About 14 years ago I met a remarkable man in Bisbee Arizona. Jim Babcock, a multi-dimensional, creative, brilliant, and somewhat manic eccentric. He was a geologist, artist, writer, landscaper, and when I met him, proprietor of a truly eclectic bed and breakfast. In my few encounters with him on visits there, he said a lot of thought provoking things. Kind of scared the crap out of my young daughter on one visit when he started ranting a bit of existential stuff about her past and future incarnations. Later - years later - she remembered it clearly and admitted that it somehow did make a lot of sense. Anyway, the one thing that he said that always stood out the most to me was this. If you watch the way that all the birds are flying, and you head in the other direction, you'll never have any competition. I've thought about that often in a lot of contexts over the years, and it still rings loud for me.
Jim was one of a kind, and I'm sure there are lots of stories still circulating about him out there. He was, I suppose, a troubled soul, who lived life very large - when it wasn't consuming him. In very odd ways I've never quite understood, he reminded me a lot of my own father, who was almost exactly the same age. I expect they would have never cared for each other had they actually met in Cochise County, where they each spent much of their last years. But they both lived lives very much against the current, and each in their own way found unique reward far from the main stream.
I don't consider myself bold or brazen or driven enough to compare to Jim or my father. But something gleaned from them was the courage or at least curiosity to swim against the current. In a standardized and evermore globalized world, we are expected to funciton like lemmings. Go to school, get a job, get married, raise a family, invest in the stock market or retirement fund, buy insurance, join a church and health club....... and hope that it all works out. Then, when the shit hits the fan for the whole kit and kaboodle....like it has now in these economic times...I guess there's comfort in knowing that everyone is in the same boat. Of course the sad thing is that there are a lot of folks now feeling like they're going down with that boat. Not just the unemployed (more than 10% of us!) but also the overextended, the disenfranchised who can't buy insurance even if they want to, the health fanatics whose knees are caving underneath them. And unfortunately, in my line of work, we see the aftereffects like tidal waves sweeping through the little children who have no clue as to why life is so topsy-turvy.
I'm not sure there's anythng close to sense or comfort in bucking the system or status quo. Who moves to Maine when it's time to think about easing up and retiring? I can't tell you how many people raised their eyebrows at my decision, and questioned my recollection of the meaning of the word "winter." Who buys a house where taxes are some of the highest in the nation, and the economy riddled with some of the toughest problems out there? Hmmmmm, all good points....and ones I'm pretty sure I was well apprised of when I made my move. But there is something here - beyond long cold winters and high taxes, that is hard to pinpoint. Incredible beauty, for sure. Also, a spirit of deep-rooted survival and independence. A tendency to create, and to conquer challenges in unique ways. To commune, commiserate, question anyone's authority, and stubbornly refuse to conform to someone else's idea of what we should be. Where there are WalMarts and McDonalds up here (few and far in between) there are a LOT of people apologizing and wishing that they'd never let that happen. There are more people here making lives in fully individualistic ways than anywhere else I've ever been.
