Skiing with the Father

The man was on top of the world.  Or on top of New Hampshire.  Or, merely, on top of New Hampshire’s Mount Sunapee. 

 

He sat on the deck of the summit lodge with a 360 degree view, interrupted in a few directions by clumps of trees, and in one direction by the mechanism of the ski lift.  The sun was warm, for February.  There was little wind; the ski runs were well groomed.  It was a Wednesday.  School vacation week had brought families to the mountain, the man’s family included.  At the moment, though, he was alone. 

 

He was exhausted by the blandishment of the present time. 

 

During vacations, many persons desire to drop out of the present, the man included.  In a week, the same public arguments and scandals and breathless excitements will once again nail them to the—might the man say ‘to the Cross’?—of the present moment.  But vacation offers a momentary cessation of the noise. 

 

“I’m looking even more like my father,” the man had said to his wife that morning, after shaving. 

 

“Yes, you are.”

 

The man’s father had died twenty months before at age one hundred and one.  The man’s father had been a poet—highly regarded, internationally lauded—whose fame had then faded before his own demise.  But the father had possessed the toughness to hold stubbornly to life. 

 

“You know the critics?” his father, sitting in the sun at age one hundred, had asked him. 

 

“Yes?” 

 

“They’re dead.”  He smiled, “And I’m not.” 

 

After the man’s father reached a high place at age one hundred, he continued to push life’s rock uphill for one more year.  That’s grit!

 

The man missed his father fiercely.  Often, when he was driving alone, he put into the CD player a spiritual which promised that those who are separated by Jordan will one day find each other on the other side. 

 

Also, his father had been a skier.  In his father’s day, athletes ascended mountains by strapping sealskins to the bottom of their skis and walking there.  A day might be occupied by a long climb, stopping now and then for a breather, a swig from a flask, and a refreshing pipe when the view inspired.  There would be a picnic in the snow at the top, and then would come the reward at the end of the day—that one, long, delightful schuss back downhill again. 

 

Today, of course, we use a speedy chairlift to carry us through the air to the top of the mountain, and we are able to enjoy a score of downhill runs in the time that the man’s father had experienced one. 

 

Mechanical devises nowadays truly do make life’s uphills easier to master than was the case a mere century ago.  But that does not justify chronological snobbery, as C.S. Lewis called it, our unexamined assumption that things of the past ought to remain in the past and ought not to trouble us cleverer moderns. 

 

The man was sixty, and he was feeling about his own past a new weightiness.   There were now accretions upon him.  They were the results of life assumptions, relevant to himself in years before, of the events and philosophies and choices by which he had lived.  He was beginning to experience the old person’s anxiety that these important events and philosophies were hidden from young adults of the present. 

 

What must the burden of the past have been on his father at age one hundred?  That man could reach back nearly to the Boer War.  The Boer War!  Scarcely anyone today has even heard of it, but it was a bellwether of its time. 

 

Lounging in the winter sun on his New Hampshire deck, the man thought back forty years, and he remembered himself on the deck of another summit lodge such as this one, but on the other side of the world.  Then, he had been high in the Bernese Alps, enjoying the same mid-winter ambiance as today, except that the mountainscape was limitless—dazzling alpine peaks, stretching all the way into Italy, with the Jungfrau as a magnet to the eye.  On the deck with him were skiers who had taken the train up the valley from Schoenreid to the base of the funicular car.  Then the funicular had carried the merry group to the summit, where they had debouched upon the deck of the lodge and now sat in the sun, drinking beer or schnapps, and eating fat sausages with sauerkraut.  As compared with the present day, no ski garment worn by anyone on that long-ago deck was an advertisement.

 

The man’s father came and sat down next to him.  “Just like in the 1920s.”  Then he laughed, “Except the last time we had to climb up, and once we got above the tree line, it was harder.”

 

“Why?”

 

“There wasn’t any way to know which route across the snow fields was safe.  If you were the first to cross.”  He filled and lit a pipe.  “And we always wanted to be the first to cross.”

 

The man had a vision of his father as Nick Adams, from Hemingway’s Cross-County Snow, but as a Nick touched more closely by the Muse than Nick the brawler ever was.  

 

“In those days, were you ever here, right here?”

 

“Above this valley, yes, but lower down, by the Diableret Glacier.”  His father mused a bit and then said, “You know, if we time our runs right, we could make it there today.  It means skiing the snow fields above Saanen and Saanenmoser.  Then we could ski down to Gstaad and take the train back up the valley to Schoenreid for dinner.” 

 

And was there ever anything more romantic sounding than that? 

 

As it happened, the man and his father didn’t make it all the way to the Diableret.  His father was more comfortable with a slower series of runs, and they ended by dropping down out of the snow fields and into the trees above Saanenmoser.  So the up-valley train ride was shorter, and they were early for dinner, and the man’s mother was pleased.

 

 

*      *     *

 

The man’s memory up there on top of New Hampshire took him back only forty years, to the 1960s.  When his father was skiing the Diableret, in the 1920s, the lessons he was concerned about came from the great conflict so recently ended—The Great War.  The French speakers were wounded and vengeful; the German speakers were resentful and truculent; the English speakers (except some of them like Churchill) were hoping conflict itself would go away; the Russian speakers were saying nothing at all because they sagged under the Bolshevik weight and were silenced.  And the Americans were ascendant…and talking all the time.  More than had been the case twenty years before, when the man’s father was born, human aspiration was seen now in political terms—what can government do about man’s lot, or can it do anything at all?—and Christianity was no longer the one world religion that was generally understood in the West to be true.

 

But when his father was born, in 1904, the lessons learned by the adults of that time concerned what had happened in their pasts.  In those days, at the beginning of the brand new 20th century, big were colonialism, its pros and cons, and also rationalism’s challenge to religion.  Manifest Destiny was, indeed, still manifest.  Explosions were occurring in what was later to be called psychology, physics was bending time and finding that light has gravity, and cubism, Dadaism, and other movements of the artistic avant-garde were delighting or affronting, depending.  The big storm that rumbled over the horizon was the fight between capitalism and communism.  That would have its hellish impact later…but it was only after the democracies finally decided to fight back against their own destruction and defeated despotic fascism that they turned their attention to despotic progressivism. 

 

            Yet, as the man mused in his silent space atop that New Hampshire mountain (he had recently re-read a good deal of C.S. Lewis…together with John), there’s a longer perspective as well, and it was there in the man’s father’s day, as well as in the day of his father’s parents and of their parents, too. 

 

There’s a greater Father still, and He saw the universe at its beginning, knows its present, and understands its future.  He isn’t compelled by chronological snobbery; he has not our limited human perspective.  What all persons struggle with today is no different from what persons struggled with in ages gone by.  They, all of them, they climbed through life, up their snow fields, and they took their looks from their summits all around.   

 

We today are comfortable with the sins we have chosen, until we learn to ski with the Father. 

 

 

*     *      *

 

 

            The man walked down to the snow, stamped into his skis, and pushed off for the long run home. 


*****


Reach me, if you like, at dikkon@dikkoneberhart.com

 

The Point

If, like me, you have the heart of a theologian, you probably believe in your heart that history is going somewhere…that there’s a point.  

 

Many secular friends argue instead, why should there be a point?  I understand what they say, but I argue back, why should there not be a point? 

 

In two weeks, I will be two-thirds of a century old.  After years of observation and consideration, I can’t prove that there’s a point, not in a way that all of us would acknowledge as trumps.  But I have hints.    

 

           

Hint:

 

Popham Beach, Maine—January, midnight, moonless, 15 degrees below zero, stiff NW breeze: one of my favorite spots and conditions.  If you stand there long enough, you may come to recognize what no-pointedness is like.  No-pointedness is nothing, and it’s cold!  But, in fact, right there on that beach, there is not nothing.  In fact, even in that deep cold, there exists all of creation.  You see it, hear it, feel it. 

 

It would have been so much easier, wouldn’t it, for there to have been nothing, nothing, nothing at all? 

 

If there is no point, who took the trouble to make creation so?

 

           

Hint:

 

When I was a lad, each storm at sea drew me, and I forged out in my Dark Harbor 17, foolhardily alone, to brave the great swells and the winds, seaward of Saddleback Ledge, near the mouth of Penobscot Bay, Maine.  I pressed myself and my boat through the threnody of the blow.  I willed myself upwind, and—triple reefed and deck awash—I battered myself there. 

 

It was wild; on the very edge of things.    

 

            I might have stayed ashore; most people did.  When I would return, schooning into Weir Cove and rounding-up for my mooring, a few old salts might come from their cottages and stand, battered by the wind, to watch me snug the boat down and row ashore.

 

             “You were out in that?”

 

            “Sure,” I’d say.

 

            “Blowin’ wicked out there.”

 

            I’d stare across the thudding sea, crack a grin.  “Nice sail,” I’d demur.  “Nice sail.” 

 

            If there is no point, why do we have will?

 

           

Hint:

 

Between us, my wife and I have lived in four different states (two of them twice), owned five houses, and we have changed employers numerous times.  We have matured our politics.  We have changed our religion; I've converted twice. We have spoken out, publicly, when we deemed it appropriate.  We did as we wished, worked hard, failed, achieved, re-started. 

 

            Freedom. 

 

We are fortunate to live in a society which was set up and pushed onto the landscape of history by the concept that our rights as human beings are bestowed upon us by God Himself and not by the state.  We are fortunate to live in a society whose founding documents are designed to protect us as citizens from the potential tyranny of our own government, as it—inevitably—seeks to become understood as the grantor of our rights, instead of God as the grantor.      

 

If there is no point, why were our founding fathers urgent, for us, that our rights should come from the Absolute Good, rather than from a random scattering of other, temporarily powerful, sinful humans?

 

 

Hint:

 

The only time I saw my father weep was in church.  This was when I was about ten.  Usually, I was relegated downstairs, away from the service, to color pictures of a pretty-looking guy on a donkey riding through a gate.  For some reason, this time, I was upstairs.  Here was my father, weeping.  My father. 

 

I never went downstairs again; something was happening up here, and it was big.

 

            During sixteen years after college, with now and then a teaching gig when I was out of money, I went to graduate schools, chasing after theology, comparative religion, phenomenology, and how art is a mirror of creation.  Then there came raising four children in Reform Judaism, dissatisfaction with its cherry-picking of Torah, exploration of Orthodox Judaism, more dissatisfaction, and staggering out onto a spiritual desert. 

 

            Finally came Jesus, who said, “Take one more step, Dikkon.  If you’ll take one step, I’ll take two.” 

 

If there is no point, why is there belief in something greater than no-pointedness? 

 

 

            So, brothers and sisters, who advocate for there being no point, why is there something instead of nothing? 

 

Why is there will? 

 

Why is there freedom?

 

Why is there belief? 

 

Here's my answer.  Because humans are not protoplasmic happenstance, which was primordial ooze once upon a time and now shops for good cheese. 

 

There’s more to us than that.  We perceive beauty.  We love.  We sacrifice.  We yearn.  We are, in fact, integral to something larger than ourselves. 

 

And that’s the point, from my heart.    

 

 

Write a comment, if you disagree, and tell me why.  Truly, I would like to know.   


Or reach me directly at dikkon@dikkoneberhart.com.
 

 

           

 

Our Sea-Girt Ancestor

When my grandmother died, there was in her foyer a large oil painting of a square rigged ship.  Family legend has it that the ship is one of her father’s.  The ship’s rigging is post-clipper: around 1875.  In the painting, she is roaring toward the viewer, all canvas pressed into service, including her stuns’ls.  Her voyage has been hard: rust mars her topsides, and her dolphin striker is askew to starboard.  But a fine sight she must have been as she schooned into Boston Harbor, bringing my great-grandfather a nice return on investment. 

 

            Now, the painting dominates my living room in Phippsburg. Maine.  I like to imagine my ancestor who, as a Danish sea captain, finally settled in Boston because, as I was told, it was the harbor of all the world into which he best enjoyed to sail. 

 

            That ancestor: the same burly, muscular build we all carried down the years, a white whisker running full round the face; stern visage, bright eye.  In a photograph on the wall of my grandmother’s dining room he sat and staring at the facing photograph of his wife, who herself had a formidable profile, an aggressive bosom, and a mouth which seemed to me as a boy more apt for command than for comfort.  His settlement in America underscored his forward view of things: in America, here was a land of opportunity and of virtue, where his children might blossom, and where the future looked bright. 

 

            For all the many years I knew my grandmother—she died just short of her 102^nd birthday—she searched for her father’s sextant, which she wanted to present to me, her first grandson, who spent a lot of time on the sea.  She never found it.  It was somewhere in her house, she was certain, just out of reach, at the back of some drawer or other, or in the bottom of some trunk.  

 

In addition to the picture of his ship, my grandmother did bequeath to me his definition of a gentleman.  A gentleman, my grandmother instructed me, is a man who knows how, and when, to shake another man by the hand.  But he also knows how, and when, to punch him in the nose. 

 

            Further, I have one more thing my grandmother passed down to me.  I have the idea that there is a sextant to be found, at the back of some drawer or other. 

 

Somewhere there is an instrument that will show us where we are.  I’d like to know where we are.  I’ve read thousands of books and written for many years, all of it to discover where we are.  As Americans: whither go we, and why? 

 

Today, in Bath, Maine, in the birthplace of ships, a ghostly reminder has been built that should help us to think about this.  Visit the site, those of you who come here sea-borne, or those who merely enjoy the metaphor.  The Maine Maritime Museum has constructing a full-sized replica-in-silhouette of Wyoming, the largest fore-and-aft rigged wooden vessel ever built.  Today, she is back on the very spot where, in 1909, her keel was laid down, at the Percy & Small shipyard.

 

Go to Wyoming and beside her stand.  She represents some of us—we are a mercantile people, ably building bigger vessels, ably sailing them. We found the routes that brought back finished goods and raw materials.  We made our trading partners and ourselves wealthy. Scarcely was there a port on earth that did not know a Downeaster and did not love the sight of her hull rising offshore.  Here came goods, news, ideas, and here—especially—here came hope of a better life. 

 

Might I go where to she came from, wondered some yet-to-be ancestor of ours?  Might I go there, too, and prosper?     

 

Any sea-girt ancestor of ours must surely be musing upon us now.  He may be the captain, or the bosun, or the master’s mate.  He may be a young able seaman, who can hand, reef, and steer.  All of them are out there on the sea right now, our ancestors, cradling their sextants, wishing us strength of purpose and character, and shooting the dark star of our soul. 

 

Have we done them proud?  Will we continue to do them proud? 



****

Reach me, if you like, at dikkon@dikkoneberhart.com

 

           

Madawaska, Maine

A whistle cut the steam.  The steam came from the paper mill across the river. The steam obscured the view.  The whistle seemed to pull the steam apart—for a moment, workers hastening from their shift were visible.  Then the steam closed back down again, and the men were gone. 

 

            “Like Arnold’s troop,” the lawyer said, referring to the Revolutionary War general and later traitor, “disappearing in the muskeag of Quebec.”  He was sixty-ish, short, burly, gray.  He had not spoken English until he was twelve, and the French-Canadian accent was a thin and a sweet syrup on the other man’s ear. 

 

The lawyer stood beside the salesman at the back window of his law office.  The two men had been acquaintances for a dozen years; they were content with quiet.  The view out the window was down, across a sloping clutter of slap-dash houses to a flat bottom beside the river.  Along that river bottom, on this side of the river, ran the trains. A logging train ran just then, slowly, eastward: car after car with the thick ends of the trees fore and aft, and the thin ends in the middle.  Beyond the tracks flowed the river.  In that late afternoon light, the river was a silver sheen a hundred yards wide, shallow, slow, interrupted now and then by curls of old pilings where once there had been piers.  The river’s flow was to the men’s right, eastward, the same direction as the logs, always eastward, always, that is, since this clench–jaw countryside had been neighbored. 

 

In the view, just to the left, was the bridge across the river, an engineering marvel of the 1930s, across which commerce ran and on the opposite side of which stood the paper mill.  Steam, lit white by the low slant of the sun, continued to obscure the façade of the mill when the wind stayed still for a moment.  But it was cold that autumn day, a harbinger, and the wind was rarely still.  All walkers wore their light-level, winter, outer coats. 

 

The lawyer continued, gesturing at the departing workers, “Used to be they didn’t know if they belonged to the King or to Congress.  Used to be no one quite knew: were we French or English?”

 

The salesman, also sixty-ish, was burly and gray, too.  The two of them had concluded their business—one bought, one sold.  Stacks of imposing law books were on shelves and on the floor.  Most of the books were out-of-date, but their weightiness impressed the lawyer’s clients, and—the salesman surmised—the lawyer himself.  The presence of even their outmoded decisions and methodologies meant that the lawyer was able to fly by the seat of his pants, as he had done successfully through thirty years. 

 

The salesman always tempted the lawyer with up-to-date sets of those books, or even, nowadays, with electronic versions of the same.  But the lawyer always demurred; he liked seat-pant flying.  It’s how he progressed.  He bought off-hand things, a small book here or there, for the purpose—again the salesman surmised—of keeping this salesman stopping in when he was on one of his infrequent trips, seeing lawyers along the river bottom. 

 

Now that the selling was done, the two men were doing what they preferred, really, to do.  They were reflecting slowly about why they were there. 

 

“So the French settlers, the Acadians, they were driven out again from around here and they squatted in the forests over there.”  The lawyer pointed to the soft slopes that reached into the distance, across the river.  “And then after the war, when the loyalists were driven away, they needed to go somewhere, so they came here.  And, since they were loyalists, they appealed to the King, and he granted them legal title, and they drove the Acadians away all over again.” 

 

The salesman was struck by the reference to “the war.”  It was the Revolution, here, in Acadia, which still counted. 

 

“My people were Acadians, mostly closer to Quebec.  We married our women to the English, in the winter.”  He pointed at the river.  “That’s how they communicated then.  The river froze in the winter, and you walked down the river fifty miles and found an Englishman to marry your daughter.  So we became farmers then, up around Saint Agathe.”

 

“So you were with the King.”

 

“No one knew where the border was, both sides of the river.  And there was no way to get south, really south, to America.  The river took you to the sea, but that wasn’t America.  Nothing but forest between here and even Bangor, which didn’t exist then.  Maybe a horse track, or a trapper.  That’s why Arnold had such a bad time.”

 

The men returned from the window to the chairs they had occupied earlier and sat down.  After a moment, the salesman asked, “I’ve always wanted to know: why the law?”

 

The lawyer thought for a minute.  He looked at the sagging shelves of statutes and their endless interpretation by the courts.  “Tales in my family, maybe.  From the early years, maybe the late 1800s, the 1920s.  Men would come up from America, from the government.  We didn’t know, were they here to steal our land?  What did they want?  We’ve always been stand-offish.”  The lawyer paused.  “Maybe it was that.  Help the people to keep their land.” 

 

There was silence in the room.  After a bit, the salesman picked up his bag and placed it on his lap.  “I should go.”

 

The lawyer chuckled quietly.  “I like to think I might retire sometime.  Probably never will.”  He looked at the salesman.  “I’d like to know more about the history, though, that’s what I’d like.  That’s what I do on weekends.  I go around, and I ask about the history.”

 

The salesman stood.  “See you next time.”  Their hands met and shook firmly. 

 

“Stop any time.  That was some journey, that Arnold expedition. We helped his men, you know that?  We Acadians.  We hated the British.  We helped to get Arnold to Quebec, for his attack, after his men—what was left of them—came out of the forest.”

 

“And now they’re Canadians, and we’re Americans.”

 

The lawyer glanced again through the window, across the St. Johns River, at Canada.  “Well, sort of.  Sometimes.”

 

The salesman left the office and walked to where he had parked his car.  He sat down, turned the key, and tuned the radio to find news.  Most of the stations were in French, and when he found English it was Halifax calling: there had been an accident between two ships in the harbor. 

 

The American presidential election was to occur shortly; there was much of great excitement to discuss.  But the salesman took the longer view: he slid in a disc of old spirituals and drove away. 

 

 

*****

Reach me, if you like, at dikkon@dikkoneberhart.com.

 

 

Why Peter Slowed Down

 

Having been a teenage boy, I can attest that I know how to make a car skid.  I learned this skill so I would be able to make a car stop skidding, if I were ever in extremis.  But there is more fun in creating a skid than in stopping the skid, I will now confess. 

 

            Growing up in northern New Hampshire we fellows made good use of iced over ponds.  For the sake of the spirit of my mother—who may indeed be reading this from heaven—I can honestly attest that I was one of the cautious ones who waited until the ice was eighteen inches thick before edging the car out onto its surface. 

 

            That caution differed from my earlier insouciance when it comes to ice travel.  There is the story, famous in my family, of the time my mother drove past a local pond early in winter and saw her ten-year-old son and his dog edging their way out onto the black surface of the new ice, on their bellies, inch by inch, with me holding the barrel of my cap pistol and cautiously tapping ahead of myself with its grip. 

 

I remember my logic. 

 

I knew that it is possible to break through ice and that doing so would lead to no good conclusion.  My mother would be mad, at the least, and, at the worst, my father.  However, I had my dog Rock with me, who would go and bring help if needed, and I had my gun.  Guns have two good qualities.  First of all, they’re guns; enough said.  Second of all, they make useful ice tappers. 

 

My mother, on the other hand, failed to subscribe to my logic. She made her failure to subscribe perfectly plain during her subsequent remarks to me, remarks she delivered in a tone that was unnecessarily loud, entirely devoid of sweet reason, and not nuanced in the slightest degree.  In short, she ruined my science experiment.  Knowledge is always a benefit, as I tried to explain to her.  I was increasing both my knowledge and potentially, as an added gift to the world, the knowledge of others as well.  Just how far can a ten-year-old boy and a dog creep onto a pond only partially covered with ice in early December in New England?  Many people would like to know.   

 

I’m thinking of these events because I recall a teenage driving moment, one deeply instructive.  Being a young man, I liked to be in control, behind the wheel.  When I was in control, nothing bad could ever happen.  But sometimes I was not in control, usually because the car belonged to someone else’s father.  Then his son was in control, and we other fellows were powerless. 

 

Frequently when I was growing into my driving years, my mother would sit me down and make the same point, over and over again.  (“I know, I know, Mom.  Come on!”)  But her point was good. 

 

One night, six of us were packed into another fellow’s father’s car, and we were returning from a party down a curvy road, and there was rain, and the surface was wet.  Life was grand at that moment, and it was made grander by going really fast. 

 

Wedged into the back seat, I was frightened.  I wanted my friend to slow down.  After a few more curves, I wanted very, very much that he slow down.  But how unsophisticated it would be to say anything!  

 

Here’s what my mother had drummed into my thick head: If you see something happening you don’t like, even if others are silent about it, speak up!  Probably there are others around you who will be relieved that you did, and, in any event, it’s your responsibility as a man. 

 

It hurt my throat to get the words out, but: “Hey, Peter!  Hey, slow down.  Or stop and let me out.  I’ll walk.”  Sure enough, there was a grateful chorus of other voices.  “Yeah, Peter, too fast.”  Peter grumbled, but he did slow down. 

 

This was an early transformative moment for me. I write this blog under this same compulsion. May we all look around ourselves and observe what is truly happening, and speak up, and be saved.   

*****

Reach me, if you like, at dikkon@dikkoneberhart.com.

 

 

 

Mainer Potatoes, Baked

 

Ingredients:

 

1 13’ Whitehall Pulling Boat, with anchor

2 oars

some tinfoil

1 match

couple potatoes and a chunk of butter; salt

 

Mise en scene:

 

1.      Go down to my shore and shove off in the boat.  Row to the island.  Anchor the boat so she stays afloat.  (Tide is falling, at half.) Oh, yeah, bring along a heavy coat because it’s December, three o’clock, and clear.  Also a blanket, a hat.

2.      Below tide line, dig a shallow depression, and ring it with stones.  Find some down wood and sit by the pit stripping the wood with your knife until you have a few feathery pieces and some other small stuff.  Watch the sun set.  Don’t think about it; just watch. 

3.      Construct a fire…a careful cone of dry twigs with the feathery bits inside.  Lie down real close to the sand and the shale, so you can smell it, even in the cold, and, while protecting the wood with your body, light your match.  This is a test.  You are twenty-nine and mythic.  Intentionally, you’ve brought only one match.

4.      If you fail, go home and try this test another night. 

 

Method:

 

But this turns out to be the right night.  Some things you can do well. 

 

1.      You keep feeding your fire with small stuff and then bigger stuff.  It’s dark now except for a sheen on the sea—we have a quick twilight in winter.  Wind’s from the west and steady.  Low waning moon chasing the sun.  Faint, lambent shoreline: one gull patrols and then settles for the night. 

2.      You listen to the cold sea water gurgling in over rocks and snails, gurgling out over rocks and sails, gurgling in, gurgling out. 

3.      The fire tends itself now, and the sky darkens.  The moon is yellow then gone.  Overhead is an appearing of stars. The meander of the Milky Way is a pathway between here and the other place.  Mostly by feel, you cut your potatoes in half, smash some butter between the parts, salt them, close them, wrap them in foil, and push them into the coals with your stick.  You clean your hands on your pants, wrap the blanket around your legs, tug down your cap, lie still. 

4.      Alone; no muddle. 

5.      In, you breathe, and out again.  In, and out again.  You feel your chest as it fills with air and empties.  In, you breathe, and out again.  In, and out again.

6.      There’s a woman you want to marry, but you’re scared.  No real snow yet.  Ground’s not even frozen.  The last marriage hurt.

7.      Alarmed at your fire, a squirrel chitters from the wood behind. 

8.      Your imagination enters into the earth, and you feel the to-ing and fro-ing of all her parts.  The tug of tree roots in soil as their limbs swing back and forth in the wind.  The tide’s pull on the swirling rockweed as it swishes across stone.  The flicker of barnacle webs sweeping plankton in. 

9.      Then your imagination rises.  The cold steam of your breath, invisible now, blows eastward on the air, over meadow, over shore, over sea.  It takes you to an island that is further out than ours. 

10.  Out and out, you spiral through tree and stone, through squirrel and gull, through earth and sea—from star to star—until you find of the entire awesome ponderousness that is God.  Devil and angel, you find, devil and angel there.

11.  Shall you ask her?  Shall you not? 

 

Chef’s note:

 

Don’t burn your fingers when you grub the potatoes from the ash, open them, and, dripping with butter, eat them in the dark.

 

Robert Frost and My Anticipated Fame

We studied Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” when I was in seventh grade.  It’s the poem about two paths diverging in a yellow wood and the speaker, the poet, needing to select which path he should take.  The last couplet is what everyone remembers:

 

                        I took the one less traveled by,

                        And that has made all the difference.

 

My teacher told us that the couplet extolled Frost’s prescience in selecting his own way, the poet’s way—the way less traveled—over the ordinary, the more heavily-worn path.  But I was struck by another idea. 

 

Three times earlier in the poem, Frost makes it clear that the paths were not different in wear or attraction.  Poets don’t waste words.  I already knew this from my father—another poet.  So here is what I figured.  If Frost tells us three times in so short a poem that the paths were similar in wear, but then, at the end, he refers to one of them as being the less traveled, he must want us to notice the reversal.  He must mean something poetical by the reversal.  As readers, as I understood our job, we should discover his meaning. 

 

Here is how Frost tells us the paths are the same— 

 

                        Then took the other, as just as fair

 

                        and

 

                        Though as for that, the passing there

                        Had worn them really about the same

 

                        and

 

And both that morning equally lay,

                        In leaves no step had trodden black

 

I was delighted!  Frost was being subtler than my teacher imagined.  Frost was saying two things, not one, and the saying of both of them in so short and seemingly simple a poem made the final couplet more interesting than my teacher supposed.   As I sat in class and listened to my teacher, it came to me suddenly what Frost might mean.  I was only fourteen-years-old, but I could imagine a time when, later as a man, I might reflect backwards upon a moment when I made a life’s pathway choice.  As I would acknowledge then, by choosing one pathway, of course I had not chosen the other.  Then I might congratulate myself on the wisdom of my choice.  That was as far as my teacher’s interpretation of the poem went, for, after all, Frost had become a prominent man by following his poetical choice.  But, instead, here is what I thought Frost might really mean.  If each of the pathways is of equal wear and looks the same when we make our original choice, then everyone’s chosen pathway is the road less traveled by.  Every one of us takes the road less traveled because no one else but we ourselves could have traveled that road.  And therefore each of our pathways, individually chosen by each of us, has made all the difference.    

 

            I was almost breathless with excitement about my idea.  Our homework that evening was to prepare ourselves for discussion of the poem on the next day.  So, when I got home, I asked Mr. Frost—who had stopped by for dinner—what he thought of my idea.  I had always liked Frost, who had that granite face and shock of unruly white hair.  Particularly, I liked him for the fact that he played his part as the gruff New England versifier very well, but with a yankier and yankier twinkle in his eye.  And there were times when his eye would catch mine, and he would shoot me a dart that delighted me because his dart told me how much fun he thought all this was. 

 

Gratifyingly, in his Robert-like way, he responded to my interpretation by saying, “Good, Dikkon.”  He smiled.  “You’ve said it almost as well as I did.” 

 

Thus armed, I went to school with every expectation of heroism.  English class came, we took out our books, our teacher asked if anyone had ideas, I raised my hand, I was called upon.     “Well, as a matter of fact, I was having dinner with Robert Frost last night, and he said…”

 

            It was a disaster. 

 

            The teacher could not have been less interested to hear anything that came from, one, so unbecoming a show-off character as myself, nor, two, from so dubious a source as the author.  I was soundly snubbed.  I was made to sit down and not called upon through the rest of the day. 

 

            Ah!  How fickle is fame….

*****
Reach me, if you like, at dikkon@dikkoneberhart.com