Thirsty Bears

I was in the back with the luggage, leafing through the jagged terrain of Waterton Lakes Park, Alberta while they drove.  Up ahead, there was a marvelous castle built on the mountainside facing south over the lakes into the lower forty-eight.  

“Let’s stop in real quick and take a look around.”

 “Looks interesting.”

 “I want some guacamole.”

The Prince of Whales Lodge was an architectural triumph.  As we entered the lobby, a delicate and defiant mosaic of guitar plucking and slapping echoed off the lofted ceilings. A glass wall opposite the entrance exhibiting a vista deep down the spine of the Rocky Mountains into virgin wild land was the only mortal concept that could have survived next to her voice.  I thought I saw Baja California.  

We hovered across the room to the couch where she hunched over her ebony, acoustic Martin and dropped into the cushy sofa right next to her.   I forgot the view through the black side of my eyelids. 

When she finished, they opened.  Then she got up and stuck the guitar in its case and started for the door.  I was paralyzed. 

Jay skipped across in front of her causing her to studderstep by.  “Hey now?"  Head down she swept around him and continued for the door.  Her midnight hair swooshed around and masked her brown visage.  So he wheeled around and jumped in front of her again.  “Hey, wait.  I’m sorry, stupid, American—hey!”  He bent under her, looking up, and actually brushed her hair back with both hands rather delicately and held her by the elbows.

“Excuse me!”  She reared up and slugged him on the arm.

“Could you just hold on one second?  Slow down.”

“You slow down you freak,” but she couldn’t help smiling.  She brushed him aside and started out the carved double doors.

“We’ll be at the campground down on the lake tonight!  Come see us, if.”  And she was gone.  The heavy doors shut with a whump.  I thought I caught a whiff of sage.

We nosed around the lodge for a while.  It was spectacular.  But we liked being outside.  The guy at the desk told us that her name was Rose and she worked summers in the park leading nature walks and guiding trail rides on horseback.  Some evenings she played for tips in the lobby. 

At the campsite we started fighting over her.  “Would you care to make a wager?  And shake on it like a gentleman, Mr. Falls?”  Will asked. 

We were rolling out our groundpads and sleeping bags.  Jay clanked around outside the tent whipping up some grits for dinner while we finished setting up camp.  

“It's over.”

“You really think it’s over?”            

Jay flew horizontal through the open flap and caught me reaching up to secure the tent attic, caught me in the ribs with his shoulder like one of The Flying Zamboni’s, ramming me into the tent wall.  The tent flipped up on its side, ripping up the stakes he had just hammered in.

“Dusty Rhodes, The American Dream!  Off the ropes,” he was flying around the tent, “CLOTHESLINE!  ELBOW!  BELLY TO BELLY SUFLEX!”

I flipped backwards in his bear hug slamming into the mat and jumped up to my knees disoriented but in full character as Rick Flair, held up four fingers, fluffed my hair, “Whoooooo!” caught him with a chop across his wooly chest and got him in the figure four.

He was writhing around when Will came out of nowhere, “Oh no!  Not the metal chair!” and he clocked me in the face with his heavy feather pillow, jolting me enough for Dusty to break loose.

“Ladies and gentlemen!  Tonight’s main event, The Three’s a Crowd, I Surrender All, Last Man Standing, Tent-cage of Death-Match between The Flying Bull, Manny Ramiraz, Rick Flair, and The American Dream, Dusty Rhodes!  Hold on to your hats!  It’s going to be a wild one!”

By the time it was over, we all lay exhausted and panting and laughing hysterically, wrapped in a tangled mass of rainfly, broken poles, and guy lines.  The teapot on the stove was at full whistle when a pair of women’s boots stepped in our field of view.  She looked down over us shaking her head.

Jay sprang to his feet sending Will and me into a deathroll out of the tangled mass and into the dirt.  His hair was standing all up everywhere.

“Some folks that work here in the resort are having a little get together tonight at the stables.  A bonfire.  Go take hot showers and lather up a few times and meet us at The Thirsty Bear at nine.  I’ll introduce you to some good people.”     

Natural Burial

I started 17th Century Metaphysical Poetry this week with my classes, and yesterday one of the poems we discussed was "Death Be Not Proud" by John Donne.  It goes like this:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,

For, those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then;

One short sleep past, we wake eternally, 

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

The poem is one of Donne's Holy Sonnets.  He had unenthusiastically entered the ministry at the insistence of King James, and his quick wit, his flair for the dramatic, and his rolling intellect had established him as the mega-rock star preacher of his era.  In the poem, the speaker condescendingly confronts Death and personifies him as a tool, a cocksure pawn of Fate, Chance, and desperate men.  For the believer, death is really a peaceful little nap at the start of eternal life.  Yet he runs around like a bluffing bully.  The cacophonous  couplet at the end reveals that the joke is on Death.  While we wake eternally, death dies.

I'm not sure about all that, but what I do know is that I dig the gist.  

So naturally, I had a dream last night about my death.  It wasn't a morbid or a disturbing dream.  It was one of those dreams where I was thinking, sort of awake.  I was contemplating my own little nap and how I hope it goes down.  Here's what I dreamt:  

When I die, dig a hole in the woods about two meters deep in Newton County, Arkansas or in the Blue Ridge somewhere, 20 or 30 yards away from a waterfall or a bluff or a big, old tree where woodpeckers hang out.  Wrap my body in a linen shroud and place it in the hole.  No embalming fluids, no incineration, no concrete vault.  Cover me up with some soil and relocate a dogwood, a wild blueberry bush, blackberries and raspberries for the bears, some dwarf lilies, mayapples, and ferns.  I love ferns.  Or just spread some rich duff and fallen leaves; it doesn't matter.  One short sleep past, I'll wake eternally and death shall be no more.  Visit the waterfall, the bluff, the tree and see what I become. 

I'll send you off with a tune in your head if you know the Dave Matthews Band:

Gravedigger,

When you dig my grave,

Could you make it shallow

So that I can feel the rain?  

                                 --David John Matthews