To Saunter

                                        To Saunter

It’s late October yet it feels as it did last May when it was finally comfortable enough to keep on walking, simply walking, rather than risking a busted hip racing back inside the house with an arm load of firewood. I’m not interested in power walking, or my heartbeat, or my personal best, or your personal best, or a gluten-free breakfast, or pushing through pain (Haven’t we all had enough of that one?). I just meander, poke around, change direction, look up, down, stop, start. Attention to detail. Which detail? Doesn’t matter. One is always there. The goal is to…saunter.  A la Sainte Terre. To the Holy Land. A pilgrim walking to Jerusalem. A sacred journey.


Now, I’m neither proposing nor pretending to go that far, but there are wonderful words, ancient words, abracadabra sounding words from all the British Isles that evoke what I do with whimsy and the ecstasy of morning dew. I love to “doddle”, to walk slowly and pleasurably. I can also “dander” or “nuddle”, walk in a dreamy manner, with my head down, like Christopher Robin searching for a toadstool. I could also “soodle”, if I wanted. My choice. Any one of those will do. You get my meaning.


60 degrees. Days like this won’t be around much longer. The hawk is on the way, so I sauntered forth on what could be the last of these junkets for a while. Joe, my pure black, sixty pound, brilliantly goofy, doodle loped ahead. We headed north towards the foot of Evergreen Mountain, an uphill walk that gradually increases grade. Easy. We cleared high brush and reached a spot bordering the woods, yards from a briskly running brook where the sounds were the same sounds for as long as this land has been – the very same sounds - breeze, some scurrying under brush, sometimes thunder, rushing water - the same as forever. Breeze and brook. The caw of a crow, the whisper of an owl, the bleat of a deer. A deep-throated, drawn out squawk jarred me out of whatever state I was in, picked up an echo, and kicked it back. I swear it sounded like a shofar, the haunting wail of the ram’s horn sounded by observant Jews to begin and end the High Holidays. Who knows? Some cultures might say the brook knows, the trees know, the breeze knows, but me? What do I know?


One thing I do know: I love being alone in a place where no one else in the world knows I am. Alone. No one. Not forever. Not even for very long, a month, long enough to feel cushioned by the world round me. Current geography has altered this somewhat. One is no longer in the middle of thousands of miles, and it’s not likely one’s going to get there again any time soon. Still, I can wander out my door and settle in somewhere with the understanding, at least until dinner, that I’m the only one who knows where I am, assuming, of course, that I do. Selfish? The people I love know I won’t stay away too long. 


Many years ago, the Hollywood years, I took off for Alaska while I was in the midst of writing a script. My plan was to follow a trap line deep into the bush and stay there for a while. Pre-cell phone. My producer wanted to make sure we kept in touch. The phrase “off the grid” had not yet been invented, so when I explained to him how completely out of reach, I’d be, it really rocked him, dazed, like a fighter who had just taken a good punch. “Aren’t you even gonna read the trades?”, he asked, attempting to process what he’d just heard. Was that a quiver? He could barely get the words out. It took me a second to realize the man was serious. I laughed a friendly laugh because I didn’t want to appear as condescending as I was actually feeling, but, really, I thought, why would I want to read the trades? That last sentence seems to explain my Hollywood career.

Put me in the middle of Alaska. Put me anywhere. I am never in the middle of nowhere. I am where I am. No matter where that is. It’s a gift, a perk from birth. Really, it is. I am safe. It’s not a lonely feeling at all. There is no yearning. Perhaps that’s why I need it? Trekking across Alaska there were times when I was many miles from another human being. Truth is, I didn’t really think about it. My feet hurt too much. It was hard enough moving one of them after the other. 


One night – late, dark – I stopped where I was, laid out my caribou skin, my sleeping bag on top of that, shed my boots and climbed in. It so happened, that particular night, I had a joint in my shirt pocket. Somebody back in Eagle must’ve slipped it to me. I can’t remember what I ate or if I ate, but I do remember lying back under a sky flush to the horizon with Northern Lights wafting in the solar wind like opera house curtains, firing up that joint with a waterproof match, and sending its bewitching smoke skywards. I’m surprised I didn’t levitate. Maybe, I did. Maybe I came as close to Heaven as I might ever come. Maybe I was actually there, you know, just passing through. Fine weed can make one a believer, but, of course, you already know that.


October, 2019