Some Men in My Life

BTW: Got iphone working again, after a call for support. Turns out it can freeze up like a computer, and requires a simple fix.

Great fun bottling estate oil with George from old old trees in a dry desert area on a Greeek island that reminds me of much of Wyoming. Had trouble getting the oil to stop pouring before running over bottle lip. Much cursing and swearing and approximately four dozen bottles later (most of them wiped off), we moved into the bar area (the kitchen he is using is rented from the Casper airport) and sat around with another old friend Miles, whom I hadn't seen for 30 years. So interesting, the way we watch each other age at different rates, but all in the same direction. And these two, George and Miles, creative, maverick men, have decidedly opened to their connection with other suffering humans. The edge is still there, but now as a very small part of a sort of diffuse understanding of the folly and ignorance that still drives them. I've been "processing" stuff with women for all these decades, and of course, watching us change and grow and unfold our various natures. But it's only recently that I can say I have great hope for the men in my life, and can see that they too, have been opening to the same path of expansion into a more spiritual understanding of their own lives, the wondrous stories that keep us shaking our heads at the strangenes of it all. And laughing, laughing.

For example: after doing gold jewelry for many years in big cities, Miles established a coffee shop in a small town, then worked with Native American kids who had been abused as a counselor, then ran a group home for adolescents back east, then returned to Casper, adrift, "no direction known." Had been "walking the prairie" every weekend with his wife, his own sort of spiritual practice, for a few years when he began to "see" in the desert in a new way, due to an arrowhead made of jasper that, one day on top of a windy, see-forever, hill, was lying at his feet. This led him in a whole new direction—mining claims!

And George, so protean and carefree when young, now at 62, the widowed father of two beautiful boys, 9 and 12, absorbed in keeping his kids safe, their bellies full, the house in order.

And me, on the road on what some might think a quixotic adventure, drinking a gin and tonic with the two of them, all of us now in our 60s, laughing and loving and so glad for the continued connection despite the long hiatus and the passing of years.

Which reminds me (and forgive me if I've already told this story; I would have gone back to look at other posts, but don't know how to save this and then return to it): my friend Steve, another marvelous man, who is staying with the kitties, wrote me this a few days ago, and warmed my heart all the way from Cheyenne to Casper: "I have found out what makes the cats really comfortable. I just have toread the NY times on the porch, your favorite perch. they both came around
and just started purring. I had a long talk with them and told them that I was going to be around for the next two months."

Tonight, first book event of trip, at the yurts, where I'm staying: to gather with a grieving community of climbers who lost two of their own, both young, roped together, hurtled 3000 feet, from a high traverse in the Tetons early this summer. One of them lived in the yurt that was mine up until five years ago. We will meet at the fire pit there, under the full moon.