And they mostly live on worms, which are also blind. This is a case of the blind eating the blind. Sorry.
Some very interesting things: they build two hills for each tunnel, one at each end, but one of the hills is slightly higher than the other so that the difference in pressure draws air in through one and expels it out of the other.
Says one mole to the other, “Lovely breeze down here today, isn’t it? Makes you want to take a deep breath and go hunting for worms.”
And speaking of worms, moles can hear when one of the poor squiggling creatures digs too far and, whoops, falls into a tunnel. Off runs the mole and . . . gulp.
Except they don’t gulp them all. They are smart and know there will come times when the worm supply will dry up, so the moles dig pantries into the sides of their tunnels and stuff the extra worms in there and then seal up the walls.
The worms are apparently so happy being snuggled up with other worms that most of them stay put. Some of them even make more worms. It’s a worm farm.
The thought that makes me feel most sorry for the moles is that after a day of digging and eating and packing away the groceries wouldn’t it be nice to curl up in a warm, dry bed and dream. They may dream, but they don’t get the warm and the dry.
For all these reasons I wanted to do a story about them. Pictures are easy, thanks to the incredible internet. Tiny cameras let you watch them running through the tunnels and chomping on worms. Lots of naturalists have still pictures of their snouts and eyeless faces and their incredible claws.
But the end of the news is not a science show and I am no authority on anything. I need a reason to put the little I have learned about anything on the air. Simply, we need someone who cares.
“Hello,” I say to a couple of women walking by the molehills next to the sidewalk where we have been standing for twenty minutes waiting for someone to pass. Not many people walk by molehills. “Do you know anything about moles?” I ask the women.
There is that tilted head again. Of all the questions in the world, one of them is probably thinking—questions about politics, the economy, crime, cooking, the weather—why is this idiot asking about moles?
“No,” they both said.
The next is a man. “No,” he said.
Then some teenage girls. “I can’t hear you,” one said. “Take out your earphones,” I said.
“What?” she shouted.
“Moles!” I shouted.
“What?”
“Moles. Those things that live down there,” I said pointing to the hills.
“I thought that was dog poo,” she said. Then she put the earphones back in and as a group they left, walking together but each in her own world.
“There goes the next generation of leaders of the country,” I said to Murray. I added, “I quit. We aren’t going to find anyone who cares anything about moles.”
“Just try one more,” he said.
“No. We are wasting time that we could spend finding something else.”
“Just one more.”
That is what I like about him. He is a sailor who knows how to wait for a wind. That takes patience and faith.
No one was coming.
“Wait,” he said.
Then someone was coming. Two someones, young and in love, because they were holding hands and arms and looking at each other and laughing and happy to be together. Love has its own way of walking.
“Excuse me,” said I with no conviction. “We were wondering if you ever think about moles?”
The young woman looked astounded. She looked at the young man then back at me and laughed.
I figured right there that I would quit and study accounting.
“He loves moles,” she said, pointing to the him in her life. “He studied them. He is always talking about them.”
Then he said, “I used to dream of being a mole.” Honestly, it is on the video disc and in the story.
“No?!” I said, meaning everything in that word.
“I love the way they can be so cozy down there.” He looked at the molehills.
“Even in the rain?” I asked.
“They have thick fur. And in the summer it’s cool and it’s not so cold in the winter. Perfect.”
Because of him and a sailor with a camera and the amazing internet full of pictures we had a story about something that most of us, including me, had never seen. Thank you.
The Stick
She was pushing a tricycle with a stick. That alone was good enough for a picture, maybe good enough to make the day.
One end of the stick was in her hand, the other was tucked below the seat of the tricycle, and sitting on the seat was a two-year-old boy trying to steer.
Two-year-olds can’t steer, which made the picture so much better. The woman pushing, mother I presumed, was the engine of the trike, but not the driver. The motorless vehicle operator was going left, then right, then left off the sidewalk into the bushes.
Beautiful.
“Hello.” The usual. “Tell us about the stick, please.”
“They think this stick is wonderful,” she said.
Then her older daughter, six or maybe seven, came back. She had been walking ahead as six or maybe sevens will do, which is the first step in stepping away.
It is amazing to me how we all follow the same path, even though none of us know it. We are all programmed to grow but as far as I can see we all think we are the first and only ones on this road.
“That stick is everything,” said the six- or seven-year-old.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s for fishing and rowing and throwing and bows and arrows.”
That was more than I had hoped for. In fact, I hadn’t hoped for anything except pushing.
“Anything else?” I asked, trying to push the envelope with the neat message inside.
“Drawing,” she said.
Here was another example of how good ordinary things can be. From seeing a woman pushing a trike we now had most of the activities of humankind.
We got to the fishing dock of Trout Lake. The six-, maybe seven-year-old, took the stick.
“Look, I am fishing.”
She hit the water several times, telling the fish that if they would like to be caught this would be the time.
Then she dragged the pole through the water.
“Catch anything?” I asked.
“Net yet, but I will.”
She sounded like Reilly. I will tell you—once again—about him next. It is a shame if you don’t know about him because Reilly was the most important part of my life. Even more than God, even though I think God sent Reilly to me. Yes, that is a pretty big endorsement.
Anyway, back to the six-, maybe seven-year-old.
“Sometimes we use it like a spear,” she said.
Then she took the stick and threw it like a spear, and I am glad I wasn’t standing in front. It only went a tiny distance, about the length of my arm, but that would be enough to poke me somewhere tender and I was glad I wasn’t there.
“And then a bow and arrow,” she said.
She held up the stick like a bow that wasn’t bowed and pulled back an arrow that wasn’t there. Then, bing, she let the arrow fly.
Then she said, “We use it to row a boat.”
She put the stick back in the water and pulled it like an oar.
“You are going pretty fast,” I said.
“And I can go faster.”
Then she took the stick out of the water and ran over to the ground near the wooden dock.
“We can draw pictures with it.”
She made a circle, then some zigzags, then another circle.
Picasso would have taken note and made a fortune from it.
The mother of the two told me it was bamboo from her backyard. Th
ey go through a stick a week.
“Some little kid is always walking away with it,” she said.
A story about the stick that beat out all electronic games and made the imagination of a six-, maybe seven-year-old, burst into being. No one around that pond or anywhere on the planet was happier than me.
We said goodbye. There was nothing else I could have wanted. Except then the girl took the stick from her mother, stuck it behind the tricycle like her mother had been doing and began pushing her little brother.
Now there was nothing more I wanted, except for every kid to have a stick and play with it.
Reilly
I have put off telling you as long as possible. There are lots of new stories and they are important, but Reilly always comes up. Someone asks me my favourite story or the most important story or what do I like to talk about and it is Reilly. You know the story, right?
There is nothing new about it, except that every day when something bad happens or something good happens or something that I want to happen happens, there is Reilly again.
I was at Trout Lake. The cameraman, Dave McKay, and I were looking for something. There was a small kid fishing and he was wonderful from the start. His fishing pole was a stick with some leaves still attached. His line was hemp, so it was frayed, and when he pulled it out of the water we could see it had a safety pin for a hook.
And the bait was bread, squeezed by his fingers and barely holding onto the pin. Nothing, not anything Hollywood could create, could be better.
“Hello. Is your mother here? We’d like to talk to you.”
He looked at us, then pointed off to the side of the lake and said with slow, measured, almost painful words, painful because they were so slow, “My foster mother is over there.”
Foster parents have saved the world, or at least the world of many kids. Before them there were orphanages and in the orphanages kids without parents slept in barracks like in basic training in the army.
There was no privacy, no tucking in, no sweet goodnights. They woke to the commotion of dozens of others. The possibility of saying they wanted to stay in bed a few minutes more was not in their world. Saying they wanted anything was not in their world.
Foster parents changed that. They may not be a real parent but they are very close. The kids get a goodnight and in the morning a nudge, and that’s not bad.
But when the boy with the fishing pole said his “foster mother” I knew he had had a hard life. You don’t get a foster parent if things are going well. And when he spoke so slowly I knew he had had an even harder life. You don’t talk like that and have many friends or go to a public school or have conversations. You answer questions and then go quiet.
His mother was in a portable chair reading a book. She had been watching us.
She said his name was Reilly and yes we could talk to him. She said he was quite wild but calmed down when he came to the lake.
Dave and I walked out on the short fishing deck and I kneeled down to talk. Dave stayed standing and pointed the camera down at an angle at Reilly.
“Caught anything yet?” I asked. It is the only question for someone fishing.
“No (pause) not yet,” Reilly said. “But (pause) I (pause) believe.”
If you find that hard to read, it is harder to listen to.
“I believe that (pause) if (pause) you believe . . .”
And right there is when he sucked back some mucus that was dripping out of his nose. It went back up into his head with a slurp. It made my eyes open and my stomach tighten.
Then he continued without dropping a word or a pause, “you can (pause) do something (pause) you can (pause) do it.”
So slow. So beautiful. So painful. So eloquent. So disgusting with the mucus. I didn’t expect any of that.
“Have you had a nibble?”
“No . . . but I . . . believe . . . I . . . will.”
That is easier to read.
But again the mucus, which was tinged with green, was slipping close to his upper lip before he again sucked it back up.
And then he continued.
“You can . . . do any . . . thing . . . if you . . .”
And again the sliding glob slipped down from his nose and again it got vacuumed up.
“. . . believe . . . it.”
Two things were going on at the fishing pier, and neither of them had anything to do with fishing.
I was listening to a Buddhist or Christian or Jewish or Muslim philosopher.
I was going to throw up.
I wanted to ask something else, but I couldn’t get out any words without something else coming out of my mouth. I stood up and turned to Dave.
“Did you see that?”
“I saw everything,” he said. “It was beautiful.”
“Did you see his nose?”
Dave looked at me oddly.
“Nose?”
“Did you see the nose?”
“Are you nuts? What are you talking about?”
“Did you see what was coming out of his nose?”
Dave still looking at me in an uncomplimentary way. “No.”
“You didn’t see the runny nose?”
“No. I heard him sniff, but I didn’t see anything.”
Oh, wonderful! Oh, super wonderful!!
Because of where he was standing he couldn’t see it. If he had been able to see it we would have had a story about a kid with a runny nose that probably wouldn’t have passed the good taste censors in the edit room.
Because he didn’t see that, we had a story of determination and positive thought and faith. Wonderful!
This gets better, but before we even left the park I realized much of life is like that. If something is bad just move slightly, either in your feet or your head, and you may see it entirely differently.
Such good advice I gave myself!
But the bigger thing, after the story was on the air, was that I started using Reilly’s words. I didn’t believe them but I had nothing to lose, and I needed all the help I could get.
What I needed was to find a story every day. I was pretty good at it but once in a while the day would get near the end, the sun was gone and I had nothing, which was bad.
Calling the office was worse. “Sorry, I have nothing.”
A groan at the other end. Then I could hear, before the phone was hung up, “Find something to fill in for . . .” and then the phone was down. Clunk. The clunks hurt.
So, “I believe I will find a story.” I didn’t actually believe it but it was good to say it, just in case.
Then I said it again, and I didn’t believe it again.
And there, around the corner, was just what I was looking for. How did that happen?
The next day I said it again. Okay, maybe now I believed it just a tiny bit but not really.
And around the corner, wow. How did that get there and why did we turn at that particular corner? I don’t know.
And the next day. And the day after.
The days became weeks, as they always do, and then months and there were no fill-ins at the end of the show.
And then it became years. That amazed even me. Did just saying it trick some part of the back of my head into believing it? Did believing it make it happen?
I don’t know, but the years became more years.
I know the self-help books all say the same thing, but who believes them?
And I know the Bible says sort of the same thing: you will get help if you help yourself, and you know a little help is all you need.
It has now been a decade. Sometimes an hour or two goes by, but then I say, out loud, “We will find something,” and I look for a hole in the clouds and ask for a little help. Who the heck believes in holes in the clouds? But after that I believe we will find something.
And around the corner, well you know what is around the corner. And I say afterwards, “How the heck did that happen?”
It’s free. Use it if you like.
I did the same thing with my health and I got healthier. Okay, I’ve had shingles and the flu and once a twisted bowel that almost killed me, but overall I’ve been healthy.
I also did the same with getting along with my wife. We are pretty happy together, but there are times. You know.
So I say things will be fine and then—no arguments. To be totally truthful, sometimes my wife has a problem with me, which means Reilly’s method is only close to perfect, like me.
Again, if you have read this before I thank you for reading more than one book. And if you have read it you know it works. If you’ve read it and you haven’t tried it, that’s just plain silly.
As for Reilly, I got a call from someone after the story was on the air. He wanted to give Reilly a new fishing rod. I called the foster mother, she talked to Reilly and then came back to the phone.
“He says he will catch a fish with his own rod, and he believes that,” she said.
I never saw him again. I assume they moved or he went to another home or he graduated to another goal, but I do know that somewhere, somehow he caught a fish.
John and Gerry
He laughs about his time in the war. It was ghastly, scarily terrible, but he laughs. In his eyes you can see the horror of it. He doesn’t talk about it. His laughter covers it up.
That’s Gerry MacPherson, and that is the kind of name that fought on one side in the Second World War.
John Schleimer is the kind of name that fought on the other side in the same war, but John doesn’t talk much about it either, because he says, “You can’t explain it. You just can’t. You can’t let anyone know how bad it was because . . .” And then he goes silent.
John laughs a lot, too. He laughs about fishing with politicians and hockey players. He got to know a lot of people because he was a barber for, well, forever in North Vancouver. Barbers know a lot.
But then he started talking about something no one could understand, not even him. He was in Hitler’s army, conscripted when he was teenager. He didn’t want to be but that had nothing to do with it. When he was seventeen he was captured by some of the fringe forces in Yugoslavia who were fighting the Germans.
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