Thoughts on growing older (at least chronologically)

SEPTEMBER 14  2013

Cutting to the core, I'm approaching 80 -- February 14th. I don't feel "old". Some people say  I don't look old at all. (It's impossible for me to be objective about that, of course.)  Recently, purchasing a tobacco pipe at a small store, I used my American Express card -- which, among other things, states my membership on that back to 1969.  My oldest daughter, Maria, was with me. The national concerns about identity theft are present in this area. The older man in charge politely but clearly had unspoken (to me) problems with the card and myself and made two trips with the card into a back room where I assume he called American Express  At one point, he emerged to ask me questions about our address and where it was located.

There was a time I would have taken umbrage with this, but he struck me as a nice old guy.  So I waited patiently for things to play out.  They finally did and I left with a good pipe and my AMEX card.  Versions of this, age confusion, have occurred many times over the decades.

Go back ten years into September 2003 and I'm in the throes of then undiagnosed System Lupus (SLE) -- a deadly and dread disease. (Hitting many of my body parts, it did spare my mind.) I nearly died at that point and may have had the beginnings of some sort of Near Death Experience (NDE).  But obviously I didn't die.  The succeeding weeks saw my malady diagnosed by twelve or thirteen docs as a major and heavy "full-blown" attack of SLE and I nearly died twice more in the next few months.  But, of course, I did not die -- though I had a fascinating kind of NDE later that year.  http://hunterbear.org/ghosts.htm

I fought on.  In 2010, it was obvious that the Lupus was ebbing very significantly.  In 2011, there were no signs of active Lupus, nor were there any in 2012 and 2013.  I feel essentially OK.  About a year ago, the last effect of the SLE -- a conspicuous stomach -- began to disappear quickly.  My weight is now very normal for a six foot guy of muscular structure.  http://hunterbear.org/shooting_lupus.htm

So I don't feel "old."  Neither does my good spouse and partner, Eldri.  At this point we've been married since 1961 and have a whole raft of good and sharp direct descendants -- with more on the way.

During my occasional visits to academe, I talk just as easily and smoothly to university students as I did as a fresh young teacher in my mid-twenties.  And they respond as smoothly and easily as have all my students, any time and any place, bar none.  These days, of course, I have many more apt stories to tell.

There's been a bit on one of our discussion groups about philosophical consistency as one grows along in years.  Speaking only for myself, I haven't undergone any really significant changes in that genre since I was just turning 21.  I still hold very much to the Western American grassroots-democratic and thoroughly egalitarian Industrial Democracy faith of the old time IWW Wobblies. My broad social justice commitments remain the same: Native rights, labor, civil rights, civil liberties.  But I have no problem working in common cause with all good people on the left and liberal sides of the range lands -- and sometimes with good conservatives.

Many of my old peer friends, not all, are now gone. (But there are always fine new friends, some via the Net.)  It's always good to telephone talk with an old friend from the old days, Chuck Saunders, late of Flagstaff's then very wide ranging KCLS radio -- with Chuck's great groundbreaking Navajo Hour.  He's about 98. Very sharp. Yesterday, I telephoned Joe Janes, my old buddy in forest fire fighting days out of Flagstaff -- and numerous rowdy escapades, 'way back then. We always stay in touch.  Ten years older than I, he's always very sharp but in difficult physical condition.  We talked for about an hour.  He's wheel-chair bound and asked me about my walking.  I said things were OK on that score and my Size 16 Lowa Mountain Boots (the two boots together weigh five pounds) give me, as a friend once commented, a firm "understanding."  I also have a fine maple walking stick, thanks to a good friend in British Columbia.

Joe was impressed.  "Do you remember that Secret Mountain fire we went to?" he asked.  I remembered it. I was very young on that one.  Secret Mountain, well southwest of Flagstaff, is an extremely large and rough and rugged high formation, well timbered in the upper regions.  A lightning fire had started a small "smoke" but things were drying out around there and it had the potential of growing very large.  Joe and I and about a half dozen other crew guys went in there. It was a very long hike of several miles to get to the mountain. Our fire dispatcher, Keith Hunter, hovered overhead in a small plane.  In those days, fire fighters traveled light compared to today.  But we each carried an appropriate tool.  Some carried Kordicks (rake/hoe), others Pulaskis  (axe/hoe) and I had one of those.  Each of us had a one gallon water canteen.  We all carried K-Rations and/or C-Rations -- military field food -- in very light packs.

Some of the guys, not Joe, began to really give out on the steep climb up Secret.  I took their canteens and hung them around my neck and shoulders.  I also took a couple of their fire tools.  We topped out, found and contained the growing fire, and left two fire guards there.

"That's one of the most impressive things I ever saw you do", said Joe yesterday.  "You looked like a huge hulk with those canteens and the other stuff.  You just loped right up that mountain, never stopped."

"All in a day's work," I remarked modestly.

I mentioned it to Eldri.  "I think you could still do that," said she.

Between Joe and Eldri -- made my week.

We will all fight on.

Nialetch,

Hunter Bear

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / 
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

Check out our massive social justice website
www.hunterbear.org  The site is dedicated to our
one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm
.
See my  new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book," 
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new substantial 
introduction by me. And this book is also an activist's
how-to manual:  http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm   

And see the related http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm 
and also "Fifty Years: Remembering Medgar Evers" :          
 http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/3876

See the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Many photos.)

Our very substantial page on effective community organizing
techniques: http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm