Grinnell Lake in Glacier National Park

 

THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

December 7, 2023

 

From Rocky:

October 18, 2023, 5:40 a.m.

Dear Johnny

 

Hello and good day to you. I hope that this letter finds you in a moment of peace & joy. I am just starting my day here & it is a beautiful day & the autumn sunrise is starting to fill the sky. I love this time of year. Between October & April is the time of year I love the most. The holidays & friends & food! The feeling you get from being close to the ones you love. Well, I have to start the day now. I’ll be back soon.

 

October 19, 2023, 6:11 a.m.

 

Do you know the dreams you dream at night that let you know everything is alright? I had one of them last night. A friend & I just sat & talked about the last 25 years of our lives. It would seem we did it in the blink of an eye, or, 40 winks. We just sat and talked & it was so nice to see her, even if it was only in a dream.

 

October 30, 2023, 5:10 a.m.

Dear Johnny & Nancy,

 

It’s a very cold morning here & it is also beautiful Autumn out, my favorite time of the year. Family, friends, food & good times. I had an amazing October this year.

 

The harvesting of the last of the Summer’s growth & the tilling of the earth for the crop. The falling of the leaves, each one of them landing on the bed of my heart. Autumn has always been dear to me, even when I was a child.

 

The smell of pies & of chopping wood, the smoke from the chimneys as the smell fills the neighborhood. Children in costumes, bags full of candy and running noises—running towards Thanksgiving with their families. With Christmas on the way.

 

It was so nice to talk to you two while you were picking out a tree for your yard. I closed my eyes & could see you shopping together. I know you came to the right one and it will look great in your yard for many years to come. I wish I could have been there to plant it for you, while you enjoyed some coffee while I dug the hole. I know the digging around there is not so easy. I’m more than happy to do these things for you two. I want to enjoy life with my friends & family.

 

The last few days have been so cold here! It is going to be one of those years, I think. Long Cold Winter!

 

—Rocky Hutchinson

*

 

Katie sent this:

 

Gate A-4

 

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning

my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement:
“If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please
come to the gate immediately.”

 

Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

 

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just
like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. “Help,”
said the flight agent. “Talk to her. What is her problem? We
told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”

 

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly.
“Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-
se-wee?” The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly
used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled
entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the
next day. I said, “No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just later, who is
picking you up? Let’s call him.”

 

We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would
stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to
her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just
for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while
in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I
thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know
and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.

 

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee,
answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool
cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and
nuts—from her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the
lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered
sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

 

And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two
little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they
were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend—
by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag,
some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradi-
tion. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

 

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This
is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that
gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive about
any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.

 

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

 

—Naomi Shihab Nye

 

I think this is perfect for our times. The importance of language and listening and compassion can lead to deep understanding and inter-connectedness. 

 

—Katie Radditz

*

 

Todd Oleson shared this:

 

Kurt Vonnegut wrote: 

 

When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archaeological dig. I was talking to one of the archaeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

 

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’n not any good at ANY of them.”

 

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

 

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.

*

 

Driving to the Headlands 

on the 23rd of December

 

What a light this morning!

Glowing peach balloons for clouds,

towering bouquets of them,

suspended by an invisible clown

across the heavens.

 

At last the greening of our hills comes to pass,

like iridescent birds beside a charcoal sky.

A jungle phoenix whose feathers color

with inhalation and sunlight.

 

And there’s an egret

doing tightrope tricks

above the marsh on my way to work.

All white and long necked,

she bows and scrapes 

from her telephone wire

acrobat in nature’s circus,

waiting for applause.

 

—Gail Lester, from Transformed by Other Places

*

 

           Water Song

 

I flow lower, slower, sliding wet in rivulet

or defile, creep deep, seep under, sift through,

turn blue, mist up from wave or pool, fool

to be gone, abscond beyond accountability,

myriad molecule sipped by Caesar, fog

furrowing battlefields, shining shields,

surrender’s yield sealed sacred, feeling

my way out from thicket or conflict,

healing drought, ooze from wounds,

sound of splash, blood from lash, river’s

dash from peak to sea, pleased to meet

you, travel through you, be lost, ghost

in your shape, rain cape descending,

sending my battalions over islands,

storm stallions stamping feet of lace,

dawn song, small saint, clear paint,

face dressed, soul blessed, best taste,

not much, a healing touch, and gone.

 

—Kim Stafford, from As the Sky Begins to Chang

(forthcoming as a print book from Red Hen Press, April 2024, and also as an audiobook)

 

(QR code for “Water Song” poem by Kim Stafford)

*

 

J Kahn sent a link to “Nature’s Mystery: Watch the Hypnotic Dance of a Starling Murmuration”:

 

 

He says: “I personally believe it is an example of meta-consciousness.”

Check it out!

*

Honesty

 

Mirroring one another

the herb pale and round

as the moon is pale

and round shows in the house

of light that all favors

have been showered upon us.

 

The object, barred by the dragon,

cinnabar, sulphur, and mercury

joined to find salt, we’re keeping

the wax warm for the inscription.

 

The rhythm of hymns

protects us from the snake.

The tree, branches

through each state,

vapor rises as the eagle rises

the serpent held aloft eats his tail.

 

Nature is one substance

in different forms,

the very last thing left behind.  

 

—Elizabeth Domike

*

 

There is a ribbon

so deep in shadowed rubble

it is colorless.

 

—Alex Tretbar

*

 

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should see sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

 

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

 

(quoted by Jack Kornfield in The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace, p. 32)

 

 There is no statistical evidence that harsh punishment, including the death penalty, acts as a deterrent to crime—(109 countries have abolished the death penalty). On the international level, the idea that the world can be improved by war has long been a popular one. The results so far are not encouraging. Twenty-five hundred years ago, Buddha said:

 

In this world

Hate never yet dispelled hate.

Only love dispels hate.

This is the law,

Ancient and inexhaustible.

 

—Dhammapada, translated by Thomas Byrom

 

And as Tiny Tim says:

God Bless Us, Every One!

 

—Johnny Stallings