Power plant redux: the short version

Morning fog

One step closer to the unknowable

     Sleep made me awake and the whisky sleepy. Surely that’s coming full circle though I’m left dazed and not a little woozy, midnight passing and me yet chained to the computer. After a week without Internet I’m still spelunking the endless alleyways of cyberspace with thoughts of birthdays and aging and creativity and getting somewhere or nowhere, depending upon my outlook at that particular heartbeat. The aggregate is toward the future, uncertain though it is. This is a relatively new thing seeing as how for most of my existence I was firmly in the Janus camp, two-faced with two pairs of eyes staring forwards and back, though my favorite view was toward the direction I’d come. Scrutinizing the past gets you nothing more than a low-level remorse based on unchangeable events, most of which were far more insignificant in the larger scheme of things than our feeble memories allow.   

I’m still puzzled over a stranger asking if I’d be interested in second shooter position for an upcoming wedding. I said I would but needed more information. My puzzlement lies not in the request but in my response, for wedding photography was never something that interested me. I’m still questioning what I want to be when I grow up, a laughable concept indeed considering the finite number of years left to me. That the wedding fell on my birthday meant nothing other than I’d wanted to do as little as possible that didn’t include cuddling, reading, drinking and eating, in that order.

At my age birthdays are more an excuse for cake and ice cream, also some minor introspection formerly reserved for the final day of the year. While others partied I glued my butt to a chair and hammered out pages of reflection that ultimately did little other than calculate gains and losses. I grew to envy mammals and birds their freedom from self-consciousness but then realized that perhaps their supreme awareness of their surroundings and their place within it was more advanced than our own simpering egotistical efforts, at which time I left off writing in favor of something more practical, like reading a book or going to bed at a reasonable hour. 

Whether from dread or anticipation I’ve started a countdown of sorts without a fixed end position which leaves me floating about in a cloud of uncertainty. Life is what we make of it and how we deal with the cards we’re dealt, not the number of our days. Fortunately I’ve been dealt some good hands and won more than I lost. From here on I suspect losing will be the norm, at least in terms of family members and friends, also health, fitness and that ill-defined concept called well-being. After mowing the yard on our return from New Mexico I realized that for all my efforts at walking straight to keep my body aligned with my knees, I’m still meandering like a crab, not exactly sideways but hither and yon as if my lower legs had differing opinions about the route to be taken. This isn’t a huge handicap though while skirting knife-edge ridges in the San Ysidro Anticline care had to be taken that my legs wouldn’t wander the rest of me off a cliff. Unfortunately it places stress on my hips and a blossoming pain as irrepressible as the morning sun rising above the wooded creek to the east of our house. It dawned on me that someday I’ll be a crippled-up, gnarled old man with fire in every joint and all because of a bad knee. 

As someone who tries to find connections in all things, sometimes to the point of absurdity, I’m afraid, it comes as no surprise that our bodies hinge on connections of the weakest materials: cartilage, brittle bone, atrophied muscles. It probably doesn’t help that in the past year I ate more than I exercised, thanks in large part to the selfsame knee, thus adding to the mass requiring support. I’m often my own worst enemy but seem incapable at learning from my mistakes. Just now I cut myself another slice of birthday cake but not until stifling the interior voices advocating restraint. Being raised Independent Baptist infected my conscience with a prudish, prissy demeanor that finds no joy in living when Old Testament austerity worked so well for Job and the desert-wandering prophets. Screw that. I might have two pieces of cake, and a shot of bourbon to wash it down.

Thinking of the desert and aridity reminded me of our recent traverse across the Great American Desert, a prescient description to be sure in light of the drought. Somewhere in the middle of the Oklahoma panhandle we came upon a tractor dragging a plume of dust, each disturbed particle rising and falling to settle again in the ragged furrows until the agglomeration sifted into waves of sand hammered down by a merciless sun. I slowed to watch and wondered if the reason for the endeavor was more ingrained than purposeful, effort for effort’s sake and none other, neither planting nor harvesting but something else entirely, spitting in the face of adversity, perhaps, or a fatalistic act to stave off madness and despair. And as I watched movement caught my eye, swarms of dragonflies weaving the air in a southbound dash, sprinkled here and there with orange splashes of Monarchs. I’ll fly away, the old gospel hymn, came to mind, an old tune almost forgotten here on this deserted stretch of highway, but not so deserted that for a short moment we were all conjoined, the farmer, the travelers, the migrants, while all around us things were moving, migrating, the wobbling world spinning them off into unknowable trajectories, and anchoring us to this time and place a spray of wildflowers blue as the cloudless sky, and as full of unrealized promise.

The point was further hammered home upon our return when the evening sky darkened with the wings of hundreds of nightjars, swifts and swallows wending their way toward the tropics. Our chimney swifts apparently tagged along for since then the heavens have been deserted. I’m always left slightly bereft at the passage and not a little jealous. Why they get to go and I have to stay proves that life is unfair, but then again I’m safe and cozy in our darkling house, weary though I am.

***

The wedding fell through, or my part in it, anyway, leaving me the freedom to pursue other avenues. Mine led me to a local school where I watched an artist teach students the technique of encaustic painting, sort of a Photoshop layering using beeswax, brushes and heat guns rather than digital files. Seeing the students create their own works gave me hope for the future of the human race, something I’d not felt for some time but then I’ve been studying the political farce we call government and subjecting myself to online reader reviews, testament to the indomitable witlessness of my fellow Americans. I’ve come to the conclusion that the nation is doomed though it might be my pessimism talking. My timing was off meaning I arrived late for the workshop and had only a few minutes to indulge, but as I turned to leave my eye snagged on five wrinkled canvas aprons hanging on a wall. Something about them was mesmerizing, the interplay of light and shadows, the juxtaposition of rough texture against smooth wall, or maybe that indefinable conviction of seeing beauty in the ordinary and mundane. Without hesitation I lifted the camera and snapped the shutter. 

I didn’t have to look at the LCD to know I had what I wanted, not merely an image but a substantiation. Life is a lot simpler than we make it out to be. I could needlessly complicate my remaining minutes by marking the inexorable ticking of the clock, watching the dissolution of our nation or lamenting the grand migration of our birds, or I could do something substantive, something creative, maybe even something beautiful. Why that escaped me before is anyone’s guess, but here before me was the path I was meant to take. So bon voyage, my feathered friends, and bon voyage my U.S.A., we’ve come to Frost’s fork in the road. You go to your perilous journeys and to your doom, respectively; I think I’ll stick around and make myself useful.

We're back from the Land of Enchantment..

Stacy and Shawn McGrath's grand adventure

Power plant

It's a jungle out there...

The world’s most expensive pattypan squash

        In the end, I stood my ground and prevailed.

It wasn’t much of a victory but it was better than nothing. Better by far than the alternative, which in this case would have meant being swallowed in one of those enclosed, multi-story parking garages in downtown Lincoln, Neb. And that’s not something I’d do lightly or, given the chance, at all.

My long-suffering wife managed my endless circling with a calm, placid grace that extended to turning a deaf ear to my imprecations. We’d driven to Lincoln to see firsthand the fabled farmers’ market at the historic Haymarket District, where about 120 vendors compete neck-to-neck in a two-block area bordered by the railroad tracks. This would be our second time, the first being lost in memory except for a splendid burger and beer we ate across from the old train station. 

When asked how that farmers’ market was different than, say, the one at the end of our block each Friday evening, Lori’s answer was instantaneous. “Nobody around here sells pattypan squash,” she said. 

There was more to it than that, of course. More than a single variety of squash, more than a very large and diverse assortment of wares, there was a cultural aspect about it that was somehow lacking in our smaller, more localized market, she explained. I took this to mean that bigger wasn’t just better, it was imbued with a glimmer of cultural synergy, if not superiority. 

Being the practical type, I suggested that driving 121 miles to Lawrence—her first choice—for a pattypan squash was an absurd waste of money and time. We were already harvesting yellow squash and zucchini, and a cousin had dropped off some funky oriental cucumbers, one of which resembled a small melon. We could barely keep up with our tomatoes, green peppers and hot chiles, so onions and string beans were about all we shopped for. 

And it wasn’t as if we ate pattypan squash on a daily basis. In fact, I wasn’t sure whether I’d ever eaten a single bite of the grotesque little fruit that resembles nothing more than a pale, misshapen flying saucer. If I had, it made no lasting impression.

But isn’t that the whole point of eating, to prepare and consume memorable meals that tantalize our taste buds and pique our palates? If something is so bland that it never registers within our culinary memories, why bother?

This wasn’t, however, the time for philosophical discussions. She wanted a pattypan squash and by God she was going to get one.

Lincoln had changed, and not necessarily for the better. It had grown, for one thing, and was growing still, as evidenced by towering cranes, blockaded roads and miles of fencing sealing off vast sections of lower downtown. What wasn’t barricaded was a morass of people and vehicles vying for the same small space. And us, of course, two small-town denizens dropped into a maelstrom of motion and haste. 

It didn’t take long for my big-city driving skills to kick in. Nor was it long before Lori was suggesting an indoor parking garage, numerous to the point of ubiquity. My steadfast refusal was less about being cheap than about a deep psychological scar known to very few. It harkened back to grade school, where I was routinely dumped headlong into a metal trashcan by a beetle-browed, knuckle-dragging ape, whereupon his simpering cohorts would begin beating the sides with anything at hand large and heavy. The psychological damage wasn’t claustrophobia per se but something limited to confined spaces and noise. Spelunking in dark caverns never bothered me. 

So we circled and backtracked and meandered and almost got lost and then took a wrong turn that sent us sailing over the tracks on an elevated viaduct. And below us a series of narrow streets utterly devoid of traffic! Several miles later I made a sharp U-turn, found a way beneath the viaduct to a quiet street a mere five blocks from the market.

Before I could congratulate myself we were in the fray, sandwiched between hundreds of shoppers, lingerers, loiterers and pushers of a dozen nationalities. It was indeed a cultural stew, a synergetic symbiosis, a riot of clamor and color, sizes and shapes. The current carried us from booth to booth, more prisoner than bystander, and every booth a replica of the one before so that I wondered how they could possibly compete, and why a customer would prefer this vendor over that when everything for sale was a mirror image of the rest, neither greater nor lesser and priced to match. Nor did it appear that anyone was actually buying; few people carried bags and fewer seemed interested in anything more than the act of gawking. Several vendors offered cooked meals, whether barbecue ribs or egg rolls, kolaches (no green chile cheese, alas) or cinnamon rolls, and one had a variety of chile rellenos. More astounding was that he seemed to be doing a brisk business. “Would you like one?” Lori asked. A Nebraska chile relleno? No thanks. 

When we finally broke free, Lori grasped a small pattypan squash.

“Only one?” I asked incredulously.

Only one. 

There were other stops, such as the brewpub and a grocery store, so that by the time we departed the city both the car and stomachs were full. And later, once we’d settled in for the evening, I did a quick calculation of cost versus product, focusing on that single stunted squash. The total was stupefying to the point of incomprehensibility. 

Ah, well, I thought. What counts is the journey. 

For all those heat-baked, drought-stricken friends out there...

Where we're going there is one road in and one road out. The rest is up to us.

Chasing elusion

It’s always the same, you sit down to your first cup of coffee, sleep dragging at your gritty eyes, your list of to-dos exponentially long depending on the day of the week but set aside for a brief spell to collect your wits and infuse your sluggish gray matter with hard jolts of caffeine, and about the time you start to feel slightly human the phone rings and everything goes to hell.

It was early, my notes organized on my desk and my pen ready and the recorder plugged into the telephone jack, and Lori stirring in the kitchen. A morning like any other but fated to become something else, a morning good and slow and easy, a morning cloudless and hot and getting hotter, hot enough for the window air conditioner which I turned on and promptly turned off at hearing the phone ring.

I recognized the voice as that of my editor, Dan, but his tone had a clipped, strangled terseness.

“Crested caracara,” he said, and the line went dead.

I blinked and stared stupidly at the receiver and blinked again and set the phone on the cradle. It took about ten seconds for my body to catch up with my brain which had already conjured an image of a large distinctive raptor of Trans-Pecos Texas and northern Mexico. When it did, I roundly cursed cell phones and dead spots and tried calming my racing heart. 

His call meant that he had either found one or was chasing one. That the species had never before been sighted in Kansas meant nothing—”Birds have wings,” a friend of mine used to say. That it had never before been sighted in Kansas meant everything.

The phone rang. I yanked it to my ear and heard the first syllables of what would have been more had the signal continued, which it didn’t. 

An e-mail popped into my inbox. 13th rd between gypsum and fox. West of Washington, it read.

I grabbed my binoculars, the camera and a hat and ran out the door.

***

Thirty miles, I estimated, and the fuel gauge was balancing slightly above a quarter tank. I pushed the car to 70 and 75 and on long empty stretches to 80, wondering if I had enough gas or if I should stop and refill in Linn. No time for that, I thought. The bird is there and he has it spotted and it might not be there long.

The trick was to get there in the shortest amount of time. Thirteenth Road was gravel so I kept to Highway 148 and counted down the alphabetic road names to Heritage, which looked wide and well-traveled. Braking hard, I fishtailed onto the gravel and sped north dragging a plume of dust. Every raptor, every speck in the sky, was suspect though I hesitated to stop to look. At 13th I headed west into unexplored territory, the road narrowing until it swung north for a short spur. It continued as a weedy single-lane rut, which I nosed onto.

A mile further and the road was blocked by a van and a truck. Dan was pacing. “You missed it by eight minutes,” he said.

Warren, the driver of the truck, had managed to photograph the bird before it winged off to the south. We followed as best as we could on rutted roads distanced one mile from the other, stopping occasionally to scan the trees and the fields. Vultures drifted lazily on thermals and red-tailed hawks kited, their forms ghostly in the white hot haze of the sky. To the west towering thunderheads blossomed on the horizon though where we were the air remained sultry and ovenlike, the area unpeopled and empty with only an occasional roofless ruin to show proof of a former civilization.

After two long southbound miles we stopped near an intersection. 

“It could be anywhere,” Warren said.

He was right. It might have landed in a tree hidden from the road, or it might have kept flying. It might be 20 miles from here for all we knew, or it might be watching us from a shaded perch. A first-state record wasn’t something to be so easily dismissed, however, so after a quick exchange of phone numbers we split up.

I continued southward. The land undulated like waves at sea, the draws and gullies heavily wooded, fields a checkerboard of corn, soybeans or pasture. Once past the intersection the land swallowed me in verdant loneliness and I drove with no thought other than finding the caracara. Stopping on high ground to scan became rote, panning the horizon and the ragged treeline and upward into the shimmering glare and back before moving on, wasps and horseflies buzzing the windshield and the woods clamorous with cicadas. Eastern kingbirds seesawed from fencepost to thicket joined by mockingbirds and chipping sparrows, and other species that normally would have given me pause—red-headed woodpeckers, scissor-tailed flycatchers—were summarily dismissed. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, though this particular haystack covered half a county.

  The gas gauge steadily dropped past a quarter tank. I drove a slow mile south of Highway 148 and jumped a mile to the east and headed north again, hoping the phone would ring and end this fruitless search. When it finally did it was Dan saying they were calling it off.

I’d had enough. The car was running out of gas and Linn was a good 15 miles away. But before turning around I navigated a rutted, muddy stretch that led to a high hill, where I stopped and looked around. The view itself was stunning but I had eyes only for a raptor perched atop a dead snag.

It was a good half mile off and no way to get closer, backlit by the morning sun. More shape than detail, but when it turned its head I saw what appeared to be a massive hooked bill. I braced the binoculars on a rusty gate and tried calming my nerves. This is it, I thought. I found it.

The rising sun beat down like a torch baking me at my lonely vigil. I resolved to remain in place until the bird moved no matter how long it took. Five minutes, ten, the minutes ticked by slow as hours. Sweat trickled into my eyes and soaked my shirt. After a while I began to question my resolve though the bird was never questioned. Hawks have smaller bills and this one was clearly a monster, but I needed it to fly and it appeared in no hurry to leave the tree.

I was ready to give up when it spread its wings and dropped. It took a second to locate it but the sun and the heat haze obscured its plumage until it fell below the horizon. The distinctive white banded tail I expected was reddish brown.

It was time to go. I turned the car around and headed for Linn, eyes alternating between sky and gas gauge, remembering other chases that were more fruitful, the snowy owl, the Inca dove and the long-billed thrasher, and the others, too, the failed quests where every bird no matter how common or mundane possessed for a heartbeat a momentous attraction far greater than it ever would again, every bird a promise of limitless possibilities.