Best Days

The older I get, the more I find myself trying to define my life. I don’t really mean what was my purpose. I figured that out many years ago. I knew I would never live a life glamourous by nature, but feel I certainly served a purposeful life in many areas. I lived a life of service, service to people that flew the skies of this nation, but also service to this country with over seven years of military service and thirty plus years of federal duty to my country providing safety to over five thousand flights a day through the Denver ARTCC controlled airspace. Something like eighty-eight thousand square miles, of which I visited nearly three-quarters of. I had many good days filled with a lot of satisfaction for a job I could be proud of. But it isn’t what I’m talking about when I says best days. The best days are those days that throughout my life have brought me back to my center and by the end of the day I feel refreshed and pleased with the day. Satisfaction that I did something just for myself. Doesn’t mean there weren’t times during that day that focus might have shifted to someone else for a brief time, but these days were ultimately selfish and always returned to my thoughts, a movie that meant something or getting lost in a book. Have I ever lived a perfect day? Not yet, but I’ve come close a time or two. But what does my perfect day look like, or will I always settle happily for an accumulation of best days? Probably doesn’t matter but is important to keep looking for it now and again.

I’m not saying I’m on a quest. Though it might be the closest word to what my lifelong search has been. I’ll tell you about days I’ve had that came close. Ever since I was a young boy, I was introduced to fishing. I never was on a journey to be a professional at it, but I did learn what I loved about it and have recreated those days multiple times. When I was a boy, these times were spent in West and East Texas lakes. But the favorites were the days we would be in East Texas, and we would go to my grandparents farm. My dad, uncle, and my grandfather (Papa) would take me to the stock tanks on his and neighbor farms. We’d fish from the shore, and I would soak up how these men cast a line, set a hook, and held the rod while reeling in a fish. Mostly though, I would get caught up in the stories and conversations they would have. I never interjected anything about how I felt, unless they asked me how I was doing. This is a practice I have maintained throughout my life. What I discovered from people that did nothing but talk about themselves, their wants, wishes, and goals was that they were the worst listeners in the world. They were also the least observant. I suppose this is why I feel they are generally of low self esteem and their search through life is to have people respect them. These are people always looking at what others have and trying to figure out how to obtain it for themselves. Rarely do they ever come to the conclusion that the very thing they try to emulate is based on people that could give a rat’s ass about how others feel. I’ve been more interested in the study of others. I appreciate how others have achieved success, but not by the possessions they have accumulated. We know these folks; they are the look-at-me people. Sadly, these are usually the less successful people because they never learned the why, only the picture of success, not the true success of knowing. That knowing deep in our souls. I can easily get sidetracked, but this observance of others is exactly what I like about writing sometimes, seeing something maybe others don’t see. I can’t gain that access if I’m running my mouth to tell you what I desire, want, and need as if I have some expectation they should even care. Fact is, they don’t, and I certainly don’t care what it is others are trying to achieve, but more the study of the human nature of why they are driven to think anyone cares about what they might be able to attain. Very sidetracked and this is not what a best day looks like.

Back to fishing, following the days of my youth gaining the understanding of what fishing meant to me, I began to really put it into practice in my teens, especially after turning sixteen and getting the biggest freedom ever, a car. Up until then, I would ride my bike to the Colorado River. There were many good fishing holes along the streamside that ran through the town of Kremmling. But when I got a car, numerous lakes, streams, and creeks became easier to reach. I worked at a grocery store initially due to Bob Beckner being the butcher and I simply admired him. But mostly, I was able to stock my fishing tackle box with the latest doodads sold in the store. I only worked a few days each week, so having stashed a six-pack outside on one my breaks, I would retrieve it and head to one of my favorite fishing spots. Usually, I would find some isolated place like Sweetwater Lake up on Gore Pass. I’d cast a line, pop a top, and lay back looking at the clouds in the sky and daydream about the shapes they reminded me of. Some times I would sit and look at an area and wonder about the Indians and early settlers that would have wandered about in the same place I was. I often wondered about what they would have been thinking or doing. It is about this time I was turned onto Louis L’Amour westerns and the detailed account not only of the characters, but what he was so good at was describing the landscape. Later, when I started collecting the hardbound editions, I learned these areas he would describe were real. There were maps which made me even more aware of my surroundings and heightened my enjoyment of nature and the solitude I could get by casting my line of life right in the middle of it all. When I was in such a place, my heart was filled with a satisfaction that has only been matched by moments such as marriage, birth days of kids and grandkids, and gatherings of them. But even so, the chaos was overwhelming and I would long for the solitude of a mountain stream and a bed of grass to stare at the sky for hours lost in thoughts and remembering my earlier days doing the same.

But I can’t always run away to a river. Books and movies can give me an escape from reality. I’ve loved westerns since first seeing Hopalong Cassiday save the day. My grandmother even got me a coffee cup with his likeness and would serve me cowboy coffee while we watched him, Bat Masterson, Bonanza, Zorro, and countless other western shows. I lived through these shows and still do at the age of sixty-three. In fact, as I write this, I’m watching one of my all-time favorite westerns called “Bite the Bullet”. Lots of life lessons about wrong and right in people as most westerns seem to provide. Somewhere along the line, I also learned to love musical movies. While my dad was in Thailand and we lived with my grandmother, mom and I would go to the theater in Crockett and watch numerous Elvis Presley movies. I would also watch musicals such as “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”, “Oklahoma”, “Singing in the Rain”, and even a rock opera like “Tommy”. I could easily escape reality and let my mind wander about in my imagination which needs a song playing to be complete.

My best days are those days getting lost in myself and being self-absorbed in my imagination. I don’t seek these days out, but when I am presented with a day alone, I will make sure I don’t do anything but indulge in this pleasure. There are days ahead that Jen and I will get lost floating in the boat, reading, fishing, and staring off into the abyss of thought. As we get closer and closer to finishing this vision of a house Jen has and I’ve come to understand, my wish is to spend more and more days doing exactly what we want. Travelling to see National Parks, camping, waking up late, reading countless books, catching fish by the dozens, and laying on my back in the grass watching a cloud form creatures and enjoying their shadows cast on the landscape, constantly moving at a rhythm of some musical in my head. Best days? I hope they are ahead of me in plentiful numbers. For now, I’m gonna finish the Bob Hope comedy that somehow has eluded me over the years. It gives me comfort to know that I haven’t seen them all and there are still discoverable things ahead of me and not just a bunch of days recreating days I have already lived. Yep, best days are ahead of me!