The Man with Six Typewriters

Steve Doughty, The Man with Six Typewriters and Others Who Knew God (Eugene Oregon: WIPF & Stock, 2015), 130 pages

                Years ago I came across Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which featured the prose of James Agee and the depression era photographs of Walker Evans.  The title was intriguing as the stories and the photos are not of men and women whose appear on the front page of the newspaper or in magazines.  Instead, they are people often overlooked.  Agee and Evans attempted to shine some light on them and to honor their sacrifices.   There are many people who are important in our communities and our lives, but who often remain unknown and in the background.  Their obituaries are short, and their modest tombstones record but little of their lives. Drawing on his pastoral experiences, Doughty recalls some of his encounters with some of these individuals.  In reading this short book, we are reminded that we’ve all been created in God’s image and that, in and of itself, makes us all valuable.

                Steve Doughty is a retired Presbyterian minister.  During his ministry, he served a number of congregations: in upstate New York, the coal mining region of Pennsylvania, on the Western Plains and as a denomination executive in Western Michigan.  As a pastor (and Doughty remained a pastor even when he went into administration where he served as a pastor to pastors), he had the privilege of knowing many unique individuals such as the man with six typewriters, a recluse who constantly typed and retyped the scriptures.   In retirement, he serve a stint as a peacemaker in Columbia, a dangerous job but one who brought him into contact with a new set of people who “knew God” even though they were not well known by others.  Doughty tells about individuals working in the background such as the one who asked the right people the right questions to get a movement started to have a community center.  He tells about shy performers in a community choral setting, and a Native American friend whom he reconnects, years after they both lived on the prairie.  Most of these stories are about Christians but a few come from other faiths.  In retelling their stories, we learn about kindness, listening, honoring others, and in a round-about way, incarnation.

                I recommend this book in the hopes that those who read it might find their eyes opened and see others as valuable parts of the human race.   As a disclaimer and tribute, I was privileged to have Steve as a spiritual director for several years during a critical period of my life.  

Paddling Open Water to Ossabaw Island

Heading Out (in Delegal Creek)

I’m pretty tired tonight after paddling from Delegal Creek to Ossabaw Island and back.  Five of us started out on the trip, leaving the marina at 8:45 AM.  Our first stop was Raccoon Key.  Last night, when I checked the weather, we were to expect a mild 8 knot wind from the southwest, but by the time we left the creek and headed across the mouth of the Little Ogeechee as it flows out into Ossabaw Sound, we were in some rough water.  The wind had moved to the east and was blowing strong.  As the tide was running out, the wind pushed up waves that were close together and choppy.  One wave hit me broadside and had it not been for the sprayskirt, my boat would have been filled with water.  After we arrived on Raccoon Key, I checked the wind and found it blowing as high as 14 knots.

Crossing the Little Ogeechee

Horseshoe crabs in love (taken on Raccoon Key)

 Once we made Raccoon Key, three of the group decided not to go any further, but Gary and I decided we were still game. As it turned out, the tide was lower than we had realized and we were pushed way out around a sandbar than runs from the key all the way out into the ocean, separating the waters from the Little Ogeechee and the Ogeechee Rivers.  We found ourselves having to walk our kayaks and at one point, where the bar was pretty narrow, we hauled our boats across.  The wave/tide action was still strong as we crossed the Ogeechee and the waves even larger than before, but the troughs wider and the ride a lot smoother.  We assumed that when the tide turned and started going in, with the off shore wind, it would calm down.   We made Ossabaw Island with no problems, arriving a little after 11 AM.  We walked out toward Bradley Point and then down the beach a ways, then had lunch, walked back to our boats, talked and sunned until 2:30.  It was then time to start back.

Approaching Ossabaw

Beach on Ossabaw

Line of breakers

From the north shore of Ossabaw, we could see a line of breakers on the other side of Ogeechee River, running from the Raccoon Key out into the ocean. So much for the tide change calming the waters.  What had been a sandbar was now shoals.  We decided to check it out, hoping we could find a deep enough place to cross the line without too many waves.  There didn’t appear to be any and before I knew it, a wave caught my boat and I was surfing fast, heading northwest, into the melee of breakers.  As soon as my ride was over a wave from the northeast broke over my boat.  I was soaked, from my hat down.  I immediately turned the boat into the direction of the waves and began to paddle hard.  Gary was right behind me.  We paddled hard until we got out of the breakers on the other side.  Waves were crashing on the sandbar, but thankfully the bar wasn’t exposed so we were able to make it over it, a little wet and with our hearts pumping in excitement. 

My one photo of being in the high waves
 and these aren't the big ones!

We could see another line of breakers ahead and ten minutes later, we were in the same predicament.  Again, I had a wave break over me, soaking my hat and shirt.  Thankfully, the sprayskirt kept the water out of the boat.  Sadly, I never got photos of the two of us in these lines of waves as it was all I could do to keep my boat upright and moving through the waves.  Several times I was afraid I’d have to do an Eskimo roll and hoping I could execute the maneuver successful as I did not want to come out of my boat this far from shore.  Thankfully, I never had to try as the boat stayed upright.   After the second set of waves, we found outside in still choppy water and way off Raccoon Key.  We were fairly close to the south end of Wassaw Island.  We turned westward and began to paddle toward Delegal Creek.  There was one more set of choppy waves (where I was able to get a nice photo of Gary navigating the waves, but sadly these waves were nothing like the others we’d already navigated.

This was the same nest I reported on in March

Our last obstacle was making the mouth of Delegal Creek.  We were paddling slowly as we talked and passed the first red buoy for the creek (it was on our right).  We the current was moving us along nicely and as we got deep into a conversation about our experiences on the shoals, we noticed that we were no longer being carried into the creek but into another channel between the creek and the Little Ogeechee River.  We had to paddle hard against the tide.  Once we were in the creek, the tide was strong and we did little paddling, just enough to keep straight.  When we passed the Osprey nest on the channel marker (which I’d seen them building in March), we were treated with a young Osprey who, after making some clicking sounds, took to flight.  We were back at the marina a little after 4 PM, in time to have a beer and congratulate ourselves for a wonderful day.

On Ossabaw Island

Going to Ground

This is another book I've read in an attempt to better appreciate my new natural surroundings in South Georgia.

Amy Blackmarr, Going to Ground: Simple Life on a Georgia Pond (New York: Viking, 1997), 170 pages.

At the age of 33, Blackmarr leaves Kansas and returned to her native state of Georgia, settling in to her Grandfather’s old fishing cabin. She doesn’t give a lot of reasons for her retreat (but does drop hints such as tired of being inside an office and three ex-husbands).  Instead of reminiscing her past (which sounds colorful), she focuses on the presence, with attention to detail.  She is especially aware of the natural world in a manner that reminded me of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  At first, she seems to be a little unsteady (calling on her distant neighbor to dispatch a snake or to ask about alligators.  In time, she gains confidence and learns to depend on the kindness of others and the comfort of her dogs, Queenie and Max.

Many of Blackmarr’s stories are humorous.  When she sees a snake that she fears to be the poisonous copperhead, a real threat to her dogs, she fetches her trusty pistol but is unable to hit it.  She calls her neighbor who sends over his son with another pistol, but he also misses and returns home to fetch a shotgun and comes back and “dispatches” the snake.  Afterwards, her neighbor looks at the snake and she is horrified to learn that it was a harmless corn snake. (44-45)  She also has a humorous battle with mice in the cabin.  The battle reaches a climax when she has a close encounter with one of the beady eyed beast.  “Across my forehead went that mouse.  Flushed me up out of the cover like quail and I made a beeline for the broom”  (81)  After being unable to wipe out the mice population, she finally causes a truce.   In her stories, she appears to gain an acceptance of the natural world.  In the beginning, she seems determined to dominate the natural, in a way that’s not exactly politically correct (she does have a pistol for protection and seems too trigger-happy when it comes to threatening wildlife).  Surely, the natural world is violent, as those at the top eat those at the bottom, but in time Blackmarr also learns it is world that can be appreciated without a knee-jerk need to dominate.

 

Blackmarr prose creates pastoral images:   “I was sitting on the steps with my coffee this morning, watching the pond water ripple under the breeze, and I was wondering where the golden cord is that ties this land to me,” she writes. (97)   She describes the Milky Way as “a lightened path through an obsidian sky”  (32)When musing about ownership (she didn’t own the cabin) and time, she pens: “Sometimes I sit out in the yard in one of those yellow lawn chairs with the frayed bottoms and watch the light move across the pond.” (167)   Sprinkled into her descriptions are quotes from a well-read life:  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Merton, Henry David Thoreau, Robert Heinlein, John Keats, and Scripture (to name a few). 

As she becomes more secure in her life by the pond, she also learns to accept the generosity of strangers.  Realizing that she has left her wallet at home and is out of gas, she presents her dilemma to two small town police officers.  Needing only a dollar of gas (this was in the  90s), one officer gives her a couple of bills and the other gives her a few more and says to use it to get herself some lunch.  (139f)

There are several back-stories of which we're only provided glimpses.  Blackmarr mostly focuses on her relationship with nature, but in the stories we read about her weekly visits to her grandmother who is in a long-term care facility and her teaching at a community college.  Her grandmother owns the property and after her death, the family sells it.  Blackmarr finds she must move on and heads to the mountains of Georgia (the source of another book).

 

Toward the end of her time at the cabin, her dog, Queenie, gets out beyond the fence is hit by a car and is buried on the property.  The story is sad, but it does provide Blackmarr with a permanent tie to the land that she (and her family) no longer own.   I recommend this book.  It was a treat to read and I look forward to reading other books by Blackmarr.

“Solitude is an easy companion.  It doesn’t require much from me except the ability to be comfortable alone.”  (31)

Bourbon Pecan Peach Cobbler

On Wednesday night, I hosted a Dutch Oven Dinner for 15 of us.  It was only my second use of the “pots” since I moved here to Savannah, but everyone loved the dinner and we had a good time.  I fixed a pot of ribs, another of potatoes, onions and bacon, and a peach cobbler.  I improvised on an old recipe for peach cobbler and it turned out great and since I was using canned peaches verses pie filling, it cost a lot less (and the bourbon and pecans gave it a wonderful flavor.

My old recipe (for a 10 inch pot):

• Rub ½ stick of butter on the inside of the pot
• 2 cans of peach pie filling
• Top with yellow cake mix
• Cut up a stick of butter and put it on top
• Cook 35 minutes, the juice will bubble up and cook the cake mix.

My new recipe  (for a 12 inch pot):

• ½ stick of butter rubbed into the inside of the pot
• Mix together:  3 28 cans of peaches (mostly drained).  Add ½ cup of brown sugar and ¼ cup of corn starch and an ounce of bourbon.  When finished, pour into the pot
• Chop up a cup of pecans and soak for 30 minutes in bourbon
• Mix pecans and a cake mix together and spread over the peach mix
• Sprinkle ½ of chopped butter on top
• Bake in a medium fire (dozen coals under and over) for 30 minutes
• Serve with ice cream

Now, when the peaches start coming in, I’ll have to try this with real peaches (and maybe some blueberries).   I am sorry I didn't take a photo of the cobbler when finished, but it was gone before I had a chance!

Two of my pots after cleaning
along with a small collection of "fallen soldiers" waiting for recycling

All the Wild that Remains

David Gessner, All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey,Wallace Stegner, and the American West (New York:  W. W. Norton, 2015), 354 pages including notes and index and a few photos.

I have waited for this book for over a year.  I'd read others of Gessner's books and had reviewed My Green Manifesto in this blog.  When I learned Gessner was writing a book on two of my favorite authors, I knew the book would jump to the top of my TBR pile when released.  The book was released a little over a month ago.

Wallace Stegner and Edward Abbey appear to be opposites.  After an unstable childhood that lead him all over the American and Canadian West, Stegner became grounded as he spent decades developing the writing program at Stanford.  Abbey was more unsettled.  He grew up in the coal country of Pennsylvania, born to a free-thinking radical father and a mother who was deeply involved in her Presbyterian Church.  At the age of 17, and with the country in World War 2, Abbey spent a summer hitchhiking and hoboing around the West.  After a brief stint in the military, he returned to the West, living a hard and unsettle life as he worked various jobs while attempting to make a name for himself as a writer.  Although he was not in search of riches, Abbey unsettledness may have had more in common with Stegner's father, the model for "Bo Mason" in his autobiographical novel, The Big Rock Candy Mountain. In their personal lives, Stegner remained married to the same woman while Abbey married over and over again.  Stegner held a respectable academic position and worked alongside government officials to bring about environmental changes and worried what the longhaired hippies might be doing to the country.  Abbey, on the other hand, encouraged (if not participated in) monkeywrenching (or eco-terrorism, depending on your interpretation) as a way to make a statement and attempt to save a portion of the American West.  Although there are many differences between the two men, they both loved the American West and the region defined them.  Interestingly, Abbey spent two semesters at Stanford and studied under Stegner but then went off on his own direction.  The two men never met again (although they apparently exchanged some letters).  

In All the Wild that Remains, Gessner brings these two men back together and suggest that their vision for the West provides us a model for dealing with the ecology challenges of the West.  Taking a summer to drive from his home in the East through the American West, Gessner visits many of Abbey's and Stegner's old haunts while interviewing their friends and colleagues.   His journey begins with a visit to Wendell Berry on his farm in Kentucky.  Berry also studied under Stegner and was friends with Abbey, even reading a letter from Stegner at a memorial service for Abbey following his death.  From Kentucky, Gessner travels to Boulder Colorado, where he had formerly lived.  Traveling in 2012, he learns of the damage of the wildfires that have been plaguing the West including the Boulder.   From there, Gessner's travels takes him to Moab, Utah, a town that is built on recreation and enjoyment of the wild, which allows Gessner an opportunity to reflect on the damage to the land by those who loves it.  He visits Arches, the location of Abbey's classic non-fiction book, Desert Solitaire. His travels takes him on to Salt Lake City, a city that Gessner finds beautiful and realizes why Stegner loved it so  (On a personal note, Gessner needs to visit SLC in the winter and after skiing up in the canyons, drive down to SLC in a thermal inversion and experience how bad the smog can be).  He paddles down the San Juan River, getting a feel for the canyon country that defined Abbey.

Later in the summer, he meets up with his and daughter who travel with him.  Then, his wife returns home, and Gessner sets out with his daughter, traveling north, visiting Doug Peacock (Abbey's model for Hayduke in The Monkeywrench Gang and Hayduke Lives), and on into Canada where he visits Stegner's childhood homestead. (I couldn’t help to think about Abbey’s character in The Fool’s Progess, having a vision of traveling with his daughter). Inserted into Gessner's 2012 road trip are other trips to the West, where he visits the Southwest and California, exploring the stomping grounds for both authors, as well as trips to New England to meet with Stegner's family.  In these travels, Gessner visits friends of Abbey and Stegner, along with other authors who played a role in their development.  He also ponders what each of them might say to current environmental problems brought on by climate change, sustained drought and an increasing population.

Although Gessner provides a basic outline of each author's life, this is not a dual biography.  Instead, he uses the writings and the visions of the two authors to reflect how we relate to the land.  His writing is a playful approach, providing insight into both authors while offering both critique and suggestions of dealing with current environmental issues.  One of his linger questions in the book is which author was the true "radical."  This question came from a conversation with Utahan author Terry Tempest Williams who suggests that Stegner was the real radical.  It might seem the other way around as Abbey was pretty much an anarchist, but Abbey was also strong on individual rights.  Stegner, on the other hand, appreciated the role the early Mormon's cooperation (a communal economy) played in the development of Utah and felt such an outlook was necessary in the West.  However, the cooperative economics of 19th Century Utah have given way to a more individual centered economy (one like Stegner's father lived) that extracts wealth and leaves a mess behind.  Although he doesn't endorse Stegner's vision outright, Gessner left me with the idea that he leans toward his ideas.  I agree with Gessner that Abbey's writings are fun and am sure that if I picked back up and reread The Monkeywrench Gang, as Gessner did, I would also find it a bit childish on the second reading.  Gessner considers Abbey’s non-fiction to be superior to his fiction (which I would agree). I consider A Fools Progress to be the finest of Abbey's fiction and it appears Gessner would agree with my assessment (277).

I recommend this book, especially to fans of Abbey and Stegner.  I enjoyed riding along with Gessner on many of the same roads I've covered in my own travels as I listened to his ideas about the region and these two authors.   In a way, this book seems as just the beginning of a dialogue.  Abbey and Stegner may give us starting points for a dialogue, based on the land they loved, but we are in desperate need to create a more sustainable vision of how humans are to live on this planet.

For an attempt to summarize my understanding of Edward Abbey, click here.

That's me, Sage, after a backpacking trip in Abbey Country
I'd just hiked through Buckskin Gulch and the Paria River along the UT/AZ border