A Mission Statement For Love - Part I

I sit here in a 20-foot trailer camper surrounded by divorce papers and flies. Outside a boy dribbles a basketball. The rubber ricochets against concrete laid with hands stronger than my own. There was a time I might have challenged that fact, but my youth is fading with the orange sun peeking through my small square window, the tint casting a light that somehow matches my mood. The color will fade, along with my melancholy. And maybe that’s the lesson here. After all, who am I to feel sorry for myself? Has not every man encountered troubles that made him stronger? Wiser? Humbler? Are these not traits to be thankful for?

I’m reading Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt. It’s a firsthand account of the dying of a people, retold through the eyes of a man who witnessed it all up close and all too personable. In the first paragraph, as the Sioux elder begins to tell his story, he confesses, “…if it were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it; for what is one man that he should make much of his winters, even when they bend him like a heavy snow? So many other men have lived and shall live that story, to be grass upon the hills.”

And there it is. If a Native American, blind with the memory of what was his, burdened with what was done, left to live among the remainders of a world that rejects him, doesn’t make much of hardship, why the hell should I? I am nothing but a man, and so many other men have walked and will walk, leaving tracks beyond my own. And although this is all true, I can’t help but write as if my words have meaning, as if they may live beyond me.

For the past few years I’ve been struggling with a concept seemingly imbedded in my soul. These ideals were cultivated as soon as I was old enough to watch HBO replays of Legends of the Fall and Dances with Wolves. Even Goonies was a love story, and I’ve always been deeply drawn to that word. Love. It encircled me like a fog wreath, clung to the backwalls of my actions and superseded the heights of my sophomoric intelligence. I came to believe in things like destiny and soulmates, grew intoxicated with the idea of wild and pure things undisturbed waiting for me somewhere in the world. These ideals manifested themselves into two forms - the wild west and a beautiful woman. Both made my heart thump like a savage rabbit; both propelled me to leave my hometown, quit a career, abandon a widowed mother, say goodbye to childhood friends, say goodbye to brothers.

It was late at night when I almost hit the first with my truck. I had been driving countless miles in search of good elk hunting. All I had found were four-wheelers with hunters mounted on the front racks, their bows stretched across their laps, their faces grim with the threat of competition. Every trailhead held a horse trailer, every pull-off a camper or a tent. My introduction to wild Idaho was abridged by lifted 4x4 Chevy’s and stereo music drowning the songs of crickets chirping at the moon, the latter the only tune I was interested in listening to. Where were the herds of unhassled elk? Where were the ridgelines with mule deer feeding without a care in the world? Where were the wolves and grizzlies, the fumbling black bear or the soaring bald eagle? Instead, I found man-made roads higher than mountain goats could climb. Instead, I heard engines roaring over the trickling of creeks no longer free to flow their course without the diversion of irrigation interests and power company pocketbooks. Now, I’m all for electricity. And I grew up a farmer. At certain times I’ve made my living on both. I’m not going to go all Monkey Wrench Gang here, but after a while a guy just wants to see a piece of ground that doesn’t have his own signature on it.

So, I kept driving. The sun went down. The surroundings grew flat and barren and shapeless - sagebrush and dirt - the last thing from wild-looking country. I navigated by an app on my phone, the screenlight fending off the black that swallowed my truck. And that’s when I almost ran him over. I slammed on the breaks, looked up, and stared a 6x6 bull elk in the face. He looked back at me through the dust and beams like I was an alien plummeting onto his earth. I was in shock. He was in his bedroom. Suddenly, I had flipped the lights on. He trotted off into a western abyss and I parked my pickup, exhausted and thankful to finally see the creature I had come looking for. I slept in the truck bed, the topper kissing my forehead every time I rolled over in my mummy sleeping bag, my feet kicking the end of my tailgate. In the morning I found him. He had bedded no more than 200 yards from our encounter. I couldn’t catch him in the wide open and he was well out of range of my bow and arrow, so I only watched him as he walked miles up a mountain. I memorized the pine tree he strolled past when he entered the timber. That evening I hiked up. With two hours left in the day, I watched more than thirty elk file out - a raucous band of bugling bulls and mewing cows, the bumper bull bringing up the rear. They were wild and beautiful. He was the king of the mountain. No other human being was in sight. And they haven’t been for the last six years.

How did this elk know where to go? In the daylight, I could see the other mountain range he must have come from. It stood against the blue sky seven miles east of the one he straddled now. Seven miles is not that far for ungulates, I know. But how did he know those other elk were there? He walked across a barren sage flat to the exact trail, found them among a thousand other paths in a hundred other ridgelines. This baffled me then; mystifies me now.

It must be proof that wild places are still out there. You have to look for them. You have to cover some ground. They’re not the same wild places our great-grandfathers might have visited. They’re not the same grounds Black Elk spoke of when he said, “Once we were happy in our own country and we were seldom hungry, for then the two-leggeds and the four-leggeds lived together like relatives, and there was plenty for them and for us.”

It’s a modern wild. And that’s better than nothing. North America has done a better job than anyone else when it comes to managing wildlife. There may no longer be plenty to go around. The demand is too high. But it’s more nuanced than that. Because depending on how hard you work and where you are, you might experience wilderness richer than our frontiersmen ancestors had at their disposal. The point is that if you love it, you’ll keep looking. And if you keep looking, you’ll find what you love.

It’s not for any other reason that I found that bull that night in the headlights. It was love that propelled me down the rutted two-tracks for hours, love that kept me warm in a sleeping bag that puffed down feathers like a science fair volcano every time I moved an ass cheek. I didn’t love seeing other hunters, and that emotion steered me in a different direction. It kept me searching.

Too many times we settle for the familiar. Pick the devil we know, as they say. But sometimes, there’s something better over that next mountain. Sometimes, there’s a honey hole over the next ridge. And when your lungs are tight and your legs are sore, there’s only one emotion big enough to outlast ego, pride, and vain insecurities. It’s the same emotion Black Elk spoke of when he remembered the days of his people. It’s the same emotion the bull used when he left an entire mountain range. He was looking for love. And he found it.

He trusted his nose and his gut. What else do we have? GPS’s and smartphones? Satellites and topo maps? Maybe we’ve forgotten how to use the navigation we were born with. When the batteries run out and the laptops fail, what are we left holding? Is there not some burning voice inside your soul? Is there not a whisper behind the squabble of the T.V.? Maybe some people never hear it. Fair enough. But I don’t know what that’s like. Mine’s been talking to me since I watched A River Runs Through It. The only way to shut it up has been to move, to go outside and turn over rocks, to peek around trees and cross rivers, to sleep under the stars. To sleep alone.

You don’t have to do what I did to find it, either. You don’t have to move across country; don’t have to quit your day job. But if there’s a nagging crevasse in the topography of your heart, maybe you should listen to the voice that’s trying to fill it. Do your best not to hurt anyone, but don’t compromise your own ambitions. Be honest and tell the truth, whatever that is to you. And when the candle starts to reach the end of its wick, focus on the only thing bright enough to make it spark again. Focus on love. Let it guide you. Let it fill your cup. Let it move your legs forward, onward, and upward. That’s where your herd is. They’re waiting for you in the trees. You can’t see them from the valley floor, but a part of you knows they’re there.

My youngest daughter’s name is Faith. I picked the name because I believe it may be the essential virtue to a successful and happy life. What else does Black Elk have now that his people are gone? What else do I have after this paper is signed in font of me? After the flies stop buzzing and the basketball stops bouncing?

Last night I played the piano with my middle daughter Brook. It’s been months since I’ve played, and I wasn’t any good then. Let’s just say the time away didn’t do me any favors. I started to get frustrated when I couldn’t remember any of the songs I had learned. There may have been a few curse words. Brook turned to me with an open and honest consternation, as if she were frustrated with the childness of her own father.

“Don’t give up on your dreams, Dad,” she said sarcastically, her voice trailing with a mocking tone.

Now, my dream isn’t to play the piano. That was my father’s gift and my fumbling now is only a weak attempt to connect to something he loved. (Again, that emotion motivates almost everything we do.) And although Brook was being facetious, her words struck me. Maybe it was the few Snake River Stouts I’d had, or maybe it was the melancholy I mentioned earlier. Whatever it was, I challenged her.

“Really?” I asked. “What if our dreams never come true?”

Not one of my prouder parenting moments, and I somewhat regretted saying it as soon as it slipped out. By the look on her face, I could tell the question bothered her.

“Dad?” she said incredulously, “Are you serious?”

She’s getting older. How do we prepare our children for the brutal realities of life while also giving air to the wings that support their dreams? If I told Brook about all the times I’ve failed, or about all the odds stacked against dreams, or about the forces in the world that can only be described as evil, it would crush her. She’d be lucky to get out of bed in the morning. On the other hand, if I continue to naively plant the same seeds I sowed in her younger years, spouting the fairy tale tropes of every-one-wins and all-good-things-happen-to-those-who-try, I’m only setting her up for an inevitable pitfall when life reaches out and smacks her in the face, which it undoubtedly will. So, what did I do?

I was flummoxed. I sat there on the stool, my hands on the ivories. She sat next to me, waiting. After several moments, I turned and looked at her. In her eyes was a glow that would not even begin to consider doubting the idea of chasing dreams. With that glow she eroded my cynicism. She taught me a lesson. This is the purity of the child’s heart, and it matches the elk I watched hike miles for love. The reality of the harshness of life doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that we don’t stop. No matter the odds. If we stop, it’s death. But if we keep going, there is life.

So, I put my fingers on the keyboard on top of hers and taught her the beginning of the one song I remembered. We laughed together and giggled as the sun set through the kitchen window. The misplacement of keystrokes became the rhythm of love and we made fun of ourselves. She only learned the first chord. But we’re not done playing.