind? Inanimate objects give it little heed, although it may be the cause of their gradual disintegration or transmutation into something new or different. Within a given scientific theorem, time may well be a vital dimension which gives form to a universe composed of animate and inanimate matter. In this context, time must have meaning absent an interaction with cognition. But within its interaction with cognition, lies the source of its power. For, lacking cognition, inanimate objects don’t care if they change over time; only animate objects do. And animate, cognitive objects are fascinated with the limitations upon their being; limitations placed upon them by the passages of time.

So what does all this mean? Only time may tell, but only if there is a different sort of time lying beyond the boundaries of that which we cognitively enjoy.

It is early on the morning following my retirement from forty-three years of practicing law, so forgive me while I ponder aloud about the meaning of time and if my pondering is meaningless. For with one major tranche of my life complete, I am trembling on the brink of another, wondering the while whether the truths that informed my past are sufficient to inform my future.

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Autumn Winds

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

No one can tell me,
Nobody knows,
Where the wind comes from,
Where the wind goes.

It’s flying from somewhere
As fast as it can, I couldn’t keep up with it,
Not if I ran.

But if I stopped holding
The string of my kite,
It would blow with the wind
For a day and a night.

And then when I found it,
Wherever it blew,
I should know that the wind
Had been going there too.

So then I could tell them
Where the wind goes…
But where the wind comes from
Nobody knows.

A. A. Milne, Wind On The Hill

Occasionally, I stand listening to the night before entering my car to begin my morning commute. I am fully aware that much of what goes on around the Farm occurs outside the scope of human ken, but I find evidence of such activity in the glimmerings, the tiny rustlings, and the faint impressions engendered by the deepest darkness that occurs just before dawn. When I pause in this manner, it is because a presence has somehow registered and weighed upon my senses, a seemingly sentient something quickened by the night and existing, maddeningly, just beyond the outermost edge of my cognition.

Whatever it is, it never seems unfriendly. It is a spirit of some sort. To my modern sensibilities, it seems as if it might be the shade of a being formerly worshipped by our ancestors, a mere wraith who has somehow found its way to the Farm in hopes of becoming the object of simple acknowledgment or, perhaps given time, even renewed worship. But since I have been rendered powerless to grant it divinity due to the skepticism of our age, I am reduced to thinking only welcoming thoughts whenever its presence becomes palpable enough to draw my attention.

This morning the wraith, for once, was strikingly evident for it was possessed of oratory – speech made manifest by the interaction between a vigorous Autumn wind and our many pines. I am as certain as I can be that its intended message was grand in scope, for the resultant soughing of the pines was simply too musical, too magnificent to have been mere mumbling or a verbalization of an incoherent rage over an inability to communicate more directly.

Whatever the wraith’s message may have been, its grandiloquence held me spellbound for several minutes there in the swaddling darkness just outside my door; there in the thin zone of permeability between the wraith’s world and mine.

I didn’t even notice the rain.

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Somehow Or Other, We’re All In This Together

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

As I left the house this morning, I encountered a rabbit running out of the fog across the driveway and onto the opposite verge, attempting frantically to draw me away from a lair hidden somewhere among the bushes and hillsides that line our driveway.  Ironically, his very act of trying to mislead me through a myriad of unpredictable twists and turns is what revealed him to me in the first place and granted him specific existence within my perception.  Absent his movement, I would have been reduced to speculating (if it had even occurred to me to speculate at that hour of morning) about the existence of a mostly invisible rabbit population on the Farm, speculation driven by such not-so-rare, early morning sightings and by periodic glimpses of faint clues their nightly sojourns sometimes leave behind.

His sudden bolt to the opposite side of the road made me wonder where his lair was, a lair I could only find, if so inclined, by assiduously following his every move – a feat I am no longer capable of, if I ever was.  Since I have not the facility nor the inclination to seek his lair, from the standpoint of human logic I wondered why he moved at all since he would likely have remained invisible in the foggy darkness had he stood still.  But rabbit logic and human logic aren’t congruent.  So given this logical mismatch, I chose to do what I always do when scaring up a rabbit on my way to work – I slow down until I am certain the rabbit is no longer where I might inadvertently hit him, and then pass him by so that he might go on with his life on the Farm without further interference from me.

Having negotiated the rabbit, I turned happily into the lane that services our small community and immediately had to slow again due to a vague perception of  movement to my left.  And so it was that I saw the stag first, standing magnificently in my neighbor’s field, his appearance rendered magical by a vaporous mixture of headlights and fog.  Since I long ago learned that deer, unlike rabbits, are usually found in groups, I stopped and peered mystically into the fog ahead of me – a task made more difficult by having my headlights reflected back at me by the dense fog.  I quickly sensed further movement on my right, and a doe ran from my property to the neighbor’s to join her mate.  As she reached the stag, he rolled his head in seeming invitation and they bounded, together, into the cover of the trees which blanket the steep slope above the river’s catch basin, some 40 feet below and behind my neighbor’s home.

The deer make their home either on the neighbor’s slope or on the forested hillside behind our house.  In the Summer, I often find their grassy nests in the high grass of the untamed meadow below our house.  In the winter, deer sign is harder to spot, although I sometimes find their footprints commingled with bird scratching in freshly fallen snow.  Once we came home to find a deer carcass alongside the drive, the doe – for such it was – apparently dead from natural causes.  We dragged her across an open field and into the hillside woods so that she might return to her home in all senses of that verb.

And so it is that I interact from time to time with our fellow residents of the Farm – short, quick glimpses of foreign lives that are simultaneously intriguing and beautiful, even if incomprehensible.  I suppose I could read more about the history and habits of my fellow residents to enrich the interactive experience, but I confess that I prefer the mere glimpses, if only because they assure me that much is afoot in the world other than things of petty human concern. I would rather speculated why the rabbit runs wildly to divert my attention while the deer stands stalk still in an attempt to evade it, than to have it scientifically explained.

Of one thing I am certain – I will not mention to Helen tonight that the deer were on our property, since it will surely fuel her ongoing war with them over whether certain  vegetation is edible, as determined by deer logic, or sacrosanct, as determined by gardener’s logic.  She doesn’t have the heart to shoot or otherwise injure them, but she is capable of a perfectly good foot stomp or a loud shout to drive them away from prized roses or other plants, and I don’t want her to feel that it is time to go back on guard duty.  The late fall weather is simply too uncongenial for such a purpose, especially at night when the deer roam free.

It is clear to me that all of us – deer, rabbits, humans, and all other varieties of critters resident on the Farm – may be partners in the use of the land, but we don’t necessarily follow the same rules or share the same goals as to that use.  All I am completely certain of is that it is only human logic that maintains that a single species – ours  may own land outright to the exclusion of fellow residents.

The other creatures survive on the land by interspecies sharing and if they have any logical notion in common, it is that running is the means by which to stay free.

Posted in Humptulips County, Our Place in the Firmament | 2 Comments

A Thank You To My Many Friends

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

Humptulips County has a diverse population, much more so, in fact, than when I first moved back after graduation from law school. Over the years, the area has become increasingly diversified and far more tolerant of that diversity. It is by no means perfect in its tolerance, but the nay-sayers and beetle-browed racists have little voice here.

When I began law school, I shared the general feeling that New York was the aspirational goal. The process of my disenchantment with this notion began at my very first meeting with law school faculty and fellow students – a welcome tea in the Lawyer’s Club before the beginning of classes. When I arrived, the room was already full, and, being a late comer, I joined a group centered around a law professor then unknown to me. He was a short man with graying hair, a rotund appearance, and tiny half-glasses perched dramatically on the end of his nose. The first thing I heard was a question from a fellow-occupant of the hinterlands (in his case, Nebraska): “Professor, I want to go back home to practice with my father for a couple of years and then go on to practice in New York. Would that be possible?” Confronted with what hadn’t seemed a challenge when uttered by the questioner but what had obviously been perceived as one by the recipient, the professor drew himself up to full height and, glaring over the top of the half-glasses, proclaimed: “Young man, it is always possible to go from New York; it is never possible to go to New York.”

My immediate reaction to this haughty statement was to label the professor a pompous ass (a label that easily withstood the test of time), but my strong reaction caused me to begin reassessing the possibility of a New York practice. The professor was from the East, and I began to wonder what I might find in New York, a place I had not yet visited at this moment in my life. In fact, he did me the favor of causing me to consider the East, in general, as a different culture from that I had known growing up in the West, and made me much more aware of the values I had learned in that environment.

Several months later when driving to class from the small town where I had been lucky to find lodging that first year of law school, I found myself faced with a disbelieving wife staring at me from the passenger seat of our car. When I asked what the look was for, she advised me that I had just commented on how lovely the mountains were this morning. Michigan not being noted as a mountainous state, it dawned upon me that I had been looking at a cloud bank on the horizon and thinking of Humptulips County. As I subsequently contemplated the implications of my reaction, I realized I was homesick.

From that moment on it was a foregone conclusion that I would return to Seattle. And so I did. I returned to a Seattle that was a city governed as if it were a large village by a few self-chosen, white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant males, and in doing so I felt as if I had stepped back in time to a quiet place lacking the intellectual and political energy of the University of Michigan campus. Everything seemed smaller, quieter, and starved of intellectual acumen. Cultural issues that were considered pressing in Ann Arbor had not yet even occurred to Seattle residents as matters for consideration. During the initial stages of my re-acclimation to Seattle, I confess that I had some doubts about my choice.

Whatever doubts I had quickly vanished as I immersed myself in practice and the community. Whatever it was I had found upon my return, its presence was fleeting. For I had the good fortune to return to a fledging city ready to flex its muscles in public, and during my 40-plus years of practice I was privileged to have a front row seat to the exhibition and to become a bit player in the show.

Seattle quickly grew from a venue where a white male bus driver could close the door on the foot of an anxious black man hoping to catch a ride before the bus left its stop (I witnessed this first hand and had the pleasure of yelling at the bus driver to stop) only to be subsequently “disciplined” (according to the official response to my subsequent letter of complaint), to a venue in which a significantly diverse population would have quickly labeled the driver’s actions as racism and seen to his summary firing. And lest you believe I think Seattle perfectly free of racial bias, let me quickly disabuse you. It isn’t. But it has become a place where something so overt would be an immense insult to the common weal, and it is actively working on increasing the depth of its compassion for diversity.

From a macro viewpoint, this atmosphere of diversity has been immensely satisfying, especially to anyone of curious disposition. It allowed me to form friendships that would not have been acceptable in the culture of ignorance prevailing in the small town where I was raised, and it provided an ongoing education in human culture and values in the context of a work-a-day world. It taught me to ask questions of others from divergent backgrounds and to appreciate their divergent cultural viewpoints.

So, over these long years spent working in an evolving culture of diversity and economic change, l have learned much: from an African-American friend, the value of discussing societal differences openly in order to arrive at a mutual understanding uncolored by the teachings of a racist past; from a Japanese businessman, the value of taking a long-term view of business relationships and periodically asking for relief from obligations in furtherance of the resulting partnership; from a young Muslim friend, how a religious community can use its beliefs to further, by common action, the interests of its members as they engage in the panoply of life’s endeavors; from a Jewish friend, the value of fighting against all of the guises that racism assumes, the true value of diversity as a goal, and the pure, simple joy that comes from fighting for that which you believe to be right; from my many professional female friends, that the struggle of the male to balance priorities in our culture is nothing when compared to the magnificence of their super-human efforts; from my senior partner and former citizen-soldier, the value of grace and style under pressure, especially when combined with practical advice, in achieving success in the practice of law; from my artist friend and his wife, that the view of life from the right brain, as expressed in the concomitant angles, sentiments and perspectives of a completed work of art, is essential to finding the serenity of mind needed to balance the left-brain, capitalist imperative that rules our days.

There is much more but the list is too long to recount everything I have learned from so many friends and mentors, so perhaps those whom I haven’t listed above will forgive my overlooking their contributions for the sake of the brevity of this piece.

Perhaps, in summary, I can simply report that the one of the true friends I have gained from my days at work in this culture of diversity and change is of Korean heritage; a person who is as American as I, but who appreciates our shared culture from the vantage point of being a young mother who, in turn, is a child of immigrant parents. The bonds we two have forged go far beyond the work place and extend to our respective spouses, families, and acquaintances. Except for purposes of illustration in a piece of this kind, it no longer occurs to me to consider her as of Korean heritage or as a woman, for we are simply friends who believe in one another due to a trust gained by the sharing of lessons learned from our differing stories.

This is as it should be.

And for all of this education and friendship gained from a serendipitous decision to return to Humptulips County at what proved to be a propitious time, I am greatly thankful on this day after Thanksgiving.

Posted in Friendship, Humptulips County | 2 Comments