Doug Fine: Author, Journalist, Adventurer, Goat-Herder

How many organic cowboys does it take to change a vegetable oil fuel filter? I had to find out the answer to this ancient koan after said filter clogged at 77 MPH on Interstate 25 near Colorado Springs recently. I was on my way to appear as a guest on the etown radio program. For me, this was as exciting as any of the media bookings that have materialized as a result of Farewell, My Subaru, because when I lived in Alaska, radio was all there was. So most folks, myself included, lived the radio schedule the way that I imagine people did with their television programs pre-Tivo. And etown, for several years of my life, represented an hour of American roots music interspersed with interviews that generally broached the loving-kindness and Earth-saving sphere. I didn’t like to miss it as a listener. And now I was going to be a guest.

Except that the R.O.A.T. (Ridiculously Oversized [but carbon-neutral] American Truck, for new visitors to these dispatches) was wheezing in the left lane like someone trying to breathe in Bangkok. I managed to exit at the turn-off for the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Fuel filter changing, I was about to discover, is a disgustingly greasy, if carbon-neutral job. Almost impossibly fortunately (speaking of Alaska), some of my closest friends, who hail from Fairbanks, were in Colorado at the moment of my vegetable clog. Even more astonishingly fortuitously, one of them, Tim, is a union electrician. Let’s not even get into how mind-bogglingly lucky it was that on a fairly large planet, Tim, wife Ariana and their kids Ahnika and Porter were visiting relatives about ten miles from the site of my issue (except to say that every now and then there arise incidents that make me glad I caved and got a cell phone). The whole brood met me at the Colorado Springs’ NAPA auto parts store to dial-in the tangle of wiring that had to be reconnected once I figured out the actual fuel filter mechanism on the R.O.A.T. It was a fine excuse to cross paths with these folks, who as you can see from the above photo are able to change even a car repair nightmare into a kind of fiesta. That’s Ahnika giving her dad an unsolicited back massage while we try to iron out some of the nuances of the filter change. My pregnant sweetheart Amanda is in the background. Ariana, her own infant Porter in tow, took the picture.

Meanwhile, I made it to etown (recorded live in a beautiful theater in Boulder, Colorado) with about an hour to spare, and the show was a blast. Hosts Nick and Helen Forster are serious about trying to nudge society toward kindness and sustainability, and the whole evening was a great time. The show airs on 300+ radio stations. To hear the episode on which I’m a guest, go to www.etown.org. Click “join” and go through the free user name/password routine. Then logon as a member and click on the “listen/access audio archives” link. Search under “Bodeans” (one of the musical guests) or “March 2008″, then scroll to the March 9 show. The whole archive is full of fantastic listening, by the way. Unless you only like speed metal.

So now the hardcover leg of the Farewell, My Subaru carbon-neutral book tour is finished. If the number of pleasure-carrying neurons firing across my nervous system is a measure of how fantastic it feels to be home, to be grounded in Place again, then this period is best described as a spiritual sigh for me. Or maybe a deep intake of breath. I contemplate this from a patch of tangerine desert paintbrush blossoms as drowsy afternoon clouds flank a sun half a day from setting over sandstone canyon walls. I guess in yoga both the intake and exhalation of air are valuable and part of the picture. And speaking of The Picture, in the past five minutes I experienced the specifics of what I only understood in vague terms late in the book tour when I started telling people who asked if I was having fun on the road some version of, “Well, it’s great meeting folks and laughing a lot and eating great food (including an all-local Northern California restaurant with mushrooms in every item on the menu), and, ya know, seeing ecosystems with moisture in them, but it will be amazing to be back to the Funky Butte, too. I like both.”

Home again at the Ranch for a day or a week now, these specifics have appeared around me palpably. Among them, I’m stretched on a vintage, padded, lime green recliner surrounded by rosemary, blooming iris, and the aforementioned desert paintbrush, when a hummingbird nearly flies into me. Soon after, the simultaneous sounds hit me of goats asking for further out-of-corral forage time, chickens exclaiming chickenhood, and my dog’s tonguey-breathing against my neck as she raids my space (to announce her prediction for a hike, as soon as possible) while I make these notes.

Ahhhhh, deep intake or exhale or both, pleasure seeping through me, lowest chakra to highest. Inside the house behind some adobe, some Marley dub remix had the vibe pinned, and I know that later in the day, after some more gardening and a yoga class, I am returning not just to the hike for which Sadie is so ready, but to a hike with everyone I love most in this world. THIS. This is why I am so glad to be home. And with only a few never-before in-my life-attempted projects on the horizon – a human baby, twice daily goat milkings, summer innertubing, and planning my next book, film, television and journalism projects, for example.

But these milestones aren’t what I’m thinking about now (OK, maybe I’m always thinking about the coming baby a bit). What this period is about more than anything else is a return to rural awareness. I went from not being aware of the phase of the moon for a time (due to urban lights or being [and peeing] inside) to realizing from the way my animals are acting that a storm is on its way.

No, wait, that’s not what this period is about. What this period is really about more than anything is baby goats.

I blazed home last week in a sea of curry exhaust (as oil prices hit historic highs in the $120 per barrel range and I bypassed gas station after gas station) to find white fur ball kids even cuter than expected. They wear perpetual smiles as they plan a lifetime of loving deviousness. Which leads to the long-anticipated results of he baby goat-naming effort in which so many of you made hysterical and appropriate suggestions. Ready for the results?

We named them Nico and Stevie. We’re giving Stevie, the male, to a family in a neighboring community, and keeping Nico, who already likes snuggling into me as I’m doing my daily meditation. Her fleece is softer than a much-washed baby blanket, her horns the size of marbles.

So now, after just a few days of catching up on sleep from tour rigors (tiredness, after all, is just a thing — it can be overcome by various forms of happiness), I’m back in the garden, planting the warm weather Anasazi triumvirate – corn, beans and squash. This diet, recent DNA testing reveals, kept my indigenous predecessors on this land living well into their 30s, so it seems to me a menu to emulate. (We’re just eating the final batch of last year’s creamy, fantastic Anasazi bean harvest in tonight’s salad. Lasts and firsts: today we also tasted Natalie’s first milk sample — quite simply the most delicious dairy product of my life. It was a small quantity — maybe a cup, but we’re hoping both we and she will get better at milking as we progressively wean the kids, who are eating organic alfalfa like some kind of, well, adult goats.)

And now my day no longer goes from media interviews to live bookstore events, but from goat corral cleaning (I’m still covered in detritus of his) to a yoga class across the valley…THIS IS THE LIFE! I’ve dreamed of it. Now it’s reality. I scamper inside. Dirt (as opposed to the vague fear of germs) is coming off again when I wash my hands. I cause Ring Around the Sink. This is a Positive Phenomenon, no matter what Proctor and Gamble would have us believe. And I’m already limping from a goat hoof upon my Chacoed feet. Gotta go now. I’m returning to Gregorian time and see from the oven clock that it’s eight minutes until yoga class. I’m late to relax…

Here’s a shot from the etown segment.

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