There are people who have joy in what they do and are quite able to spread that joy to others who are open to it.
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The last four or five times I've gone to see the Reds play at Great American Ball Park, they have lost the game - not by getting tromped, but by leaving people on base. Lots of them. Today, AJMT and I went to the afternoon game with Milwaukee. Jonny Gomes hit a two-run homer near the left field foul pole and Francisco Cordero threw eight pitches in the top of the ninth. That works out to something like $12,500 per pitch he would get today. Dave and I figured Francisco would be able to put food on the table tonight after this outing.
Anyway, Reds win by two, and I get to see a victory. AJMT loves baseball and we need to get to more games.
This is Bob. Robert Gordon Stephens. Though he's Australian, I met Bob in northern Wisconsin in September of 1989, when he was on an extended explore around the world and I was an instructor in the High Road wilderness program at Honey Rock Camp, the Northwoods campus of Wheaton College.
At first I thought Bob a bit eccentric, but it turns out that what he was... was just totally himself. By the time I took this photo of him, we were good friends of the heart. He's leaning on this tree because he was tired. The blaze hacked into this tree is one of the originals left by Francis Edward Roberts in the 1860s, as he was establishing the border between Queensland and New South Wales, by order of the Surveyor General of Queensland. Someone decided that the top of the ridge extending west to east from Wilson's Peak to Point Danger (where Capt. Cook ran aground in 1771) should be the border. I'll post a map below to show the changes in elevation and the border area.
Bob and I were there because he was going to lead a trip in a couple of weeks and we needed to confirm that the headwaters of Barney Creek were flowing way up high there on the Queensland side. By the time he reached that area with his group of people, they were going to be a long way from a water source, and we were used to carrying four litres of water person per day - and that seemed still pretty dry.
Not sure now where this blaze is, but tracking through Google Earth, it's on the border at about 28 degrees 18' 36" S and 152 deg 39' 41" E.
From a little east of that point we dropped north into the headwater area you can see if you're still looking at Google Earth and camped. There was water then, but by the time Bob and his group got there two weeks later it was barely there. They were traveling along the border ridge from west to east and I met them a day or so after that.
Bob and I haven't talked in a long time, but I still think about him a lot. When we were stopped up by Lake Superior for three days in big weather, he used his Champion Swiss Army knife (that big fat one) to build himself an actual hut out of driftwood there on the rocky shore. I mean, it deserved a mailbox, that hut did, though there was no road. Later on he visited Yosemite, picked up a few cones and tried to germinate a few Giant Sequioas at his place in Australia. His was a lively mind and a curious one.
So, Bob, if you somehow read this, please give me a shout. I would very much like to catch up with you, but meanwhile it's good to think about some of those places we tramped around in out in the bush. You are in my heart. GT
One of my favorite poems is "Ulysses" by Alfred Lord Tennyson - while kind of sentimental, the lines also express some of what I have come to think are universal longings of the heart. Line 18 is written
I am a part of all I have met.
Lately I have been tempted to believe that there is nothing especially noteworthy about my life as it is; part of the big machine I am (I think), a good little consumer, a contributor "the economy" and all that. But for my life, as for all others, the routine doesn't explain who I am - and who I am now in large part is due to "all I have met."
So I am going to spend some time in this blog remembering some of the key people in my life, those who have become a part of me. Most of them are still alive, some aren't. In some cases I hope that those people I remember find this story, but in all cases I will try to remember and communicate what these have taught me.
