TheBanyanTree: Snow Moon

[Dale Parish]

Russ warned me that retirement would serve up less free time than working ever did, and I took him at his word, but I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of requests for time that avalanched down upon me before retirement has even arrived.  Monday will be my last day as an employee, and Tuesday starts my retirement.  The folks at work keep asking me what I’m going to do with all my spare time. Ha!

As I mentioned my retirement date to friends in various organizations, it seems they all believe that the sole reason I’m retiring from employment is to dedicate my former employment time to volunteering for our organization.  As if theirs was the only organization to which I belonged, and I had no need for any spare time for myself.  I should have listened better, Russ.

But I can hear the John Deere and Kubota both calling me.  If I can afford diesel on my retirement pay, I’d be busy and happy for much time to come.  After rupturing a disc in my back a couple of years ago, I’m afraid to do what I used to do with the chain saw—it’s a back stressor.  I’ve become much more patient with myself climbing up and down at a more leisurely pace than I used to do, and guess I’ll get used to it.  It’s amusing in retrospect to observe how patience comes so much more naturally to one for which the majority of his life is behind him than in front.  One would think that youth with most of their life in front of them would be the more patient individuals, and the aged, with less time remaining, would be more impatient.  Doesn’t work that way.  You just learn what’s more important and are more aware of your limitations.

I started reading Ox Team Days- Story of the Oregon Trail, about Ezra Meeker, who traversed the Oregon Trail in 1854 and fifty-four years later, after making and loosing several fortunes on the west coast, decided to repeat the Oregon Trail in the opposite direction at age 70, and made the trek from the Dalles in Oregon all the way to Washington DC by ox team, documenting his trip. He has some interesting observation on how much development had taken place in those 54 years. 

The book is a real reminder of how much television and movies have warped our perspective of history.  All the westerns show wagon teams being pulled by horses—not so.  While some horses were brought west, the wagons that made the Oregon trail were almost all pulled by oxen—horses were just too light and lacked the disposition and endurance to make the trip.  Interesting, too, that the first people to make the transcontinental wagon trip remarked that the prairies were much smoother than the roads back east—and a lot less muddier and rutted.  That changed quickly.  Historians attribute the Oregon Trail to the largest mass migration in history at that time, with some 350,000 making their way west, although after 1849, many veered south after crossing the continental divide, towards California and the allure of gold. 

Twenty or thirty years ago, Dick Estelle, the “Radio Reader” read the story of two brothers who were the youngest ever to cross the United States by single engine airplane.  The story was a good one—well written for a boy in his teens.  I don’t remember how I heard about it, but that same boy—forty years later-- decided to repeat the Oregon Trail trip from the Mississippi River following the original route, and got his brother to accompany him. It was an interesting book, especially for me to imagine taking either—not both—of my two brothers along.   Some of the disagreements that arose between them being the same that probably would have arisen between one or the other of my brothers in the same predicaments.  In the book, he included a lot of later history, including the references to Ezra Meeker and other Oregon Trail pioneers.  After reading his account, I hope to find time to follow the trail on an extended camping trip. 

Been thinking about StarGazer a lot lately—Cindy has taken up bird photography, and has made several traipses to Galveston taking pictures of birds along Nine Mile Road and other places on the western end of the island.  She heard about a group of Whooping Cranes being over in Jefferson County, and went over and found them near the road, and was able to get some good pictures of the group of three Whoopers, close enough to read the marking on their leg bands and transmitters.  This two days before the yoyo shot and killed two of them.  She is outraged—she’s traveled to Rock Port several times to photograph the bigger flocks of Whoopers, and was elated to find three in the next county over, before this yoyo shot two of them  There’s no excuse for it, but it’s sounding like they’re going to let him plead out to some lesser charge and do no time. The birders are outraged that he can’t be shot.  At least do significant hard time.

 

Hugs,
Dale
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Dale M. Parish
628 Parish RD
Orange TX 77632-0264