GRAND CANYON: FLIGHT OF THE GRAY EAGLE

We are no more than a stone’s throw from the grand Sierra Mountains, dividing Nevada from California. In the beginning this journey was billed as a trip to the golden state where I was born and raised.

“Going home. Wouldn’t mind some company but I’m going just the same.”

From the moment Wiz decided he would join me, the trip became much more. We spent the night before our departure in the Wiz’s makeshift studio, an old school house in the hills of the Tennessee countryside. We were recording the jazz poetry play inspired by our meeting. It was a wild futuristic vision of Joan of Arc in an underground setting and it took us more than five hours to complete. Wiz controlled all sound, playing keyboard, sax and trumpet as well as working the microphones. The only sounds he did not control were the voices of the actors and the relentless cicada outside.

It was an ordeal and an epic accomplishment. It enabled us to embark on our journey as jazz poets. One of our accomplices gave us references in Albuquerque and a friend from Florence, Alabama where Wiz grew up gave us a stop in Berkeley.

By the time we left Albuquerque none of that seemed important. Jazz poetry was no longer at the forefront of our psyches. We had become Zen Golfers in the sacred moon of Grand Canyon. We had taken the spirit of the Black Crows. We had leaped into the darkness. We had seen death and played our part in it. We had heard the laughter of a Zen master. We had known fear and loneliness as well as beauty beyond belief.

Now, as we ascend the Sierras, we gather our thoughts and collect our visions for soon we would be called upon to become social beings. My family is gathered at the home of my aunt and uncle in Graeagle, California, just over the hills. It had been a year since I had seen any of them. My Aunt Zella and Uncle Tim, cousins Tim and Cathy, and a scattering of friends I had not seen in two years. My older brother, the dark sheep of the family, had only recently returned from Arizona. I had not seen him in over five years.

Graeagle is a family place. As a child I spent many summers in what was then a sparsely populated mountain town. The people who could make a living here were a rare and sturdy breed. It was originally a logging town. The men took jobs in the lumber mills and logging camps during the summer and scraped by the best they could during the winter. It was well suited to a man for all seasons, a jack-of-all-trades, and the mechanically minded. Wiz is such a man. My Uncle Tim is such a man as well, strong and soft-spoken. His son of the same name was made from the same mold. He overcame a reputation for wildness and recklessness to carve his own nitch. His wife of equally sturdy timber and a heart of gold had a lot to do with his success.

Graeagle was an outdoorsman’s paradise. Over the years it had changed. Only an hour from Reno, Nevada, it is now the home of at least three championship golf courses and a burgeoning community of summer homes for the wealthy. My Aunt Zella, a gifted storyteller who came from hardworking folks herself, had the foresight to start a gourmet coffee, candy and card shop in a little space next to the town store. The shop prospered and relocated to its own building on the town’s main street. She passed it down to her son Tim and his wife.

My mother Artis, an artist and as sweet a woman as ever graced the planet, has taken to spending much of her time with her sister Zella. It was a development that left my father feeling alone but that was his own doing. Under the spell of second childhood, he went off on adventures, living away from his family in central California for years at a time. Zella and Artis had found paradise somewhere up on the Klamath River in northern California, where Zella and Uncle Tim owned a cabin. The gray eagle had flown north, leaving behind the old wooden Indian outside the town store and they had followed their own bliss.

The Fourth of July gathering in Graeagle had become a family tradition. My oldest brother John and his family started it many years ago. I had joined in the last few years before moving to Nashville. My sister Sue and her husband Robert were now a part of the tradition, as were most of my fellow siblings and their families.

On this summer only one of my family had opted for a separate vacation. He stands out by his absence. I recall how often he spoke of this place with longing. After a brief separation, his wife had given birth to their second child in the last year. I wonder what unresolved conflicts remain between them. Not coming to Graeagle was a statement.

The family welcomes us and takes Wiz into their embrace. There is always room for one more at the family gathering. My uncle is Polish and is thrilled to share his heritage with the new arrival. Wiz has an easy style and manner with people of all ages. It is one of his many gifts. I envy that quality while recognizing that it comes with an obligation and a responsibility to be generous with one’s time. It can be a curse as well as a blessing but if it is a burden he carries it well.

We exchange stories and make plans. Tonight we celebrate. Tomorrow we will watch the local parade, play golf on the local nine-hole course, and settle in for the fireworks display. Zella inquires about my wife and wonders when she will get to meet her. My wife has instructed me to reply that we need some time apart. I say only that she has business back in Nashville. She’s in the music business. When I left she was recording in two studios: one as an artist and the other as songwriter/musician. I am not aware that business has slowed to a crawl in the city of music two thousand miles away.

I have called only once and left a message on the phone machine. I have always had a mistrust of phone communications. I need to see a person to trust what he or she is saying. It has been a difficult year, a survival year in many ways, and I want my mind free of the debris it has left with me. I want to focus on the moment. I am a married man approaching his fortieth birthday. I am a speech pathologist in the public schools. I am a writer by avocation only. But tonight and for the length of the journey I am none of these things. I am a man in search of his calling.

The night is spent in the motel room of my sister Sue and her husband Robert. Among the family Sue is closest to me in both age and philosophy. Robert has often served as both counselor and antagonist in late night discussions on the meaning of life, marriage and most anything else that arises in late night discourse. Sue once came to me on a mission to give testimony to the power of the mind. She had taken a course teaching techniques of mind control and affirmation. She was surprised to find me receptive. I did not have to be convinced. I was already a believer. She thanked me for affirming her sanity against the chorus of criticism and belittlement she received from others, family and friends alike.

Over the years Sue and I would share our ideas concerning auras, meditation, altered states, alternative consciousness, charkas, crystals, karma, reincarnation, the afterlife, religion and the New Age. Nothing is beyond the realm of possible and noting is to be trivialized, scoffed at or mocked. The closeness of our bond was more than blood kinship. It was mutual respect, unconditional trust and a shared sense of wonder in the world of ideas.

In some ways our collaboration served to protect her from the cynicism of a family raised on atheism. I was respected as the smartest member of the clan, the only one to receive a higher degree in college. It was a title I never claimed. I enjoy study. I enjoy reading, writing and research. These qualities made me a better student than my siblings. From my point of view, it has little to do with intelligence however that concept may be defined.

Each member of our family needed something to distinguish him or her from the pack. John was a leader, a coach, an organizer and the enforcer of family values. Brother Randy was a smooth operator, a dandy, gifted with the ladies. He was wild but he had the best shot in basketball and a solid golf game. Sue was the communicator, the most spiritual and often the arbiter of dispute. Dave was the hardest worker, the most determined and without doubt the best golfer. Bob was always level headed, pragmatic and a genuine artist. Robin was both the most attractive and sensitive and the best with children. Tom excelled in imagination and had a gift for gadgetry and mechanics. He would go on to get a degree in engineering.

Our family album was like a high school yearbook. Our trophy case was full. We all had something to contribute. It was not for me to tip the balance.

My long lost brother Randy joins us at this gathering. He has been to the lower depths of drugs, poverty and self-imposed banishment to Arizona and parts unknown. He has returned to the family circle. Wiz admires his response to the constant preaching he is obliged to receive. It is well intentioned. Randy listens attentively and calmly as he is reminded of the times he betrayed the family trust. He nods and replies: I agree with you one hundred percent. He seems to mean it and has learned the futility of explaining his past. He is a recovering junkie. He speaks of friends know to us all who have died on the path he has walked.

Randy tells us the story of an old family friend. Sue offers testimony of his kindness. Like my brother, he was a good man who got lost in the shadows of an alternate lifestyle. He was living a separate reality. Randy protests that he was not a junkie. His poisons were alcohol and cocaine, afflictions that grab hold of so many. He says the drugs did not kill him as much as a broken heart. He was devoted to the love of a woman. When she left him he was done. They found him lying on the floor of his apartment, drowned in his own vomit.

He tells me that if his life is ever written it should be called: Sleeping with the Ants.

I don’t ask for an explanation.

Wiz is reminded of his own brother, something he rarely speaks about. He is remembered as a great man gone astray. It is a ghost we share: the knowledge that within ourselves there lurks an attraction to the darkness. There is a cynical side. There is a blues man. There is a rebel who would lead us to the edge of the abyss and push us over. If not for the grace of god…

His brother did not survive. He lives only in memories as a constant reminder of how wrong life can go. He lives in the hearts and minds of those he left behind. He is remembered for the good times and the love but his memory will always be accompanied by sorrow and longing.

My brother is still alive. His manner is light and easy, his spirit full of joy and laughter. He has looked into the eyes of the beast and lived to tell the story. At this moment, frozen like the still waters of a moonlit pond, he has no need to return to the life he led. I believe him because he believes himself. We do not know what the future holds. We can never know. But for now, in this refuge beneath the towering pines, he has rejoined the children of light. He is in the family circle.

We spend hours trying to play a song they’ve written called A Family Tradition. Robert spends as much time explaining that he can’t sing as he does singing. The late hour entrance of our eldest brother John finally interrupts us. He has taken my father’s place as the man who holds the family together. He has learned to temper his own wildness with the wisdom his wife Margie has nurtured in him.

He tells us the police stopped him on his way here. He had been drinking and left his headlights on high beam. The cop let him off with a warning, on the condition that Margie would drive the rest of the way.

It is a cautionary warning and a sign. We are all of us inclined to live a little recklessly in the spirit of celebration. Behold the signs. Go easy. We retire for the evening.

The next morning we gather in front of the Mill Works to watch the Fourth of July Parade. It is pure Rockwell. It summons a more innocent time in America. There is a Vietnam veteran, paralyzed from the waist down, who has traveled the length and breadth of the country in his wheelchair for the rights of the handicapped. He is a genuine American hero and the inspiration of this year’s Graeagle tradition. The volunteer fire department, the logging industry, the jazz jubilee, the Sierra Club and the developers are all represented.

It is a slice of American pie that seems as distant as the seventh star of the Pleiades.

My cousin is a judge on the parade platform, a highly respected position. This same man who once uprooted a kitchen counter and walked through a plate glass door in a nightmare of Armageddon is now a pillar of his community.

Change is possible.

The time has arrived for a round of family golf. We have two foursomes. My father has been uncharacteristically quiet but now he’s in his element. He challenges our concept of the Zen of golf but when I ask him if he has ever guided the ball with his mind it clicks. He loves the game and has often spoken of its mental aspects. I have witnessed him call on the powers of the masters during a round. In my mind he is held back from the realization he has long sought by his competitive nature and the desire for the power of a younger man.

There is some confusion over starting times so we are forced to wait a couple of hours. Mental and physical fatigue is setting in by the time our names are called. The group in front is apparently intimidated and asks us to play through. I decline but my father yells out: Don’t let them fool! They can hit the ball a mile!

We play through at their insistence. My father’s foursome is up first. Pop rips a drive down the middle of the fairway. My brother Randy steps up and sends one hooking out of bounds. My brother-in-law Robert follows with another OB left. My sister adds two more.

One of the foursome who graciously let us play through remarks: Well, I didn’t know they were going to hit two balls apiece.

My foursome adds to the OB total by two. My shot is a dribbler but at least it’s in play. I have often seen this phenomenon. Add a little pressure to the first tee and watch what happens. Observe the player in front of you go astray and you’re more likely to follow. It is the nature of the game.

We settle down to some golf. I finish three over par despite an opening double bogey. The shot of my round is a five iron to within six inches of the hole for a birdie. Visions of the Canyon are alive and well.

The foursome is up and down. My youngest brother Tom is a little too in love with power. He struggles through eight holes but unleashes a monster 280-yard drive to just short of the green on the ninth. It is the talk of the day. His girlfriend is an attractive nurse with a BMW and a friendly disposition. She’s a beginner in golf but plays with touch and finesse. Little brother is a good teacher. Her etiquette is spot on. Wiz surrounds a healthy number of pars and bogeys with a couple of disastrous holes.

All in all, we enjoy the round, the companionship and the walk.

The mood in the other foursome is different. Robert, who thrives on the challenge of competition, tells us what transpired. It seems Randy had been taunting him with an offer of one stroke per hole. Their scores are only a few strokes apart. Neither my father nor my sister wants to talk about their rounds.

When the time is right I speak to my father about the dangers of playing for power. He agrees and promises to make amends.

Swing easy, hit hard.

My brother crowns me the new family champion but reigning champion is not here. I sense family trouble, an old rivalry, and want no part of it. Competition has played a major role in my upbringing. I have grown to recognize the value of competition in instilling drive and inspiring progress but have also recognized its darker influence. The drive for mastery should come from within. The desire to improve and achieve should be independent of one’s competitive standing. A player should never be satisfied with a round because his score was one better than his rival. There is nothing on the golf course uglier than a golfer reveling in his partner’s misfortune. It will inevitably express itself in his own misfortune somewhere down the line.

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy a round well played. I do. And if that round is reflected in the score it pleases me. But if I ever find myself rooting against a fellow player or worse, planting misfortune in his mind (“Watch out for the water on the right.”), I know I have lost my way and my game will suffer.

Respect your fellow golfers.