Saturday, May 22, 2021

Out of the mist, a fantasy fulfilled (partially at least)

Waiting for that tap, tap, tapping.

O
ut of the blue a friend called today. I was so glad to see it was someone who had lived like I do for a while because I had a story. I knew he would understand. I asked him what in his thought processes out there alone was the greatest fantasy. Without hesitation his response was “a woman coming to the door.

I laughed and then said, “That’s what happened to me last night.”

Explanation: As I was watching a DVD McGyver episode (wishing I had been pondering a tome of forgotten yore) there came a tapping, tapping at my door. No, it wasn’t a raven, but it was a vision I had dreamed of for years.

In the drizzling rain stood a gorgeous young woman, water dripping off her hat, her two dogs milling about around her legs. Not only gorgeous, she was obviously Alaskan, dressed in a full suit of Helly Hanson rain gear and muddied from her shoulders to her XTRATuff boots.

She asked if I could give her a ride home, telling me she lived only three miles down the road. My first thought was, “I’d drive you to Florida if that’s where home is.”

What I said was, “sure,” hoping she couldn’t see my heart trying beat its way out of my chest. She told me her four-wheeler broke down about four miles along the trail that leads to the East Pole. She had hiked the four miles of muddy, puddled, slippery wet trail to reach the trail head where I have been high-centered for about a month

I quickly grabbed some outside clothes and a drop cloth to protect my back seat from her muddy dogs. I was so flabbergasted I almost drove off with my generator still running in the bed of the truck and still connected to the trailer by the power supply cord. Fortunately I realized it and stopped before it came up tight and did some damage.

On the road I believe we told about half our life stories including a bear encounter from each of us. We reached her house in short order, long before we could have reached Florida. Incidentally I had us married by the time we drove through Montana.

Out of the car at her house she actually hugged me, something I returned probably with enough enthusiasm to scare her. Still she told me her name, I told her mine and the she said good night before heading into her house with the dogs. Halfway back to my trailer I realized I had done nothing to memorize her name and it has been lost to me. I do remember where she lives, but I have no intention of making her any more nervous about me than she already might be. I am hoping to catch her when she and her father come past on the way to rescue her machine.

Meanwhile I have that moment of fantasy realized burned into my brain.

And it doesn't take too much imagination to go this way: Only three more miles along that trail and two months back in time this could have had an awesome big production number at the end of the story. And of course, there's the reality of that hug to cherish, the first in how long? Years?


Firewood and Revery

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Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. Kurt Vonnegut

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The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

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My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

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A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

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One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

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Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

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“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

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I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

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You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

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Sports malaprops

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Man caught driving stolen car filled with radioactive uranium, rattlesnake, whiskey

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GOP congressman opposes gun control because gay marriage leads to bestiality

Owner of killer bear chokes to death on sex toy

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Give me all your money or my penguin will explode

How zombie worms have sex in whale bones

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Nude beach blowjob jet ski fight leads to wife's death

Woman stabs husband with squirrel for not buying beer Christmas Eve

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