I think the smartest people are the folks that can make themselves happy. I’m not talking bout pleasuring yourself. I not talking bout taking yourself on exotic vacations or expensive restaurants. What I’m talkin bout is the person that works hard to set life up in a fashion that makes one happy and then maintaining that life. You might have a big ol head full of information, you might be able to do algebra in you head, while standing on one foot, but if you let the things in life that make you happy slip away, well then.
I have a couple of friends, they are both guys and they both really want to get married and have kids and a big ol wonderful life. They both date women that would love to marry them, but neither guy will settle. It’s not that they are real picky, it’s just they have the smarts to know the path to happiness can’t be forced. They know it would be wrong to get married for the wrong reasons. Not fair to them and not fair to the woman that is not “right” for them.
Next week I’m gonna start writing about one of these guys. I have not know him a long time, maybe 7 or 8 years, but we have become great friends. We have spent lot’s of time eating meals together and having wonderful conversations. As he sometimes says we are “solving world problems”. I think this guys story is very interesting, he’s is in a really good place in life right now and it was a very different path he has followed, many paths literally.
Not long ago he started a job as Park Ranger. His “office” is the Redwood National Park. A few weeks after he arrived and started his job he sent me a “transmission”, that’s how it read anyway. Then a few weeks later another one. I replied, letting him know how much I enjoyed getting them and how much I liked his writing style. I ask if I could post them as a blog sometime. He told me these “transmissions” were short pieces he was sending to an A.M. radio station in Ely, Minnesota. One of the DJ’s read them every Sunday morning on a program called Pathways, I think that’s the name of the show. Anyway here is the first one he sent me and Stacey. Next week I will tell you more about Dr. Johnny Duke and share another “transmission”.
Arrived in the Redwoods yesterday. A few excerpts from my
journal: Carpooling with a lady named Amy out of Ely, a dollar
twenty-five from downtown Duluth to the intercity bus
station and 18 minutes of your time, the scratched out words "No Ringing
Cell Phones" handwritten on the "passenger" side visor of the bus to
Minneapolis, blue sky with wisps of clouds, trees with tiny, light green
leaves, immature bald eagle perched on a tree along I-35, redwing
blackbirds on the cattails in the temporary ponds of the ditches, the
man leaning over to say, "They can afford to build new roads but they
don't have anything for the homeless. We need a revolution," my reply,
"I've started the revolution, I'm on this bus," cliff swallows flying
into mud nests under an overpass in Salt Lake
City, a kestrel hovering over a field for 20 seconds before diving into
the grass for an unseen prey, riding the transit system in Portland that
is
among the best in the world, walking through the bohemian Hawthorne
district that is
reminescent of Greenwich Village, the thousands of staples
in the telephone pole from the political
activism, lost cat signs, and community announcements, meeting people
from all over the world at the Hawthorne Hostel, picking up
Ernie the hitch-hiker headed to Eugene, Oregon to visit friends, the
emotion that overcomes me when I first see the "Big Trees", the stumps
of long
gone trees that remind me of the enormous boulders in the Boundary
Waters, the proud feeling when my supervisor hands me the heavy, golden
nationl park badge to pin on my (as of yet to be issued)uniform, the
sound of the white crowned sparrow that is a cousin of the ubiquitous
white throated sparrow in canoe country, meeting and having good
conversation with housemates who cooked
me breakfast this morning.
Reporting live from Crescent City, California. Johnny
Duke
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