The weeks news. A mountain man looks at 60. (Sorry Jimmy Buffett, had to steal.)
It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven in the great northwest. We have moved the pickups up to our road, and are hoping that the tracks come in soon for the UTV. Shipping issues due to the ongoing pandemic are, it seems, delaying everything these days.
Yes, in a couple of short weeks, I turn 60. It’s hard to believe at times, since I never should have lived past the age of 3, when a kidney issue that I can’t remember the name of, almost did me in. It was so bad that the doctors told my parents that they should choose a coffin sooner rather than later.
I beat the odds, as I have done many times throughout my life, often going as far as acting as if I’m immortal. I walked away from two bad wrecks while driving semi, I deal with a debilitating disability in the form of nerve and muscle disease, and most recently, I survived narcotizing pneumonia, leaving half of my right lung mostly scare tissue. Such has been my life to date. I have challenged life, and it has not killed me yet (though the lovely wife wishes sometimes I would not tempt it so much). With all that, you might be able to see how making it to this age has been a surprise to me, I’m not sure what to make of it. I will continue to live life to the fullest, since I have no idea when it will end.
I watched Neil Armstrong take his first step on the moon, and years later, I was building a fuel tank for a torpedo when the Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff. In less than fifty years, my phone has gone from a party line to one I can hold in one hand and carry with me. Personal computers weren’t even thought of when I was a kid. Now, I hold one in my hand that gives me access to the world. Reel-to-reel tape was new when I was a kid, now my music is online. I no longer need a vast collection of 8-tracks, cassettes, or CD’s. Humanity has come a long way in a relatively short time, technologically speaking, In other things, we still have a long way to go.
I served in the Navy twice. Once, during the cold war, as a torpedo man on three different ships and at the Navel base in Yorktown, Virginia, and then, again, after 9-11, as a Seebee, sitting on a gun mount in the heat of the desert in the Persian gulf. I regret none of it, though, coming back with a crippling disability is something I definitely could have done without.
One regret I do have, watching people working to find a way to fly to Mars, is that I will miss out on space travel. I look back at where we have come from: the invention of the wheel, the first flight, men on the moon; and I wish I could be around to fly into space as an explorer, discovering new worlds, finding others like us, or ones very different from ourselves. Yes, I wish I would be around to see it, or even experience it first hand. I’m sure there were some in the past who felt the same way, as technology sped past. Such is life; we make ours what we can, we hope, and we leave the future to our young.
In other news, it seems spring has come early. Temperatures are rising fast during the day, melting off the snow a little more every day. I will be happy once I can putter around outside once again, even if I have to putter much slower these days. I rely on my son more and more lately, and this summer will be no exception.
Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.
