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

“More berry picking.” Just as Ford Prefect’s nine year-researched travel posting about planet Earth gets reduced by a sub-editor’s secretary to “mostly harmless” in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so these three words can reasonably be used to sum up both the setting and the meaning of today’s Dispatch.

In the fifth installment of that same Hitchhiker’s series, an important galaxy-wide lesson that alternatively-employed astrophysicist Tricia McMillan learns is that in life, “sometimes you go back for your bag, and sometimes you don’t.” For those unfortunate enough not to be familiar with the multidimensional plot of Douglas Adams (the 20th Century Shakespeare)’s storyline, let me state the mantra as it’s been dancing into my head during recent (and increasing) Frisbee and especially berry picking “work” breaks:

“Apply the lessons across which time allows you to stumble in exchange for oxidizing,” I’ve heard myself telling myself, often, lately. “And indeed even the lessons in the lessons. But, vitally, learn when to. When you do that, not only does what feels like an enlightenment plateau appear hazily in the bike lights, but every hike and indeed organic interaction becomes tax deductible.”

For whatever reason, this is an easier lesson to remember when, to describe the very common recent state of things, various berry juices are staining my nose, clothes, and now laptop keyboard, than when, say, I’m stuck on hold with a company’s evidently Jupiter-based customer service outsourcing unit whose employees can’t seem to grasp the concept of “new credit card number.”

Fortunately, the general berry ripening is coming on with the Malthusian rush of popcorn hitting its stove top stride. I don’t even resent other berry pickers in my patch (human or otherwise). There’s enough to go around.

In fact, the berries are ripening almost visibly, not by the day but by the hour. So intensely, in fact, in multiple vitamin-packed species, that I’m ecstatic to report that, following some sort of holistic blogger maintaining that fresh strawberry pulp, applied for ten minutes, is a teeth whitener, I, yesterday, was able to use wild ones from a patch mid-morning run.

Results? Um. Sure. Call this evaluation “holistic license” or maybe “premature.” Let’s put it this way. It was the tastiest treatment of any kind I’d ever self-administered, and it didn’t make my teeth any less white. Furthermore, it’s difficult to overstate my pleasure in realizing that I can now officially call my wild strawberry habit “medicinal use.” Not covered by insurance, true, but at least free, unless you count the tea tree oil applied as a result of second-degree berry scratches.

Indeed, ripening, in general, feels like a profoundly valuable concept, if you have a large enough cycle in mind. It’s comforting to have a sense of visualizing “all the spokes” of experience’s wheel. But here I feel caution seeping in. What moment of clarity has not faded, leaving me feeling that revelation is “almost gone,” like the streak that remains for a long second following the most intense shooting star?

Those chronologically challenged humanoids, kids, as usual, seem to perceive the Big Lessons without any kind of static. I took joy in noticing yesterday (a philosophical-eureka-an-hour kind of day) that my three-year-old groks (indeed reminded me) that our tomato plants need water, and that the now-faded irises will return next year. Again, the juice promise of wild blackberries and strawberries mitigate any sense of tristesse surrounding the suddenly absent irises.

In other words, I’m being taught by the people I’m supposed to teach, let us not forget the “to head or not to head back for the left-behind bag?” mantra that begins this Dispatch. Is the steadiness that comes with planning and perspective always the goal? Or is periodic reliance on the giddiness of the Now (the actual moment when you realize you’re incontrovertibly in the midst of a killer berry patch or meteor shower, which by the way we are — both — as I post this Dispatch) sometimes a good way to refuel faith in the operation of the very same cycles of the universe? I had the pleasure of wondering exactly this when I noticed I had berry-picked so long yesterday that the morning had misted over. I jogged home, my head literally in the clouds, wondering if there was, at least periodically, not just the usual psychic but an actual practical advantage to right brain fogginess over left brain clarity.

Reflecting on the experience a day later, I think yes, if the conclusion drawn is that the Universe is Kind and knows what it’s doing. To give a prime, semi-competent neo-Rugged Individualist example, readers of these Dispatches and associated books will know all-too-well that the Houdini-esque escapades of the goats I protect from coyotes and GMO hay like a Digital Age Elmer Fudd can send me into a stressful state more commonly experienced by urban cubicle dwellers…um, pretty much always.

So therefore today it feels like yet another vital life lesson (Act Now and Get Your Degree In One Concentrated Berry Picking Session!), like a cosmic sigh, to recognize once again, against my will and following my usual carbon-neutral tantrum, that my goats’ rose bush raids have invariably resulted in, if not manicured, than at least botanically functional and perfectly timed pruning.

The lesson is clear: worrying less is progressive, healing and contagious. But requires some faith.

So, for instance, any time I decide to head off on a river trip I’m striking what I hope is a balance between valuable adventure lessons and caution (with the role of Adams’ breakthrough Infinite Improbability Drive played in this case by elements like rain, carabiner integrity and the universe in general. Such is my aim when I, a taxpaying father of two, aim to balance spiritual and physical risk and reward.

These past six months and counting have given me a lot of reason to store copious reserves of faith in the workings of the universe, which I hope the work I’ll be releasing in various media in the next year or so will bear out. In short, it’s been feeling easier and easier to just “go with it” in my daily life, since the results seem to be positive on personal, spiritual, creative, health, family and professional levels.

This “in sync” momentum reminds me of a the feeling of catching a wave on a surfboard (specifically when you realize how much stronger the ocean is than you are, and how OK this is), and the resulting confidence resulting from yesterday’s berry overindulgence emboldened me not to get nervous when a Western astrology-inclined friend warned all in earshot, later in the day, to be careful throughout this Gregorian month because “Mercury is in retrograde.”

Assuming this is indeed something about which to be careful, I’m feeling like having faith in recent decisions and current direction is the way to go. And this, my friends, in turn feels like a yet another immeasurable blessing. I think I’m up to three recognized already in this half-finished Dispatch.

Did you ever take a moment to sigh and realize, “Absolutely nothing is wrong-everything is as it should be”?

Feel free to do it right now.

Because I passionately believe it’s true.

A lot of this discussion (to be fair, of any discussion), of course, depends upon how one is looking at time at the moment. It occurred to me, for instance, that in general
I calibrate time via beard growth. I trim every three weeks in a fairly elaborate and messy ceremony during which I confess to wondering, “is this how calendars started? I grok lunar cycles are more universal, but..”

You remember the cheesy Westerns wherein you knew someone was a Native American because he was the one who told the impatient settlers that some outlaw passed through his backyard “many moons ago”? For me, it’s more like, “my next book is due after twelve more shaves. But I’m still going berry picking this afternoon.”

And that berry picking session is where the book’s lead paragraph writes itself. While I’m in Berry Mind.

I’m an environmentalist in the landscape of time as well as space. Now, I’m not one to speak for what I personally mean let alone something as dynamic as the universe, but this kind of thing has been pretty happening fairly consistently this past half a year. And so this Dispatch, really, is an account of my recent transition from a period of cleansing to one of maintenance. From sage to nag champa, in terms of incense choice.

By way of understanding the mindset that allows such confidence, and the kind of seeming revelations contained in the occasional cleansing literal and mental fog, it’s helpful to know what you might call an (in other circumstances) under-reported detail in the life of this Writer/Goat serenader: yesterday, I realized late in day that, following an early morning multispecies saxophone jam/dance party in the corral, I’d been wearing my saxophone strap for seven hours. Before, during, and after my berry expedition. No one mentioned it at the farmer’s market.

I take my belly laugh when I simultaneously realized my fashion misstatement and how many people had ignored it (at least until back with their own loved ones), to mean I’m feeling chill enough to look at myself honestly yet lovingly. For instance, it came to mind the other day that I once had a judgmental girlfriend who was always probing my every thought and opinion for signs of hypocrisy or other flaws. It was pretty hardcore. As in, “yes, but couldn’t I have had fourorgasms?” or even “Why are you waking up now? How do you know that you don’t really, deep down, want to sleep another half hour?”

With my gullet full of blackberries, my neck wearing a thick black saxophone strap and my teeth mid-strawberry-whitening treatment yesterday, I suddenly had the pain-lifting revelation that, even if she didn’t, ya know, practice what she preached, that doesn’t mean this ex couldn’t teach me a vital lesson ’bout being real. Now to remember to consistently put it in practice outside my immediate comfort zone.

I realize that in choosing in any given situation whether or not to “go back for my bag,” I’m really talking about my interpretation of my own myths. My personal experiential mythology is an amalgam of my religion, past girlfriend judgmentalism, and my feeling that I am trying to be a “first generation,” when it comes to Big Picture Priorities. It’s a pantheon, like any spiritual framework in a complex universe, that attempts to blend a lot of seemingly paradoxical concepts, like “Digital Age” with “sustainable,” “libertarian” with “progressive,” “responsible” with “wildly fun and spontaneous” and “loyal” with “content.”

Constant psychic detectives, we look around ourselves for confirmation of our mythological foundation. Mine, of late, happens to be confirmed by a high quality wild berry situation. Does it really matter, in the “end,” if your myths are confirmed by the astrology of the New York Times (where my most recent contribution also surrounded fruit), some Murdochian nightmare network, or The Psychic Friends Hotline? Who wants to live without myths? It’d be like sushi without nori.

And so I keep seeking and finding universal fueling stations for many of the choices in my recent life. But before I broach overconfidence about my current “the universe sure feels well-tuned these days” mindset, my berry mind also floated the following thought, in a patch near a catfish creek, toward the end of yesterday’s gorge: “Weren’t,” it asked me to wonder, “the spontaneous generation vermicelli people as sure a couple of centuries ago of their worldview as our CERN scientists today are?”

I let this kind of thought filter through me like water rinsing a colander of greens. I don’t spend too much conscious time on them, because then I wouldn’t get anything done. “What does it all mean?” becomes a less viable question if “it all” entails just the wondering. But I do devote at least some time to Berry Mind reflection. Because in leaving my saxophone strap on for a day, I am reminded that busy is great, but never forget to dwell in the now. And so, I close this Dispatch with another berry photo, and those who have read the previous Dispatch will know why: the astounding ripening progress described herein, if you compare the two images, is no exaggeration. I’ll see ya when the berries are even riper, and the bristles are longer. May the Cosmic razor spare you burn.

Postscript: My soundtrack as I prepare to post this Dispatch, allegedly randomly chosen by a Motorola Android engineer, seems yet another mythological confirmation of universal approval. As the final Beatles lyrics reach me (”the love you take is equal to the love you make“) just above the berry-celebrating ravens diving outside my open office window, I recall as the day’s first sun hits me
 over the top of the Funky Butte that John Lennon, my heart, and physics are all insisting that there’s still time for the Good Guys to win.

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