Boomer Stuff

Summer has finally arrived.  Yesterday we packed a lunch, strapped the bikes on the back of my Expedition, and headed for a park not far from my home in the mountains of central Oregon.  It looks like a typical small urban park although it is situated on a hill surrounded by a jack pine forest with sage and bitter brush, and hundreds of mountain resort homes.  Everything is in bloom: clouds of ivory pollen puff into the air when a robin or flicker alights on a pine bough, the golden-yellow bloom of the rabbit brush sweetens the forest with its bitter, earthy aroma, and the grasses, both wild bunch and cheat grass and the newly mown lawns of the athletic fields, shine with a green that is so alive you can feel the energy with your eyes.

The pavillion tables, normally aligned in orderly rows, clean and deserted, were filled with pans of food with all the preparations for a feast.  Scores of adults and children milled about, some scampering amongst the tables and into the surrounding trees in a chaotic game of chase, others playing a serious game of horseshoes next to the tennis courts, and a group of teens, in tank tops and ankle-length shorts, played a casual pass-and-shoot game of basketball nearby.  It looked like a family reunion with no one over five-seven and everyone with swarthy complexion and stocky build.  We decided to move on to the far side of the park and set up under the trees that overlooked the soccer and baseball fields. 

After a hearty lunch, we spread a blanket, took off our shoes and lay down in the partial shade with something to read.  My wife brought the latest Oprah mag and I started reading Shelby Steele’s A Bound Man.  There was a slight breeze, the distant laughs and shouts of children at play, and the occasional crack of an aluminum bat from a couple of families who had taken over the baseball field for a friendly game of ball.  I found myself reading a few paragraphs and then raising my head to take in the view, all the far removed activity of people at play on the first warm Saturday of the summer.

We ended the afternoon with a bike ride down from our hilltop park along a meandering paved bike trail through neighborhoods of rustic homes and tree-lined golf links to the river.  Nearing the Deschutes we headed down a gravel road that turned into a rutted dirt road and then into a single lane trail.  We intersected the river at the pull-out where all rafts and boats have to disembark for Benham Falls is just ahead.  Crossing on a wood-plank foot bridge, we followed the river for a mile in the cool shade of an arbor-like path, passing  pedestrians of all ages enjoying a late stroll to a breath taking view of the falls.

After a heavy snowfall this winter and slow melt during our frigid spring, the river, with this recent on set of hot weather, was straining with an enormous volume of water.  Pushing at the banks, moving in what seemed a slow, effortless pace, the river was deceptively peaceful.   All it’s furry was released as it churned and boiled over the rock steps of the falls.  What was normally a mild cascade of water, almost a rapids, had become a jaw-dropping display of power and rage.  You could see no rocks at all as the torrent dropped a little, swirled around a bend that is normally just a peaceful alcove, and began pouring down the dozen or more steps that is Benham Falls.  It was a mass of foam and dirty-white liquid producing it’s own wind currents and a fine mist that floated to the shore and drenched the plants and mosses in dew. 

We had riden our bikes a little over four miles to take in this view and it was well worth it, although we had forgotten that the whole trek was downhill so the return was uphill.  We made it puffing the last half mile but refreshed in our soul.  What a grand day.

This last week I have had two occasions to pull out of a long line of cars, stopped by an accident on the state highway that passes through my area, and either bypass the holdup or proceed straight through it.  In one case I had the spouse of an accident victim as my passenger.  I wanted to find her husband, see that he was alright, and reunite them, so it made perfect sense to abandon the  mile long lineup, cut through the crowd at the end on foot, and persuade the police to let us through to follow the ambulance carrying her husband.  Yesterday’s accident, no doubt caused by a violent deluge of rain and hail ahead of us, had just occurred, attracting emergency responders and backing up the traffic as we topped the hill that had been the site of the previous wreck one week earlier.  Instead of waiting in that line, I found myself again cutting into the oncoming traffic lane, empty now because of the accident, darting cautiously down the hundred yards to an exit and threading my way through a labyrinth of roundabouts and wooded lanes to bypass the holdup and get to my destination.

The irony is that my passengers yesterday were the same couple I was attempting to reunite only a week before on the same stretch of highway.  And my quick escape was not simply an impatience for getting to my planned destination.  Knowing the trauma this scene would evoke, I felt it my job to break free, to leave the beaten path and find another way to resume our journey.  It’s not that I didn’t care about the victims of the accident ahead.  But I had other pursuits, part of a bigger plan than I could imagine, and I felt the strong urge to be about that business. 

My wife, sitting at my side, found the map of the area that I always keep close, having been lost in this maze of narrow, winding roads many times.  She methodically guided me through the wooded streets, filled with rain gorged puddles, bordered by the remnants of a heavy hail downpour that still whitened the shoulders.  Through the pine forests, we had occasional glimpses of a golf course that meandered about this mountain resort, it’s green fairways a stark contrast to the hail covered greens and sand traps.  By the time we reached the resort lodge, our destination, sun light was straining at the foreboding gloom that had threatened our enforced detour. The planned artist’s reception was beginning and we enjoyed a long conversation with one of the artists and his wife, the end of a long day of exploration and discovery. 

I have been getting out of line my whole life.  I quit college three times.  Once out of rebellion against intellectualism at nineteen, the second time halfway through my senior year when I realized that I wanted a craft not a degree, and finally, in my fifties, I wondered away at the start of my last quarter because my life was so full there was no time to finish out the course.  I just couldn’t wait in line any longer.  My life has been a series of side trips, all fulfilling, because I couldn’t stay in line with everyone else.  It may be that I have become accustom to detours and feel uncomfortable following the mainstream.  So many I meet, having stayed in line so long, find sneaking into the wrong lane to make a way out, a very dangerous road to take. 

This is an invitation to come along with me.  It isn’t that dangerous, and could be more rewarding than you imagine.

The I-5 corridor is an old haunt for me.  I used to drive from southern Oregon winding my way up through the low passes to Roseburg and then cruise down the Willamette Valley almost every month to buy and sell in Portland.  That was in our antique-dealer days in the late nineties. 

Sailing along the interstate yesterday after an absence of seven years, jockeying for position with the semis and sleek  RV monsters, my eye wondered across emerld green fields of seed grasses and grains, all in full bloom.  There are pastures stretching for miles from both sides of the roadway climbing up to the foothills of the Cascades and the coast range, laced with serpentine irrigation ditches, spotted with clusters of woolies hardly moving in the lush belly-high spring grass.  Crossing one of dozens of tree-lined rivers and creeks that churned with fresh snow-melt, you sneak a quick glance down the mysterious channels in their slow miander from high in the mountains to the Pacific.  The miles ticked by and I awaited our first sighting of Mt. Hood, sparkling in snow. 

There were new sculpted interchanges at Eugene and Salem.  New subdivisions climbed the hills tucked among the vineyards with their winding rows of vines flowing up and over the slopes like little soldiers in formation.  Bridges were being widened, roadways landscaped, and the cars and trucks kept flowing on their way somewhere.  I felt as though I was being swept on by this surge of travel, of prosperity, of optimism.  The few stops we made heading north, for a break or to change drivers, were only little park-side oasis’ from the churning flow that whooshed by only yards away.  It was exciting to see the changes, reassuring to know that much of the natural beauty of this magnificent valley was here better than I even remembered, and frightening to feel the intensity of this mad rush, an artery of America’s constantly pumping engine. 

Living in a small mountain community, I had forgotten about this intensity, that life on steroids which was only to increase as we neared Portland.   My wife spotted Mt. Hood on the haze-veiled horizon to the east, more distant than I had expected.  The traffic became crazier, more tightly spaced and reckless.  I girded my loins for what was coming; for the city approaching me at a mile a minute.  I wondered at my audacity attempting to risk this torrent of steel and humanity. 

The last minute, we decided to skirt the city and go out of our way a dozen miles to avoid the insane maze that is I-5 through Portland.  At one point, traveling at 65 miles an hour, only feet from the largest dump truck I have ever seen on a freeway, in the second of four lanes with cars in front and behind at dubiously short distances, I felt a panic.  It seemed to seep into my mind, a chill that held terror if it were to gain sway.  I took a breath, focused my eyes straight ahead, and concentrated the way I have learned to do in a snowstorm at night: a tunnel vision that makes everything a little unreal.  The feeling passed but the foreboding tension of that threat still lingers.  I don’t know how city people do it.

I was a lobster who, when thrown in the pot a little late, wanted to claw my way out because, unlike my fellow pot mates, I knew the water was boiling and escape was my only salvation.

The world we live in is full of mystery and contradiction.   With all our modern knowledge, the amazing discoveries of science and technology, the instantaneous and sometimes overwhelming access to information through the net, I at times find myself confronted with more questions than answers.  The more I know, the more I realize I don’t know.  Last night a friend emailed me for my reaction to the miracle of St. Bernadette.  She is the Catholic saint who, as a young child was visited with several apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Christ.  Most of us have heard of Lourdes, the place where these appearances are supposed to have taken place in the mid-nineteenth century.

My friend was asking about the claim that her body is still uncorrupted after more than 122 years.   Having been raised a Catholic, when I was young the idea of miracles was just one other unexplained element of life, as normal as thunder storms and lightning, snowstorms in south Texas, or the sudden accidental death of a playmate.  They were all part of this unending revelation that my parents and teachers called life.  And I took them for granted.

As I grew up, I became, as we are want to do, a bit of a skeptic.  My doubt, the result of a hard-hearted questioning of all authority, took some strange turns.  First I questioned and rejected my religion, then I began to question all authority, even secular.  I rebelled against the accumulation of intellectual knowledge and education even to the extent of refusing to learn anything new.  But, thank God, I passed through these phases.

Over the last forty years I have had to revisit the question of the unexplainable: of miracles.  Miracles are a bit slippery.  Because their acceptance always requires an element of faith.  There never is the certainty that we have come to expect, whether warranted or not, from science.  Some find this swampy terrain too difficult to navigate and choose to abandon it’s exploration for firmer ground.  I find the uncertain world of miracles intriguing and, at times, invigorating.

The question of miracles like that of the well preserved body of St. Bernadette is a tricky one for me.  My life experience confirms the idea that God works in our lives, and He works in mysterious ways.  As a result I am open to the possibility of miracles.  About four years ago I read a very good book, The Miracle Detective: An Investigation of Holy Visions, by journalist Randall Sullivan, a non-believer, who traveled around the world to the sights of several recent apparitions of the Virgin Mary.  One was in Oregon, one in Bosnia, and several other locations I have forgotten.  He met the people involved with these mysterious appearances, got to know several of them intimately and continued to investigate their stories over the years.  It changed his life and made for a compelling narrative. 

He also went to the Vatican and got to know several priests whose job was to disprove miracle claims made to the church.  They were an interesting lot as well.  I came away from the book with no positive answer, only many questions and a certain wonder at the mysteries of life.  I am not sure all questions can be answered with the certainty that science always promises.

Back to Bernadette, it could be a scam or it could be real.  Short of my going there and doing my own thorough investigation, I won’t know.  But do I really need to know?  All I need is to know what the possibilities of life are.  Then I can hope for miracles.  If I experience them in my own life, and I have, when the time comes I will use my mind to look critically at everything, without rejecting any explanation out of hand. 

I also find I don’t always have to know.  The unknown, the mystery in things, is not that frightening.  I have often faced the unknown, both from without and within, and the experience has formed the person I am.  For me the uncertainty is the spice of life.

There has been an unending chorus of complaints about Senator Obama’s “embittered Americans” comments.  I began to wonder if dwelling on a few sentences to condemn a candidate was fair.  True, Obama has managed to stand on the stage of public life for several years without making clear where he stands on many important issues.  True, his autobiography draws the picture of a young man with an identity crisis who wants to be someone he is not and learns to be whatever you think he is.  How can he admire a minister who is a racial bigot and, at the same time, preach racial harmony to vast hordes of followers, both white and black?  Is he innocent, naive, or conniving? 

Is he to be a modern-day Lincoln: inexperienced, idealistic, haunted by his own demons, who was thrust into the leadership of a nation deeply divided by the legacy of it’s founding fathers, a legacy of slavery they could not resolve, could only pass on to the next generation?  Lincoln’s greatest struggle was with the politicians who got him elected and then tried to handle him.  In the end he won control of the war and the country, saving our nation and bringing it closer to it’s ideals, but at the cost of his own family and his life.  A tragic figure.

Or is he a slick politician, eager to please and hungry for power, seeking to fill his own identity void with images he can paint in others eyes?  Will he sacrifice our nation’s future for his own as Bill Clinton did becoming, in the end, a Macbeth-like figure ridden with guilt for his sins, leaving the kingdom he was entrusted to lead and protect, a prey to it’s enemies?

Neither question need be answered if Senator Obama is used by others to achieve their goal: the destruction of the country of freedom, self-reliance, and faith that we have grown up in.  In reading this essay by Mark Steyn, a Canadian no less, I am reminded of the bigger issues this coming election may decide.  We must steer a course away from big government and socialist thinking and toward entrepreneurship and individual achievement.  We must be a country with room for millionaires and paupers.  That gives hope to all and a sharp spur to motive those who have fallen between the cracks.

So many of our leaders seek to alleviate any suffering they find.  But suffering gives birth to courage, and hope, and ingenuity.  As Ben Franklin said, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”  The Great Depression was the training ground for the Greatest Generation so that they might win WW2 and build the strongest bastion of freedom the world has ever known.  Adversity can be your friend or your conqueror.  It is all dependent on your spirit.  America still has that spirit to rise above adversity, let’s help to keep it that way.

Yesterday Diane and I committed to our new winter pass time: snow shoeing. We had been promising ourselves to drive up to the ten mile snow park at the base of Mount Paulina, park, and snowshoe up the mountain to the falls. After three broken promises, we finally packed our gear and headed up the mountain. On the way we came across a pickup coming down the hill that sat head into a snow bank with the three young occupants out attempting to get the vehicle out. It seems they tried to pull off the road, that was their story, and couldn’t get enough traction in the melting snow to back out. I checked the back of my truck for a rope but found none. It was decided that we would drive one of them back up the mountain to the snow park where their parents were about to set out in snowmobiles. They would have the equipment to get them out. It seems that the young men had driven all the way from Prineville just to bring a set of keys that had been forgotten. Now they were stuck in the snow on their return.

So we hauled one of them back up the road. As we arrived, his parents were revving up their craft, about to take off. We slowly pulled up to them. They looked up, not recognizing our truck, no doubt wondering why we were stopping. I had a friendly grin on my face, anticipating their reaction when they saw their son emerge from our car. I focused on a middle aged woman dressed in a black snowmobile suit, her helmet in her hand. She at first looked puzzled, and then, seeing her son, her face turned to worry. I could imagine her mind picturing his truck in some accident or over the cliff edge of the road. It made me feel a bit trivial and uncaring to be smiling so pleasantly when I could see the concern in her face. If only for a moment, she was frightened deeply, concerned that the worst had happened.

But it hadn’t. I knew that. There was no one hurt and the mishap was easily remedied. And yet I felt badly that I had let her fears for her son’s safety surface. My simple good turn, giving him a ride up the mountain, had caused her anguish, if only for a moment. It may be that her concern was a manifestation of deeper turmoil. She may have had forebodings for the trip or felt badly that their excursion had misfired at the start. Someone had forgotten the keys that required her son and his friends to drive fifty miles from home. And now, upon their return, misfortune had befallen them. She could be getting omens of impending disaster. There was a drama playing out that her overly concerned face revealed.

We pulled our truck over to a parking space at the far end of the lot. I gave no more thought to their plight. They would no doubt have the equipment, a chain or a shovel, to set their son’s truck free and on it’s way. It would be no problem to unhitch one of their vehicles and go back down the hill. They would be delayed but their snow play would have to wait until the saga of the forgotten keys was played out.

Pulling out our gear we proceed on foot up the hill to the signs explaining the trails. We were looking for the cross country skiing trail, marked with small blue diamonds nailed to trees along the course. Finding our route, we slipped into our snow shoes and set out. It had started to snow lightly. The forest, except for the sharp whine of a distant snowmobile, had a soothing effect. As we wound our way through the trees following the tracks of an earlier skier, the spell of clean, crisp air transported our minds to simpler thoughts. We seemed to unwind. The musty smell of moss, the sweet sap of pines and fir, fresh snow crunching under our shoes, the mystery of the forest under snow, all entranced us.

After a short distance of twists and turns, we were lead up an embankment and back to the road to Paulina Lake. But this was passed the barrier that marks the end of the cleared road for winter. You could see the road bed, freshly groomed, laced with runner marks from recent snowmobile traffic, a brilliant white cutting it’s way up the mountain, hanging to the edge as it took it’s steep ascent. I was disappointed to be leaving the seclusion of the forest but the pure white landscape, with snow swirling in haphazard patterns, had an enticement of it’s own. We heard no more sounds, no distant noises, only the whisper of the erratic mountain breezes as they passed through the tops of towering pines. Out in the open with a sure trail ahead, we felt more secure and set out with determination to conquer the grade and see what lay beyond the next turn.

The climb was steady, uneventful, except for a trio of snowmobilers descending in a rapid whir of excitement and snow dust. The steep climb and our determined pace, required an occasional rest, a sip of water, and a chance to stand and listen to our hearts pound. To listen to the mountain whisper it’s soothing message. To breath in the peace and majesty of this place. There was a view over the edge of the valley and the highway out toward the west, but it was shrouded in snow clouds. The guard rails and road signs were buried in snow. Civilization, but for the silent tracks in the road way and up and down the steep embankments, was nowhere to be seen. We felt alone. That can be a liberating feeling. At times all our conveniences smother us. They seem to entrap us in a rush of thought and activity: the sound and fury of life.

After an hour of steady climbing, within site of the park service entrance, we turned to descend. We were a mile from my intended goal, the falls. But there will be another day. We were getting in shape. Training our bodies and conditioning our minds for future expeditions into this refreshing world. We felt tired and satisfied. The descent was quicker and easier, though we had to adjust to walking downhill. The earlier climb had not seemed that steep, but, as always, heading down we were astonished at the sharp grade. Nearing the parking lot, it dawned on me that no snowmobilers had passed us, going up hill. I wondered if the party we had startled with the surprise visitor we brought up had quit for the day. If their trip had been postponed because of the omens they may have read into the events of that afternoon. There were empty trailers in the parking lot but I couldn’t remember which they had been pulling.

Our climb was fulfilling. It was something we had promised ourselves, but had never made the effort to follow through with. I hope their day ended with the same confidence that the right course was followed, as mine had. We headed home tired; taking some of the peace we had found this afternoon with us.

Whether it is something hidden deep within my genetic code or merely the subconscious effect of years of TV westerns, I am fascinated by the stories of our pioneers.  From the late eighteenth through the beginning of the twentieth century fearless men and women set out with all their possessions for a better life to the west.  Because I find their stories so compelling, I have searched them out in books and movies and even with my own migration to the Oregon desert in the mid seventies.  That is where I got to know the descendants of the pioneers who braved the Oregon Trail to eventually  settle in Summer Lake valley.

Knowing their history and having a mild taste of the difficulties of living without many of today’s conveniences, I appreciate what they accomplished and the legacy they have left us.  But I find so many people today find fault with everything our fathers did.  I don’t want to defend some of the injustices and prejudices of prior generations.  But if you know the history of their lives and try to place yourself in the world they lived in, you will be able to forgive their mistakes and honor they accomplishments.  For the one historical trend that is obvious, is the constant improvement of life on every level. 

My great-great-grandfather was born in a two-room hut in the Irish countryside.  It had a thatched roof, a dirt floor, and an open fire for hearth and kitchen.  The prospects for his life were grim.  With the potato famine, religious persecution by the English gentry, and a medieval system of land holding, the only hope for his children was to sail for America.  And they did.  All but the oldest, who stayed in that hut and scratched out a living for two more generations.  Hanging above my desk is the pendulum wall clock, the only mechanism in his home, that kept the time for those many years.

It is a long road from his desperate condition to where I sit today.  I enjoy the freedom to own my land, to practice my beliefs, to rise above class and education to what destiny I aspire to.  My ancestors stumbled many times on their way to winning me the freedoms I have today.  And I am sure that there are prejudices I carry that might limit the next generation making it’s way in the world.  But there has been great progress, which has been won with equally great suffering.  My great-grandparents had to endure the hardships of being poor, uneducated, and Irish.  They succeeded as homesteaders in Minnesota and sent their son to study at college.  He was still Irish, the first to attend college in his family, but he endured to become a country doctor.  My own father endured the Great Depression, survived combat on the European front in WW2, and returned to college to become a lawyer.  His childhood was better than his father’s, and mine was better than his, each generation fighting for changes for their families and their countrymen.  If they chose to give up the fight or to settle for less, where would I be today?  Where would we be as a nation? 

A thorough knowledge of my family’s past has prepared me to fight for a better future.   I want to apply that same experience to another burning question of the day.  It is the war in Iraq.  I just finished reading a fascinating essay by Victor Davis Hanson that puts it into an historic context that we have been working without since it’s launch.  That context brings the war into clearer focus.   It is a long essay, chock full of facts, illustrating the history of war-time mistakes that are the precursor to the victories which have yielded a legacy of wealth, freedom, and prosperity.  Reading the whole thing may be overwhelming to some, but it was certainly worth the effort for me. 

I found myself enthralled with Mr. Hanson’s narratives and his wide-ranging knowledge of the obscure facts that often spell the difference between victory or defeat.  His critique of the Iraq War is unsparing in it’s harshness, but his conclusions ring with the clarity of classical logic and hard sought research.  To read this essay is to take an Odyssey.  Your voyage will lead you from confusion to despair at the human condition to hope that reason and justice will triumph.  All we need is the will to persist and hope in God’s final justice, something my immigrant forebearers had in abundance.

Here is the link.  If you find the piece too long, or the facts tedious, which I did not, please read the last two paragraphs.  They don’t have the power without the complete work to proceed them, but they resonate with the point of view that has blessed our country for it’s entire history.

In his directorial debut, Ben Affleck has teamed up with novelist Dennis Lehane to make a movie with authentic texture and thought provoking themes.  Gone Baby Gone is set, like Lehane’s Mystic River, in the heavily ethnic working class neighborhoods of South Boston where the forces of good and evil fight it out in the bars and triple-deckers. It starts as a simple tale, all too common today, of a little girl who is missing, taken from her own bed for no apparent reason.  The first street scenes, shot in Southie, are brimming with the texture I know so well of congestion, seething frustration, apathy, and intensity.  The family is heartbroken; the media is a circus; the police, in a show of force, are powerless.  Where is little Amanda and what is happening to her?  Affleck pulls us into the emotional scene with swift, genuine artistry.  The tragedy of the kidnapping scene is all too familiar to us and yet there seems to more here.

 Patrick Kenzie, played by a convincing Casey Affleck, is a reluctant foil, enlisted by the family as a private investigator, in the web of deception that has been woven in this complex world that is South Boston.  My wife was raised on the streets of Southie and Dorchester.  She lived in the projects down Broadway and later in a triple-decker off Dot Ave.  I have sat on a balcony overlooking the street scenes that Affleck brings to us.  The many sides of life in the neighborhood are often missed  by the casual observer,  but we are soon educated about the other side: drugs, corruption, greed. 

Things don’t add up.  Patrick discovers everyone is lying if only to protect themselves.  He wants to know the truth and find the girl, but he’s not sure everyone else does.  In the end, he must risk everything dear to him, to set things right.

(Go see the movie before reading further)

What has kept me thinking about this movie well after discussing it with my friends is the conundrum it raises.  It turns out that Amanda was taken by her uncle to force his sister to tell him where she had hidden $30,000. she had stolen from her drug dealer.  Before his plan can get off the ground, his wife reports the kidnapping to the police.  Now, his buddy, Remy played by Ed Harris, is one of the detectives called out on the case.  He tries to help make everything right by getting his captain to take the little girl since he lost his daughter in a kidnapping years ago and is about to retire.  This way Amanda’s druggie mother doesn’t ruin an innocent child, Amanda’s uncle, who has been sober and honest for the last decade, doesn’t go to jail, and his captain, Morgan Freeman, gets a daughter back: perfect justice.

But fate and Patrick’s stumbling doggedness end up destroying everything. By the end of the movie you feel like you are in a Shakespearean tragedy with bodies lying everywhere: Remy and his partner, the drug dealer, and various druggies and perverts.  The cover-up to preserve this “perfect justice” costs dearly. 

Yet Angie, Patrick’s partner impressively played by Michelle Monaghan, wants Amanda to stay with the captain where she will be raised in a loving family with money and a happy home instead by her drugged out mother in Southie.  The captain pleads with Patrick for the sake of the little girl.  Patrick must decide whether to follow the law, even though it may destroy Amanda, or to let this scheme that has gone so badly, continue.  He calls the Staties.  The captain is arrested, Amanda is returned to her mother, and Patrick looses Angie, the love of his life.

What is right and what is wrong?  Is following the law going to lead to a greater injustice?  Breaking the law has already lead to untold misery and death.  Even Patrick, who struggles at the edge of the worlds of the criminal and the cop (half his friends are druggies and dealers and the other half are cops), finds himself shooting a child molester and murderer in a moment of extreme revulsion.  Though everyone consoles him that it was only natural, he cannot forgive himself.

So we have the conundrum: Following the law can lead to injustice, but abandoning the law will lead to chaos.  Which is worse, injustice or chaos?  Societies, churches, and communities struggle with this question every day.  I do not have an answer.  I think that Patrick did the right thing, but others side with Angie and the captain.  I love a story well told that tests our sense of right and wrong.

Since the seventies, we have been exposed to gruesome accounts of the treatment the American Indian received during the settlement of the West.  Through movies, best-selling books, and political demonstrations we have been reminded, sometimes in graphic detail, of the wholesale massacre of villages and entire tribes.  Just as the dog squirms and struggles when his master pushes his nose into his mistake on the carpet, I have squirmed when forced to look at this dark time in our history. 

My discomfort could have come from the hours spent in my youth playing cowboys and Indians.  Or maybe it was the admiration of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers and Wild Bill Hickok that lead to my reluctance to hear another version of the story.  Since I grew up with Matt Dillon and Paladin as my model for western justice, I could be predisposed to believe that western expansion was inherently a good thing.

It seems that from the time I became an adult, I have been made to look at all the mistakes and injustices my ancestors perpetrated on the helpless.  This drum beat of self persecution has had an enormous impact on my generation.  We have become very sensitive to injustice and feel guilty for the sins of our fathers.  We question the motives of authority more, it seems, than any other generation.  We have rebelled against traditional ways of doing things in our quest to avoid the mistakes of the past.  But what if this sensitivity has become a neurosis?

I stumbled across a book the other day while perusing my favorite section of the library: pioneer history.  The author’s name caught my eye.  I had done a design job for someone with the same name years ago and wondered if there was any connection.  The author, Robert M. Utley, an accomplished historian who spent his life studying the Indian wars and the relations between the white and red cultures, was not connected to my acquaintance but he had written a story I needed to read.  I had to overcome my aversion to hear all sides of the story in order to see things from a new perspective.

Indian, Soldier, and Settler tells three stories that are part of the western experience.  They are true documented tales that create pathos and ambivalence in the reader.  He tells the story of Dewey Horn Cloud, a victor at Little Big Horn and a survivor of Wounded Knee, whose bitter memories of the fight for survival of the old ways and of the wretchedness of reservation life haunted him until his death in 1955.   William Drown, born in New Hampshire and trained as a printer, served in the frontier army in the 1850’s.  His experiences living in the Arizona desert dealing with the drudgery of garrison life, the fatigue and futility of long marches after an invisible enemy, and the occasional harrowing skirmish with marauding bands of Indians come alive in the compelling entries in his journal.  The final story is the tragic tale of the four German sisters who survived a surprise attack on their wagon in the fall of 1874 only to see their family members killed and be taken prisoner themselves by a band of Cheyenne.  Eventually rescued by the army, they all went on to live uneventful lives, the last dying in California in 1959.

None of these three stories was typical.  They are part of the mosaic that makes up the settling of the West.  You cannot understand what happened in those tumultuous years unless you hear their tale and that of hundreds of others.  There was courage and depravity on all sides. 

I have lived in a pioneer cabin without running water or electricity; cleared land with primitive tools and struggled to get my crop to grow; spent frigid winter nights outdoors watching over my livestock; wondered how my forbearers had the courage to endure the loneliness of life in the wilderness.   I have read diaries and journals of the pioneers, the explorers, the trappers, the scouts, and the Indians.

The story of Old Bill Williams comes to mind.  He forsook his family and farm to become a missionary to the Indians.  Then he abandoned his own culture to live and marry into an Indian tribe.  He left his Indian family in their village to travel the West alone trapping and trading with white man and Indian alike.  He lead expeditions, fought Indians, made peace agreements, became rich and poor in the same year, and was finally shot in the head while inviting a band of Indians to his camp.  I don’t understand him or why he did all that he did.  I know he was a remarkable man full of contradictions.  The West was full of men and women as hard to understand, but deserving our admiration and forbearance of hasty judgement.

In the forward to Utley’s book, Dan Murphy writes:

          When I was a boy we played “cowboys and Indians” out in the orchard.  In our version it was always best to be a cowboy, since then you always won….The pendulum has swung since, and just a few years ago a common image was of the noble Indian, incapable of lying, being crushed by men who were barbarians in all but technology.

          …[T]he stereotypes are wrong.  They do grave injustice to the remarkable people who won the American West, and to the equally remarkable people who resisted that winning.  Their story does not need such distortion or embellishment.