WHEN DOES THE HUMILITY KICK IN?

Cows

The cows on the other side of the fence don’t even look anymore, they’re so used to seeing me walking this road. Above their backs and fifty miles to the east, snow covers the Northern Cascades. The Olympics are dead ahead, I’m walking fast and the oxygen is pumping endorphins into my brain. I’m writing this blog in my mind as I go, so I apologize for the bombast. It’s a beautiful day to be alive.

Yaks

I’m almost to the Olympic Game Farm, where I usually turn around. I can already see the peacocks preening for the rolling cars, hoping some people will throw them some bread. Seagulls are landing on the car roofs and, wily and fast, they get most of the whole wheat slices that land in the dirt. Over there are some yaks, and fallow deer and, sad to say, a bald eagle on a fence post, looking for a snack. 

I turn around and head for home. The irrigation ditch on this side of the road is packed with watercress and Nootka rose, its red berries are Christmas ornaments on barbed stalks. That’s got to be a metaphor for something. They’re welcome winter snacks for redwing blackbirds.

 

Humility

I’m hauling it, and I can see things, especially this: it’s certainly prideful to think one is humble. But one can admit there is reason to be. There's no way I can walk around without a constant reminder of where I've been and the people I've met on the road, whom I thank for keeping me alive and so humble for that precious gift.

Every step on this carbon fiber foot transmits the feel of the road up through the hydraulics into my knee and the polyurethane socket, snug around what’s left of my right leg. I can feel the bounce in my step being transmitted through my hip and into my heart. I’m so happy to be walking down this road on a winter day, the sun shining, the afternoon rain still trying to evaporate from the road.

Next October it will be 50 years since a booby-trapped mortar threw me in pieces across our perimeter. Thanks to several medics, I’m still breathing. Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver helped me heal enough to slither out of a hospital bed into a wheelchair, then eventually put on an artificial limb, stand up, walk and, finally, rejoin the flow of humanity. That sentence took me over a year to live and 20 seconds to write. Let’s hear it for short stories.

I give many people credit for helping me be who I am. Some in small ways, some in huge. If I mention one, I’d have to mention them all, but if you’ve read this far, I’d like you to leave knowing two people to whom I owe a huge amount of gratitude. And respect.

Perhaps you and I have that in common. We have different names on our lists, but how we feel about them is the same. And it’s good to run that list of names through our minds periodically, isn't it? Today, as I’m getting almost to my house, I’m remembering one, especially.

The Lady Who Washed My Hair

She was an older lady, a volunteer at Fitzsimmons. She would arrive every weekend, fill a basin with warm water and wash the hair of all the guys who were locked into their beds by traction rods and other whatnot. She was a terrific conversationalist, laughed at whatever we said and never left without commenting on how much progress we’d made. I shake my head, still, at her purity of heart. A small thing, washing a man’s hair, but with such immense meaning.

As I walk through my front field, I see it'll need mowing soon. We’re in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains, but we still get enough water for it to grow in December. The sun is low in December, though. It’s a perfect balance today between the rain and the photons. A few more months and this place is going to explode into flower.

The Lion

I take a seat on the porch, drink some water and look at Mt. Deception. I was out here a couple nights ago when the call of the peacocks was sounding like a bunch of strangled cats. It set off the coyotes, who began singing at the full moon. 

That set off all the neighbors’ dogs and eventually everybody was screeching and yowling, having a grand time, a major opera. Then the main guy stepped onto the stage and, even at this distance, the roar of that lion vibrated the bone in my nose. Everybody shut up. I sometimes wonder what the dairy cows think when they hear that, knowing they’re out there, defenseless.

Michelle

A terrific walk today. I can’t help thinking, I’ve had a charmed life, a great life. Of all the people who’ve helped me get to this thankful place, Michelle is the One. She gave me the gift of being married to the most wonderful woman who ever lived. She loved me for who I was, and not who I wasn’t. She died last March and I'll never be the same.

This picture is the last one taken of me, before I knew it would cost me (almost) an arm and (certainly) a leg to escape with my life from Vietnam. I can, humbly, say it takes time and grit to fight one’s way back from that, but it isn’t impossible. In fact, it’s a done deal when the universe sends the right people to stand by you.

What a great day this was.

For more about other right people, you can read our book, Letters in a Helmet. Bob’s story about beating prostate cancer, The Prostate Chronicles, is a page turner, too.