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 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.”