I was born on a Friday the 13th in the Great Western Desert, the healthy, white son of middle-class parents who loved me. I was immediately swaddled and fed the standard diet of the time and place, a hearty slurry of the products of mass agriculture in post WWII America. I grew tall and strong.
I have been fairly well educated in the public institutions of my people, taught the values and myth of an Empire at the peak of its power, wrapped in the comforts and entertainments of its endlessly ambitious corporate machinery. I’ve owned well-designed and solidly built shoes, bicycles, motorcycles, cars, trucks, and boats to make my way across the face of the planet. I’ve had time to use them.
I fell in love when still young, to a partner of enormous strength and courage, a fine and lovely woman who has indulged my quirks and forgiven my mistakes. We remain, more than three decades on, best friends and passionate lovers.
My child is a wonder, a righteous heir to the genetic heritage he carries, a better example of the species than I am. He is strong, smart and gentle.
We live in a home of our own. It is dry and warm, filled with the light and beauty of the place we live, stimulating and unusual.
My community, the people of Crow Island and of the broader West, are generally thoughtful and kind. Their energy and community-spiritedness enrich the place and my own life every day.
And so I often say, I have won the lottery. To spend this short life doing the things I’ve been allowed to do, in these places and with these people, is an astonishing stroke of good luck.
Crow Island 