Me and the Monks — Old Man of the Mountains

(Other episodes in the in-process autobiographical series “Me and the Monks” may be discovered via search bar on this site)

*****

He was shorter than one imagines the mythical figure, and missing the long white beard one would have expected to see flowing from his chin, but every bit as aged and as weathered and tough — as of course he must be, to make his living hunting wild animals in the Alaskan outback.

I met him on a city bus, Stateside.

He’d come to resuscitate a daughter. Disabled by an automobile accident and subsequently deserted by her partner, he told me, she’d sunk to a feeling of utter worthlessness.

“I reminded her of what a good cook she is,” he said, “and also that she’d always had a good head for business. I pointed out that she can still cook from a wheelchair.

“I helped her get her kitchen remodeled so she can work in it… She’s in business, and back to being enthusiastic about something now. I’ll be going back North soon.”

We walked to the park in the center of the downtown district, sat on the grass under the trees.

He said he lived way out, away from everybody. Completely self sufficient.

He told me that, after a lifetime of hunting, he’d learned a few things about the balances of nature.

Having gotten good enough at his craft to feel that he had an unfair advantage, he began the practice, which he maintained for the rest of his life, of evening up those odds.

When fishing, for example, he always went to the rocks above cascades, where the fish had less chance of noticing the bait and more momentum for getting away.

He also shaved all the barbs off of the ends of his hooks.

We ended up talking and smoking in the dingy little temporary room he’d rented for his sojourn in civilization. I knew I had nothing to fear from this man.

I told him about my experience with the starving bear who had bitten but would not eat me.

“Animals know respect,” he said. “If you have respect for them, they have respect for you. Not like humans.”

We had a deep and peaceful understanding, possibly as rare for him as for myself.

He wanted me to go back with him.

Back in my very early twenties, when post-polio syndrome first reared its head forcing me to drop out of school and gradually but completely rearrange my life, I was determined to live not only as normal but as productive a life as possible. My daughter needed a fulfilled and contributive role model, and I needed to know that I’d not gone through this existence without making a positive difference in the lives of my readers and of the people around me.

Come what may, this life would not be bounded by medical appliances, complaints and inconveniences. People were going to smile to see me coming if it killed me.

Well, it damn near did, but I must have accomplished it, since years later as a young woman my daughter confided that even living in the same house she’d had no idea what I was going through.

People don’t. Especially people who, if they have ever been sick a day in their lives, remember the experience with horror and an inner resolution never to let that happen again.

People like the man sitting before me in the little downtown rental room, with his heart in his eyes.

“I’m not that strong,” I said.

But, even as I said it, I knew nothing in his experience would allow him to hear me. In his own very respectful way, he was doing the same thing that the most disrespectful of entitled city-slickers does when they look me up and down and say contemptuously, “You look fine to me.”

But this man was all love for me.

I understood.

I would continue living surrounded by thousands of people every day, yet had virtually no chance of ever again meeting someone like him. He was going back to absolute isolation — no chance whatsoever of meeting again someone like myself.

“Don’t go,” he said.

“I have to at least think about it,” I said. “If I think I can, I’ll come back.”

“Don’t go,” he said.

But I had to.

*****

Among us, poets are not paid. The poet/editor of this website, being physically disabled, lives at a fraction of her nation’s poverty level. Become a patron of the fine arts at: https://www.gofundme.com/are-you-a-patron-of-the-arts