Author: frankisemptiness

May 8th, 2018

“For What It’s Worth” from Buffalo Springfield

May 5th, 2018

The Chicago Tribune printed a letter from me today. It is as follows:

“I read recently that 18 Republican members of the U.S. Congress have proposed that President Donald Trump receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Some folks attending Trump’s rally in Michigan wanted the same thing for Trump. Apparently, there are people who are convinced that Trump is somehow, single-handedly, achieving a peace settlement in Korea, one that has eluded diplomats for six decades. It is true that current events on the Korean Peninsula have taken a sharp turn toward denuclearization and reconciliation between the warring parties. Even if President Trump’s efforts have not actually been a factor, he certainly has managed to be in the right place at the right time.

The Nobel committee significantly lowered the bar for winning the peace prize when they awarded it to President Barack Obama for essentially doing nothing. Obama got the prize simply because he was not George W. Bush. It might be prudent to wait a while before we clamor to give the prize to Trump. Things are looking better, but nothing has yet been changed in a concrete manner. If, at some point, the two Korean regimes make peace, and the peninsula becomes nuke-free, then by all means give President Trump the peace prize. Why not?”

May 4th, 2018

It’s amazing how quickly memories can fade. I left Tyler and Gilbert three weeks ago, and already it’s hard to remember details of our interactions. It’s true that I didn’t know those guys for very long. I was only with Tyler for two weeks, and with Gilbert for less than that. However, they both made an impression on me. They made me think.

My first exposure to Tyler was when he picked me up at the Amtrak station in Havre. His first comment to me was,

“Yeah, I heard about you.”

That statement can mean so many things.

It took us a while to feel each other out. We are different in many ways. Tyler is twenty-five years younger than me. He’s from San Francisco. I’m from the Midwest. He has a full head of hair. I don’t. (Tyler made a joke about that once. He got worried that I took offense. I didn’t.)

Tyler joined the Longest Walk the day I left it to go home the first time. We missed each other by a matter of hours. During the time I was away from the walk, Tyler found his niche as the group’s photographer and media guy. He also received a carved wooden staff from the tribe in Yakima. He was very proud of the staff, and that bothered Bobby. During our move from Fort Belknap to Billings, Tyler misplaced the staff. I think he left it behind at Fort Belknap. Bobby saw this as a kind of karmic reckoning. Tyler got the staff back, but it seemed like he held it differently.

Tyler drove the F250 one day. He did the entire stretch from western Nebraska to central Missouri. I sat and talked with him for hours. He told me about being a carpenter in San Francisco. He told me about his studies in herbal-ism and acupuncture. Tyler and I discussed religion. He follows his version of Native American spirituality. In his own family, there are Christians, atheists, and Buddhists. They must have interesting holiday get-togethers.

Tyler is a very talented young man. Besides his other skills, he writes and performs his own music on the guitar. He is a good cook. He is curious about the world around him, and he is very thoughtful. He has a good heart.

Gilbert is a Native American from the Sacramento area of California. He is twenty-three years old. When Karin first met Gilbert, she remarked,

“He seems like such a gentle soul.”

I think that is an accurate description.

Gilbert and I had some long conversations, mostly while I was driving the ill-fated Nissan through Montana and Wyoming. He has done a number of things already in his life. Without a doubt, the most important thing to him has been his participation in the demonstration at Standing Rock.

Standing Rock means everything to Gilbert. It marks his coming of age. He was involved in an confrontation that was both meaningful and dangerous at times. In a sense, he is a veteran. When he spoke with other people about Standing Rock, it was like I was listening to my oldest son talk about being in Iraq. For Gilbert, the time he spent at Standing Rock is the defining moment in his life. Anything he does in the future will be measured against that experience.

Gilbert likes to smoke (both tobacco and weed). He gave up weed for the walk. He was happy to do that. He told me that he never had dreams while he used weed. He was grateful to have dreams again.

Gilbert rolled his own cigarettes. My father-in-law used to do that too. Gilbert burned one every chance he had. He quickly ran short on tobacco. Oddly enough, I had a full pack of tobacco. Bob, one of the other walkers, had given it to me during my first iteration of the journey. So, I gave the whole package to Gilbert. He was delighted. He wanted to repay me, but I told him it didn’t matter. It all evens out in the end. Gilbert was okay with that.

Gilbert walked with me one time while we at Greg’s place in southern Illinois. He was fascinated by the trees and animals in the area. He especially liked to watch the hawks in the sky. Gilbert has a deep love on nature.

I wish that I had been able to spend more time with Tyler and Gilbert. We never exchanged contact information, so it is unlikely that I will see them again. I am grateful for the time that I did have with them.

May 3rd, 2018

Seven days.

One week.

One week from today the girl we love will go before the judge for sentencing. Karin and I plan on being in the court room with her. Our presence most likely won’t change anything, but we will be there. According to a woman from the Department of Corrections, Karin and I will be able to make a statement at the sentencing, if we so desire. I have to think about that.

Both Karin and I spoke on the phone with the lady from the DOC. She was working on the pre-sentencing investigation, and she called us for our input. We tried to give the lady all the pertinent background on our young woman. The woman from the DOC listened carefully to what we had to say. She actually seemed to care. Her report will go to the judge, and he will use it as he sees fit.

I talked to a friend of mine, Mike, about the upcoming court appearance. He shrugged and told me,

“It’s just going to be a day full of suck.”

True. There is no way to spin it to make it look positive. It is unlikely that the judge will tell the girl, “Go and sin no more!”. That’s probably not going to happen. The question is what will he choose from a selection of bad options. What is the least shitty outcome to all of this? I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t. I have no advice for the judge, because I don’t know what we is the best solution for this situation.

The girl we love seems to be handling her anxiety well. At least, she seemed to be coping with it when we saw her at the jail on Monday evening. It’s got to be incredibly stressful for her. It’s stressful for me, and I’m not directly affected by the judge’s decision. Karin and I will be collateral damage. The court decision will radically change the life of our loved one. By extension, it will change our lives too. Our girl is not in this alone. Like it or not, we are all on this walk together.

Our loved one spoke to me about going to Florida someday. Years ago, we traveled as a family to the Gulf Coast near Destin. We went to a state park on the beach, where the sand was pure white and the water was warm and salty. Our girl doesn’t have many good memories, but that trip is one of them. She dreams of returning to that beach. I talked to Karin about the girl going back to Florida. When things settle down, whenever that happens, we will help the loved one make that trip.

If I would speak at the court appearance, I doubt that anything I say would influence the actions of the judge. All I would want to say is that Karin and I are with our loved one on her journey, no matter where it leads. I want the judge to know that. I want the loved one to know that.

April 30th, 2018

My throat hurts. It might be hurting because I am fighting a cold. It might be hurting because last night I was screaming in my sleep.

Do people often scream in their sleep? I don’t know. I only know that I do. Not all the time. Actually, I don’t scream very often, but when I do, I do it right.

I tend to go to bed early. Karin, on the other hand, is a night owl, so she doesn’t join me until I have already been asleep for a few hours. She came suddenly into the bedroom last night, shouting, “Wake up! You’re dreaming!”

I had been crying out and thrashing in my sleep. Loudly. The covers were scattered all over. The pillows in disarray. The memory of my bad dream faded rapidly.

Karin looked down on me and asked, “Who was attacking you?!”

I don’t know. The ephemeral scaffolding of the dream collapsed as soon as she woke me up. All I had left was a feeling of panic and phlegm in my throat. My heart raced. My breathing was ragged. My conscious mind knew where I was and what had happened, but my body was still fighting something from somewhere else.

Karin decided that I was okay. She said, “You never screamed that loud before.” Then she left the room.

It took a long time to get back to sleep. I never have the bad dreams twice in one night. The forces of darkness have their fun, and then they wait to visit me some other time.

I never remember contents of the dreams. I only remember darkness and fear and rage. Who or what is attacking me? The loose ends of unfinished business? Unhealed trauma? A guilty conscience? The avenging Furies?

I don’t know.

April 29th, 2018

Hans called us a little over a week ago. He called to let Karin and myself know that he and his fiancee, Gabby, were expecting a baby. I think that both Karin and I were expecting that they would at some point be expecting, so this announcement wasn’t entirely a surprise.

Hans told us in usual monotone that Gabby’s test was positive. Then he said,

“This wasn’t planned.”

My immediate response was, “You weren’t either.”  The answer was a verbal shrug.

Hans was born thirty-one years ago. He came into the world in March of 1987, at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. Hans decided to show up four weeks early. He was a breach baby, and he had a cesarean birth. I was in the operating room with Karin. There was a screen across her midsection, so that she couldn’t watch the surgery being performed. I watched, and that made me kind of woozy. I wasn’t very good at comforting Karin. I remember them playing Madonna’s “Material Girl” in the room. Karin’s doctor was named Bruce Lee (seriously).

Hans spent several days in an incubator, until his liver was functioning adequately. Karin cried when she found out that she couldn’t take him home to nurse him. I cringed every time the nurse to a few drops of blood from the heel of his tiny to a test sample.

I had no health insurance when Hans was born. I had started a new job and it would have been another month before I had coverage. Somehow Karin and I paid for Hans’ medical bills. The fees cleaned out our savings.

Hans was weak for quite a while. Hans had two inguinal hernias, that needed to be repaired when he was older and stronger. They were in fact repaired, but that happened maybe a year later in Germany when one of them was suddenly strangulated. Another emergency.

I would like to say that Hans’ life settled down after that. That would be a lie. As I look back on it, Hans’ life has been a series of close calls. He had something that appeared to be a seizure while he was in middle school. After an endless array of tests, the doctors never really could determine what happened to him. I was strict and over-protective with him. Hans jokes now that, after growing up with me, Army boot camp was a letdown for him. He was a very quiet and restless adolescent. He found his solace in video games, usually violent ones. He loved dogs. He still loves them, and they love him.

Hans became adventurous once he reached adulthood. He moved to Texas. He tried to find work down there just as the recession of 2008 struck the economy. He joined the Army in 2009 for a variety of reasons. He went to war. He came back very comfortable with risk-taking. He bought a crotch rocket and he went skydiving. I suspect he was already comfortable with risks prior to going to Iraq, but he lost all fear during his deployment. For a while Hans was homeless and jobless. He has been slowly rebuilding his life since then. It’s been a scary process.

Now he is soon to be a husband and father. Is he ready? Of course not. I wasn’t ready. I have never met anybody who was ready. As I look at my career as a family man, I see long list of fuck ups, occasionally interrupted by moments of clarity and compassion. I’ve done a lot of damage, and maybe a bit of good. I tried to do things right, but it usually doesn’t feel like I did.

Hans has his issues. He knows what they are. So does Gabby. He also has his strengths. Hans is brave and loyal to a fault. He is intelligent and honorable. He is capable of a fierce and self-sacrificing sort of love. He will do the best he can.

We will help him. We will help Gabby. We will help their child.

April 25th, 2018

“Nuk nu’waat!”

That was one of Bobby’s favorite phrases. It roughly translates to: “It’s done!” Chief Bobby would use those words to end a circle ceremony. Up until Bobby said, “Nuk nu’waat”, members of the circle could speak their minds (at least in theory). After Bobby said that phrase, nobody was allowed to make any further comments. Bobby told us that it was important for us, as a group, to follow this protocol. Otherwise, he said, “We will not look strong.”

“Nuk nu’waat” encapsulates Bobby’s style of leadership. He ran everything. He was The Man. For the most part, I was okay with that. Bobby could do whatever he wanted to do. I was just along for the ride (or walk). I have spent most of my life being in charge of something, so I was good with somebody else handling everything. I slipped back into my old Army mode, and just waited for somebody to tell me what to do. I didn’t need to know all the details of the operation, and Bobby certainly had no intention of discussing them with me.

This “walk” was very different from other walks I have done. By rights, it should been called “The Longest Drive”, because that is what we mostly did. This journey was also different in other ways. I remember with previous walks that, at the end of the day, we would all gather together and discuss the events of the day, and talk about what we might change or do better. That never happened on the Longest Walk. We might gather up in a circle at the day’s end, but it was usually only Bobby that spoke. The rest of us were there mostly to listen.

Bobby often made plans and then changed them, sometimes without telling other people about the changes. For instance, on the day before Easter Sunday, Bobby had told us that we were going to attend the Christian religious services on the rez the next morning to talk to the congregations about the walk. We were sleeping at the Lodgepole High School that night. We got up early and hung around the high school until noon on Easter, but we never went to any of the church services. Why? I don’t know. Nobody knew. Apparently, Bobby decided that he didn’t want to attend the services, so none of us did. Instead we went to the Easter egg hunt in the afternoon. That was actually fun. The kids were madly running around in a field full of snow and horse manure to find eggs that would win them bicycles. There was also a rumor that two of the eggs contained $100 bills. That motivated people.

As I mentioned earlier, I was usually fine going with the flow. As long as somebody had some kind of a plan, I was willing to follow. I was satisfied to observe and learn from others. Then things got weird.

We drove in a snowstorm from Billing, Montana south into Wyoming. The plan, as I understood it, was for us drive all day and then camp out some place near Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. The roads sucked. Everything was snow-covered and slick. Our gypsy caravan crawled along I-25. The trailer that Tony was pulling behind the F-250 had an unfortunate tendency to fishtail in the wind and the snow. Gilbert burned a little sage and cedar in our car, in the vain hope that it would keep on rolling.

Bobby and Chief Kindness pulled into a rest stop just inside the northern boundary of Wyoming. The rest of us followed them into the stop. We gathered around their camper. Bobby brought out an object wrapped in a scarlet cloth. It was a chanupa, a peace pipe. We stood in the wind and the weather to listen to Bobby. The following is not an exact quote of what he said, but it is close.

Bobby told us all, “We are not going to Pine Ridge. We are going further to Illinois. We have to keep this quiet. I don’t want anybody posting our whereabouts on Facebook. If you can’t stay off Facebook, then you can be left off at the bus station in Casper. This is for your own safety. Anybody want out?”

Nobody wanted out. Bobby lit up the chanupa and we passed it around the circle. We all took a hit, and then we moved on.

Bobby never told us where we were going in Illinois. We were all just following him. It was a journey of three days. We drove through freezing rain and snow. The Nissan died in western Nebraska, and we abandoned it there. We slept in rest areas and redneck truck stops. After the Nissan quit, I was seriously considering going with the bus stop idea. Bobby convinced me to keep riding along. I’m glad that he did that.

I don’t like secrecy. I never have. I grew up in a family where everything was a deep, dark secret. I didn’t mind so much that our group of walkers was driving across the country on an open-ended road trip. It did bother me that we seemed to be hiding from someone, and that Bobby seemed to be hiding things from the rest of us. The talk about this change in plan being for our “own safety” made me very uneasy. I felt like I had joined a cult.

When we arrived at Greg’s place in southern Illinois, everyone rested and relaxed. It was a wonderful place to be. However, the secrecy continued. Bobby never told us how long we would be staying with Greg, or where we we were going afterward. Everybody just kind of shrugged and hung out, waiting for Bobby to make some kind of decision.

The obvious question would be: “Why didn’t I just ask bobby what was going on?” That is hard to explain. Part of it goes back to my time in the Service, when I got used to not asking questions. Also, at least for me, it was difficult to feel relaxed around Bobby. I felt a distance between us. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was just there.

I went home from the campsite in Illinois. I had a medical issue, and my wife drove seven hours to get me. I’m not sure that I would have stayed with the group even if I had remained healthy. The dynamics in the group itself did not seem healthy.

Bobby was admirable in many ways. He was extremely dedicated. He truly cared about the people in the group. When I was in the Army, there was a saying: “Mission first, men always.” Bobby exemplified that. I am convinced that he cared about me, as a person. I still care about him.

I never discovered if Bobby’s style of leadership was typical for a Native American, or if  it was just how Bobby rolled. Maybe that is how a chief runs his tribe. Maybe Bobby’s way of handling things was normal. Maybe that is how it had to be. I don’t know. All I know is that, because of the secrecy, I eventually stopped trusting him.

After Karin brought me home and I had the medical problem checked out, I looked on Facebook to see where the Longest Walk was. They had gone from Illinois directly to Washington, D.C.  The show was over.

Nuk nu’waat.

April 24th, 2018

I asked Gilbert, “So, what is the big deal with an eagle feather?”

“What do you mean?” he asked me with a quizzical look on his face.

I shot an anxious glance at the low oil light that was glaring red on the dashboard, and then I refocused and said, “Well, for instance, Bobby has an eagle feather staff, and it is really important to him. Why?”

Gilbert took a drag on his cigarette and thought for a moment. He courteously blew the smoke out of the car window. Then he replied,

“Eagles fly closest to our Father, the Sun. Because of that they are sacred. That makes their feathers sacred.”

Gilbert actively looked for eagles while I was driving with him. He was also excited about seeing hawks. These birds were almost magical for him. While we drove through Wyoming and Nebraska, Gilbert would get excited if he saw a hawk anywhere nearby.

“Oh, look! Did you you see that hawk?!”

I would look up from the snow-covered road, and quietly say, “No.”

Gilbert would go on, “It was flying up so high! It was beautiful!”

I checked the engine temperature on the nearly-dead Nissan, and said, “Yeah, cool.”

At one point on the journey across Nebraska, we all stopped on the shoulder of the freeway because Bobby thought he saw an eagle carcass lying on the grassy median. He had to investigate.

There were so many things that I will never understand.

Another time, I asked Gilbert about the different herbs that the Native Americans use as medicines: sweet grass, tobacco, sage, and cedar. I wanted to know what they do, and why the Indians use them. I already had a lot of experience with sage. They used that for smudging, and they used a lot of it. It seemed like nearly everybody smoked, so tobacco was also frequently burned. The sweet grass and the cedar were more exotic, and I didn’t know how or why they were utilized. For instance, in the 2005 Nissan with the 214K miles on it, the portion of the dashboard nearest to the windshield was covered with sage, cedar, and sweet grass. Why?

Gilbert gave me answer that was short and insufficient. He told me,

“Sage attracts good energy and cleanses people and things from bad energy. Sweet grass attracts all energy, so it should only be burned when sage is being burned. Cedar is used as a blessing. Tobacco is used as an offering. When we harvest bits of cedar from a tree, then we offer tobacco to the spirits of that tree.”

When the Nissan finally gave up the ghost, and we blew the engine out at some desolate truck stop fifteen miles west of North Platte, our people emptied the derelict vehicle of everything of value. I remember Bobby saying in frustration,

“Just leave the sage in there! It didn’t work!”

I’m still confused.

While we were camping out on Greg’s property in Illinois, Bobby had Gilbert braid long blades of sweet grass. Gilbert burned sage as he carefully wove the strands of grass together. He told me that he needed to be in constant prayer as he braided the sweet grass.

At the same place, Bobby took out his eagle staff to repair it. He asked me to help. Somebody had attached colored fringes to ends of the eagle feathers using a nasty sort of glue. Bobby and I tried to remove the material and the glue without damaging the feathers. That proved to be impossible. Despite our painstaking care, we still tore away bits of the original feathers. Every tiny bit of feather that was stripped away was also a bit of Bobby’s heart that was torn apart. The staff had been given to Bobby by Dennis Banks. It was a parting gift from Bobby’s friend and mentor. The feathers were not just feathers.

Bobby has his own private shrine. There are things on it that I can’t recognize. I know that he has a buffalo skull as part of the altar. Why? I have no idea. He never talked about it.

Feathers, sage, a buffalo skull… what do all these things mean?

I don’t know, and I will probably never know. Even if the Indians explained it all to me, I still wouldn’t know. Each of these physical objects has a meaning that is multi-layered. The meaning goes deeper than words can go.

As a Catholic, I go to Mass and I receive Communion. How would I adequately explain the value of standing in line to get a cracker and a sip of wine? I wouldn’t be able to explain the experience. Some things cannot be learned vicariously.

I can only understand the value of burning sage by burning sage.

April 23rd, 2018

Mission Canyon is a hidden jewel. It lies near the southern boundary of the Fort Belknap reservation, just a couple miles from the town of Hays. Mission Canyon is like a tiny version of the Grand Canyon, with sandstone cliffs of various colors at various levels. The cliffs contain numerous small caves, and the valley is full of pines and birch trees. Near the entrance to the canyon a person can find a natural stone bridge. A dirt road winds through the canyon. When I saw it, it was a river of slick, yellow mud.

I got the tour of Mission Canyon in the front seat of a police car. No, I wasn’t driving. Brad, the tribal cop, was giving me a ride. He told me about finding shark teeth (fossils) in the canyon. The canyon is ancient, and sacred. Brad smoked cigarettes and nursed an energy drink as we slowly navigated the curves on the narrow road. It was snowing heavily at the time. Other vehicles were also on the road, showing the canyon to the other members of the Longest Walk. Occasionally, we came across relatively flat portions of the canyon, places where there were picnic areas or sites for Indian ceremonies.

We stopped to turn around at one such place. There was a car sitting there with a busted front end and a windshield cracked into a spider web. Brad looked at the car and said,

“They’re tweaking in there. I know it. Look how they slump down into their seats.”

Brad didn’t try to bust them. It wasn’t a good time for it. Maybe at that point there wouldn’t have been enough evidence. I don’t know. I’m sure he will have other opportunities to nail them, whoever they are.

Brad and I talked. He pointed out that many of the picnic sites were run down or vandalized. Brad lamented the fact that the new generation on the rez didn’t seem to care. They just wanted to get fucked up.

I liked Brad. He was an Iraqi War vet, and he reminded me a lot of our son, Hans. I am certain that they would have gotten on well. Brad’s stories from Iraq were almost identical to the stories that I heard from Hans, even though they had been there at different times. It relieved me in a way that they said similar things. That meant to me that Hans was speaking the truth. But it also scared me, because the stories were so violent and so intense, and these tales were told in such a matter-of-fact way.

Brad told me that interdiction of drugs didn’t work so well. The people who were using would leave just before the cops showed up. Brad estimated that the police stopped maybe 10% of the drugs coming on to the rez. That’s not a good statistic.  The War on Drugs is not winning.

My compadres on the Longest Walk usually told people that the answer to the opioid epidemic on the reservations was for the Indians to recover their roots. If they only relearned their languages and their customs and their values, it would all go away.

I wonder.

Last Tuesday, two weeks after my return from the Walk, I went for coffee with Ken, my friend from the synagogue. As we sat in the Fuel Cafe, I described in detail my journey with the Longest Walk to Ken. He said that it sounded like a Jack Kerouac novel. Actually, it does sound like that.

In any case, I mentioned to Ken that one of the recurring themes from my travels with the Native Americans was the desire to return to the old ways. There was this strong belief among the Indians I met that, if only they could recover their original identity, they could solve all of their problems.

I asked Ken about how they can do this, and still function in the world that surrounds them.

He smiled and said, “They should ask an Orthodox Jew about it.”

Oh, so true.

The Jews have been struggling to maintain their identity and their culture for two millennia. They have some experience with this sort of thing. It is a difficult thing for a people to remain true to themselves, and still be able to survive in a world that actively opposes them. There are odd parallels between the Jews and the Native Americans. Both peoples have experienced genocide. Both peoples have tried to assimilate, and found that they simply are not allowed to do so. Both peoples are intensely tribal. They do not always welcome newcomers.

I met a young Indian named Gilbert. He traveled with us on the Walk. He was from the Sacramento area of California. Gilbert was wise for his age, maybe wise for any age. Anyway, I told him about my experiences at the synagogue. I told him (and this is true) that it took me probably seven years just to be accepted at the Shul as myself. It took years for people at the synagogue to completely trust me. Gilbert seemed surprised by that. The fact is that it would probably take me just as long to be fully accepted among the Indians. I’m not sure that Gilbert would have believed that. My gut tells me that it would be true.

I digress. My question to the Native Americans is: “Is it even possible to go back to the old ways?” I mean this seriously. With the boarding schools and the other encroachments of the white men, is it realistic to think that the ways of the ancestors ever be recovered? To a large extent, languages have been lost, rituals have been lost, basic identities have been lost. Other cultures have tried this route and failed. Italians are not able to become Romans. Black Americans cannot become Africans. My wife is from Germany, but our children will never be truly or completely German. We cannot turn back the clock, much less the calendar.

Would it help for the indigenous peoples to return to their roots? It might be very helpful. However, they will never again be who they were. They may recover some of their past, but they will always be a hybrid, something new. This new thing may turn out to be something wonderful, but it will not be what went before. That is not possible.

I admire and respect the traditions and values of the Native Americans. These people have much to teach the rest of the world. For better or worse, these people. like the Jews, need to adapt to the outside world. It is not a good nor bad. It is just a fact.

April 13th, 2018

We were at Greg’s place in the woods for R & R. One person in the group read Greg’s books on herbs and native plants. One guy wove sweet grass braids as he prayed. One person fasted alone in a shack. One walker composed songs in the loft of the cabin. Somebody sat and watched the turtles sunbathe on a log in Greg’s pond. I wandered the gravel farm roads. Most of them were flooded out at some point, and I watched the sun sparkle on water that barely covered the drowned corn stalks in the fields.

Most of us didn’t know where we were until we got there. Even after arriving, I wasn’t quite sure where exactly Greg’s land was. The site has a soothing energy. It is a place where healing can occur. The land whispers “welcome” to those who go there.

I thought a lot about my redneck, combat vet son while I was sitting around the tepee. Greg is the commander of a militia. To be precise, he is in charge of the Wetzel Brigade of Rogers’ Rangers. Greg has numerous photos of the brigade on the walls of his cabin. They go shooting and have camps. They study the traditional skills of the hunter and trapper. Most of the members seem to active or retired veterans. I thought to myself that Hans, my son, would feel right at home here. I felt that Hans would easily connect with Greg, and that Hans’ PTSD could be alleviated in these woods.

I talked to Greg about Hans. I told him that Hans had fought in Iraq, and that he had come back damaged in spirit. I described Hans’ current struggles.

Greg gave me a serious look and said, “I would be honored to meet that young man.”

I texted Hans about Greg. I told Hans that he should really get to know Greg.

Hans texted back, “Why?”

I found that question to be totally like my son, and completely exasperating.

I wrote and said, “Because the man is totally cool.”

That didn’t seem to impress Hans too much. So, I explained more about what Greg does and how he lives. That aroused Hans’ interest at least a little bit. I told him that Greg would be honored to meet him.

Hans texted back, “Why does he want to meet me?”

I replied, “Because you are a combat vet and a patriot.”

Hans texted back, “I’m just a good old boy.”

I texted him and said, “You are all of those things.”

Greg gave me a copy of the invitation he sent out to the brigade members concerning their next camp that is coming up in a few weeks. I mailed that copy to Hans. I told him that I know he probably can’t make the trip to that event, but he could always come to see Greg some other time.

I don’t know what Hans will do, if anything. It is usually counter-productive when I give him advice. I mostly wanted Hans to know that Greg wants to meet him. I think that means something to my son. It’s kind of a belated recognition of what he has done in his life. That alone may be good for him.

It still feels strange that I wound up at Greg’s place. I thanked Bobby for convincing me to come there with the other walkers. Maybe the only reason I went that far was to tell my son about that cabin in the woods, and about the man who lives in it.