by Hal Walter
A friend once suggested I write myself a check for $50,000, $75,000, or something like that, and just tape it to the refrigerator as a payment to myself for this grand lifestyle I’ve chosen.
Perhaps I should just make it an even, cool $1 million.
It may be true that at both ends of the socioeconomic continuum there exists a “leisure class,” but for those of us who find ourselves a little ways in from either end, life may not be so leisurely, and a check to yourself won’t pay a mortgage or buy any groceries. And if you’re nearing age 50, I suppose you pretty much are where you are on this continuum.
Recently, after an hour hike into the Goodwin beaver ponds with my son Harrison riding one of our burros, I opened my fly rod case and found one of the four pieces — the one with the reel seat — missing. Suddenly I remembered seeing a fly rod section in the bathroom before leaving on the outing. I had thought it was a piece to another old rod that Harrison had gotten out of the closet in his excitement about the trip. Apparently I had half of that right. He was excited about the trip, but had removed the piece to my new fly rod from its case, then zipped it back up.
I could only laugh. You could chalk it up to autism, but then plenty of parents of neurotypical children have stories just like this.
I had spied a number of fair-sized brookies in the creek along the trail, so naturally I was disappointed. However, during the hike I realized I’d also forgotten my reading glasses back in the truck and that knotting a fly onto a light leader was going to be tricky. I wondered, in fact, if I would be able to do it at all. When I hit 45 the near vision went, and now that I’m 49 I need glasses for reading or doing any up-close detail work.
Clearly we weren’t going to do any fishing on this trip. I told Harrison that it was OK — we’d come back next week.
A week before I had entertained an old high school buddy, Eric, and his son Sam. They were here four days and we had taken a similar trip into the Swift Creek beaver ponds. Harrison has been on fishing excursions before and has been present while fish were caught. But it was on this trip that for the first time I knew he “got it” when I hooked into a fair-sized cutthroat and he held the fly rod while I scrambled down the bank to release it. We caught a couple more fish after that and I could see the interest level setting in.
The visit with Eric was an interesting milestone. I had not seen him in 23 years. We grew up together in Northern Virginia, attending Lake Braddock High School. Eric was a next-door neighbor and our parents all commuted to work in Washington, D.C. Together we explored our growing independence as teenagers and pondered our futures.
Eric was two years ahead of me in school and light years ahead of me academically. He was perhaps best known at school for his yearbook photography and besides that everyone know that he was just really damn smart. And it’s true he went on to get a Ph.D. in economics and to work for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the Federal Reserve Board, and The Brookings Institution before settling into a position as a professor at Indiana University.
I moved to Colorado with my parents between my junior and senior years of high school and pursued a career in journalism. Somehow Eric and I stayed loosely in touch. Regardless of the time between our communications, there always seems to be a comfort level there, and the private jokes are still relevant and funny.
But zooming 23 years ahead suddenly brought into focus that Eric is a successful career man, a professor of economics and an advisor to banks worldwide. He lectures around the globe and has published research papers. Money? Well, multiply what I make by 1.5, then add a zero to the end.
Now he was coming here to see my lifestyle, at a point in time when I am struggling to regain my feet after being laid off from my job as a copy-editor for the Pueblo Chieftain — a newspaper that’s not even a blip on the radar of serious journalism — and trying to face the challenges of parenting a five-year-old son with autism. I live a relatively rustic life here in the Wet Mountains, caretaking a neighboring ranch, piecing together odd editing and writing jobs for other income, and racing burros. I do have a pot to piss in, but beyond that it’s often week to week.
In retrospect it was perhaps a mistake for me to have gone back to work at the Chieftain in 2004 when Harrison was born. I previously had been working for a company that was sold to venture capitalists and things were going South in a hurry. I thought the opportunity to get back into the newspaper business was a good choice. It turned out to be a five-year dead end.
Since then I’ve been editing and designing books, editing marketing copy and being thankful that there are horses and vacation homes in the neighborhood that need care. It’s not exactly what I’d call a career, but then I’ve chosen to live in an area that does not support life unless you came here with a nest egg or a retirement check.
I fetched Eric and his son Sam at the Colorado Springs airport and after a brief stop for groceries we drove on back to my humble abode in Custer County. Sam’s main interest in the trip was the chance to fire guns, and before Eric and I could even get reacquainted he was asking about when we would shoot.
After little questioning I learned that Sam had never even touched a firearm, and so I suggested that we start out with a pellet rifle, and work our way up from there. Let’s just say this did not make me popular with Sam, who I guess thought we’d start off with automatic high-powered weaponry like he’s seen on television.
The next day it was off to the mountains with the boys riding burros and the rest of us hiking to the Swift Creek beaver ponds. The fishing there is challenging because of the thick brush and trees. I finally located some trout and was able to get Harrison interested in catching them.
On the way out I was astonished to watch Harrison, who is five, ride the steep and rocky trails with complete comfort and confidence. In contrast Sam was a bit nervous, especially on the way back down. And I noted Eric had experienced some difficulties on the way up. This was a big outing for them, but something we might do on a spare afternoon.
Another thing Sam wanted to do was build a campfire. I have a fire ring near the house and so one night after dinner we lit a blaze. As the flames rose into the sky, a pack of coyotes let loose with barking and yapping from the surrounding landscape. It was just like in the movies … and just like every other night around here.
The next day I let Sam shoot a .22 rifle and he seemed to enjoy finally firing a “real” gun. Eric and I had a few moments to talk, though it wasn’t nearly enough and it was mostly about the challenges of parenthood. What struck me the most was how gracious Eric was about the visit, and how complimentary he was about my lifestyle. He commented at least a couple times about how much I “know,” even though in his world the things I know would not be all that useful.
Still, the visit brought up the old net-worth versus self-worth that I’ve struggled with much of my life, and which at this point I realize I just have to let go. As someone recently told me, “you haven’t sold out in 30 years, so I doubt you’re going to do so now.”
However, in recent months I’ve caught myself cruising the Internet for editing jobs, and sending off resumés to places like Boulder and Los Alamos, N.M. I’ve considered moving to a population center, perhaps Albuquerque or Tucson. It would be difficult at this point for me to live in a city, but I think I could handle the outskirts of some place with employment opportunity and a real grocery store.
The next day, before putting Eric and Sam back on a plane to the Rust Belt, I brought out what must have seemed to Sam like the Holy Grail — a .410 shotgun. I watched as the father and son shot cans and yogurt containers until they grew tired of it. I thought how rarely I take the opportunity to plink like this even though I could do it every day on my own property if I were so inclined, and if I could afford the ammo.
It was a couple weeks later I found myself laughing about the missing fly rod section at Goodwin. My son just wanted to fish but I had to explain that we couldn’t this time. We’d have to come back next week.
There was always next week, so long I we live here, like this. Maybe writing a check to myself isn’t such a bad idea.
Hal Walter writes and edits from the Wet Mountains. You can keep up with him regularly at his blog: www.hardscrabbletimes.wordpress.com
