My talismans

Hi everyone,

My friend MICHAEL FRIZELL sometimes posts pictures that demonstrate the sort of mood he’s in or might be in or could be in or once was in. It’s great fun and I always look forward to his next selection. This morning I’m looking around my office at the much loved objects that have found their way here over the decades, thinking about Michael’s exercise, remembering stories behind each of my treasures, the many moods they evoke when I pause to look at them, and wondering if I’m going too far to think of them as my talismans — my bringers of luck, inspiration, strength (?), and endless stories.

We all have them. You know what yours are and why you feel compelled to keep them near you. I have a dead lizard in a jar, mummified in the desert sun on an Indian reservation near Ajo, Arizona. I was eight years old when I found it and took it home in the jar I was given by my hosts. I have kept it close for eighty years. I have written about it. Gazing at it through its glass tomb takes me back over the years and miles and lifetimes to the moment I looked down and saw it at the bottom of a dry cistern. Never going to let it go.

My grandfather’s pocket watch hangs in a small glass dome. Once years ago I got up the courage to turn its winding stem a few clicks. I was suddenly hearing the tiny tinkling that my dad’s dad, the grandfather I never knew, had held to his ear. I couldn’t hold back the sudden tears. On another shelf, a small framed picture of my other grandfather, the bastard who ran off with another women, leaving his wife and four girls at home without a penny. How many times have I looked at that picture and wondered what sort of man would be capable of inflicting such pain and hardship on his family.

Close by, three skulls. The big one, a replica of a short-face bear, was a gift from my wife and son when my book about Riverbluff Cave was published. A joyful day, an incredible surprise. The smaller skull is actually large in its own right; an extinct variety of black bear that I discovered with BILLY PAULY when we were twelve years old. Shouldn’t have been in that cave. Great adventure.

Pictures on my walls and shelves are gifts from artists with whom I’ve collaborated on a number of books — BETSY LEWIN, ELOISE WILKIN, CHRIS DEMEREST, DAN BARR, GILES LAROCHE, ROB SHEPPERSON… All represent months and years of collaboration with wonderful people, gifted artists. Yet another shelf holds a Steuben crystal brontosaurus. SANDY bought it for me in 1969 when my first book came out. One of the most wondrous gifts and the sweetest memory of all.

As the song goes, these are a few of my favorite things. There are many others. Each represents a poem or book, but their value can’t be measured that simply. They belong here. They are part of me. I have no idea what will become of them when I’m gone, but for now they bring me pleasure every day. That seems enough.