The Ten Year Itch

One of the few things I truly enjoy about getting old is gaining insight and wisdom. The only thing I enjoy more than that … is the Illusion of gaining insight and wisdom.I try to remember to never forget that getting old a) is a blessing that many fail to experience b) not for sissies c) I … can’t remember number three, but never mind because what I wanted to share with you was this strange realization that came to me recently.

Looking back at my life ( one of the required past times for the privilege of becoming old), I am puzzled by a strange pattern that seems to reoccur, you know, kind of like fever blisters on your lips. Its seems like about every ten years I have this tendency to take up a new sport.

Now I realize that many, if not most people (north Americans, anyway) often reflect back on their lives and define themselves in terms of accomplishments. You know, like “I was a brain surgeon, or a stock broker, or something really challenging, like a stay-at-home mom. I guess I’m just different; always just playing around. Besides, I actually tried brain surgery and a) it isn’t that much fun and b) I wasn’t very good at it anyway¹

Starting when I was thirty (‘cuz getting drafted into the Army kind of spoiled being twenty) I got interested in white water canoeing. It changed my life! At the time I was living in Atlanta, Georgia. Jimmy Carter was Governor, Burt Reynolds was starring in Deliverance and the Wild and Scenic River that the movie was filmed on way just up the road in North Georgia. Even Jimmy got into it and paddled a canoe down that river and it seemed like everybody was doing it. My first wife, Helen, wasn’t that excited about the idea, given that she had never learned to swim.

We joined the local canoe club just in time for their annual Spring canoe training and off we went. It was educational on so many levels. Like, the first time we flipped our canoe over and I learned that my shy, innocent wife knew more profanity than all the drill Sargents I had known in the Army, combined.

But it really did change the direction of my life. Hanging out with river people is kind of like herpes, you never really get over it. But the experience of being in the natural beauty of mountain riparian environments pretty much ruined me and directed most of my career migrations, leading me to live most of my life in either the Great Smoky Mountains or the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. While interviewing, everybody asks themselves what kind of job they would prefer to be doing, I always was more concerned about where the job was.

So forty came along and next on the list was white water kayaking, a natural migration. Some may think that’s not a real change of sport. Those people have never flushed through a major rapid upside down, counting trout and feeling like a billiard ball as your helmet leaves traces of paint on various rocks. The fluvial equivalent of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to lead others astray.

Arkansas River, photo by Hamilton Langston

Canoes are much more civilized; one may sit or if skilled, even stand in a canoe. And there are practical advantages, like taking cargo or even loved ones, although the latter often requires many hours of therapy. Out of the five couples that comprised our initial “class” of canoe novices, my wife and I were the only ones still married after four years. Rocky times those.

And age fifty brought some excitement in the form of rock climbing. Why anyone wants to pretend to be a human spider crawling up stone walls in incredibly beautiful canyons, communing with hawks, achieving heights of … oh, never mind. It is NOT for everybody and like brain surgery, while I enjoyed my time doing it, I really wasn’t that good at it. And it is not a forgiving sport, especially for the forgetful. Having tumbled some forty feet down a rock face after forgetting to tie a stopper knot (yes, that is really what it’s called), I realized the gravity of it all while in a CT scanner several hours later.²

Sixty approached and since I had already fallen out of love with rock climbing, I went rapidly in another direction. Motorcycling was not on my wife’s radar, we both had a distaste for the dust and noise of the dirt bikes that sometimes tortured the hills and hogbacks around our Colorado home. She was most surprised upon return from a business trip to open the garage and find a shiny new motorcycle in her spot. But mechanized mayhem had seduced me via a Craigslist click of the wrist on the keyboard. While trying to research musical instrument prices online, a slip up one category line to motorcycles led me to this:

The only bike I ever owned that looked like it was going fast when it was parked. What late middle-aged man (halfway to 120! ) wouldn't lust after a a chance to go fast before he stops going … at all. To paraphrase an old saying “Straight roads are for fast bikes; mountain roads are for fast riders”. But the reality for me is that bikes aren’t about speed, and it is about the journey, not the destination. Motorcycles have taken me to places of great beauty, places I would never have seen except for my two-wheel magic carpet.

Once you're over the hill, you begin to pick up speed - Schopenhauer

And along came seventy and I found myself without my life partner of 50 years; I was adrift and not looking for any new adventures. I wondered what was left on a horizon I could not bring into focus. Like a ship becalmed, finding an occasional zephyr seemed like all I had to look forward to. Ha!

A red-haired sunset stirred the pot, a mushroom glaze whet my appetite and my compass spun full circle. I fell out of grief and in to love. Sailing, metaphorically, in a new direction; crossing an ocean in realtime, I find myself anew in an old world Portugal with a wonderful first mate, though she be my second wife.

A moment frozen in time, taking our vows on the Million Dollar Highway, Ouray Co;orado

Lucky in love, lucky in life, lucky to have been in love, not once, but twice.

1. no human beings were harmed in this short career divergence, although I did have to use an electric saw to create access points, but everybody woke up happy the next day just to be there.

2. Only broke one bone in my foot, but killed several large sage bushes and one small Pinōn Pine.