Treehab

by Bob Smith

  Knowing you’re in a special place is always a beep from your Life Positioning System. The Steller’s jays were waiting for a handout, and I placed a nugget of banana bread on the table. The birds lunged for the cake like eagles with a sweet beak. As I took another sip of my java, Gretchen, Jen, Brad, and Jonathan joined me. Gretchen said, “Bob, if you keep feeding them, they’ll fly back to Los Angeles with you.”

  “The bird nerd would love that,” said Jonathan.

  “He’s a bird stalker,” said Brad.

  “The Steller’s jays are going to get a restraining order,” said Jen.

  “You’ll have to stay five hundred wingspans away from them,” said Gretchen.

  Travel has taught me that my strongest memories are formed by people rather than Grand Canyons. Yukon Island was the second place in Alaska that proved my belief that travel shouldn’t be about looking at views, but alter how you see your life.

  Melissa came out on the porch. “I can only enjoy this for a minute,” she said before sipping from her mug of coffee. “I’ve got cooking to do.”

  “Alaskans eat well,” I said. “Most 48ers wouldn’t expect that.”

  “Well,” said Melissa, “Alaskans don’t want mosquitoes to eat better than we do.”

  She’s as charming as Gretchen, but I really got to know her well on my next trip to the island. Melissa paints rocks, but it’s not a hobby; it’s actually the work of an artist. On my next trip, I brought Michael Hart to see Yukon Island, and we stayed overnight. Gretchen, Melissa, Michael, and I had dinner together. Gretchen told us she had gone to a neighboring island where her cousins fished to get us a fresh salmon. Of course, we were blown away by her hardworking hospitality, but Gretchen wasn’t fishing for gratitude, she was just matter-of-factly telling us the story of our delicious dinner.

  Earlier that day, Michael and I had spent time with Melissa at her house. She had shown us her work, and I immediately sensed I was talking to another artist; it’s animal intuitive as well as intellectually rational. I’d spent over twenty years writing jokes and could see that many people wouldn’t regard that as the work of an artist, even though Lenny Bruce correctly said that writing a forty-five-minute stand-up set is equivalent to writing a novel. I’d argue that painting rocks can be the work of a great artist and my evidence is the cave paintings at Lascaux and Chauvet.

  I also have another verification of Melissa’s talent. On my third visit to Yukon Island, Melissa gave me two of her painted rocks. I treasure them and they sit prominently displayed on a side table in my Manhattan apartment. One night, we had David Rakoff as a dinner guest. David was urbane and very funny, but also one of the most brilliant writers I’ve ever known. As soon as he sat down, he carefully picked up the rocks and asked about them. I told him their story and David said, “They’re beautiful. A memento attached to an enthralling tale isn’t a postcard; it’s a short story.”

  Unfortunately, we had to leave on the fourth, since Brad and Jonathan had to work the following morning. Before departing, I wandered around the island, returning to Elephant Rock. Right before Jen was going to shuttle us back to the Homer Spit, I was poking around Gretchen’s house, sad to go, but elated that I had the experience of visiting Yukon Island. I noticed on her bookshelf half of a large, round, broken stone vessel with sides that were intricately carved. I had no idea of its purpose but sensed it was archaeologically significant.

  Four months later, another example of Alaskan serendipity occurred. I was performing in Juneau for a fundraiser for SEAGLA, the Southeast Alaska Gay and Lesbian Alliance, sponsor of Juneau’s gay Pride. They flew me up from LA. I stayed at the historic Silverbow Inn and down the block was Observatory Books, the only rare and used bookstore in Juneau. It’s entirely devoted to Alaskan and polar/arctic circle books. The elderly, gracious owner Dee Longenbaugh—another old-growth forest of gray hair—directed me to the archaeology shelf. I spent two hours checking everything, not really sure what I was looking for.

  I found a 1956 issue of The Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska. There was an article titled “A Stone Lamp from Yukon Island, Alaska.” The scholarly paper discussed another large intricately carved oil lamp with a seal’s head rising from the basin, found on Yukon Island. Then I found a mint copy of The Museum Journal published by the University of Pennsylvania in 1928. There was an article, “A Remarkable Stone Lamp from Alaska,” with photographs of a large Eskimo stone lamp found near Seward in 1919. At that time only three of these lamps had been discovered. The broken bowl on Gretchen’s shelf was actually half of a ceremonial oil lamp. Only about a dozen of these ceremonial lamps have been found. (I want to write the curator of the Anchorage museum to organize a show of these lamps. I’d fly up for that.) Rising out of the lamp oil are either a seal head, a man, or a whale’s tail. Dried moss ringing the bowl was used as wicks. It’s easy to imagine how profoundly beautiful these lamps would be when lit. Finding those bulletins made me decide to make my Alaskan fisherman character an archaeologist.

  My visits to Yukon Island turned me into an amateur archaeologist. The next summer I was performing in Ashland, Oregon, and decided to visit the redwood parks in far Northern California. The area was a good fit for me since Crescent City, the most northern coastal California city, was destroyed by a tsunami caused by the 1964 Alaska earthquake. It was a two-and-a-half-hour drive each way, but the trek was worthwhile since Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park had only three cars in its parking lot—in August.

  I walked along the old-growth redwoods by the shore of the Smith River. I knew salmon still lived in this stream, one of California’s last wild rivers. It was the driest month in Northern California and the water was low, and I walked on a bed of exposed stones. I realized that Native Americans probably fished this river and also that, while most hikers might be able to spot an arrowhead, most people wouldn’t recognize prehistoric fishing implements. I looked down at my feet and immediately spotted a large net stone carved with a square notch. I took a photo of me holding it in my hand and then put it back.

  I’ve been to Homer and Yukon Island three times and the people attract me as much as the scenery. One of the trips was with my friend David McConnell. I wondered if David would get Alaska since he seemed the most cosmopolitan of my friends. All right, I thought he was borderline dilettante. But David is a Nature Boy and we saw stuff I had never seen in Alaska before—even though I had visited fourteen times. We stayed for a week with a gay couple, Stephen and Charles, who had bought a house in Homer. One of the couple ran a gay literary website and the other partner was a lobbyist in Washington, DC. I didn’t investigate the lobbyist’s job and stupidly assumed he was a benign lobbyist for something like teacher unions. They clearly weren’t Alaskans because they served us frozen salmon in July—the peak time for fresh sockeyes. Yes, I mocked them.

  David and I would always go to the Salty Dawg after a hike. David smoked cigarettes then and you could still smoke in the Salty Dawg. I even smoked a cigarette just for the experience since it seemed like the last bar in North America where you could still smoke indoors.

  David and I were visiting the Pratt Museum in Homer when we overheard a moose and her two calves were on the forest trail near the museum. We shot out of the building and followed the trail until we saw the mama moose and her meese. I knew that if we got too close the mama might stomp us. But the mama moose lay down in the woods and her calves circled around her. We got too close to the meese—proving we were cheechakos—and took photographs, knowing the mama moose could have stood up and trampled us. It was an incredible experience, feeling that we were hanging with the meese. That mama moose taught me an important lesson. Every parent has the right to defend his or her children. So if you’re a climate-change-denying asshole and endangering my children’s enjoyment of natural wonders, I will stomp on your face until it’s a puddle of greed. That’s not the behavior of an asshole; that’s loving your children and the beautiful world we share.

  D
avid and I visited Yukon Island and we brought the lobbyist partner. We were having a discussion with Gretchen when she mentioned the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Charles bragged that he was a lobbyist for Exxon! I was horrified. Not only was Exxon antienvironmental, they were against protecting their LGBT employees from discrimination. A gay man working for that company offended me mainly for its poor record on the environment—I have two kids who will inherit the vandalized planet they want to create. Gretchen looked stunned then calmly mentioned that Exxon had caused a lot of hardship to Alaskans. Thank god, Charles didn’t respond. Gretchen had proved I was a fool for not asking questions about his lobbying before accepting his hospitality. She taught me to never let that happen again.

  One more treat for the bird nerd, on our boat trip back from Seldovia, the only town across the bay from Homer—population 225— David and I saw a Kittlitz’s murrelet. It’s critically endangered and 10 percent of its population had died from the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It was Mother Nature calling me an asshole for hanging out with that lobbyist, and she was correct.

  Michael Hart and I also spent a week in Homer, but we stayed with Brad after he had finished salmon fishing. He had the use of a friend’s house while his buddy was working at a wilderness lodge across the bay. Our trip included walking Homer’s beaches, which are covered with beautiful gray rocks with a line of white mineral bisecting each stone. One evening Brad’s lesbian friends invited us to a bonfire on the beach. Homer’s beaches are used more by the locals than tourists. You can drive on them and party while looking out to the south side of Kachemak Bay. Its horizon of snow-covered mountains is a postcard that includes the message: “Don’t you wish you lived here?” Of course, Alaska’s lesbians are a reckoning force: even the lipstick lesbians can wield a chain-saw. We drank beers, smoked pot, and laughed while a flock of sandhill cranes flew overhead.

  Another night we went to a local tavern to sample shit-faced heterosexuality. We were sloppy straight impersonators because we didn’t pick up any chicks, talk about cars as if stick shifts gave us boners, or discuss baseball or football games as if we secretly wanted to shower with the players. At nine o’clock, we entered the bar with moose antlers hanging over the door. It was still light out, but it wasn’t afternoon bright and hot where the sun is a school yard bully. It didn’t feel like twilight either. The sun seemed to be lying in a hammock, not napping, but relaxing. The interior was standard cheap saloon where viewing the green felt on the pool table makes chronic boozers feel outdoorsy. When we left around eleven, the sky was day-go day-glow. This was not a normal spectacular sunset. We were transfixed.

  “Did the bartender put LSD in our beers?” I asked. “I feel that I’m trippin’.”

  “The sky is psychedelic,” said Michael.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Neon pink and yellow.”

  “I grew up here,” said Brad. “But I’ve never seen a sunset like this.”

  The clouds all across the sky were rosy, as were the snowcapped mountains across the bay, but the fairy light also made the parking lot look like paradise. The luminosity of the fiery finish didn’t seem like an ending, but a beginning. I felt like a firefly enjoying the radiance of living. It’s the one sunset that I can’t forget. It was an unexpected philosophical question: what kind of light illuminates your life? It was a year after I had been officially diagnosed with ALS, but I could still talk, hike, and drive a car. It never occurred to me that I might be enjoying my own glorious sunset.

  My first visit to Yukon Island was a small beautiful moment in my life and convinced me that I was catching Alaska. I started writing Selfish & Perverse that summer.

  Finding an Arrowhead

  My love of all things Native American blossomed early. When I was in the seventh grade, social studies in New York State was entirely about the Iroquois. I was in the honors program, but a hormonal surge caused me to become a class clown. Disruptive with my constant jokes, I annoyed my young teacher, the overweight, mustached Mr. Simpson. One time he even sent me down to the principal. My grades suffered, and I received three Cs and even one shocking D. Our final exam grades were posted on the hallway walls and I was stopped by Mr. Simpson while I searched for my name. He appeared angry. “Bob, you got a 96!” It pleased but didn’t surprise me. Throughout the year, I’d eagerly read about the Iroquois, but after closing my textbook, I’d focus on making smart-ass remarks that would make Kirk Gunsallus laugh. Even though we were young, Kirk was already a muscular hunk. Mr. Simpson glared at me. “My worst student shouldn’t get a 96.”

  The truth is that the Iroquois fascinated me, but Mr. Simpson bored me. There wasn’t a glimmer of enthusiasm when he taught the Iroquois creation story. He acted as if the world wasn’t perched on a turtle’s back but was sitting in a recliner. He taught as if he believed the Great Spirit gave life to men and women for the sole purpose of yawning. My enchantment with Native American culture was romantic and realistic. I read the brutal history Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee when it came out in paperback when I was seventeen. I understood that Caucasians were orcs and Europe was Mordor, but I also responded positively to muscular shirtless men living in ecological harmony with North America.

  In my thirties, I became obsessed with reading about the Lewis and Clark expedition. Their story is an adventure tale that reads like Tolkien. America was a fantasy land where Carolina parakeets flew in Kansas and California condors fed on dead whales in Oregon. Like the elves, Native Americans welcomed strangers who would eventually cause the dissolution of their traditional culture.

  My enthusiasm for Lewis and Clark intensified after I read Brian Hall’s novel I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company. The heterosexual novelist convincingly portrayed Lewis as being in love with Clark, which made me reexamine their story. In Stephen Ambrose’s classic book Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West there’s a quote from the last surviving member of the expedition that “the fineness of his physique” caused him to be selected for the company. If Meriwether was picking hotties for their two-year-and-four-month trek, that’s a sign he might have been gay. Lewis returned from the trip and slept on the floor in a Buffalo robe saying he no longer felt comfortable sleeping in beds. He also described Native American guys in his journal as “hardy strong athletic active men whose dew kissed loins shiver like fly bothered horses in the evening dusk.”

  During their journey, Clark wrote about meeting two-spirit Mandan Indians—men dressed as women. I believe after returning Meriwether became increasingly depressed after Clark married. Meriwether also realized that, unlike the two-spirit Native Americans, he couldn’t live with and love a man openly. Lewis had seen a world where gay men were accepted and even honored. He might have even seen men behaving romantically. Since all the other men on the expedition were constantly fucking Indian maidens, perhaps Meriwether hooked up with a two-spirit. Once he returned to “civilization,” Meriwether had to deal with the oppression of being branded a sodomite, and I believe it drove him to commit suicide. Narrow-minded historians will say there’s no proof that Lewis was dude-loving. Another telling indication was that his Newfoundland dog was named “Seaman.” Talk about a Freudian slip. What straight man likes to go around saying “Seaman, come! Seaman, come!” amid a group of strapping beefcake?

  Later I learned that my Canadian ancestor Nicolas Smith fought with the Iroquois against the Americans during the Revolutionary War. Growing up, my Smith grandfather always joked about our Indian blood. All four of his children had black hair. My cousins own a winery in Ontario on land Nicholas Smith bought. On the Henry of Pelham website, they claim Nicholas was part Iroquois and served as a translator in Butler’s Rangers. I hope it’s true. After seven generations, I only have 1 percent Iroquois left.

  My interest in Native American culture isn’t nostalgic. I’m never going to claim I’m Native American even if I’m carrying a few arrowheads of their DNA. And I never will support New Age white guys runn
ing Indian sweat lodges. I did a sweat lodge during the Harmonic Convergence in 1987 and the white guy who ran it was an idiot. He filled the tent with smoke and everyone had to bail out.

  One adventure was the time my pal Michael Hart and I snuck onto a ranch near Galisteo, south of Santa Fe. We wanted to see a stone ridge covered with prehistoric Native American petroglyphs. Michael told me we could be shot for trespassing. “Cowboys shooting white guys looking at Indian art,” I joked. The petroglyphs were amazing! We had to climb the ridge—big stones—and while we didn’t understand the reasoning for carvings, great art and beauty is a universal language. There were figures that looked human. The heads weren’t so they might have been gods. One had a big stylized bird. Sometimes the carvings were covered by circular yellow lichens. It was astonishing to see that art.

  My most exciting Native American moment was hearing Navaho on the car radio as we drove on their reservation. There was no translation and we listened for an hour. I wouldn’t allow the other passengers to change the station.

  I’ve never believed the Native American culture is vanishing.

  Once I committed to writing a novel about salmon fishing, I decided that I needed to spend more time in Alaska. My novel, Selfish & Perverse, would take six years to finish, and I visited Alaska twice each of those years. One trip I met Jack Dalton, a Yup’ik storyteller who made his living telling his version of Yup’ik tales. I’ve seen Jack tell stories several times; his brilliant use of humor and his narrative skill not only gives a glimpse of Native Alaskan tradition, but I could imagine The Odyssey being told to an audience of ancient Greeks, eliciting laughter and suspense.