Saturday, July 21, 2012

Adventure Stories

My grandfather has been an inspiration to me for a long time. Maybe he's the reason I race bicycles. A week ago, my uncle Tom went to Ontario to move my Grandpa down to California. Grandpa flew in on Saturday night.
He’s had an interesting life. As a young man he was a successful chemist who registered 30 or 40 patents working for the USDA, including the original patent for epoxidized oils. Then he quit and left town, taught environmental studies for a couple years, canoed from New York City to Alaska with some of his studies, and finally settled on his forest in northwest Ontario.

My mom used to take me and the rest of the family up to Ontario sometimes to visit in the summer. When I was 3, they would plunk me down in a patch of blueberries and let me eat myself blue in the face. As long as the blueberries held out – and they were prodigious – I wouldn’t move. When I was 9, I learned to paddle and steer a canoe on my own. Me and Grandpa were stronger than the Eagle Scouts.
When I was 15, my parents bought an 80-acre parcel adjacent to Grandpa’s. We spent three weeks exploring the ins and outs of the twisting Wabigoon River that knit the two properties together. Our family stayed on an old homestead under a stand of poplar just downstream from the waterfall, 100 feet from the gradually collapsing log cabin. We built a raft to cross the river, and a rope swing for jumping into it.
I spent a lot of time staring at the water flowing past, like time… The river is a rich brown the color of tea, dyed from the tannic acid in the leaves that the water passes through. The tannic acid suppresses bacteria and keeps the water clean and pure. Grandpa says that his water tastes better than water from wells or water from lakes or water from anywhere else. A leader from the Native American reservation downstream agrees, and likes to visit periodically. Grandpa’s good health and spirits were always a strong indicator that the river water is clean and safe and good to drink. But at 91 ½ years old, I guess he was ready to move to a place… where water comes out of a faucet, instead of a bucket carried in a wheelbarrow hauled up from the river ½ mile downhill.

On Monday morning, I saw him for breakfast in my Mom’s apartment on Garber Street. He likes to have his tea by 6 or 6:30 am. We discussed, amongst other things, my bicycle racing. I did pretty well on Sunday, ended up fifth place, with some good prize money. “But where is your bicycle this morning?” he asked me.
“I don’t have it today. It was just so early and I drove. I’ll bring my bike next time,” I promised. Not the biggest promise I’ve ever made him, but a real one.

After Thursday’s group ride, I came back to visit again. Lunch. Warm smile, regard. Grandpa sat on Mom’s window seat overlooking the bay. She’s on the fourth floor on a hill facing the bay, and the view is incredible. I spent the afternoon setting up my old laptop for my Mom to use and encouraging her to clean. Grandpa napped on the window seat. When he woke up, Mom pointed out the fog rolling in through the Golden Gate. It looks pretty good even through a limited pane of glass. But being out there...
“The view from Grizzly Peak this morning was amazing. The bay is so blue, and the mountains are so majestic, and then there’s all this industry in the middle of it, the cranes in Oakland, all of the tall tall buildings in the City, all stretched out below me. Every time I come up over Pinehurst and catch a view of the Bay, I feel like I’m in an adventure novel, and I am an adventuring heroine.”
Grandpa nodded his head in recognition.
“It’s amazing. I’ve lived here for – almost ten years. And the view still takes my breath every time.”
Again, Grandpa nodded. I’m pretty sure he feels the same way about the forest in Ontario. “Good morning, morning” he used to say each morning, and the Whiskey Jacks came flying out of the trees into the clearing where his cabin is. They used to eat toast or pancakes from a tin pan on top of the woodshed, or sometimes from his hand.