Month: August 2026

Again with the Walking

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 3 Comments

Every time I go to the doctor’s, the first question they ask me when alone in the room is, “Have you been depressed?” It is a waste of their time–and mine–to consistently ask the question, and the next time I am there I am going to suggest they take that off of their “to do” list for patients. Because the last several times I have actually answered yes, said that I am in fact a little depressed, suggested perhaps it is the medicine, they say nothing, they do nothing, no follow up, no “Oh really, how bad is it?” no “Did you want to talk about it?” no “Perhaps we can recommend a counselor” no “How close to suicide do you think you get?” Nothing. They move on to my blood pressure, which because of the lack of follow-up to their thorough mental-condition question, rises exponentially, and when they say, “Oh, your BP is up! Is there anything you can think of that would cause that?” I answer, “The outrageous indifference of people to other people’s feelings.” They suggest I eat less salt.

Last year I actually saw my cardiologist for the first time in some years as I now have those consultations done at my GP unless he finds reason to refer me back, and when I saw him just for a check up, he asked the question and I said, “Yes, Dr, I am.” He looked at me for some time and asked, “Is there someone you can talk to? Maybe someone at work?” “She died.” “A best friend?” “Dead.” “A priest?” “Dead.” He stared at me a minute more. “So what do you think is depressing you.” Sigh. I hung my head like Charlie Brown and walked to the parking hot, a bubble of %##$%@@& symbols above my head.

The world is burning. Drought. Floods. Political leaders are absolutely out of their minds. The Israeli Prime Minister is trying to kill everyone in Gaza, Putin everyone in Ukraine, and Trump everyone in Canada. The most significant places I traveled as an adult were Mexico, Central Africa, and Russia, and between cartels, war, and invasion, they’re no longer favored destinations. I thought about Hemingway who lost his beloved Paris to World War Two, his beloved Cuba to the revolution, and his beloved life to disease followed by suicide. Depressed?

I planned trips which got cancelled; I have dealt with more than my share of impatient people, and the only salvation I’ve found in the past eighteen months has been in The Netherlands, the Uinta Mountains, and the Oregon Coast. This says a lot, but it also tells me I’m not depressed when I’m not sitting still.

This is all to say this: I started walking again. I had stopped–depression maybe, book deadlines perhaps, but I am walking again, a lot, and I noticed something significant when I’m out along the river or the bay, walking through the trails at the maritime museum or even down the hill at Aerie to the Rapp: I couldn’t care less about all of the news and the happenings in the world, and I just am. It reminds me of when my son and I walked the Camino de Santiago, and after a week of letting all the crap of life fall off of me along the trails crossing the Pyrenees, I was present, completely present in the moment, alive and at peace. Likewise, I recall how in college at retreats or just hanging out in someone’s room, we’d talk about how important it is to carry that peace with us, “bring the peace with you” as Fr Dan used to tell me. And we’d insist that we would, sometimes even making it a day or two before the weight of life settled back on our lives like a nuclear storm. So as I grew older I just assumed, as many people do, that the kind of peace I’m talking about is reserved for vacations and breaks, for mornings with coffee on the porch or watching the dolphins move up the bay.

That’s not true. Peace can be a constant, a presence we learn to accommodate. The Camino may change to hallways or market aisles, but the atmosphere is our call.

***

Listen, I know depressed people; I mean legitimate, clinically diagnosed depressed individuals doing their best. Their struggle is chemical and environmental and real and debilitating. Those of us who feel overwhelmed by the seemingly unbearable weight of existence, who feel alone because friends and family left the party early, who feel worried about the most minute details of otherwise irrelevant minutia, we are not depressed, we are distracted, focused on the question instead of the solution.

I walked today and found that creativity out there next to the soybean farm, and further down near the pasture with deer and rabbit I found the energy to manipulate the creativity how I wish. No wonder I have been depressed; I left most of my work down the hill on the way to the river.

But this casual depression is very real even for those of us who have not officially been diagnosed. There are days the clock is the size of the planet and the hands are spinning like a 78 record, and I wonder how I could have screwed up my life so much that I’m constantly asking what is the point, truly, and I mean this, what is the point to anything if we’re all going to be dismissed anyway.

And then I saw a rabbit at the river just sitting there, and last night the clouds covered the lunar eclipse but I was out there ready, and being out there ready at one am was enough to make me feel connected to everyone else out there ready.

I walked today and the sun turned pink, almost lavender, and it glowed across the river and out toward the bay, and even a heron stood and watched, and for that moment we all brought the peace with us.

Five Pm (and counting)

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 1 Comment

If life happened in a day, and Einstein is horrifically more accurate than we would like, then let’s make a 6 am sunrise birth and place death around a 9pm sunset. I’ve always preferred summers for the extended daylight hours.

And if we break a life of ninety years (I’m an optimist) into a day, we live about six years an hour, or a year every ten minutes. Goes fast doesn’t it? In fact, my clock reads 5 pm. School’s out, lunch has been made, eaten, and cleaned up, and the morning hours are so long ago I barely recall them anymore. I am just checking out the fridge to see what to make for dinner.

If life happened in a day, we’d make sure we didn’t miss much, no matter the weather or how tired we are. We’d call our closest companions and ask them to join us—we’d go through this together. It is too bad we can’t do this again, we’d admit. I don’t want to miss any of it, we’d say, suddenly aware of how fast time goes by, how many moments we let slip away. In fact, just talking about the fleeting morning might make us miss those hours of the day’s youth when discovery is ripe and exploration is new. Those hours of life when no one but us has yet discovered the forest out back, the rapids in the creek down the road, or the view from the bent branches of a birch. We would remember what it was like to not be afraid to take chances, before the midday sun sucked the optimism from our marrow.

Looking back at my own day, around 10 am I lived in Massachusetts in a yellow house next to a reservoir. It was a quaint village surrounded by a larger town, and across the street was a small post office and an antique store. Just up the winding road was an apple orchard where I bought bags of apples and where my neighbor the postmaster would buy me an apple pie for shoveling her driveway. I loved then, and I often talk about how I wish it was 10am again, and I again was leaving work to head to the mountain to hike to the summit to see kettles of hawks.

Just an hour later, I was gone, living in a different latitude and finding myself finding myself once again. Love was easier than it should be and shorter than I had hoped, and the lessons learned so late in the morning stole my energy for a while. Exhaustion isn’t always only because of age; sometimes it is a sudden lack of momentum. But time passes. I’d give the next six hours to have a few minutes back, but we can’t. We must look forward. If I spend too much time regretting what happened at 11 this morning I’ll blow right through the afternoon without noticing the way the light of the sun can bring everything to life no matter how late it is getting.

At noon I walked to the river with my son on my shoulders, and we laughed our way through the early afternoon, hiking through woods and eventually continents. It was just about three this afternoon we trained across Siberia, and ten minutes later hiked across Spain. If my clock battery broke between three and four, I’d consider myself a lucky man. Luckier than most, actually. Cole never had the chance to watch the five o’clock news, and Dave and Eddie hadn’t yet kicked off their shoes after work. At least Fr Dan was settling back for an after dinner drink before he left the party, but Letty never even got to pour that wine with dinner, so fast was her exit, so shortened her time. I am lucky that both my parents were headed to bed anyway, but too many people I’ve loved not nearly enough barely had a chance to finish dessert.

What a day it has been so far. I can’t recall a single hour of my life I’d not do again. From sunrise on I’ve had a great time trying to stay one clip in front of the bend, with golden moments I couldn’t have scripted myself. Maybe that’s why the day seems so fast—I’m really having a great time.

Did you ever stop and just recall a moment from years ago like it had just happened, just now? I mean so that you can taste the meal and smell where you were, feel it, so real like it just happened, just now–complete clarity. That happened to me today, over and over and over, and now it is five o’clock, and it is happening again. Thank God it happens to be five; I need a drink.

Tonight, from 6 to 9, I’m going to take my time and do the best I can. In fact, while I know the sun is well into it’s evening slant, I’m putting on my sunglasses and flip flops anyway and go see what else there is I can do before I pass under “sleep’s dark and silent gate.”

What time is it in your world?

sunrise 012

Finding The Way

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And I’ve never been sure what I have been chasing all this time. I’ve had good, even great, jobs most of my life, but none of them were the result of a particular pursuit. I honestly can’t recall either of my parents, let alone counselors, asking what I wanted to do when I grew up. I always wanted to write and I always wanted to travel, but that vague desire is no clearer now than it was when I was home sick in fourth grade and wrote a book called Flight about two astronauts traveling through the galaxy. (I didn’t think it was too bad. At some point they realize they didn’t bring food along so one of them reaches out to break off part of the Milky Way–hey, I was nine). 

And all of this stuff and belongings are a bizarre thought when I give it any thought at all. I have hundreds of books and I can’t figure out why. Certainly, some of them make sense–signed books, first editions, books which had an impact on me as a writer or as a person. But even them as well as the rest of the pulp do little more than take up space. I’m not likely to read them again, I don’t open photo albums, don’t open bins in the attic filled with my son’s artwork from first grade, don’t pull out the Rubbermaid with souvenirs from my own youth. This stuff is literally just there, existing, filling space, perhaps to say in the subtle way of items, that I did live, those places and moments were real, and I didn’t just imagine it. So many times so much of my life feels like just some television show I saw once which I more or less enjoyed but I’m starting to lose track of the plot, and I keep hoping for some Ghost in the Machine to show up and pick up the pace of my narrative. 

Meanwhile on a break from doing nothing I picked up my phone to make myself feel busy, and I noticed many of my contacts are dead, same in Facebook, and I was going to write about it but Sedaris did in his last book, even though I’ve wanted to do that piece for years, but now it will look just like the “Small Talk” piece I wrote four years before he released a piece about waiting in line at Starbucks, but people still said, “Oh! Just like Sedaris,” not knowing I was there first, way first. But I did notice the contacts of dead friends and wondered how long I’d let them sit there in my list like old books I really enjoyed but will never read again. Should I give them away? (the books, not the dead contacts). Should look at them once in a while and remember? (the contacts, not the books). There’s Laura, but she is too recent to delete. It feels blasphemous to delete Fr Dan, and Letty simply isn’t going anywhere. Not yet. 

My point is I’ve come to realize at this point in my life I more or less simply tumbled backwards to this point without any real direction or coaching. Everyone I know is relaxing and laughing with family and friends and talking–albeit mostly small talk–about their careers and their lives, and I never quite feel like I’m part of it. 

Drop in Jackson: I always feel like I’m just a day away from where I oughta be. 

There is one place though, one summer when the items in my life were never in my thoughts, my job a quick reference to strangers, my ambitions irrelevant, and my hopes alive and well and living in the next moment. It was in France and Spain on the Camino. Look up at the photo above. That’s me south of Pamplona looking out over what was next. My son took the shot and it stands as the main photo for this blog. See that backpack? I had everything I needed in there. 

My son is there now, so it is on my mind. Here’s the thing: I had an Osprey backpack with a few changes of clothes, water, necessary paper and funds, guide, map, and charger. Usually a loaf of bread stuck out from a side pocket. Flipping through my journals over the years and remembering it now, I don’t recall ever, not once, thinking I needed any more, wondering how I forgot this item or that. I was set and I was one hundred percent in the present, walking, meeting pilgrims, swapping stories. I didn’t feel the need to head home, I was there, and as a result, these dozen years later I can still recall nearly every village, every person we met, what I ate and the feel of the sun on my neck. Like it was earlier today. This is about as close to teleportation as I imagine is possible.

But still I flounder wondering if I can get to the end of my life without having to have major surgery on my teeth. 

I’ve come close to that–hiking up in the Uinta Mountains, walking on the beach along the Oregon Coast. Wandering the water buffalo saturated fields of Neunen, Netherlands. Looking for Sunflowers, searching for a Wheatfield with Crows. 

But most of our lives are involved in routines at home, at work, adding people to our cellphone and deleting them when they die. Few people in Spain exchanged numbers. We were friends, brothers and sisters, linked together forever because of the Camino, but not wondering about when we can call them after the trip; thinking only about sharing some wine, laughing at night while soaking our feet in a small pool, and watching the day like it was the only day ever invented. 

I deleted Cole some time ago, and Rachel, and Trish. I never had Billy in there or Richard. Mom stays. 

I can delete most of the boxes in the attic, most of the clothes I’ve not worn in several seasons. I can get rid of the tins and artwork leaning against the wall behind bureaus because the walls are already spoken for. 

I can delete the walls. I can delete the foundation and the subfloor and the addition, the bathrooms. I can dissolve my cellphone in some lithium-sucking formula and work my way to Paris, to Notre Dame, and head south toward Arles. 

Let Sedaris write about that. Punk. I think he has bad feet. 

The Lasso Way Returns

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When my brother suggested I watch “Ted Lasso,” I trusted his judgement. He had already nailed it with a few other shows, including “Eureka.” The first time through I enjoyed it immensely, the acting, the writing of course, the timing. It took a few episodes to understand this was not simply a series of set-up/punchline comedy, a method I despise. And it took a few times through the entire three seasons to recognize the primary overall theme at the heart of creator/producer/writer/star Jason Sudeikis’ efforts: This show is all about fathers and sons. And now it returns this week for an unexpected Season Four.

When I struggled with transitioning my book The Iron Scar from the “who gives a shit” stage to the essential-to-be-published “readable and relatable” stage, the answer came while in a writing seminar in Ireland where I had been formulating the final draft of a series of letters from myself to my dad while traveling with my son across Siberia. Writer Elizabeth Rosner, almost as an aside, asked me why the chapters are formulated as letters. “I don’t know,” I told her. “Bad bad answer” she said. I pulled together a response about wanting to have three generations on board, and the reality of my son becoming an adult and moving on in the world the same time my father was approaching his final days. But I still couldn’t answer so I came home from Connemara and chopped my manuscript to small pieces. A few weeks later in a conversation with a friend in Texas, I said, “Tim, I’m losing focus on the theme.” He responded, “I’m not. This is all about fathers and sons. About moving on while trying to hold on. And the metaphor of the train is nothing more than setting.” Between the time my son and I rode the train and the time I wrote the book, my father died. I heard once that the loss of a parent is the greatest loss of security we can face, even at fifty-five years old. Not because we aren’t able to handle the turmoil of life on our own but because that foundation has been rocked. 

So I rewrote the entire book as a narrative that takes place on the trans-Siberian railway, with all the characters and unknowns that trip entails, but that’s not what it is about. It’s about relationships, about being between two generations who are about to transition. 

Back to Ted.

Sudeikis masterfully weaves every possible father-son relationship into what on the surface is a comedy about an American football coach hired to the helm of a British premier league football club. 

Right away we have the estranged father as Ted Lasso separates from his wife, and his young son remains with his mother. We also soon learn the powerful impact his own father had on him and the fallout from his father’s suicide when Ted was just sixteen. In England we meet the team, including Jamie Tartt, whose father is physically and verbally abusive, Sam Obisanya, whose father is more of his best friend and mentor, Nathan Shelley, whose Dad is demanding of his son’s talents and seemingly never satisfied, Leslie (male) Higgins who is the proud and dotting father of five boys, Roy Kent, who becomes a surrogate father to his niece, and of course Ted himself, who moves into the father-role to the entire team, the individual players with which he has various degrees of parental conflicts and resolutions.

This is listed as a comedy, but it absolutely fits the bill as a drama as well, placing it in the same vein as shows like MASH which walks that thin line between laughter and tears. 

Both the Mother and Father figures in our lives have served to keep grounded the best efforts of humanity throughout history. We need either to recognize the example or play the part. Almost all aspects of society rely upon those roles to set the strong example with seemingly unconditional love as we push through difficult moments. When hope seems fleeting and one feels “lost in a pathless wood” as Frost proclaims, that Maternal strength or Paternal guidance is almost always enough to help us keep going, knowing that whatever happens we’ll be okay. Even if we lose, we suffer those losses together, and we move on. 

Sudeikis so thoroughly designed the first three seasons of the show to investigate all possible Father/Son relations, he completes the first three seasons with a montage of the characters’ post-Lasso lives with Cat Steven’s “Father and Son.”

There seems to be a lack of parental symbolism in the world, in the nation, in our lives. In fact, more often than not those who should be in those roles these days are appearing more like Jamie Tartt’s abusive and untrustworthy father. It would be perfect if we could always rely upon Sam Obisanya’s Yoda-like dad to turn to, but that’s not the hand we’ve been dealt. In fact, it feels like we’re a player down right now and this time it’s the captain of the team who is absent. That loss of security can be overwhelming. Ted Lasso’s season four comes just in time.

Watch Ted Lasso again starting Wednesday for Season Four.

As for this coachless world in which we find ourselves, well, we might have to switch our game plan, but we’ve got each other’s backs, and that might be enough. 

My brother, my son, and my dad, 2015