Bonnie and Clyde Files 39

Bonnie and Clyde were in fine felonious form as we took the path along the river and wound our way through willows, shrubs and trees, dodging elk scat here and there. Rain fell and the river carried wood down the current with considerable pace. I thought about something I’d read by Thoreau recently: “Who hears the rippling of rivers will not utterly despair of anything.”

That was true on this river with these dogs. I have despaired, after the probation meetings or treatment sessions, the expense, the degradation, the bland carpets, the farce and anti-life of them all, but not utterly. I have seen men go to utterly and they seemed utterly aware or oblivious it was happening to them.

There are no real rapids on the river where I commune with it. Still, in my imagination, I’ve got to run the rapids of stasis in my life. How does one do that? I’ve got to run the cataracts of quicksand? How does one do that?

Our path paralleled the river for a couple hundred yards and then we found deep mud. I noticed a stick shoved upright into the mud. Odd. Someone had done that. I pulled the stick free and hoisted it into the sky. It was beaverwood the size of a fencing foil, of good green willow and gnawed to perfection at both ends by some beaver’s tooth (never teeth, they only use one to eat.)

I slashed the sword from side to side. It made a whipping sound that delighted me. I fished out a treat, from my pocket, tossed it into the air, and then struck it in half. Bonnie and Clyde raced over to gobble up the treat. Something out of an Alexander Dumas novel or Errol Flynn movie was happening to me. I was the only swordsman in the world with a beaverwood sword! I slid the sword into the belt loop of my corduroys and it hung at a 45-degree angle. A perfect fit. We were the Three Musketeers and I had never divined the meaning of musketeer until now. Quite naturally, my other two were dogs and not humans. In fact, we were three dogs!

Bonnie took the point for home and Clyde fanned out to my left. Several yards into our return to the sanctuary, I noticed a thin blackberry stalk standing weakly at attention. I drew my sword and slashed it in half with one swift stroke. Then I found another another blackberry and did the same. I looked down the trail and saw all manner of blackberry invaders.

Months ago, I had considered blackberries on a romp with Bonnie and Clyde and felt I should think about them more deeply. The time was now, but not to think, but to kill, kill the way I had killed armies of blackberries during my tenure as caretaker of a national wildlife refuge. There, I had I cut more blackberries by hand than any other living Oregonian of my generation and got my mind and body fit like never before. I had dragooned students, adults, seniors, sex offenders, friends, family members, , my then-wife, girlfriends, transients, even my dogs (!) to remove acres and acres of blackberries and then plant 10,000 trees and shrubs so this insidious and relentless plant wouldn’t reoccupy the land. I had led a small victory for a coastal watershed and it was perhaps the crowning victory of my life. It will outlast anything I write by 10,000 years.

Then I forgot about all about that victory and lost something important as a result.

I kept moving down the trail hacking, slaying, swashbuckling, mocking my enemy. Bonnie and Clyde seemed puzzled at first but then caught my madness and chewed up a severed stalk here and there.

Some twenty minutes later we reached the yard of the sanctuary and the skirmish ended. I was sweating and needed water or a Rainier in the rain (just like on the refuge!). I had slain at least 25 invaders and knew where the rest of the enemy lay rooted.

Next time, I would bring along a sharper weapon…and fire. The war had begun.

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