Ghosts

I woke up slowly this morning, hearing the stirrings from downstairs where Dad was building a fire. It was foggy outside the window--Missoula and the Bitterroot Valley had a fog advisory in place until 10 a.m., with the possibility of icy roads. I turned on the radio to Montana Public Radio for a dose of Morning Edition.

"An earthquake struck Haiti today--yes, we said today."

Another one, a 6.1 'aftershock.'

How much can one country take, really? This is a rhetorical question, because it isn't like they can refuse to accept and deal with whatever happens. But this, it is just so harsh. And it brings out the best and the worst of humanity.

It is up to us to help shore up the infrastructure of impoverished countries, Pat Robertson or no Pat Robertson--preferably none. Here's another good site for helping third world countries, one I've mentioned before.

But for all the pain that arises from thinking and reading about Haiti, it is a beautiful morning, snow and pine trees covering the mountains, and carved by the process of geological forces into the side of Blodgett Peak, I can see an Old Man of the Mountains, face tilted towards the sky. A herd of white-tail deer have been grazing idly at the frost-rimed grasses surrounding the house. When I walked to the end of the driveway to fetch the paper this morning, they idly watched me both coming and going, no sense of panic, as they have seen us every day.

To sit in a sunny living room, reading the paper and Neal Stephenson's Zodiac, listening to Morning Classics on public radio, is to forget for a time the stress of the world, a world of earthquakes and Tea Parties thrown by protesters who I don't remember protesting when the Bush Administration turned a budget surplus into a deficit.

Montana is full of pain and beauty. The Bitterroot Valley is the path Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce took in attempting to flee the army, trying to escape to Canada to be free. The first thing I saw while descending into Missoula, the first thing that made me feel I was home, was the hulking cluster of metal silos and buildings of Smurfit-Stone, the mill in Frenchtown. It was a day or so later that I realized this was the mill that had closed down, putting 400 people out of work. This was the same mill in whose shadow my first girlfriend and I spent one of our last weekends before breaking up; I haven't spoken to her in years, and I doubt I will anytime soon.

Montana is the home of old men with hearts of gold who nevertheless joke about never drinking black coffee on Martin Luther King Day, because they 'don't like that guy.' The home of men who will chop firewood for injured acquaintances, but whose church states that women must have men to vouch for them to get into heaven. Montana is mountain lakes so clear and cold that they catch the sun and hold the light for years in the memory of a child.

I can't tell whether or not this still feels like home.

The Face In The Glass, Or Home

In the middle of the redwoods, nestled in fog and rain, with the distant sound of a sea lion's bark interrupting the silence, there is a house that my uncle designed and my dad helped build. Attached to this house is a long wooden deck, where you can lean against the railing and look down a hillside of madrones and manzanitas and redwood trees towards the ocean. This is the railing against which my dad leans to smoke, and I lean to nurse a gin and tonic.

I'm here this weekend for peace and quiet. I won't try to define what this home means to me, because you can't tell people what a childhood sanctuary means; or maybe you can, but it won't convey the same impact as it would to have them in that place with you, so you can share the physical experience. And even that is never going to capture exactly how you yourself feel about it.

Yesterday evening, I had my back to the ocean, and caught my reflection in one of the many sliding glass doors that comprise the wall.

Inside the house, there is a picture of my dad in his long-haired, mustached carpenter days, holding court before the fellow workers during the construction. And as I looked at my ghostly, mirrored image in the door, it made me think of that picture. That's when I took the above photos, admittedly blurry, admittedly taken with a cell phone's camera.

When I went back inside, my uncle said, "I have good news and bad news for you."

"What's that?"

"You're starting to look like your father and your grandfathers, both of them."

I guess that means this Sonoma Coast is home in the same way Montana is. And that is fine by me.