oregon tale

Castor Canadensis (American Beaver) Man (Part 2)

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , ,

It need not concern us to delve into specifics about the events that propelled James to the secret watershed. It could have been an act of infidelity (not his), an addiction that bottomed him out, a real crime or a thought crime, a sickness or accident, a stoning on social media, a fire or a firing. A calamity of one kind or another (or in combination), struck James out of nowhere and he suffered an extinction of self. And when you go extinct in this fashion, something has to replace the former self or you merely remain in oblivion but not oblivious to your condition.

In the aftermath of his extinction, James lit out for the territory, driving west until he ran into the ocean, then driving south, south, south, until he somehow found himself living in 24-foot, 40-year-old rented Winnebago in a remote RV park named after a dead Native American tribe. The park was a block from the beach, and wonderfully disheveled in appearance, but not a creepy dishevelment. It was populated by men and women taking part in the new American diaspora, those checking out quietly of American society because American society sucked worse than Pat Boone covering Little Richard or John Wayne playing Genghis Khan or Mark Zuckerberg preaching about improving our lives through social media.

James began beach combing, river walking, estuary adventuring and stream surveying for the simple reason he had nothing else to do. Prior to arriving at the park, he’d had very little experience in nature so it was all new to him and he delighted in his solitude (although he wasn’t really alone) and his discoveries, particularly an orange dildo inside a driftwood fort.

One morning, James hiked along a forested trail that traversed a headland and had no idea where it would lead. He was paper mapless in an era when paper maps were dead, but he didn’t care. Just let a great notion of exploring unfold. They always work out when you don’t rely on received wisdom produced by digital dipshits. You might meet a magical woman on a mountain or walk through a herd of elk to enter a dive coastal bar. You might find that macrame top or corduroys that change your life.

Several miles later, the trail descended to a cove and an isolated stretch of beach. There was a couple acres of driftwood, in some places stacked twenty feet high. James tunneled into the driftwood, hunting for treasures. He noticed that many of the pieces, some tiny, some the size of baseball bats and flagpoles, were stripped of bark, and had strange chew and gnaw marks at both ends. A sort of whittling look. He picked up a few and inspected. He held one piece to his mouth like a corn on the cob, rolled it, and simulated chewing. It didn’t make any sense. He found a stick he liked and slipped it in his back pocket for a souvenir. He had no idea why.

And thus it began. Beaver fever had struck.

Castor Canadensis (American Beaver) Man (Part 1)

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , , , , ,

Our Oregon tale begins on an abandoned county boat ramp along a remote river in a secret watershed on the Southern Oregon Coast.

Come look! You will see encroaching willows and alders, beer cans and vaping pens, the remains of camp fires. Come closer! You will see signs of castor canadensis, American beaver, perhaps the most enterprising and entrepreneurial animal in nature, and one sadly relegated to scientific study, and boring scientific study at that.

Until now. Oh, there is so much more to beaver! So much more to tales about beavers than stealing fire from humans!

Come look even closer! You will see an abandoned 2001 or 2002 Honda Accord, once tan, but now a curious congealed color of rust, moss and mold that only exists on the Oregon Coast in places where it can rain 90 inches a year. Call this a nurse car because ferns and tiny conifers have sprouted from its crevasses. Near it stands the crumbling remains of a large driftwood fort, more of a lodge, intricately constructed, sturdy, interwoven, interlocked, decorated in a style anthropologists might call a kind of voodoo. Beaver voodoo! (Good rock band name.)

Over the years, drunk, stoned and methed teenagers had used the car for short sport, siring a few miscreants in the back seat, but even that had stopped as foliage further engulfed the road and swallowed the car. The car was returning to earth. A hundred-year flood might hasten its fate.

But what of the car’s former owner? What happened to him? Who was he? Who is he? Where is he?

Well, if truth be told, and this story really did happen, and is being written by a writer wielding a quill (bald eagle) pen, the man is no longer a man, he is Castor Canadensis Man. He transformed—no evolved—into a beaver. And if more truth be told, he’s pretty damn happy about it! It’s much better being a beaver than being a human in America these days. That’s pretty obvious. For one thing, you don’t have to believe your vote will count fairly in a presidential election, although you still have to contend with merciless gentrification from lower (richer) life forms.

His name was James. That was his human name. James like the apostle. His beaver name is coming soon.

There are no beavers in the Bible. Just beasts. Strike that! There are a sheep gone astray, a jawbone of an ass, and a whale who spits out a loser. One shudders to think what Jesus could have done with a parable about a beaver and a sinner! It might have changed the course of Christianity and we could have avoided the Inquisition and American Exceptionalism.

A Slash Burn Christmas (Part 3)

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , ,

Matt ate his breakfast slowly. Chris began driving across the Columbia River on the Megler Bridge. Matt watched the freighters anchored in the channel and the gulls that glided by.

“You know what a slash burn is?”said Chris.

Matt knew what slash burn were. They were the piled woody remains after an industrial massacre known as a clearcut that forest law required logging outfits to burn up, typically in the winter and spring, when the rains came. Their smoke and fires on the hillsides up the lonely river roads were a staple part of coastal living.

They were like funeral pyres for nature. They were one of the more obvious displays of how humans destroy watersheds. They were a precursor of bigger fires and thicker smoke to come.

“Yes,” said Matt. He’d partied up in the clearcuts a few times while the burning slash piles lit up the night and miscreants.

Chris explained the job: oversee about two dozen slash burns on some clearcuts near Saddle Mountain. He had a contract with the outfit that logged it last spring. It was seasoned and ready to go. This was Chris’ business. He’d being doing it for a long time.

“You mean live up there and tend the fires?” said Matt.

“You got it. I’ve got a trailer on site that I move from job to job. If it works out, you move from burn to burn. The season usually lasts until May or when the fire departments shut it down.”

Matt didn’t say anything, but Chris could tell he had questions.

“I supply food, propane and gas to get the fires going. There’s a composting toilet and a solar shower. You collect rain with a little barrel system I’ve rigged up. You can wash your clothes in the stream like our boys at Valley Forge. I come up and resupply you once a week and see if you need anything special, within reason. I don’t bring pot or liquor and I don’t allow it on the job. No visitors either. I can post your letters, too.”

Matt had never written a letter in his life. He didn’t know a single address.

Chris waited for a few seconds, then continued.

“You’re alone up there and can’t leave the fires. That’s the law. If the wind picks up you got to check around the clock. If something happens you radio me and I radio the fire department. But there’s nothing left to burn up there except slash piles and I’ve never had a burn get away from me.”

“What’s it pay?” said Matt, who noticed that they had crossed the river and Chris was turning the truck around at a wayside and they were going right back across.

“Two hundred a week. Cash. No government. You could finish the job with three-four grand in your pocket. Lots of money for meth or starting over. If it works out, you could have this job for years.”

Years, wondered Matt. He’d had thought about years ahead in years.

“There’s no phone, no internet concoction, no TV, nothing. Just some old books. You like to read.”

“What kind of books?”

“Westerns. Some science fiction. A couple of Dickens. And a Bible.”

Matt had thumbed a few books in jail. He pretended to read them.

“Most people quit after a week, two tops. I had some would-be writer think he could hack it and quit after three days. I get most of my employees right out of jail, on probation. Always methed out.”

They had returned to Astoria. The truck was just pulling off the bridge, when Matt said, “I’ll take it. When do we start?”

“Right now,” said Chris. “I’ve got to get you settled in and burning before it gets dark.”

Holiday Craft Fair (Part 2) A Christmas Tale

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , ,

The car asked Shana where she wanted to go. Shana didn’t know. She called up a map and started scrolling north, north, farther north, up Highway 101. She crossed the state line into Oregon. She’d never been to Oregon. What went on there? Logging and pot?

She saw a town named Gold Beach. Shana liked the sound of that. Gold Beach sounded nice. A nice place to die, right on the ocean, which she hadn’t seen in seven years. She’d even leave a big tip for the mortuary transport assistant who would transport her body to wherever they took bodies to in Gold Beach. Or maybe she would just drink vodka, swallow some pills, and walk into the ocean. No cleanup for anyone.

Before heading to Gold Beach, Shana stopped by her condo to pick up some clothes and toiletries. She also collected her pills (anti-anxiety, anti-depressant, anti-psychotic, pain), two bottles of flavored vodka (persimmon and dandelion), and her multiple vaping devices pre-loaded with her go-to cannabis delights.

The car found Highway 101 and headed north. She vaped every now and then while watching the Hallmark holiday marathon expertly matched with Christmas-themed suicide playlist songs. Nothing like Kenny G or Jim Nabors to wither the soul.

They crossed the Oregon border and met a ripping rain. Shana told the car to kill the movie, music and interior lights. She told the car to power down the window closest to her. A second later, she heard the old, non-neurotic sound of the ocean and rain typewriting the landscape. She stuck her head out the window and rain slapped her face like those old movies where someone tries to sober someone up.

Shana took the beating for a full minute and then stuck her head farther out the window and washed her hair.

North. North. North. Rain never relented. Shana kept the window down.

Her best friend, the car, drove her into Gold Beach. Dusk was settling in. Shana saw a red-lettered, stenciled sign on a piece of white plywood: Holiday Craft Fair.

She’d never been to a craft fair and why not attend and ratchet up the suicidal tendencies? She’d slug a couple of shots of vodka and put her slurry Dean Martin on, wander the aisles, see a hand carved nativity scene with a Caucasian baby Jesus sporting a Make America Great Again ball cap, and the proverbial trigger would be pulled.

Shana told the car to park. The fair was being held in the event center at the county fairgrounds. She’d never been to a county fairgrounds. She imagined goats and pigs and demonstrations of butter churning.

She slugged the vodka, got out of the car, and walked toward the entrance. Rain nearly knocked her over. Her hair was soaked and she needed a hat. They had hats in craft fairs, right?

A Window Washing Tale (Part 1)

Fiction, NSP Meditations, Of Walking in Rain , , ,

An affluent dad pulls his SUV into a gas station. Inside the vehicle, his three children, ages 7, 9, 10, a boy, girl and in-between, fiddle on their phones and tablets while a movie plays on a monitor.

It’s raining like hell outside. The dad waits for an attendant to emerge from the store to pump his gas, this being Oregon, only one of two states that prohibit customers from dispensing their own fuel at gas stations. Oh what sweet Oregon legislation! It actually facilitates interesting or banal conversations between perfect strangers. It can facilitate two people falling in love. You always get better directions from a person than a phone.

The dad wasn’t always affluent. He’d worked hard at a rural high school to earn a minor scholarship to a middling state university. He’d pumped gas full-time in high school and even pumped part-time in college for spending money and to meet girls.

He graduated and then went into IT and made a lot money in the amorphous ways IT people make money. He married a woman he’d met pumping gas his senior year, an elementary teacher fresh out of the same school. They bought a big new house in a leafy neighborhood (where no one raked leaves) and the kids tumbled out of the womb forthwith.

The years passed. The kids grew up. They had all the gadgets and fiddled on them all the time. They never did in any yardwork because they were always scheduled for activities. They don’t have any pets. They’ve never camped.

The attendant taps on the dad’s window. The dad awakes from a trance and powers down the window. Rain blows in, soaking the steering wheel and console. The attendant is a young Latino man dressed in orange rain gear and rubber boots. He says hello and the dad hands him a credit card and asks for a fill up. He says please. The attendant goes to work and stands near the vehicle, holding the nozzle in place.

There are no other customers. Rain wallops the vehicle. Rain wallops the attendant. The dad looks at him. He starts up a conversation, about rain of course. Always back to the rain. It means something in Oregon.

The attendant loves rain. It makes people more talkative, more alert to humanity and nature. His name is Hector and he’s studying welding at the nearby community college.

The dad checks his rearview mirror and sees his kids glued to screens. Then he looks at himself in the mirror. Rain slaps his face hard and slaps some insight right into him.

Rain on the face can do that. Try it sometime.