Rod Wrapping: Take Two; or, Life's Support System.

Friday, February 24, 2012 - 5:15 a.m.

It’s been two days since it last snowed -- and I’ve yet to shovel it. A confession of the kind I’ve only ever heard about in whispers from my childhood friend Meg, still yet in her plaid jumper and mary jane’s, fresh from school and church…they were one and the same from what I could tell, Monday through Friday. I was always somewhat jealous – she looked professional in her uniform – although I remained confused as to why it was of importance for school, or church for that matter. God answered bedtime prayers too, I was told, when we were all in pajamas...and so clothes must not matter that much. At least that’s what I hoped in my flannel shirt and dirty feet.  And so now, here twenty some odd years later, I confess in my pajamas and once again somewhat dirty feet, resolving I will not let it sit again, to double in size and weight like old friends from high school, wondering what happened, until I notice: married with children.

There have been one hundred mile per hour winds this week. Three days in a row. Giving the snow a crème brûlée crust, extra hard, as if my sister has been the one to sprinkle the sugar and hold the torch. Walking out to the truck, I break through to the cream.

Jay drives up to Estes with me today out of curiosity, he says, some jealousy too...and along the way we get onto the subject of world politics -- one of those things that even if you have the time to go into, it doesn’t always mean you should. Even if you agree with each other, it’s just so depressing...and well, it’s complicated, as Meryl Streep says. But we learn, we grow, we fail, and sometimes, even, we are birthed and die by complications. That also, is how we love. It’s complicated. And that, is what keeps things interesting and our minds and hearts alive. Settling into easy explanations -- into complacency that you know -- is the death of Being...in anything.

And so we live because of complications.


8:58 a.m.

My rod in still life, three pieces on a coffee table; butt and one tip upside down on soda-pop cans, the other tip laying on a canvas sock.  Back at the shop in Longmont, there have been two Diet Pepsi cans sitting upside down by the drying cabinet, and for the past two months I’ve wondered why. I could tell they were meant for something -- intended for some purpose -- you can tell when things are, even if you don’t understand the intention...all the while believing that in the end you will. At least that’s what you tell yourself. And so I didn’t ask, upon the belief that if I needed to know, I would. And I did -- it turns out they hold the rods up to dry after varnish has been applied to the wraps. “Works perfectly” Franks says, doing a job for which they weren’t made, but perfectly cut out for all the same.    

I know what’s to be done today. I know what to expect. But even so, what went before is not always what’s ahead. And knowing that, I get right to work.

Light bright, glaringly clean winter, washed free from preoccupations of summer days – dirt, bugs, barefeet and snakes -- streams through lofted windows. Snow comes off Mount Lady Washington’s lodgepoles like the smoke of hot spots, curling up and disappearing into thin air, as mountaineers sometimes do – as one did, in fact, for thankfully only a night the day after I stood atop her. He had passed me on the trail, going on, up to Longs. The next morning in The Denver Post, I read he was brought down, carried by rangers like a corpse through late spring drifts. No wildflowers yet; the earth wasn’t ready for him to be taken. You think about things when you are alone: life, but mostly death. The What Ifs – sounding like characters in a Dr. Suess or Norton Juster book. They’re dark questions. The things you wouldn’t dare admit aloud were people around; or if they were, you certainly would be hesitant to let them gestate, even in mere thought. What if I jumped off this sheer face? What would it feel like to spread my arms, wings like a bird, unattached, if only for a few  seconds? What if I never come back…what if I get lost...what if I am never found? Would that solve my problems? No. No child, it would only create more. I remember my mother telling me that…and I listened.

The doorbell rings, startling me to the realization that I’ve not heard a doorbell ring in years. Years. I don’t have one, and I suppose that tells you something of my social life and visiting schedule – I’m becoming the hermit my sister warned me about and feared -- don’t get too weird up here, she had said. Her boyfriend already called me eccentric (the polite way of saying weird, I gather).

It’s Hal and Terry at the door, both of whom I’ve met before down at the workshop in Longmont, when they’d just drop in to say hi. That, the liberty of those who have retired from the workaday world, dropping in. Although by definition, they seem to have not taken their retirement very seriously, namely: to withdraw, step back, retreat into the boredom which produces nit-picky rants and perfectly edged lawns.  Rather, Hal has been busy building a new drying and dipping cabinet for Frank. It’s gorgeous when I go up later to view (they had the heavy lifting all under control, of course) – and it looks like a shrine, hallowed by hands taking time. I can hear their conversation from down where I’m wrapping – now I’ve blunted these edges; and here I’ve cut so it will lay flush against the wall. Details. Thought. Reminding me of things my father has built for me -- a fly tying cabinet for Christmas – extra dowels here, for thread, angled so they don’t hit the cork padded door...you see? I do. And those random looking scallops on the top? They’re the peaks of the Front Range. I recognize them; I love him.

I keep on wrapping.  

Hal and Terry say goodbye. The Cheesy Lee’s pizza delivery man comes and leaves minutes later. And minutes after that, Frank’s son Tim arrives, visiting from Walden, “Good timing” he says.  

After pizza, Frank installs fluorescents for his new cabinets, and Tim digs through boxes of tying material. Frank, somehow, knows all the while what’s being looked at. “That hackle is off a rooster Gierach showed me how to skin…in his front yard.”  

And “Ah…Aunt Lydia’s Rug Yarn…good stuff,” He says next.

“Aunt who? Have I met her?”

I burst out in laughter -- I can’t help it, imagining the great Lost Aunt Lydia (with some dark family secret, for sure) – and so do Frank and Tim.

I keep on wrapping.

Jay pecks behind me on his computer, like a chicken at grit and gravel, fed for digestion -- editing photos and writing. It’s a comforting sound, that of writing. But I know better than to think it’s a comforting thing to actually do. Rather, it’s only comforting once it’s out – once you’ve thrown it up and are sipping ginger ale.

He looks over my shoulder and asks, “Can I put it together -- the other two pieces…and…and just pretend?”

“Sure.”

And under vaulted ceilings, I watch him gently push the ferrules together and false cast.
“Small….but powerful – this is going to be a good casting rod” he grins – he, who taught me to cast and tie and fly fish in the first place. I like watching him cast.

“She’s gonna let me fish it!” Jay says, Tim coming down the stairs. I will, “until you catch a trout,” and you better not doddle, I think…“but no one else…it’s my mothering instinct finally kicking in…and over bamboo...” I chuckle.        
                                                                                           

And still, I wrap -- through comings and goings and conversations. Through a Davy Wotton soft hackle DVD and a sunset – the thread through the day.  And I think while at my spot off to the side of things, about one of my favorite bits of writing by Stephen King, that "Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.” These threads of art, these threads of passion -- of writing, of painting, of music, tying, casting, and of rod making – they support our everydays. Our everydays, however, laugh at our art...spit on our dreams. Telling us to stop, to give up, to go to bed early. You’re too tired, you’re wearing yourself out, and spreading yourself too thin. So just go eat some fruit and relax, they say. Okay? And I  may listen, for awhile. But when I was a little girl, I wanted to be remembered after I  died. And I knew that I would die someday, my father worked in a funeral home. My mother used urns, chipped or broken during shipping, as flower vases, and I remembered that verse about beauty for ashes -- wanting to leave something behind besides flesh and blood...besides ashes. Something in stone, or paper, wood, or bamboo. Something beautiful. And so I cannot rest. 

Art supports me...

...as I lean back, looking at the last wrap which takes me, in the end, four tries before I get it right, calling Jay over, “Do you think those look even?”

“Yeah…they do.”

But my eyes doubt, and so I pick off the thread and do it again. Once more, Norman, half as long…

And then finally, long after the elk have passed by the deck window, the sun has set, and dinnertime has come and gone…I finish, liberally coating varnish over the wraps.

As Jay and I pull out of the side street, “Coyote!” I point. Straight ahead. Just leaving the beams of the headlights. Houselights are on and I can see people, watching their TV, blissfully ignorant of the coyote watching them, and Jay and I watching the coyote -- an optical food chain of which we’re the alpha.   

“Good eyes, as my dad would say.”

“Thanks” my eyes wrinkle up, “I like your dad.”

Darkness brings silence. And heaviness, as my sister called it when she was young and when she was tired. For it does feel as if everything in you -- your eyes, your arms and legs, your heart --  is being pushed down, forced to rest whether you want to or not. Whether you think you are done with the day or not; it, is done with you.  

“Hey, do you really like my rod…how it casts?” I say heavily.

“Yes. Absolutely…I do.”

“I will let you fish it, you know, for more than just one trout...and not just for saying you like it, either.”

Jay grins, “Well thanks.”

And as we near Boulder, a star shoots overhead slow enough we both see it, but quick enough I don’t have time to make a wish. But then again, perhaps I don’t need to.


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