A Background of Birds

The air smelled sweet. The growing heat and humidity seem to draw it out of the trees, the flowers, and the healing plants. Near either ocean the salty air often overpowers those aromas but as you move inland, they take over again. Whether we’re on the beaches of the Atlantic, or the gulf, the sand feels the same. The finest sand is on Caladesi Island where we spent an afternoon once searching for shark teeth. They’re usually black, triangular in shape, and scattered like shells and pebbles. We also wandered the soft sandy trails through the thick mangrove. Some of the trails weaved like a maze and ended abruptly at the water’s edge. Others circled back and opened onto the broad gentle beach where waves lapped quietly, turning the bright white sand to cream and back again, infinitely, over and over.

Four of us searched for shark teeth, while my mother-in-law sat on her walker positioned in the shade of the trees at the back of the beach. She wore sunglasses, a straw hat, and a floral-patterned outfit with tropical colors. She watched us sift and search the sand, seaweed, and the under driftwood where a lot of things collect. She tracked our progress, looked for herons and egrets, listened for doves, and kept the snacks and water out of the sun in her big canvas bag. Whenever one of us found a tooth, we yelled out and if we were close to her, dropped them off so she could examine and hold them. It was a treasure hunt for ancient teeth that were shed in the sea thousands, even millions of years ago.

Further south near Clearwater, we watched manatees slowly float and spin only three feet below us in the spring fed pool. We were in kayaks, and my mother-in-law was in the front of one of them while my brother-in-law paddled. Manatees are big, friendly and vegetarian, so experts say they aren’t a threat. We watched them disappear and reappear for a while because they blended in with the green water and ripples from the springs.

My mother-in-law passed away unexpectedly last spring. She was only a couple of months from moving here. My wife had found a great place for her to live. We thought she’d like it and it was only four miles away—close enough to get together frequently for last minute dinners. I imagined winter errands with her while she was wrapped in a huge down coat, a hat my wife would have knitted for her using her favorite colors, or a traditional Korean pattern, and extra warm mittens to shield her from everything. Her service was in the cemetery next to where my father-in-law is buried. There was one large tent that shaded almost everyone from the sun, palm trees, lush plantings all around, and directly in our view was a small mausoleum for someone else’s family. Her eulogy was read in Korean and English. My bother-in-law spoke, our daughter spoke, and a friend of hers played two songs on his guitar. It was a simple, beautiful service.

I don’t think she could have imagined there would be a constant singing of birds in the background. One particular bird landed on the mausoleum in plain view, sang for a minute or two, and flew away. It returned to the same spot three minutes later and sang in the same way, then flew away, and returned again. It’s appearance and reappearance felt like it was meant for us, signaling something, checking on us.

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“Body like a feather.” She was describing a dancer during our last birthday dinner with her.

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For 어머님 (eomeonim)

Songs :: Take My Hand, Precious Lord by Mahalia Jackson, Hold To God’s Unchanging Hand and Thank Ya by TCC Gospel Choir, Are You Going With Me by Pat Metheny Group, Caoineadh Cú Chulainn (Lament) by Bill Whelan and Neil Martin, and The Dreamer by Immanuel Wilkins

© C. Davidson

Long Slow Dusk :: [Supplemental]

Wisconsin July :: IMG_7809.HEIC — July 3, 2025 — 9:09:17 PM — Apple iPhone 16 — Wide Camera - 26 mm f1.6 — 5120 × 3451 — 1.5 MB — ISO 100 — 50 mm — O ev — f1.6— 1/121 s — Menomonie, Coulee Region

Songs :: Sunshine In Chicago by Sun Kil Moon, The Warmth of the Sun by The Beach Boys, Take the Long Way Home by Supertramp, Lake Marie by John Prine, and Tell Me All the Things You Do by Fleetwood Mac

For J.L, A.C., and L.F.

© C. Davidson

Lost and Found

I usually wake up slow, foggy and need to ease into the morning. When riding with friends on Saturdays, I often need to catch up to them because I start after they do and depending on the route, sometimes they begin a few miles ahead of where I begin. On this ride I left thirty minutes later and was four miles behind them, so I had a lot of ground to cover. After arriving at Lake Como, I got disoriented and rode in the wrong direction for almost two miles before stopping to regroup and check the navigation app. Still turned around, I asked a woman getting off a city bus which way Maryland Street was because that was the way to Lake Phalen. She pointed me north. Once there I turned west and rode another half mile before I rechecked the map. I went in the wrong direction again. Then I saw a postal worker walking from house to house and asked her how to get to Lake Phalen and she pointed east.

Miles later and back on track I crossed over interstate 35E and saw a man standing next to the off ramp. It was clear he’d been out there for a while because he had a cooler and a lawn chair. He was lean, had shoulder length hair, a dark tan, with a tank top and shorts. I stopped at the light, and we greeted each other and asked how each other was doing. We both said fine. Then he mentioned the heat and how it must be hot riding. I agreed and said it must be even hotter for him to not be moving. He nodded. He didn’t ask me for anything, but later I regretted not sharing money. I was too wrapped up in my own frustrations and impatience to make the effort. The light turned green, we said goodbye and I continued up a long hill into a new neighborhood where I swallowed my first bug of the day.

I eventually caught up with my friends near the shore of the lake, laid my bike down and collapsed onto the bench. I was cranky. Since they’d been waiting for a while, they were rested and ready to go, but I needed way more time to regroup, get water, and use the bathroom. I figured I’d catch them on the other side of the lake before the route split towards downtown Saint Paul, but I didn’t. After I circled the lake, I road through an industrial area, skirted some park land and into the center of downtown where I eventually crossed over the Mississippi. There was no sight of them and once I was on the other side, I stopped because I was turned around again. I checked their position, and they were far ahead weaving through the flood plain of cottonwoods below the river bluffs. I finally determined where I was and after a few miles of riding through the same trees, I rounded a corner and found them sitting on another bench where I swallowed my second bug of the day. For the first time that afternoon I’d be riding with them, not in circles and not chasing them.

Late that afternoon, I returned home and my wife mentioned that the group she’d been dancing with at a park outside, were a bit confused about the moves they were all very experienced at doing. Our daughter said she’d been outside for a long time too and her head was foggy and she had a nagging headache. They both wondered if it was the nearly invisible wildfire smoke that was affecting us. It made sense because we all seemed off, but our lungs, noses and throats felt mostly fine, so we couldn’t be sure. I stepped out to the deck after dinner and the sunset was electric. I looked back into the kitchen and finally felt relaxed and watched them talk at the table like I had a thousand times before.

Songs :: Everybody Hold Still by Grace Jones, One Fine Day by David Byrne and Brian Eno, Sail On, Sailor by The Beach Boys, Alone by The Cure, and Hot Sun by Wilco

© C. Davidson

Embers :: [Supplemental]

Rise and Remember :: Say Their Names Cemetery—5.25.25

Songs :: The Dreamer by Immanuel Wilkins, No Place Left to Land by Lindy Vopnfjord, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Gil Scott-Heron, Gotta Serve Somebody by Bob Dylan, and Times of Trouble by Temple of the Dog

© C. Davidson

P l a c e s :: [Echo]

We have neighbor friends who ask us to keep an eye on their house when they’re out of town, and sometimes we take care of their dog Griz. Recently Griz and I went on a short walk in our neighborhood. We came across four young kids playing near the base of a large silver maple tree on the edge of the park and school playground. I couldn’t make out what they were doing at first, but as we got closer it was clear two of them were building something, while the other two gathered items nearby, like sticks and rocks. I heard one of the girls mention forts, shelters and a special place. It was warm with a slight breeze and Griz was sniffing every tree, pole and the one red fire hydrant. It’s as if he didn’t even notice the kids around him. The area was filled with the distant voices of other kids too and the faint smell of spring and early lilacs. It’s a familiar aroma from childhood and their activity was as well. When we walked by, there wasn’t more than a small hole with a few branches poked into the ground around it, a pile of sticks and small rocks to be incorporated into whatever they were making.

It flushed out memories that filled me up and I suddenly remembered the field at the end of the street from where I grew up. The field continued endlessly into more fields, then wheat, bluffs, coulees, river flats and eventually into the arid mountains thirty miles away. The area we spent the most time in closest to Ferguson Drive, is now called Grande Vista Park. It has a playground, baseball diamonds, dugouts, chain link fences, a small building with bathrooms, parking, and a cluster of houses beyond all of it. In the nineteen-sixties it was empty and felt a little wild to us. It was endless, but it wasn't wild, or remote. The wildness was in our heads. Its remoteness was in our heads. If a neighbor across the street looked out their windows, or were mowing their lawn, or washing their car in the driveway, they could have seen us organizing, planning and digging nearby. What we were doing and where we were doing it wouldn't have seemed unusual to them, but to us it was magical. We were inventing a world. Thinking back, the partially buried structure we planned to build wasn't about the result, it was about the idea and the adventure.

Eventually in the distance someone’s parents would call out for one of us to come home for dinner. We all perked up knowing another parent would probably be calling out too and we were ready because we were tired and hungry. We'd been gone since lunch. We left most of what we'd gathered for our project next to the small trench we dug intending to return and continue our work. The only item we took with us was the shovel we'd borrowed from someone's garage. We scattered towards our separate houses for the night and when I walked through my backdoor, my mom discretely accessed my level of dirt to determine what I might track in.

Griz and I continued our walk through the thick scent of blossoms and beyond the four kids busy building their place, devoted to it, maybe even dreaming of a castle on a rock. As much as they were physically creating something, I think it mostly swirled in their heads. They described it out loud to each other in the shade of the maple tree, just like we had done in our field of dust.

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“Memory is a wild and private place.” Margaret Wise Brown — author of Goodnight Moon

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“The dust has come to stay. You may stay, or pass on through, or whatever.” Wall quote from the opening sequence of the film Paris, Texas

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Songs :: Daydream Believer by The Monkees, Summer Breeze by Seals and Crofts, Out In the Country by Three Dog Night, Time Waited by My Morning Jacket, Time In A Bottle by Jim Croce, After The Gold Rush by Neil Young, and Blue Horizon by Graham Parker

© C. Davidson

Processing :: [Supplemental]

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“Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is a superhuman achievement.” Albert Camus

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Songs :: Times of Trouble by Temple of the Dog, A Day At The Races by Jurassic 5 Feat. Big Daddy Kane and Percee P, Messy by Lola Young, and Pourin’ It All Out by Graham Parker

© C. Davidson

Point Me North

Sometimes when I’m riding or walking through a neighborhood, especially at night, and even floating through it on Google Earth, I’m suddenly flooded with imagined stories of the people who live there. Not usually people visible on the streets, but the countless unseen ones living inside their homes and apartments, each with rich and complicated lives. The stories are mostly assumptions, so I have a lot of questions I’d like to ask them. How many live there? What are your interiors like? What objects do you surround yourself with? What sorts of crafts, entertainment, and activities do you enjoy? Who do you spend holidays with? How do you make a living? Are you happy? How can you possibly live with the amount of overhead fluorescent light flooding your space? Occasional views through a parted curtain reveals a bright opening to the inside which enhances whether it feels inviting or uncomfortable—incandescent or florescent. It dawned on me recently that most of this is triggered by the feeling the architecture gives me and how it shapes what I imagine.

I remember experiencing this more frequently when I lived in Providence and explored neighborhoods new to me like College Hill, Fox Point, Smith Hill, and Olneyville. I spent most of my time near Benefit Street though—a street that witnessed the middle of the 18th Century, the American Revolution, and the Claus von Bülow appeal trial. Occasionally I’d join friends at a bar on nearby Main Street and more rarely attend a party somewhere. On this night two professors had a house party, and students were invited. Most were undergraduates who I was just beginning to know. Two of the professors were married to each other and the third was a good friend of theirs. One of them oversaw the photo lab because she taught the photo-graphics class. A fellow classmate and I maintained the photo lab to earn our work study checks so I knew her the best. The party was at the married professor’s house. It was set back from Benefit Street a half block up a slight incline all the way to their front door. It felt familiar and welcoming because it was yellow and white and looked like a simple farmhouse with a front porch like ones I’d visited or lived in growing up.

I arrived after eleven and shoved my bike into some thick bushes on the side of their house—thick enough that it remained upright. The party had been going for hours before I arrived. After I greeted some of the students I knew, I looked for the professors hosting the party. I found them standing around a drafting table in a dark corner of their studio adjacent to the living room. They were looking at printed posters that reflected the light and illuminated their faces because the task lamp was so bright. They were always friendly, but I was still intimidated because they were serious people, and I was unsure of myself. I chatted with them for a little while and agreed that Univers was the perfect typeface for most projects.

After a cocktail or two, I was swept into the crowd that danced to a variety of music including the B-52’s. The song Rock Lobster stood out because we all sang in unison and synchronized our dance moves, which eventually found us lying on our backs with legs and arms in the air. After hours of dancing and talking I was tired and needed to head home. I said my goodbyes and a friend followed me out to talk where it was quiet. He asked me if I was OK to ride as I disappeared into the bushes to grab my bike. I said I was, and we headed down their front lawn to the sidewalk on Benefit Street. We walked through the thick leaves which slowly grew louder than the music we’d left behind. We chatted for a few more minutes on the sidewalk, and he asked if I was OK one last time. If not, he suggested I could leave my bike, and he’d drive me home. “No, that’s alright, thanks though… but I do need you to point me north.”

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“Therefore, the places in which we have experienced day dreaming reconstitute themselves in a new daydream, and it is because our memories of former dwelling-places are relived as day-dreams and these dwelling-places of the past remain in us for all time.”
Gaston Bachelard

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Songs :: Time Capsule album by The B-52’s, Tangled Up In Blue by Bob Dylan, Snowflake by Kate Bush, All My Days by Alexi Murdoch, and Flamenco Sketches by Miles Davis

© C. Davidson

Fullblast :: [Supplemental]

Chaz On Ice :: (2010–2024)

“Dogs and angels are not very far apart.” Charles Bukowski

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Songs :: Are You Going With Me by Pat Metheny Group, Goodbye by Steve Earle, Move On Up by Curtis Mayfield, Blue Horizon by Graham Parker, and Thank You For Sending Me An Angel by Blondshell

© C. Davidson

Solving for X

1 + 1 = 3 :: Image Inspired by Paul Rand

Most of my favorite academic memories from junior high school, high school, college, and grade school, usually involve art, choir, theater, or gym. I wasn’t as interested in science, biology, history, chemistry, or math, so any moments involving those subjects are much hazier. I enjoyed English and Algebra though and especially liked listening to the instructor explain algebraic equations and neatly resolve them on the chalkboard. He cared about precision and the perfect single solution in the end. I didn’t like studying math and struggled when I needed to prove I understood the hardest algebraic problems on a test. I was impatient and scattered and looked forward to the answers, but I enjoyed the process the most.

My dad didn’t appreciate my view of algebra. In addition to being a gifted architect and water colorist, he was an accomplished engineer who could calculate spans and loads in his head. We usually talked about architecture and painting, not engineering, unless he asked me about the deck I was building. When an idiosyncratic form was prominent in one of his buildings, or if it was sited in an unusual way, he framed it first by function and engineering. If we talked long enough though, he’d eventually describe how the late afternoon light raked across the textured concrete at the airport terminal he designed, or the deep warmth of the reclaimed barn wood he used for various interiors, or how the two-story wall of glass, divided by fifteen square panes in the Scott House brought the outside inside.

Many years later when I was required to take micro and macroeconomics classes in college, I didn’t study hard enough to reiterate perfect answers on the written tests but loved the lectures in Linfield Hall. When I mentioned that I enjoyed economics to my mom and dad while visiting during winter break one year, he was surprised. He was surprised because he knew I hadn’t enjoyed math classes in the past. I explained that these economics courses were more about trends, human behavior and storytelling than math—like psychology and literature.

Long before that when I was in grade school, I had a crush on my third-grade teacher Ms. Thomas. So did my best friend and we looked for opportunities to clean the chalkboards and straighten-up the classroom. One late November afternoon, she asked me to stay after school to help her decorate the large cork pin-up boards with various holiday symbols and silhouettes. They were made from a variety of colored construction paper that she’d already prepared. After we removed everything she had put up for Thanksgiving, I began by pinning up four red 18” x 3” vertical strips to represent candles, with separate yellow almond shapes above them to indicate the flames. After I’d neatly pinned them up and moved on to another part of the board, she walked over and gently mentioned the rule of three, and five, and how asymmetry and odd numbers are often more visually interesting and dynamic than even numbers, so I removed one. I’ve never forgotten it. I imagined sending her a thank you note for teaching me that but never did. I would have added that fifteen years after that afternoon with her, a design professor drew two identical black vertical shapes with an identical white space between them and told us 1 + 1 = 3. They were both right because three is still significantly better.

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“Childhood is an empty space, like the beginning of the world.” Anselm Kiefer

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For the Teachers

Songs :: These Days by Jackson Browne, Everything In Its Right Place by Brad Mehldau Trio, I Was Young When I Left Home and Trust Yourself by Bob Dylan, and Keep On Doin’ It by Tom Scott & The L.A. Express

© C. Davidson

Harder to Build Than to Burn :: [Supplemental]

Landing

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“I want to say to our Republican colleagues: Pay attention. We're here today in the hopes that you will see the light. But if you do not see the light, we will bring the fire. Resist.” REP. AYANNA PRESSLEY

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“I imagine it as a chilling final turn of the plot. His world is coming to an end. he will never have another good day. The loser label will haunt him. The law will pursue him. mental illness will hobble him. His properties will bankrupt him.” Peter Marks

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Songs :: Break the Chain, Ohio, and Revolution Blues by Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Sabotage by Beastie Boys, and It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) by Bob Dylan

© C. Davidson

Rice Creek

Rice Creek :: Milky Way Image–NASA

The gravel road followed the edge of the woods for a couple of miles. The trees were a mix of white pine, spruce, aspen, and maple, and even at dusk the snowy spaces between them flickered while we drove through. We exited onto a downhill and into a long meandering meadow that Rice Creek ran through. The road eventually flattened out and crossed the creek through a covered wooden bridge then crawled back up the other side. It was picturesque and made me think of the Bridges of Madison County story because covered bridges are uncommon here. It was dark enough that the string lights outlining the large openings on each end, the corners, and the eaves just below the shingles shimmered.

When it got dark the sky was mostly stars. Out there it looked like an image from the James Webb Space Telescope. Everything was in high resolution and the Milky Way felt close and luminescent. If you knew where to look, the disk of Andromeda was probably visible too. This is the biggest reason I imagine living in the country, away from the city haze. It’s easy to get used to the lights and black sky in town, but when I’m out there, I’m reminded that we’re part of something huge and overwhelming. What comforts me is that these stars are the same stars we saw with our daughter night skiing on Burntside Lake near Ely many years earlier, or when I midnight hiked with a friend in the Little Belt Mountains four decades before that.

It was early evening by the time we settled in. We ate our dinner of pulled pork, corn bread, beans and greens under a thick couch quilt and started a long movie. The cabin had electric baseboard heat, but we preferred the wood stove and kept it crackling and snapping all evening. There had only been a handful of times before this that our dog had the opportunity to lay on flagstone in front of a wood burning stove. He was so warm I was surprised his short fawn fur didn’t ignite. He'd already eaten so he only got up to drink a couple of times during the evening and go outside to relive himself twice. Besides that, he only moved so I could load more wood. When we woke in the morning there were still glowing embers and he had since relocated to the couch and the quilt. After our lazy breakfast, lounging, and a lazy lunch, we spent the afternoon walking through the woods and playing fetch on miles of trails that had been cleared by a snowmobile.

Songs :: Always Returning by Brian Eno, Home by Bonnie Raitt, Satellites by Rickie Lee Jones, Buckets of Rain by Bob Dylan, and Sands of Time by Fleetwood Mac

© C. Davidson

2024 Ritual Burn :: [Supplemental]

There is a bird and a stone in your body. Your job is not to kill the bird with the stone. Victoria Chang, From “Love Letters,” The Trees Witness Everything

Songs :: It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) by Bob Dylan, Don’t Give Up by Peter Gabriel, and Higher Ground by Stevie Wonder

© C. Davidson

Maine

Cadillac Mountain

Northwest Montana has huckleberries and cherries, Florida has oranges and bananas, Hawaii and Oregon seem to have everything, and I discovered Maine is known for blueberries. Recently a friend of my wife gave us peaches she grew locally. I didn’t know peaches could be grown here but they can, and they were exceptional, so I ate two. If a climate has a growing season at all, or a greenhouse, and someone tries hard enough, fruit can be grown almost anywhere.

I’d imagined visiting Maine since I was a kid. I don’t remember why I thought about Maine so much. We didn’t have family there or any ancestral roots as far as I knew, but it always felt like a place I’d like. The geography looked familiar with the perfect merge of sprawling forests and island range mountains like where I grew up, but different because it flanks an ocean. Around this same time, I discovered images of New Zealand and decided that was another place I wanted to visit, or live, because it looked familiar too. The landscape was magical, especially panoramas of Milford Sound. Our daughter lived and worked on a farm in Kati Kati on the north island during her spring break one year, so I learned a little about their culture and daily life through some of her stories.

We flew to Maine three summers ago for my wife’s aunt’s birthday and mini family reunion. We spent most of our time in and around Bar Harbor with big ocean views, good food, biking, hikes to Bar Island at low tide and on the grippy granite of Cadillac Mountain. A few from our group even saw Martha Stewart and her entourage walking through the nearby arboretum. I was taking a nap at the hotel that afternoon, so I missed her. Along with blueberries, there’s a lot of talk about lobster in Maine as well. It’s on the menu in most bars and restaurants like The Lobster Pound, or a quieter place like where we were. It’s a frequent ingredient in rolls, salads, and pastas, or the entire thing can be steaming on a plate. Eating them whole is messy and complicated, so it requires plastic bibs, paper towels, and special utensils. During her birthday dinner, no one had the entire thing on their plate. Our long table was covered with a white cloth, entrees, baskets of bread, olives, cheese, cocktails, clusters of flickering candles, blueberries, with overlapping conversations, and my wife’s aunt sitting next to me.

For Hyang Ja

Songs :: Hejira by Joni Mitchell, Embryonic Journey by Jefferson Airplane, Home At Last by Steely Dan, and Big Light by Houses

© C. Davidson

W i n t e r W h e a t :: [Supplemental]

'Highwood Curtain' (Painting Detail)

Wheat :: Photograph

Songs :: Rock My Soul by Elvin Bishop, Copperline by James Taylor, The Wind by Cat Stevens, and I Remember Everything by John Prine

© C. Davidson

A Canopy of Trees

Maui Hideout

Bridge

Kitchen View

Baldwin Beach

Haleakalā Caldera

After decades, we finally made time for a honeymoon and found ourselves elevated high above the jungle floor because our rental was built on piers. The ground below us sloped through the trees towards open pasture and volcanic beaches. It felt like an exotic, well-appointed tree house with a view of the ocean and the hazy profile of Moloka’i. I’d never been to Hawaii before. My wife had, friends and relatives had, and they all described their vacations, adventures on mopeds, famous beaches, and even living in Honolulu. After our arrival in Kahului on Maui, we picked up our rental car, some dinner, groceries for our stay, and headed to the Airbnb not far off the Hana Highway. We parked in the designated pullout, grabbed all our stuff, and followed the narrow jungle path across a small red bridge lit with string lights. We dropped everything off and explored the place before discovering a red dirt road that led to a lush green meadow, strong warm winds, and cows that greeted us at the fence line. It was getting dark, and the shore was very rugged, so we stopped and soaked in the view.

The next afternoon we drove to the town of Makawao in Upcountry on the slope of Haleakala and wandered through the small shops, found lunch and a spot to eat that looked towards the ocean. Regardless of how close the water was, whether we walked through it, or we snorkeled in it, or it was just an distant silver band, the ocean always framed everything. We looked inward too—into the dense jungle, the waterfall pools my wife swam in, and the black sand beach that glittered like diamond dust. After we finished our lunch, we drove higher up the slope passing through pastures spotted with black volcanic boulders, pineapple fields, tropical flowers, and palm tree groves. The steep road eventually switch-backed through the clouds until we reached the summit. After parking and reading signs about the climate and geology, we hiked a mile into the caldera before turning around because we remembered what the park ranger had said. Hiking in this vast landscape at ten thousand feet is deceiving. The crater is eleven to three miles wide on average and the trail gradually descends two-thousand feet. Sometimes tourists wearing flip flops and board shorts underestimate the distance, altitude, and their fitness and hike five or six miles in, then become stranded and need to be rescued because they can’t make it back out.

Maui is comprised of two shield volcanoes, and we were on top of the biggest one. When we spoke with the ranger about its geology, I asked him if there was a threat they could explode someday like Mount Saint Helens did. He said it’s unlikely they’d ever become active in our lifetime and if they did, they wouldn’t explode, they’d ooze. After a few hours on top, we drove down and stopped at a botanical garden and a lavender farm where the smell was thick. We ended our day with dinner in Haliimaile at the Country Store—a large one-and-a-half story converted warehouse with wood floors and a large front porch. It served the pineapple plantations that surround it and the community of workers who lived nearby. At our table, my wife’s face was lit by a cluster of candles next to a large mason jar full of yellow hibiscus flowers, like the ones we’d been seeing for days.

For Lahaina

Songs :: Lahaina by Loggins and Messina, Waterfront by Simple Minds, A Case of You by Joni Mitchell, Hot Sun by Wilco, and Gimme Shelter covered by Patti Smith

© C. Davidson

Expecting Too Much :: [Supplemental]

Songs :: Tangled Up In Blue by Bob Dylan, Thank You for Sending Me an Angel by Blondshell, Let’s Start by Fela Kuti

© C. Davidson

A Small Amount of Free Air

MRI

The Tube

The Ironman Ride provided three different overlapping loops—30, 60, or 100 miles. Each route was fully supported with frequent pit stops. Pit stops usually provide port-a-potties, park facility or school bathrooms, snacks, water, Gatorade, simple first aid supplies and sometimes mechanical assistance. It was a gray and drizzling spring day, and I hadn’t ridden my bike since the previous Fall. I was out of shape, exhausted and struggled to make it to the 85-mile pit stop before I quit. When that happens, they provide buses to transport riders and their bikes to the next pit stop, or back to the starting point.

I felt odd on the bus, during the drive home, and all evening long. I assumed it was dehydration, so I drank a lot of water but the next morning I felt worse. I was lucky to get a clinic appointment for that afternoon, and the resulting blood work showed a high white cell count. There was an infection somewhere, so they prescribed an antibiotic and a muscle relaxer. Around midnight, an excruciating pain began in my rear-end, crawled between my legs, and settled in my abdomen like it was alive. It was overwhelming and after a few minutes I stumbled upstairs to tell my wife something was wrong. She followed me back down and called the nurse hotline. While she was on the phone describing my situation, I went into the bathroom and stripped for some reason, then crawled out on my hands and knees and passed out. The nurse and my wife determined the emergency room was necessary, so she called a neighbor and asked her to stay with our sleeping daughter while we were gone. She arrived within minutes, and we drove to the hospital where I remained for two weeks. 

They scanned me and the diagnosis was diverticulitis which can have a range of severity and complications. They also discovered a colon perforation because there were visible bubbles of free air in the MRI. So, they flooded me with intravenous antibiotics, nutrients, and morphine hanging in bags next to me for the first six days. I drifted from one day and night to the next being tended to by countless doctors and nurses only aware of some of them. When my visited in the evenings she asked me what I did all day and I said, “I have no idea.” Eventually we decided surgery was the best option which resulted in them removing ten inches of my colon. That was followed by five more days of recovery in the hospital before being released.

Around this time, our daughter took weekly piano lessons. During her lesson, I usually walked to a nearby coffee shop to get coffee for me and something for her. If the weather was nice, I’d relax outside, people watch and sometimes call my mom to chat. As I leaned against the wall, there was a loud explosion on the sidewalk just a few feet in front of me. “What was that?” my mom asked. It took me a few seconds to register what was happening inside the dust cloud and finally noticed a bike locked to a street sign had a flat rear tire. “Someone’s bike tire exploded,” I said. I’d seen it happen before but it’s a rare event because tubes are forgiving. Later that evening, I rode to the studio and after a few hours of working, there was a loud explosion at the other end of the space that made me jump. I had no idea what it was and walked over to see a flat rear tire because my tube blew too. I hadn’t had a flat in a very long time and had never had a tube explode. I attempted to patch it twice but couldn’t fix it. During my 3:00am cab ride home, I realized it was exactly one year to the day that my colon had ruptured.

Songs :: Everything In It’s Right Place by Radiohead, The Shape I’m In by The Band, Beng Beng Beng by Femi Kuti, Pump It Up by Elvis Costello, and Over (feat. Yebba) by Robert Glasper

© C. Davidson

Bighorn Flashback :: [Supplemental]

Into the Bighorn :: 2018

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"I’m very solitary, that’s all . . . I can’t dismiss it. Inside, I’m very much in communication with a lot of people and things who absolutely don’t know I’m in communication with them." Jean-Luc Godard

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Songs :: Rocky Mountain Way by Joe Walsh, Voices Inside My Head by The Police, Travelin’ Light by J.J. Cale, High and Dry by Radiohead, and These Shadows by Wooden Shjips

© C. Davidson

Lake Missoula

Glacial Calving :: Image – Video Still from Montana Natural Center

Potomac :: Image – Google Earth

The older I get the more nostalgic and emotional I’ve become. I think that’s common for a lot of people. My father and mother did and I’ve spoken with friends who are older too, and they’ve said the same thing. One has a daughter who left for her first year of college and for weeks afterwards he’d spend time in her old room every day because he missed her so much. I was surprised he told me about such intimate moments and relieved he did because I experienced that too. For months after our daughter left for her gap year to the other side of the world, I took much longer naps, welled with tears, told stories about her to anyone who’d listen, and made certain the plants she left behind were well tended.

As much as I’m nostalgic about people and animals, I’m just as nostalgic about places—places I’ve lived, read about, and some just briefly passed through. Places like Jordon, Montana where I refueled once, parts of Ohio, white sand beaches in Florida, and the drive into the Potomac east of Missoula with a sister and brother-in-law five decades ago. I hopped into the bed of the pick-up truck once we exited the highway and headed south deeper into the valley. The smell of pine and sweetgrass was fresh and the Doobie Brothers were loud enough for me to hear them playing in the cab. It was a perfect day and our trail of road dust through the lush green pastures revealed our path that led straight into the mountains and cooler air.

I spent a lot of time in Missoula during my youth, sometimes visiting for weeks. I heard the new Fleetwood Mac album in 1975 for the first time sitting on a couch at the Pine Palace house one summer. Fleetwood Mac was playing at the university field house the following night and everyone I knew in town was going. Halfway through the concert, I found myself on someone’s shoulders not far from the front of the stage and almost eye level with Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham. She wore a flowing white skirt, white top, tall boots, sleeves that looked like scarves, and a tambourine in one hand.

The railroad bridge we jumped off the next afternoon smelled of creosote and spanned the Clark Fork River. It was fast with rapids, ragged boulders, rocky beaches, and cottonwood trees along the shore. There was a deep green pool directly below the bridge and we were there to jump into it. We accessed the road level tracks high above the river and from there, shimmied up a diagonal timber truss to the top where we balanced ourselves. I squatted nervously there for at least ten minutes before gathering the courage to jump. Eventually I did and entered the water yelling feet first, then surfaced and dog paddled quickly to shore to avoid being swept downstream because I wasn’t a strong swimmer.

I didn’t know then that this valley I spent so much time in had contained a giant two-thousand-foot-deep lake once and Mount Sentinel and Mount Jumbo were underwater. I didn’t realize that the horizontal lines etched on many of the foothills in the area were where Lake Missoula had once lapped against their shores as the water drained, and refilled dozens of times over thousands of years. It’s hard to comprehend the scope of those massive geological changes, but that history pales compared to my memories of the sweet aroma of herbs and teas my sister-in-law and brother filled their houses with during the nineteen-seventies.

For Carol, Ray, Marilyn, Russ, Scott, Sharon, Tim, Vicki, Buck, Lindy, and various friends, friends of friends, and anonymous citizens of Missoula during the nineteen-seventies.

Songs :: Indian Summer by Joe Walsh, Show Me Some Affection by Dave Mason, South City Midnight Lady and Without You by The Doobie Brothers, Wooden Ships by Jefferson Airplane, See The Changes by Crosby, Stills & Nash, and the entire Fleetwood Mac album from 1975

© C. Davidson

Wisconsin :: [Supplemental]

Green Tunnel Diptych

(Modern Fossil)

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"Yo, wake up every morning. Thank the Lord ‘cause I know I'm blessed. Yeah. We can't let the way the world is shaking break us down.” Mayowa

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Songs :: Everyday Life by Coldplay, Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show, Meadows by Joe Walsh, and Transcendental Blues by Steve Earle

For Todd and Paula

© C. Davidson