The year was 1969 and I was sixteen. Outside of a prosaic life of school and idle summers at the lake, the world was experiencing Woodstock, love-ins, peace marches, and music the likes of which had never been heard before. But I watched 1969 go sailing by without me on the boat. And I cursed my time for being born too late.

For me, you are either on the bus or under the bus.

I was the tail end of the generation that grew up realizing that our country was being run by idiots and we were all desperate to do something about it. We didn’t want to have 2.3 kids and a station wagon in the driveway. Surely that wasn’t our future.

We grew up pampered in our homes, shamed because we let them kill Kennedy, knowing that we had the means to fix these problems, starting with making loud noises, and escalating as necessary.

But the stuff on the pop stations was sanitized for our parents, so we looked outside the box where they wouldn’t go.

FM Radio was just coming into its own. There were stations out there pushing every button making people crazy. And I wanted to be part of this craziness. The hip stations had DJs with British accents and they played really good music, but the crazy stations had music about revolution.

Sometimes people were sucked into this vortex and never came back. You could dial into any level of the ongoing revolution. Like being on the Titanic, we knew the country was headed the wrong way but we just watched the icebergs float by because the music wouldn’t stop and it was so good.

I was one of the lucky ones. My high school bus driver let us listen to the radio. She had one of those 50s names like Shirelle that you couldn’t tell whether it was old fashioned or hip. I was the first one on and the last one off the 45 minute ride to school. This ride took us past old farms and honeysuckle fences of rural Maryland in the time before they all became cul-de-sacked. I could get my homework done on the bus while enjoying radio music. Shirelle played mainstream AM during the crowded part of the ride, but when the bus got empty out in the hinterlands, she would let us listen to the racy FM stuff. In 1969 I sampled the revolution from a safe seat on the bus.

Sometimes when Shirelle was in a bad mood, she would just play country and ignore us. We understood. All of us grew close in a privately understood way. And we would get off the bus thoroughly brainwashed to the core without a thought about what appeared to be a plain old bus ride.

My view of the world was profoundly influenced by those bus rides to school. Only now have I begun to see myself apart from that world, now changed forever. True, I was lucky to have a clear view of the cold, harsh reality that was to come and that has served me well. But my vision was tinted by the safety and security of the big yellow box that carried me through chaotic times. Even when the box changed appearances to look like a house, or a family, or whether it was a new job or a new car–I have always felt as if I were riding in the safety of a big box with viewing windows and piped in sound. Safe on the bus, where revolution is a recreational pastime, it’s just a turn of the dial to get there and back.

Tony's snowy view of winter sun on the distant mountains.

This was written by Tony Smith while he was living next door to me in a one-room picker’s cabin in the Eastern Washington Cascades near Winthrop. It describes how 5-year old Tony first came to realize that winter can be long and hard. Yacolt is in SE Washington, and Bonneville is southeast of there. Silver Glance is a remote wilderness area a long way further east and south, in Utah. Tony passed away in about 2010. He was a fire lookout and philosopher. Perhaps reminding him of the Long Sky Cold, here is a picture of the view outside Tony’s window.

Over Silver Glance and the Long Sky Cold

by Tony Smith

Grampa said they’d better kill that hog
And take the heifer to Yacolt.
My grandmother said, “hum”, but she was looking south -
waiting for the light from Bonneville.

I’d been a help they said, maybe so,
I’d gathered all the eggs without breaking any -
Watched the mornings leave quite early in July -
Fished with string; and sneaking past the Johnson’s bull,
Patrolled the border of the woods with bow and arrow.

The hazel grove had long been overgrown with grapes
And the luncheons served to Cat and me hidden there
Were chattering affairs suffused with dappled pastel light.
The guests were always equal to the crumbs and rinds,
For then the vines and brush were busy towns; but now,
As October’s copper haze obscured my view of summer,
The ventures of spring were winding down. Cat blinked
When tired berries fell on the grass – out past the silo
The brown fields sighed under the hayricks, and coming
Upon yet another bend, the walking river stopped.

Grandpa said he’d get me a BB gun for Christmas
If Margaret didn’t care; then he squinted at Silver Glance,
Muttering that he’d left an axe down there.
I asked if it was stuck in the side of the mountain -
He grinned and spit a gob of snoose at a gang of ants -
“I don’t know, maybe so” he shrugged, then looking up as
Some ravens talked, shrugged again and walked into the barn.
I examined my bow and arrow – so this is when doubts arise -
In the nervous month, when mysterious congregations of birds,
Wheeling specks high above the farm gathered to discuss -
Soon decide, and moving off like black stars of singular intent,
Disappear eastward and silent over Silver Glance.

Three times the sun had dwindled in October
And I supposed the other two; five times sure then, that
Beyond the burnished sky and foreshortened foothill ridges
An implacable emerald dimension was streaming off
Some dazzling sheet of ice; and that after Halloween
The blinding crystal air would allow but brief forays
Into an arctic of unearthly space and long sky cold.
The old house would provide the shelter of confinement -
But it would be in a different land than summer -
For the flickering lamps would not dispel the ancient caves
Beckoning from the corners of its rooms; and short indeed,
Would be the warmth kindled in dark mornings
Between black primal nights passing like slow drum beats.

The hog would be ham, the heifer cozy in Yacolt.
Perhaps Sears had sold some small boys ordnance.
But despite such farmstead feats, uncertain fears would linger still
And my grandmother, edging back the curtain and looking south,
Would say, “hum”; and be waiting for the light from Bonneville.

[Memories of 1938 (I think)
Written in August, 1993]

Wandering footsteps,
At night,
Follow the music.

Close by,
At night,
The edge lies silent.

On the edge.

I went on past many cirques,
Their walls of snow and spacious murals,
Shining down on azure lakes.
Sparkles dancing off their sides.
The blue sky amused with clouds of cotton.

I went on past jutting spires and melting tongues of ice.
Where the world lay below me distant and weary.
I sat by the shore of a tiny lake and dropped in a hook,
And pulled out one funny fish from the bottomless deep,
Would you believe – its flesh was the color of blood.

Bottomless.

Eilean Donan Castle in Scotland

Song Of Isolde – Lyrics by Eliza Gilkyson

Wake up, wake up Tristan,
Our bed of leaves and sand is cold,
I fell asleep here in your arms,
More than a thousand years ago.
———————–

The tragic love story of Tristan and Isolde has been told and retold many different ways. In my version of the story, the love potion and the poisoned wine remind us that love and fate are two faces of the same universal force.

This story began in England during the reign of King Arthur, when a prince by the name of Drust was born in Ireland. During his birth, his mother died, and so Drust became known as Tristan, from the word tristesse, meaning sorrow.

Tristan stayed at the court of his uncle, King Mark of Cornwall, training to become a knight. When Tristan had proved himself worthy, he challenged the knight Morold to battle. Morold was a hulking knight who appeared every seven years at the court of Cornwall demanding a tribute of young men and girls. The tribute was always paid, since no champion had ever dared to face Morold. On the day of reckoning, a long battle raged, ending when Tristan vanquished Morold with a blow to the skull. Worn nearly to death from the battle, Tristan sought help in the nearby kingdom of Queen Isolde, who ruled the land after her husband King Angwish was killed. Fearing that Queen Isolde might be related to Morold, Tristan masqeraded as a minstrel, calling himself Tantris.

Tristan was nursed back to health by the Queen’s daughter, Princess Isolde, who had the magical ability to heal the sick and wounded. As Tristan’s vigor returned, the Princess became enamored of him. But the Queen was concerned that this was not in her daughter’s best interest.

Meanwhile, Tristan sent word back to King Mark informing his uncle of his whereabouts. Inspired by the unsurpassed beauty of Isolde, Tristan elaborated his message with lyrical verses in her honor. So moved was King Mark by Tristan’s poetry that he sent word to Princess Isolde that he wanted to marry her and make her his queen. If her mother the Queen agreed to the arrangement, she should send the princess back on the ship with Tristan.

Indeed, the Queen was exhilarated by the prospect of her daughter’s marriage to a powerful king and she resolved to allow the marriage. But the Queen kept this to herself, until the time came to surprise her daughter with the good news that a ship was ready to take her to King Mark.

During the burial preparations of Morold, Princess Isolde discovered a broken fragment of metal in his skull. She removed it with the thought that it might lead to his killer. Later, while doting on the Minstrel Tantris, she noticed a there was a piece of missing from his sword. Matching the fragment with the sword, she was horrified to realize that her friend the minstrel was the killer of Morold.

Princess Isolde reasoned that her only choice was to kill Tristan. But she could not bare the thought of losing this man she had grown so fond of. She determined to first kill Tristan and then herself, using poisoned wine as the instrument of death. She sent her servant Brangraine to bring her a flask of wine laced with a lethal poison.

But at that moment, a herald rushed into the princess’ chambers to inform her that a ship had come to take her to be wed to the King of Cornwall. Her plans were set aside.

Isolde let it show that she was very unhappy about this revelation of her nuptial engagement with the elderly Mark. But her mother had a solution. She gave a bottle containing a love potion to Brangraine, with strict instructions to keep it hidden until they reached Cornwall, to give to Isolde on her wedding night.

The next morning, Isolde left Ireland for Cornwall, with Tristan at the helm of the ship. On the ship, Isolde heard a young sailor singing a poignant song. A passage in the song stirred her passions with promises of love and possibilities.

Fresh blows the wind,
To the homeland,
My Irish child,
Where do you wait?

This inflamed ill feelings toward Tristan/Tantris, the man responsible for taking her to Mark and killing her previous lover. She resolved right there to put an end to Tristan.

Isolde ordered Brangraine to bring the poisoned wine and have Tristan sent to her cabin. When he arrived, Isolde beguiled him with her love, but she was still fully intent on killing him and herself. With his spirits soaring, she offered him the drink of wine.

“Why so somber, Princess?” Tristan asked, gazing into her soul.

All she had to say was, “To the winds of fate.” And they lifted their cups and drank.

But Brangraine, whose duty would have been to commit suicide along with her mistress, considered love preferable to death and switched the poisoned wine for the love potion.

Their fate was now inextricably woven together. Tristan and Isolde became engulfed in a love of unrelenting passion, a love so sweeping that the two gave no heed to the consequences. The two lovers spent the remainder of their journey embraced and swearing eternal love.

But when they arrived in Cornwall, King Mark fell deeply in love with Isolde and they were wed as planned. But despite the pageantry and adoration, her secret love for Tristan could not be repressed. After the marriage ceremony, Isolde and Mark retired to their bedchamber where the darkness hid deception. Brangraine and Isolde switched places before the consuming act. Isolde found her lover and spent the night with him instead, secretly returning to her bridal bed before daylight.

The love affair between Tristan and Isolde continued for months until King Mark finally learned of it. He forgave Isolde, but banned his nephew Tristan from Cornwall.

Tristan joined the Round Table of Arthur where he engaged in battles and knightly adventures, making a name for himself at the court in Camelot. On one of his quests, he journeyed to Brittany where he met Iseult of the White Hands. He was intrigued by her partly because of the similarity of her name to his own true love. Word of this eventually got around to the King, and on his command, he had Tristan married to Iseult. But the marriage was without love or children.

Tristan continued to do knightly deeds of high renown. His prowess grew so strong that one day he set off to destroy a deadly dragon that was ravaging the countryside. Armed with only bravery and his sword, Tristan faced the dragon in a fiery battle to the death. Although the serpent attacked him with fire and claw, Tristan was the ultimate victor. But during the battle, he too received a mortal wound. A brush with the serpent’s tongue had poisoned him. Exhausted, Tristan was barely able to return to Brittany.

Sick and dying, Tristan sent for Isolde, in the hope that she would be able to cure him. In his message, he asked that if she agreed to come, to have the returning ship set its sails in white, but if she refused, to set sails of black. He suffered in his bedchamber, hovering on the brink of life and death, praying that he might once more be graced by the presence of his true love.

The ship returned carrying Isolde, Queen of Cornwall, its full sails white against the sky. But it was Iseult who first spied the ship from the highest tower of the Castle. Iseult went to Tristan’s bedside and in her jealousy she told him, “The sails are black.”

At that, Tristan turned his head to the wall in sorrow and his life drained away.

Isolde, arrived and seeing she was too late, fell down upon Tristan, stricken down with a broken heart.

This had a profound impact on Iseult. Upon seeing the deep love that the two held for each other, Iseult regretted her action. She arranged that the two would be buried side by side. From Tristan’s grave there grew a great vine, and from Isolde’s grave sprung a rose. The two plants intertwined, and they are still a source of musical inspiration and poetry to this day.

—————
Wake up, wake up Tristan
The wind breathes dark words through the forest
There is sorrow on the land
Love must have cast a spell upon us
The path lies open there before us
Wake up, wake up Tristan

- Eliza Gilkyson

No alternatives to the smoke.

There were no alternates to our planned hike to a wetland. And so the class went to a bog in a deep valley near the Pasayten Wilderness.

Well, it really wasn’t a bog.  It was a poor fen, which is a bit of minutiae that nobody but a wetland scientist would care squat about. Being summer, the water table was low and the ground was dry, and the weather was cool, and the students were lulled into mild narcosis by the smoke, like bees before the smoker.

The class was definitely subdued that day, and most focused on the moment, counting huckleberries or strawberries. This was a fine alternative to lecturing as my throat was a bit raspy. I was a bit worried that someone would get smoke sickness, but the class persisted, lost in this smoky meadow for the better part of the day.

I will always cherish the wry comment one of them made as we were leaving,

“I have never enjoyed a poor fen so much”.

Botanists giving a squat about a poor fen.

If sun was moon and dew was snow,
We’d wake to find the world we know,
Where winter lingers for a while,
And you can thrill me with your smile.

I do of course refer,
To teddy, who I did prefer,
As best of friends for many years,
Who listened with his teddy ears,

While I would open up and share,
My daily bumps and nightly mares.
And he would nod and fall to rest,
And I would wake renewed with zest.

And if I needed sound advice,
On travel, books or rolling dice,
He somehow always knew what phrase,
Would brighten up the dreary days.

There are those of us who are,
Wont to muse upon a star.
And it is nice to find,
That you, too, are the thoughtful kind.

Let’s reminisce upon the breeze,
Of sweet sentiment-alities,
And while away our sunset days,
Laughing in each other’s gaze.

The clues to the location of the hare were contained in Williams’ book “Masquerade”, published in 1979. The story follows the character Jack Hare who loses the golden hare while taking it from the Moon to her lover the Sun. The reader of the book is left to find the location. The book contained a set of 15 exquisite drawings that provided clues to the location of the treasure.

Old as Earth, a Drawing from Masquerade

Clues were formed by rearranging the letters surrounding the pictures in an order given by the subjects in the drawings.

The final clue was contained by rearranging the letters around a picture of Isaac Newton to form the phrase: “Catherine’s Longfinger Over Shadows Earth Buried Yellow Amulet Midday Points The Hour In Light Of Equinox Look You”. The initials provided a second clue, CLOSE BY AMPTHILL.

The golden hare was buried near a statue of Catherine of Aragon, in a park in Bedfordshire near Ampthill. The specific location of where to dig was indicated by the shadow cast by the statue at midday on the Vernal Equinox, March 21.

Two million copies of the book were sold during the excitement over the treasure hunt that gripped Britain for two years. The clues in the book were solved correctly in 1982 by two Manchester physics teachers, Mike Barker and John Rousseau.

But the hunt also involved scandal and intrigue. The prize winner was “Ken Thomas”, revealed to be an alias for Dugald Thompson, who got the location through a partnership with Williams’ former girlfriend. She knew the approximate location of the hare, which was then located with metal detectors. Barker and Rousseau had actually unearthed the prize, but hadn’t noticed it; Thompson discovered it in piles they left behind.

The hare was used as a prize for a holding company belong to Thompson, but it was never claimed and was eventually auctioned at Sotheby’s in December 1988 for £31,900, to an anonymous buyer. Williams had unsuccessfully bid on the hare, but dropped out at £6,000.

Williams was briefly reunited with the hare during a BBC Four sixty minute documentary on his work, shown on December 2, 2009. After the show, the hare returned to its anonymous owner in Egypt. The documentary showcased the best of William’s from the last three decades.

Williams is a talented artist, who works in a colorful, surreal style.

Kit Williams - Wishing Fish Clock, Regent Arcade, Cheltenham

This clock was created by Kit Williams. Its working mechanism was built by clockmaker Michael Harding. As the duck at the top lays its golden eggs, they travel down into the lower part of the clock.