Mountains and Islands

The road toward my first Christmas away from home confirmed a charmed life. I'd abandoned three retail jobs I was working simultaneously and quit the lovely, but WAY out-of-my-price range liberal arts college in Portland I'd attended, where I'd racked up enough debt to bury a Bloomberg (hint: it's Monica Lewinsky's alma mater). My last month's rent at an apartment in Southwest P-Town was the agreed-upon price of a respectable, matching davenport and chair my grandparents had given me some months earlier. November, 1981. I was a drop-out, floundering, working my ass off, getting nowhere. On a whim a few weeks earlier, I'd picked up the phone and called the ski school director in Vail, Colo.  "Are you certified?" he asked. "Yes," I said. "I can put you to work, but not 'til mid-December. "Great! I'll be there." Charmed. I had assumed the few bucks I'd saved would last until my first paycheck lan...

I guess the little guy had stored enough chow for a few days and didn't need my offerings. Mice sometimes get into stuff they shouldn't -- that's why they're so easy to poison, on purpose or by accident. I left a bag of bacterial digestive drain stuff on the counter next to the sink some weeks ago. The next morning, microorganism-laden bits were scattered across the counter, a large hole gnawed into the thick plastic container. The label reads, "Harmful if taken internally. Keep out of reach of children." Maynard was fine after that incident, and I've seen no evidence of similar mischief since. He's a survivor, like his ancestors, resourceful adaptors like mine. Living softly as we do today, however, no predators to evade, as much food wasted as consumed, all things sanitized and pasteurized for our protection, minds unchallenged, numbed by technology and trivia, I wonder if we aren't sliding backward along a muddied, evolutionary trail. We...