missed it

Yesterday on my way to work, driving fast, late, I passed by a young woman walking along side the road. Not a tourist dressed in the latest colors, but a local needing something.
"Wanna ride?" I asked, pulling over.
She looked in at me. A heavy woman, young, with angry brown eyebrows and thick lips.
She did, but it turns out she was going to Chelan, and I to Manson.
"Oh, well," I said.
"Thanks anyway." She walked with a quick stride of someone late for something, a big Walmart purse up high on her shoulder.
The rest of my drive to work I turned this interchange over and over in my mind. I should have driven her to Chelan and then doubled back to Manson. She's got 5 miles to walk. No doubt someone else will pick her up. And probably somebody did, but it misses the point.
I had the opportunity to offer kindness. I could have finally met this woman who I've wondered about for a long time. You see, I know about her. She lives in a trailer I drive by most every day. She has three big, mean dogs tied up short in her yard next to over-turned apple bins for shelter. If, when, they're loose they chase my car. There's a baby stroller that hasn't moved in the driveway for years. There's usually a load of laundry hanging up inside against the one large trailer window. Another window is broken out--sometimes it has a piece of plywood up against it and sometimes not. Driving by, I've wondered outloud to my kids about that: why it's open sometimes and not others. Even toyed with the idea of going up to the door, knocking and offering to fix it. I haven't, of course--too awkward.
And here I had the chance to meet her, to find out about what her story is, to save her feet those 5 miles.
I missed it. I miss alot of these. Sorry, God. Keep trying please.

The place between the two

Worked on my tower today. Such a dynamic day: rain, sun, purple clouds, hail, strip the coat off, coat back on, snow, blue sky. A day of opposites all stiched together.
I was thinking more about that while I was standing next to my metal saw. I had 36 brackets to make out of 1" x 1" x 1/4" thick angle iron. This meant making 36 cuts at the power metal saw, a big contraption on wheels with lubricant pump[ that feeds the cut with water/oil mix. Anyways, standing there watching the cuts, I got to thinking about the auction where I got this band saw. After I bought it, I found out that the auction was due to the guy's death which was a suicide.
And here I was using the tool he most likely spent quite a bit of time staring at while operating it--just like I was now. What were his thoughts? Despair, anger, loneliness...most likely all those that then turned to just an empty dullness, since suicide is just the final move for a life already mostly dead.
My thoughts, and my project is so different than that man's reality. Building a giant fort for my kids to play in. Giviing life, finally, to a crazy dream that I've had since my own childhood. Standing and coaxing the blade in the cut and humming songs and feelings so blessed that I had this whole day to play, to create.

Those two very different states of mind--his and mine--can turn on a dime, can change in a moment. A dog is gone, a dog comes home. A car's on the road, a car's in the ditch, a person loved is suddenly a person being buried. It's so damned hard to understand how this package must come this way, this gift of life. Like take-out food brought home with things inside you don't want, this bittersweet mix of all of it--best and worst. In what happens to us, iin what we are capable of, in what we witness in others and happening to others. I don't have anything more to say about that. I do know this, though: for me, God and the way of following God I choose (I'll call that religion) are at this intersection of the sweet and bitter. Showing me, helping me, holding me.

The start of something not very practical

So, for a while now, I've been wanting to do this. About 40 years give or take a few. I can't remember when and where it began, but I can clearly remember my crude drawings, done in red ink on large white paper. And the vision was pretty much always the same: a tower fashioned into a fortress. Multiple floors, ladder to get up and down, tall and round, with a special floor up top. The get-away, the place where it could just be for me and nobody could reach me.




Well, now it is happening. I got a hold of a metal tank that's 8' in diameter, 28' long, 1/4" thick mild steel and weighs in at 9,000 lbs. I'm going to stand it on end and make my fort. Pretty simple plan.

First I had to drag the tank down to my shop within reach of my big welder, an old rescued 350 amp Hobart that runs a smooth DC bead. I used hooked Alice up to the tank and dragged it on down, no problem. I had tried with Dr. Brown, the Mack dump truck but, even with weight in the back, the tandem axle wheels just spun out in the dirt.

Now that I've got the tank down where I want it, I can begin the modifications: cutting a door, welding the ladder inside, cutting the hole in the top where the ladder will exit into the top look-out room (my room--the kids get their pick of the 3 floors below) and cutting the windows (9 of them, 3 per floor).

I got most of this done on Sunday afternoon and I was really enjoying the work.

It's hard not to get discouraged sometimes when events chain together in a direction opposite the positive. My darn road grader, Alice (of course Alice...she's an Allis Chalmers) was just one problem after another.

First, when i set out to get her woken up for Spring duty, she's got a flat tire. The front tire that is brand new--and several hundred dollars. A big gouge in the side wall that the boys at Les Shwab doubt can be repaired. I have maybe 3 hours of use out of that tire.

Then I discover a big crack in the engine block. I use only water, no antifreeze, in this machine and somehow there was still some water left when I drained it in the fall.

Then I find a leak in the radiator.

The thing is, I've got work to do with this old girl before all the moisture leaves the road. It must run.

Well, turns out Ron at Les Schwab got the tire fixed and, when I went to get it with my truck, he said "No charge."

JB Weld repaired the crack in the block. Two big bottles of radiator sealer plugged the leak in the radiator. I bought two new 12 volt 850 amp/hour batteries so I could start her easily, rather than roll starting it as I have been for the past 3 years.

And, just like that, my outlook on life changes.

The dog is home!

It's a great Easter story: Dog gets lost on Good Friday and returns home on Easter Monday.
I had written the previous post about losing Badger on Sunday evening. I still had hope, though not much. I mean, after all: three days, two snowstorms, a dog who's fourteen years old, and too many coyotes in the mountains to count.
Any remaining hope was dashed Monday morning, when I woke to find yet more snow had fallen. It was really hard to get the image out of my head of good ol' Badger pulled down by a pack of coyotes, bites taken out of him at will until he died in the snow.
Anna called first thing in the morning to ask.
"Did he come home in the night, Dad?" She quietly asked.
"No, honey, he didn't. Maybe today he'll show up." I said, trying to be positive.
"It looks like it snowed a bunch more up there..."
"No, just a skiff, really." I lied.

And then, ten minutes later, she calls again. Frantic on the phone.
"Dad! Dad! Badger's here! He's down here!"
My first reaction was anger. I could only think that Anna was playing some kind of cruel prank on me.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I opened the front door to go to school and Badger was sitting here on the front step.
So, for those of you know don't know, my wife and I are split up and the kids are part time with her and part time with me. Leigh's house is down in town and somehow the dog made it out of the mountains, all the way down to town, and found her house. Yes, Badger's been to that house before, but how he would be able to find his way there, miles over terrain he's never been on, is not much short of miraculous.
I'm hesitant to use the word miracle, but no others really fit. And, why not really? There's all kids of things that happen every day around us that are miracles, really. We just get used to them: sunsets, one's heartbeat, love despite all odds, the never-ending energy of children. And Badger--an old, tired, but needed, dog reminding us of what Easter is all about.

When dogs go missing

My Good Friday was especially black this year. My two dogs got lost out behind our place in a freak Spring blizzard and ended up not coming home Friday night. Saturday noon, my younger, stronger dog limped on in, visually shaken and very hungry. My old guy, Badger, wasn't with her though.

Since the storm had ended and I knew her tracks would be strong and fresh I headed out to see of I could find Badger by re-tracing Susie's steps.

That darn dog. I followed her tracks many miles, farther and farther away from home--over 3 ridges, down thru many gullies and traversing several mtn's until, on a south-facing slope, I ran out of yesterday's snow and prints. I figure the two of them got dis-oriented in the blizzard and ended up farther from home than they realized, and then ran into a pack of coyotes. Susie, being young and quick (she was bred to be a sled dog) got away, but Badger, still strong, but also thirteen years old, was most likely worn down and then pulled down.

Today, after Easter Service, my daughter, Anna, was adamant about going out with me one last time and looking for Badger. I wasn't even hopeful that we'd find him alive, but even finding what's left of him would be helpful...at least we'd know for sure what happened.

The day's gift was not finding a dog--it was finding within me the ability to be there for my daughter. Sitting under a grand, old ponderosa pine on a ragged ridgeline, I held her tight in my lap as she sobbed.

Not many words, but the ones I did speak were good ones, I think. Ones of how pain comes with love, how there's no escaping this fact, but that pain won't kill you and that there's learning available there.

And for me, too. Learning how to be father, but also spectator. That some times--many times--there are no answers, and there is no way to avoid the sting that comes with living.

What God made you to do

I've been thinking about the question of there being something that we--me, you--have been created for. That, while we can try to do other things, it's not really a best fit. That there might be this one thing (or one thing for a while?) that creates such a "best fit." And that you know it when you are there by the pure joy you feel.

I think mine is making things. One very, very good example would be last week: Down at in my metal bone yard, picking thru things, a few ideas in mind, but nothing specific...and then it all comes together. 15' of 8" pipe, some old rusty 1/16th sheet metal carved out of an an old tank, and a bunch of metal band saw blades. It just feels more right than anything else I do, or have done. Cutting torch, a bunch of fresh 6013 1/8th" welding rod and no plans, nothing on paper, just free-form and whimsical.

Oh, and the shoes. After hanging onto my children's shoes over the years, we offered them up at a garage sale last year. Just a few pair sold and the rest were destined for the local thrift store, but they didn't want them. Everything else in my truck was headed for the landfill, but I just could not throw these shoes out. I brought the box home and stuck it away in the barn, confident that I'd find some use for them. While decorating the metal tree with 40 pairs of little footwear, the title of the sculpture came to me: "Children and thorns."