Metal Mike
When you live in a small town you don’t necessarily get to know everyone and, with a big dose of Western “live and let live,” attitude, you don’t pry. Michael Lau is a person I’ve come to admire but it’s taken a decade to get an inkling of who he is.
I met Metal Mike when we purchased the old Red Coyote building up on the highway, Route 9. He lived next to us across a gentle wash. In front of his home on the highway is a sign advertising home-made prickly pear cactus jelly for sale. Next to his home, he built a gigantic skate-boarding structure for his boys. We learned quickly that Mike is widely admired for his metal work, something Teresa and I learned when we commissioned him to build a fence for us with beautiful rusted metal he had salvaged. We came to know him as a very independent guy who does everything with skill, attention and artistry.
One time we tangled when I had the weeds and foliage in the wash between us removed. Even though it was on our property, it did not make him happy and maybe he was right to be upset. Still, I thought we had a decent relationship. Later, though, when I tried to contact him for a new metal project, he didn’t return my calls. It was only later that I learned this wasn’t personal. He had stopped taking calls about metal work for hire because the toxic air had given him asthma.
I love following Mike on Facebook. It seems every week he discovers another pictograph or petroglyph on the land around us. He regularly finds petrified dinosaur teeth and other ancient remnants of life in our area. Mike has a good eye and he is always exploring.
Recently he announced a plan to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the border of Mexico to the Canadian line. To finance the hike, he has been gathering spent brass bullet casings that he casts into small bells. For $40 you get a bell and an 18.2 mile stretch of his hike dedicated in your name. He departs for this adventure May 25. He still has many miles that are not sponsored so if this appeals to you let me know and I’ll put you in touch with Mike. We can all ring the bells as he finishes our miles.
Wild Turkeys in our Yard
Looking out my window this morning I watched a wild turkey, one of more than a dozen regulars who forage in our pecan orchard, prance around just few feet away from me. Today, her buddies had deserted her, and she wasn’t happy about it. She paced back and forth along the fence, over and over, seeming to get more and more worked up. I sipped my coffee and shook my head. Every day I watch the turkey’s rise out of the orchard, fly over the fence to get in and then fly back over it to get out. They regularly move between our orchard and our neighbor’s and beyond. Granted, they are not the most elegant flyers. On the ground, when a male is in a flirtacious mood and preens in full Thanksgiving mode, it is something to see. In the air, not so much. But they know how to fly, and all our nervous friend had to do to get out of her predicament was flap her wings.
Teresa has a theory about this – unsubstantiated, she admits, by science. “Turkey” is slang for a goofball or dimwit but Teresa doesn’t think turkey are exactly dumb. She just thinks that a turkey brain only really functions when it is close to other turkey brains, sort of like a wireless network. Now he was “offline,” which isn’t a bad metaphor for the way anxiety shuts all of us down.
As I watched my feathered friend pace back and forth, I wondered if nature gives humans warning signs about our place on earth by the way some living things thrive and others perish. In the early 1900s, wild turkeys were on the edge of extinction with fewer than 30,000 in the wild. Today, the population has swelled to a whopping seven million. Have we humans created a world where a species that paces back and forth to cross a fence, somehow mirrors human activity? We never used to see turkeys in this part of the country. Is it climate change or have the predators who kept populations down in the past been diminished? And does this include fewer human hunters? I don’t know. Then I wondered: Am I engaging in reverse anthropomorshism. And why the hell does it matter that the turkey paces back and forth trying to cross the fence line? What is time to a turkey ?
Patti Smith
I finally got tired of watching the turkey. Time does matter to me. I had an hour before meeting my friend Steve to walk dogs and view the Virgin River up-close to see how much flooding we had yesterday with these unusually heavy rains. I took the time to listen to a fascinating interview with Patti Smith. I admit I’ve never followed Patti Smith’s music or writing but I loved what she had to say about her life as an artist, her fear of the prevalence of social media in nurturing a sane world, and her undying optimism. I’ll be following her from now on CLICK HERE TO LISTEN to the podcast.
“I’m always optimistic. I refuse to be pessimistic. Pessimism breeds nothing. A pessimistic person does not create anything … envision anything.” Patti Smith
In my own life, despair sometimes fences me in. Patti Smith reminds me to actively seek hope. When I remember to do this, I realize that I know how to fly. I don’t have to be the turkey pacing back and forth.
Love from Virgin, Utah
P.S. Today, it’s St. Patricks Day. You don’t have to be Irish to celebrate and contemplate ethnicity. Most of our population has roots on other continents. Today I celebrate being a desert dweller and a Manx man. But also I’m grateful to live in a place rich in indigenous life and tradition. Happy St. Pats
I always enjoy hearing about what you are up to. Thank you.
I loved reading all of this, and you and Teresa too.
95% sure Mom and I want to sponsor a bell.