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

This time is whatever I want it to mean
Everything and nothing is as sacred
As we’d want it to be
When it’s real
Make it real
–Beth Orton, Central Reservation

Yesterday, in the midst of regretfully goatless (and therefore goat-yogurt and goat-cheese-deficient) travel, my exercise routine proved, spontaneously, to be both physical and spiritual. What I did was (accidentally at first, then “on purpose”), I ran a couple of miles with one music earphone touching my tympanic membrane and the other ear exposed to the river, the hawks, and the breeze along the redwood forest trail outside where I’m staying.

The two-tiered, hour-long plan was (or became, once I noticed one of my Hearing Impairment Buds bouncing rhythmically onto my chest for the third time) to get the blood flowing and to make sure my cosmic radio station was tuned. The other senses (thankfully, for early June) were left fully devoted to the woods. Especially smell. The wild roses were half-blooming, invisibly melting me into nostalgia as always.

With a one-year old on my back and a smart phone on my hip, I was in every mitochondria in every molecule the solar-powered Digital Age Dad catalyzing some Vitamin D. And evidently lucky to be, after what locals tell me has been days upon days of blessed but annoying rain.

I saw plenty of evidence this was true. I could drive the vegetable oil-powered Ridiculously Oversized American Truck off whatever was growing on one restaurant’s insufficiently nonporous restroom walls. Though I should add in the name of interspecies understanding that the blackberry buds bursting everywhere I strode didn’t seem to mind.

“Dang,” I thought, eying the berry bushes hungrily. “Three more weeks and this trail would have been a Vitamin C Fest, too.”

That was when I noticed that the sensations from my accidental soundtrack tune-up were powerfully inspiring me to make sure the right musical instruments are part of my proto-survivalist stockpile.

In particular, my non-podded ear (the right one) was enjoying a thrush couple’s springtime love story — probably planning this year’s nest site in a sort of single whistle vibrating flute call and response. As for the recorded human music, it too felt organic. Beth Orton’s “Central Reservation” (Original Version). Granted my ‘binered-on water bottle was part of the trippy rhythm section.

So I guess I have to give over bunker space to everything from DJ tables to mandolins. And hope that the thrushes, wrens and other animals that keep me dancing make it past any Globalization Era, too. Which I think they would. Not that I’m rooting for or even predicting such a thing, I always like to stress at this paranoid point.

This unusual ambient musical experiment also helped me compose a few tunes of my own, including this Dispatch. Helped me forget a few things, too. Call these side-effects, if you like.

And so I have been introduced to another method of preventative medicine. Of health maintenance. Several rabbits and a fox very clearly seemed to agree. Not since the Galapagos, OK, and Alaska, oh, and Tanzania and Rwanda and Burma and Guatemala, and I guess my canyon, too just before sunset at Monsoon season, had I seen wild animals so unafraid about the approach of a plodding would-be Elmer Fudd.

After the workout, I headed back to what passes at this noisy moment for “civilization” and remembered to email an old friend about something I had seen which reminded me of a long ago adventure of ours. As I type, I still feel like an instrument recently tuned.

Indeed, by way of confirmation, or at least punctuation, it sounds to me like a raven and a thrush are waiting for me on a branch outside my window tight now, requesting I engage in some pleasant even-finer-tuning (make it a routine, in other words), which if I acquiesce, will require a little confidence in good traffic karma if I am to have a prayer of making a flight.

This, of course, represents a classic tombstone moment for me. How would you like your epitaph to read? “He took a hike” or “He invariably made all his flights with enough time to spare to buy manufactured water at the airport newsstand?”

Even if it costs me some gnarly change fees and a couple of days of Tweets, I suspect I’ll still be happy with my choice. OK, OK, birds. Coming. Same socks or fresh ones? Water bottle still full enough?

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