Vernonia Treasures

Small towns have a tighter weave of history with a person's business floating around at a faster pace perhaps, but like the normal family in America, or so it seems, assumptions are rampant among the island-building humans, pretending to know each other, in brief encounters. Sometimes the toaster gets more touch in our homes, the media or electronics our committed and precious time.The very reasons small places are chosen bring individualistic curtain calls on privacy, yet no matter how disillusioned, bitter, sordid or soiled our outlook, I believe mankind has an innate yearning to be known and understood, appreciated and cared for, or at least to be acknowledged for our existence in some way. Oh that a neon sign would blink that we have passed this way, contributed to make the world better than when we found it, or left a footprint of caring or kindness despite the valley or desert.

To think that my creative late night self came out, when all I wanted to do was to share the poem I spoke of in the last blog, and comment on one of Vernonia's Treasures. There is an 80+ yr. old retired logger, still in shape, still ruggedly handsome who connects to people everywhere with a smile or a pat on the back, a chocolate cream pie he has made or a wonderful shared dinner. He speaks of his late wife with love and respect, of his perfect love affair for 50 years, how they never quarreled, and he never stepped out on her. She has been gone almost ten years, and when he hears the music and verse of "You were the wind beneath my wings" and he is alone, he cannot help but tear up. Some have said with irritation or jealousy that he is a skirt chaser, (happily, they have their own reputation :-} )or he is a Cock of the Walk, and he can take a different woman to dinner every day of the week, but this confident, white-haired Rooster is nothing short of a treasure. I have had to remind him to behave if he's been drinking, but there is a beauty in the respectful restraint of profound loneliness.

This gentleman just lost his son, and though his impeccably clean and pressed white shirt may allude to assumed roles and settings in this stage called life, beneath his hardy chiseled chest and despite his strong work-veined arms a heart beats moistened by tears. The journey taken in this "Pocket in the Woods" is complete with all the templates: difficult and tentative, courageous, bawdy and friendly.

I must say the pork with fresh onions and celery over a bowl of noodles in broth was very good tonight, and he steamed his broccoli and cauliflower and tossed it with a little diced bacon. For a wonderful flavor, he suggested I sprinkle rice vinegar over it. I couldn't get enough.

On 5-23-91 I wrote the following poem called Homecoming. I lived in Spokane, Washington in first and second grade where sun-spread smells of pine needles during the walk home from school will be savored in my long term memory some day like a guilty pleasure wrapped in a silver box with a red bow...if I make it to the rest home.

Homecoming
Back to the fir trees I walk again
As that little girl did many years ago.
Warm washing rain, soft moss and ferns
Heal and soothe my weary soul.

Peace from turmoil-rest with us
Curtain out the madding crowd,
Tread dark and musty forest floor,
Feel sun and shade and look about.

You'll see a peaceful harmoney
Of bark and needles green and dead,
New life and old-reminding that
Your world will change. Time moves ahead.

A woman now, with traveled feet
Finds her way back, and in respect
Remembers the young one years ago
Looking for solace-on her forest trek.