On Writing, Fatherhood and the Olympic Ideal

O’Hare International Airport is about as far removed from the peaceful waters of Lake Three or our quiet forest home in northern Wisconsin as any place I can imagine. Yet last week that’s exactly where we found ourselves, sitting in the waiting area of Gate C16. Our daughter, Alicia, was talking with a friend, who suddenly looked at my wife and me and asked, “How did you get past security?”

“It wasn’t easy,” I joked. Melba and I were probably the only people there not about to board United Flight 851 to Beijing, China. Alicia and a few of her friends from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point were going to Beijing as volunteers under the auspices of Community Collaborations International to help with the Olympics. I had been dreading this day for months.

When your child asks for help to volunteer at the Olympics, how do you say no? No was never an option, and yet there were times when I hoped she would change her mind, even if it meant forfeiting thousands of dollars. I am not an intrepid traveler, and Alicia had only traveled by plane once, to Orlando with her high school choir, amply chaperoned by parents and her teacher. Even then, I monitored the flights there and back on the internet, breathing a sigh of relief each time the plane safely touched down. At Gate C16, I was cheered that she had run into a few friends, that we would not be putting her on a plane entirely alone to fly halfway across the world to the most foreign of lands. I was finally beginning to relax a little.

Gate C16 was a potpourri of races, nationalities and styles of dress. Announcements prattled on in both English and Chinese. Several men clad in the bright yellow, blue and red of Colombia, with matching sport bags, were talking business-like near the entry. Immediately behind us, Gary D’Amato of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel was interviewing the family of our youngest Olympian, ten meter synchronized diver, Mary Beth Dunnichay. Of course, at the time, I only knew there was a large contingent of people wearing matching logoed sport shirts proclaiming “Mary Beth, Our Olympian,” who were being interviewed. I had a number of things on my mind. I later stumbled across Gary’s article almost by accident.

For the past several months, I had not been at all unmindful of the many reasons for discomfort sending our only daughter to Beijing. First, there was the matter of conscience, of China’s involvement in Sudan, its policies in Tibet, its human rights record. There was the threat of terrorism. There was the matter of the air pollution. I had concerns for her safety in general as an American traveling overseas. I had the usual concerns of a parent when one’s child (actually, at 21, a young woman) travels to a place where her parents could be of little assistance in case of emergency. And then there were all of my own manufactured anxieties. I did not consider putting her on a flight from Duluth to get her to O’Hare; we would take her, via Madison where we would stay quietly and cheaply with Alicia’s grandmother. Yet, I had never driven to O’Hare, and had little idea of what to expect. Our daughter did not even know from which terminal her plane would depart, much less which gate.

Our adventure had not unfolded without a few hiccups, but in the end, after waiting in many lines, a kindly woman saw fit to bend the rules slightly and give two nervous parents security passes to reunite with their daughter across the security line. We waited at C16 until the place was empty and the huge plane taxied away and out of sight with Alicia on board, and then we waited some more until we saw it roaring down the runway and out of sight again. In the mean time seeing dozens of planes flawlessly taking off and landing had soothed my throbbing nerves just a little more.

Two days later Alicia called to say they had made it safely to their apartments. There were about ten of them, and they had just gotten back from watching the spectacular opening ceremonies, which we did not watch until later that night. As that spectacular event unfolded unbelievably before my eyes, I began to remember back to the late 70’s when the Olympics had meant something special to me, when I had tried to apply my narrow vision of the Olympic Ideal to my writing.

Between jobs, with a little savings, it seemed like the time was right. I was still inspired by the ’76 Olympics of the year before. I leased a one-bedroom efficiency apartment overlooking the lower campus of the University of Wisconsin – Madison, which I liked to think of as my garret. For six months I had nothing to do but write, to see just how good of a writer I could be. I would apply the singular dedication of an Olympic athlete to the tip of my pen. This was my time.

In retrospect, it would be easy to conclude that I wasted my time. Six months of my life vaporized like a dream. Sure, I wrote, but only about three hours a day. Hardly an Olympian feat. Afternoons I read the classics, Anna Karenina, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment. Must-reads for any aspiring novelist, I admit, but in retrospect, something of an escape from the far more difficult task of writing. I sneaked into the Natatorium a couple of days a week to lift weights, or I jogged to keep my body in shape and my mind fresh and creative, or so I told myself. Evenings I took a course in researching local history or attended readings…or sometimes I really broke training and walked downtown for a few beers. One night found me in the tepid light of The Bull Ring talking with a young black man I’d just met, and he asked me what I did. The words tumbled over my tongue. “I’m a writer.” He was amazed, euphoric even, because he said he wrote too. He said over and over that he wanted me to read some of his “shit.”

Shit. What a crude derision of one’s creative efforts, I thought. Why would I want to read shit? Back then, I was enamored of anything written in my own hand. Changing something seemed like an admission of defeat. Erasing was simply murder. I was a two-draft writer at most. What I wrote was not shit.

It was, I just didn’t know it. It took me far longer than six months to realize that. Real writers should not be afraid to write badly…and endlessly. Not to the point of developing bad habits, of course, but certainly in pursuit of the appropriate amount of humility. Just as musicians must practice their scales and just as aspiring Olympic athletes must hone their bodies, the aspiring writer must prepare himself for the seemingly endless and pointless tedium of learning his craft. He must prepare himself to throw away most of what he writes, or at least set it aside. He must prepare himself for tireless revision. He must prepare himself to write even when thoughts flee like leaves in the wind and words seem heavy as stone. He must prepare himself for few rewards. He must remember that the process of becoming a writer is not finished in six months or six years, it is the work of a lifetime.

As the colorful pyrotechnics exploded across the TV screen, thoughts were also going off in my head. When was the last time I had written a word when I didn’t feel like writing? When was the last time I had worked on a short story? Or strung words aimlessly across a page just for the sake of stringing words? When was the last time I had taken the trouble to edit something that had been waiting months or years for editing? When was the last time I had done much of anything I did not want to do? That to me was the embodiment of the Olympic Ideal, the self-sacrifice that it takes to be the best you can be at something, be it the 200-meter freestyle or writing or parenting or taking out the trash.

In the broader sense, the Olympics to me are a coming together to celebrate and share this ideal, which transcends race, religion, nationality and politics. The “Olympic truce” means far more than a guarantee of safe passage, it means the freedom of the world to come together in some small symbolic way to be just ordinary people, simple and unlabeled. I love George Will, but when he calls the Olympics a “charade of international comity” and scoffs at the IOC for holding them in a country governed by a “tyrannical” regime, he is missing the point. The Olympics and the Olympic Ideal are not about place. Did Pierre de Coubertin not say that “Olympism is a state of mind”? The Olympics are intended to transcend physical, political and ideological boundaries. Do they always? Probably not.

It’s easy to criticize the Olympics. The games are not perfect just as people are not perfect. People cheat. Judges sometimes judge unfairly. A small child lip-synchs a song. Politics stain behavior. The host country is governed by a totalitarian regime with a dismal human rights record. So do these games then serve no purpose? Only if one expects something organized on such an enormous and diverse scale to be perfect in an otherwise imperfect world. I would venture to say there are some 11,000 athletes in Beijing who believe the games serve a purpose. Do they all like each other? Do you like everyone you work with? Or everyone on your block? Out of 11,000 people there is bound to be some bad eggs. Even some who simply don’t deserve to be there.

But among 11,000 people, there will also be shining examples of courage and dedication, of sportsmanship transcending human differences. I will see people who are just plain better at being who they are than I am. That’s why I will watch and wonder and hope and be inspired. The Olympics are, perhaps, a microcosm of a world trying to get along. We’re doing it imperfectly, but most of us are trying. Like it or not, the world needs the Olympics, be they in Beijing or Chicago, because when we stop trying for and aspiring to something better, even in a small way, hope is lost.

As I continued to watch the ceremony and all its remarkable choreography (to George the subordination of individuality to the collective), it suddenly seemed so very right that part of my family was in Beijing for such a remarkable occasion. For so many months, how had I not seen that?

Reflections from Lake Three: The Writer As Fisherman

Boat, bait,poles, tackle boxes, gas, life jackets, fishing licenses, drain plug in place…what else could we possibly have needed? Just like with writing, fishing requires a lot of attention to detail. Sometimes we are so focused on the details we miss the obvious.

As we took off something was wrong, something dragging, thumping, something askew. I downshifted the twelve-year old Suburban, hoping it wasn’t, finally, the last of the transmission. Nothing changed. By then I had no choice but to circle the small campground and stop in front of our site. A left-rear flat. I was almost relieved…something we could handle. It was the third strike for this particular tire, but there wasn’t much I could do about it then. My son, John, had just changed it a couple of weeks earlier and bid me stand aside while he took ten minutes to change the damned thing again. He almost made it.

How had neither of us noticed that the tire was flat? We both had walked around the truck. It was not an inconspicuous thing. I am still amazed by it. I had been focused on the plane of lists, a list of items, a list of things to do…and I had done them. That too, the niggling details of fishing (and other things) were not my strength. And yet I’d not noticed a flat tire. That is, perhaps, the story of my writing life. Writer’s myopia. I focus on the green light, oblivious to the semi running the red.

After John had finished securing the spare and I had struggled to fasten the flat tire back into the truck, we stood outside taking stock. That damned tire had gotten us here, which was providential, but I also took it as an omen. We had planned to drive over to English Lake and fish for walleye, but now I had a bad feeling about challenging the back roads with no spare and no cell service. I believe there are signposts in life, but you have to look for them. After missing the flat, I was now looking.

“Do you want to fish here?” I asked John.

“I don’t care,” he said.

That finished it; we’d fish at Lake Three. Even if there were no walleye, there were wily largemouth bass. In all the years we’d fished Lake Three, I’d only caught one largemouth.

As I backed the boat into the crystalline green water of Lake Three, it still bothered me I’d not noticed that flat tire. When it came to detail, I had no writer’s eye, whatever that was. Wasn’t a writer supposed to notice color, texture, a bee pollinating yon distant flower? Life was lost on me, I thought, slipping through my fingers like water. The ink was running thin.

My trusty Evinrude started on the third pull again, even after a year of neglect in the garage. That was atypical of my relationship with mechanical things. In fifty-seven years, my only peephole into the world of the mechanical has been Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, and it had left me breathless. The work bench, an altar; the wrench, a holy wand. Or so it seemed.

We chugged into the little bay opposite the campground behind us, tucked invisibly back into the trees. I wasn’t thinking about literary things…War and Peace on the tip of a fishhook. Sometimes serious writers simply have to let it go. They need relief from “writer’s mind.” As they say, a watched pot never boils. I am not one of those. If anything, I need to troll the depths of my imagination more than I do, even out on the lake away from pen and keyboard. Ideas are everywhere, ready to take your bait and run. You simply have to pay attention.

We anchored and threw our bait out, suspended from bobbers. John was using leaf worms, and I put on a leech I’d really brought for the walleye at English Lake. Whether it would catch bass, I did not know. Our bobbers twitched and wiggled. Ah, I thought, the fish in this lake were interested in leeches. But just like with ideas, you have to pay attention, or they’ll leave with your bait before you can set the hook. If you allow too much slack in your line, you’ll hook nothing but water. I was not thinking about plots or blogs or even a journal entry, but what I was doing was not much different. John caught some small perch, while I was missing the hits that actually took my bobber under. Sometimes you miss, no matter how hard you’re paying attention. It happens. Life does not indulge us just because we’re taking the trouble to live it.

My bobber went under again, and when I set the hook this time, I did not miss. It was a good one for Lake Three. A swirl on the surface suggested something I dared not think aloud, that I had, at last…again, hooked a largemouth. And so it was, not a large bass but a bass just the same, caught at 11:30 in the shank of the day, in the sunlight, on a leech, on a hook dangling from an unappetizing silver snap swivel. “I’m really good,” I joked aloud to John, realizing how truly lucky I was, rather than skillful. Sometimes that’s what it takes, even with the wrong bait and the wrong tackle: you never know what you might catch. The fish was steely green, cold in my hand, beautiful black eyes, strong. The writer in me was finally coming out, capturing the entirety of the experience, even as I hastened to remove the hook as fast as I could to return the creature unharmed to the weedy depths. Only the second bass I’d ever caught in Lake Three.

Back in the tent I had a bound journal I kept solely for trips such as this. Some people take pictures. I write. Somehow I would try to capture all of this, to keep these precious moments from slipping away forever. The journal helps keep me focused, even when I'm not thinking about it.

We fished another two and a half hours without comparable success. An advantage of remaining at Lake Three was that we could beach our boat and easily take it out again that night after dinner. The bass might be biting again.

As we settled in for lunch, I was telling John about a white hornet that had visited our camp site every day at Lake Wabasso when he and his sister were small. I don’t even recall how this came up. The black and white striped hornet (most often called a bald-faced or white-faced hornet, actually a very large wasp) was a curious, docile creature, and on that trip we had come to regard it as our little flying friend, a tiny guardian angel. I still have it on videotape. Scarcely a minute after I’d told John of this, as I made my way from our screen house to our tent, I was confronted by one of these curious creatures, hovering so full in my face I might have inhaled it with a deep breath. Startled, I brushed it lightly away, knowing I would not be stung. It was the only white hornet we saw our three days there.

The eeriness of this improbable coincidence settled into me slowly. I’d no sooner spoken of a white hornet and was visited by one. Sometimes God writes in script too faint for us to clearly see, and yet it is there nevertheless and capable of deciphering with effort. My writer’s mind began to shudder and awaken. I had missed the tire, but I was beginning to see again in entirely different ways. Somewhere in solitude, with my journal perhaps, I would try to drill down to the meaning I knew was there. Even when words can't completely express what we see, they can help us understand.

The choice that night was to fish or build a fire. John chose to fish. We pushed off into the twilit bay and chugged quietly over to where we’d begun in the morning. I dangled a leech while John threaded a worm. The fish were hungry, but leeches were hard to steal, worms weren’t. Then my bobber went down, and I set the hook and felt the strong tug of a fish. I reeled my second largemouth to the boat, hoisted and released it as quickly as I could. John stuck with his worms.

Then my bobber swirled down once again, and once again I set the hook, this time feeling an even more substantial fish on the line. He broke the surface and taildanced briefly on the water, one of the most beautiful sights a fisherman can see. Game as he was, he was no match for my line, and in a minute I held him briefly in my hand, extracting the hook from the corner of his mouth, and he was free again to challenge another lucky fisherman.

I looked at John. He declined a leech again, although the perch were stealing more worms than not. He went to a surface popper and jerked life into it across the water. He had some nibbles, and caught a crappie. I wanted him to catch a bass more than anything, as if that would somehow solidify the bond between father and son. I ached for him to catch a bass. Why was he refusing to use the only bait that had caught one? I saved a couple of leeches for him and fed the fish some worms. Finally, I fed them our last two leeches as well. The mosquitoes were closing in, and only a vestige of daylight lit our way back to shore. We glided noiselessly onto the grassy bank.

We’d spent five hours on the water that day. I doubt we’d have had more fun on English Lake, where we’d caught nothing together the year before. John seemed pleased with our effort. I was pleased too, having caught two more bass than I’d caught on Lake Three in my entire life, but I would gladly have traded them for perch to see them at the end of John’s line. He would not tell me, even the next day, why he would not use a leech. I knew he wasn’t squeamish about such things, but I let it go. We all fish in our own way. John sometimes seemed like the flat tire I'd failed to see. Was I just not looking? Or was he like so many other people, evading my writer’s eye, like night creatures fleeing the light? The mystical appearance of a white hornet was easier to comprehend. How could I write of such things? How could I possibly….

For a different perspective on our fishing trip, see my post at The Silent Life.

Some Prescriptions for Writer's Block #4: The Upper Left-Hand Brick

Start with the upper left-hand brick.

-- Robert Pirsig, Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Over thirty years ago, in the midst of one of the best reads of my life, I came across the best remedy for writer’s block I have ever heard. Back then, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance provided a refreshing break from law books and case study. I could almost feel the wind in my hair as I rode along with Robert Pirsig, his son Chris and their two companions through the American countryside. Sometimes he takes you off the bike on a journey through his life (presumably his life, through a character called Phaedrus), but I never had any sense of slowing down.

On one of these side trips Pirsig explores the human tendency toward imitation through the example of one of his former students. For a time he had taught rhetoric at Montana State College (later University) in Bozeman. This student wanted to write a five-hundred word essay about the United States but could think of nothing to say. Pirsig suggested she narrow her subject down to Bozeman. The due date for the paper came and went, and she still couldn’t think of anything to say and was becoming quite upset. He was stumped. “Narrow it down to the main street of Bozeman,” he suggested.

Once again his student came back to him empty-handed, tears in her eyes this time. If she couldn’t think of anything to say about all of Bozeman, how could she write about just one street?

“He was furious. ‘You’re not looking!’ he said. A memory came back of his own dismissal from the University for having too much to say. For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see. She really wasn’t looking and yet somehow didn’t understand this.

“He told her angrily, ‘Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick.’

“Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses. Opened wide.

“She came in the next class with a puzzled look and handed him a five-thousand word essay on the front of the Opera House on the main street of Bozeman, Montana.”

Looking at one brick, Pirsig concluded, made her look. She had been blocked because she had been trying to repeat things she had already heard, and she hadn’t heard anything worth repeating about her chosen subject. She had become unaware that she could freshly look and see for herself. Narrowing her subject to one brick had forced her to do her own seeing and original thinking.

Pirsig continued to experiment. In class he had everyone write an entire hour about the back of their thumb. No one had a problem finding something to say. In another class he had them write about a coin, with the same result. A couple of his students asked whether they had to write about both sides.

Sometimes when we’re stuck, we simply have to look a little harder at the upper left-hand brick.

Reflections on 'A New Earth' from Lake Three

“In the forest, there is an incomprehensible order that to the mind looks like chaos. It is beyond the mental categories of good or bad. You cannot understand it through thought, but you can sense it when you let go of thought, become still and alert, and don’t try to understand or explain. Only then can you be aware of the sacredness of the forest.”

A New Earth – Eckhart Tolle

There never seems to be enough time. Even when I crawled out of my sleeping bag at six in the morning with the coffee pot ready and needing only heat. The birds had already been up for two hours. I read my breviary for ten minutes and put it down for the rest of the day. There is no internet at Lake Three, no DirecTV, no cell reception, no electricity, no running water, just a picnic table and a well-kept biffy provided by the Forest Service. I deliberately left my laptop at home. I scribbled in a leather-bound journal I’d not touched since the last time we were there. Two mornings we got up early enough to throw out fishing lines in hopes of a largemouth. No such luck.

I didn’t go to Lake Three just to read, but after fishing and hiking and Scrabble and being time, there still remained more time for reading than back home. I had big designs. I brought A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale and The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich. I didn’t plan to read them all, or in the case of the first two, re-read. I did plan to read generous segments of all of them. Instead I picked up Tolle’s book first, went through it cover-to-cover, and left Norman and Louise for another day.

Surely, Eckhart Tolle doesn’t need me to plug his book when he has Oprah; and there are probably more reviews of it than there are words in it. I’m not going to pretend to add anything new. In fact, the book itself adds very little to the main body of Tolle’s work which appears in The Power of Now, which I’ve also read and re-read and given copies of to my kids. However, in A New Earth he does explain his views of the ego and what he calls our “pain-body” in different ways, and suggests that through awakening (our first life purpose) will we find our secondary life purpose in the world of form. He further suggests that true hope for our planet lies in the collective awakening of human consciousness.

None of what Tolle offers us is terribly original. He draws deeply upon writings from the Bible, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sufism, which he weaves into a very Zen-like approach to life. Be aware of your thoughts, he says. Your thoughts are not you. Be on the alert for signs of the ego and your pain-body (collective memory) in your thoughts and feelings. They are not you, and so on. You can read things like this elsewhere. So why do I read Tolle and why did I take A New Earth to the middle of the Chequamegon National Forest?

I think Tolle’s genius lies in his ability to take a very Eastern way of thinking and express it in ways we Westerners not only can understand but can relate to. The teachings of Jesus and Saint Paul often lend themselves very nicely to Tolle’s point of view. For instance, Jesus said you must lose your life to find it. To Tolle, that means losing our egoic way of thinking. Awakening to our life’s purpose.

The signs about the world are ominous. Slowing economies, rising unemployment, skyrocketing commodities prices, shrinking investments, climate change, vanishing species, terrorism, fear of nuclear proliferation. My 89-year old mother remarked to me the other day that people at her retirement complex were talking about “Armageddon.” A lot of people are wondering what life will be like for their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

It’s tough stuff to ignore. What is so refreshing about escaping to Lake Three is its psychological remoteness from the world. Yes, there is radio reception, but I have little patience for listening to music there, much less the noise of the news. The sounds of the forest are enough. I can begin to forget. The trees don’t care about global warming; they’re doing their part. The birds don’t care about the price of oil. The fish don’t care about terrorism. I can begin to focus on the ego and identify the pain-body, and yes they are there. I can begin to focus on how they affect my thinking and emotions. I can at least begin, again, to learn how to live in the present. There is fishing meditation and walking meditation and even bug and noise meditation. There are challenges even at Lake Three, but one is not overwhelmed by them. I can begin to lose myself.

Perhaps the greatest challenge is the practice of nonresistance. According to Tolle, “nonresistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe.” The practice begins internally with accepting each situation as it is. When I read the headlines every morning, it is usually with a judgmental eye. God, are they really killing aid workers in Somalia? How can oil cost so much? How can we possibly balance the budget with the economy in the tank? I’m glad to get away from such stuff, so I can try to practice nonresistance on easier things. A chainsaw, mosquitoes, yapping dogs, a balky fishing line, a million little, almost-manageable things. Acceptance. Things are as they are. Tolle quotes Shakespeare too: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

It is not a matter of cultivating only pleasant, optimistic thoughts; Tolle is not into “the power of positive thinking.” In fact, he’s into thinking only insofar as it becomes necessary to live in a world of form. Tolle is into being without passing judgment. Of course, nonresistance does not mean doing nothing about the evil we perceive in the world. Inner acceptance does not mean indifference. It simply (or not so simply) means not squandering precious energy indulging in judgment.

I took A New Earth to Lake Three because I am a firm believer that survival of our planet is not primarily a matter of politics, economics or science. It is a matter of spiritual awakening that must begin with each one of us. Just today Pope Benedict XVI was quoted at CNN.com during his trip to Australia: "In so many of our societies, side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair." The pontiff advocated "a new age in which hope liberates us from the shallowness, apathy and self-absorption which deadens our souls and poisons our relationships.” Tolle puts it another way. As we learn to identify our ego and our egoic thinking, we also begin to see the dissolution of our self-indulgent sense of separation from all things.

As a Christian, I am not necessarily offended by anything Eckhart Tolle has to say. When it comes to doctrine, I am decidedly open minded. However, if you wish to read a more strictly Christian assessment of Tolle’s book, well-written and erudite, I would commend you to a review at Greg Boyd’s blog, Random Reflections.

The battle for a New Earth has begun. It is not being fought in Afghanistan or Iraq or Washington or The Hague. It is being fought within each one of us, with each breath, with each moment of our awareness.

Carve Magazine

“I’m tired. Tired of driving and making car conversation. All I want is a shower and a milkshake from the Dairy Queen we just blew past. I know I wanted to go somewhere for Spring Break that wasn’t all beaches and beer and frat boys, but driving a thousand miles on a Zen mission to visit a dead guy’s house isn’t my dream vacation either. Even if that dead guy was responsible for “Suspicious Minds.”

-Elizabeth Corcoran, Indelible Ink
-Carve Magazine, Summer 2008, Vol. IX, Issue II

I just signed up for my free subscription to Carve Magazine, an online literary magazine of impeccable quality that is just there for the reading. Carve is named for the late Raymond Carver, and the people at Carve do him no disservice. The stories there are first rate.

Here is the first paragraph of their mission statement: “Carve seeks to publish outstanding literary fiction and to strengthen its ties in the literary community. Though online-literary magazines are not the "norm," we at Carve believe that with time and consistent publishing of quality work, we can attain the same level of reputation enjoyed by print magazines.” I think they are well on their way.

Archived stories are available at Carve back to the beginning of 2007. They say they are working to expand the availability of their archive. As they say, what do you want for nothing, your money back? What a great little place to go and read a story.

Carve was just one of the magazines/ezines I found where I was able to read some great quality fiction or poetry without shelling out any money. Some are big, like The New Yorker, and some are small like Carve. I have provided links here to some of the best ones I found. Not every publication makes everything available for free, but I selected those that provide enough to make it worth a free visit. I know I've missed a lot of sites full of good reading, so please feel free to let me know of suggestions you might have.

Am I being cheap, looking for free literature? I don’t think so. It’s not hard to find places to spend money on the internet…and I spend plenty. But for those of us just looking for something to read that doesn’t waste our time, well it’s out there! In fact, you can be positively enriched by the generosity of people like those that run and write for Carve.

Man-Eaters of Kumaon

"In all the subsequent years I have hunted man-eaters I have not seen anything as pitiful as that young comely leg -- bitten off a little below the knee as clean as though severed by the stroke of an axe -- out of which the warm blood was trickling. While looking at the leg I had forgotten all about the tigress until I suddenly felt that I was in great danger."
-- Jim Corbett.
Man-Eaters of Kumaon.

I found out later that the Henry Vilas Zoo does indeed have an Amur tiger. She is Mariette, twin sister of Tatiana, the Christmas killer of the San Francisco Zoo.

I can’t imagine living in a world without tigers. That’s what I was thinking last Memorial Day weekend as we rolled into a parking lot in the University of Wisconsin Arboretum. It was hot and muggy and I hit the log barrier harder than I intended. No damage. We’d just left the Henry Vilas Zoo directly across Lake Wingra. My daughter and son and I had been visiting my 89-year old mother, and we were anxious to get some fresh air and stretch our legs. After visiting the zoo, we intended to take a walk down to the natural spring that fed into the lake. I had visited and drunk from this spring many times as a boy. For a couple of years we lived mere blocks from the zoo and an entrance to the Arboretum and when we moved, we lived mere blocks from the other entrance. I had ridden my bike to this place many times.

Our tour of the zoo had been quick. We had seen the rhinos laze around in the sun before; the kids were too old for the petting zoo; the polar bears were inside waiting for lunch; the lions weren’t out; and once again the tiger compound was empty. As long as I could remember, there had always been a tiger or two at the Henry Vilas Zoo. In recent years they had rare Siberian (Amur) tigers, the largest cats in the world. I was in absolute awe of them, their size and power, the beautifully buffed tiger markings unlike their Bengal cousins. Before the more humane natural compound was constructed, I visited them in, OK, the only cathouse I have ever been in. Once, I realized I had caught the attention of one of these huge cats, regarding me casually and calmly from behind thick iron bars. I was the only person there, and surely, his eyes were upon me. Surely, he had seen many people before. Was he really that bored? A friend later told me, upon hearing of this experience, that the cat was probably regarding me as a potential lunch. I prefer to think he was really that bored.

The shade of the arboretum offered little relief from the heat and humidity, but we kept along the well-worn trail that wound down among the huge old maples and oaks. Off to one side we passed burial mounds I’d never noticed as a boy but which now were plainly visible. Not far from the zoo on the other side of the lake, a block from our old house, was another burial ground we knew as kids only as “the Indian mound.” It had been years since I followed this path down to the spring. It was more worn now, but we passed no one else.

As a boy, I remember a book on my parents’ shelf with a jacket bearing the savage face of a snarling tiger. It was a scary looking thing with the unappetizing title Man-Eaters of Kumaon. I was not an intrepid boy. I was afraid of the dark, and our proximity to the zoo often caused me anxious moments walking home at night or even lying in bed. I let the volume alone until perhaps after I started college. By then, I think I’d heard of Jim Corbett. Once I picked up the book, I could not put it down. I knew no man-eating tiger would leap from the pages at my exposed throat. However, Corbett’s writing sometimes made me forget, such is the terrifying clarity of his prose. I could not imagine anything more terrifying than stalking, or being stalked by, a five hundred pound killing machine in its own jungle home.

Corbett’s skills were such that he came upon one of his man-eaters fast asleep. Sportsman that he was, he hesitated killing the animal. However, he also realized that giving the animal a sporting chance would have made him responsible for every life the tiger might take should he fail. There was no real choice. Even then, you can sense the regret he felt killing the killer painlessly in his sleep. Most man-eaters do not come upon their grisly pursuit out of cruelty or a sinister feline malevolence. They suffer from broken teeth or injuries caused by bullets or porcupine quills, which makes it difficult or impossible to live off their natural prey. Humans, in fact, are not particularly tasty insofar as our flesh is too salty.

Some years ago the Henry Vilas Zoo had at least two Amur tigers in its outdoor compound. Visitors were sometimes fortunate to see them up close through reinforced glass. During one visit my son and I witnessed one of the most extraordinary things I have ever seen. The two of us were alone there in the enclosed little grotto, gazing at a huge Amur reposing near the glass mere feet from our wondering eyes. Off to one side we witnessed another tiger crawling ever closer, just like a huge hunting house cat. Suddenly it sprang. The two cats rose roaring on their hind legs, paws flailing, massive battling bodies pressed against the glass, towering over us a mere arm’s length away. We stepped backwards. Was the glass really designed to hold two huge battling cats? Our instinct was to run, and yet we could not tear ourselves away from such an awesome spectacle. We both knew we would never see its like again as long as we lived. I am to this day glad that the glass contained the massive, if playful, violence. As far as I know, we were the only witnesses. Then it was over and we were gone, and the compound now seems so much emptier for it.

Did Corbett’s tales of man-eating tigers dampen my fascination for the tiger? Not hardly. Jim Corbett through his writings has been an outstanding ambassador for the world’s most powerful and beautiful cat. It is the rare tiger that turns man-eater. The tiger wants as much to be left alone by humans as we do to be left alone by the tiger. Unfortunately, when humans and tigers come into conflict, it is the tiger that ultimately loses. The South China tiger has not been seen in the wild for twenty years. What a stir was caused by a faked photo of such a tiger, promoted for the attention and tourist money a genuine sighting would cause. Even as we continue to crowd the tiger out of his natural habitat, we still hunger to see him, to wish him well somewhere out there in the forests of our mind.

Our arboretum trail wound off at strange, unfamiliar angles. It seemed longer to the bottom of the hill than I remembered, and when we reached the bottom, the trail no longer ended at the spring but only another trail. I suggested we take a left and eventually we came upon it. The spring was protected by a railing now, in its own kind of zoo. Once again, the encroachments of man had damaged something beautiful, although not out of malice. It was sad to see, the spring where I once drank deeply long ago, to think I was one of the people it needed protection from. Did the tiger need protection from me as well?

There is more to the story of the empty compound. I found out later through the Capitol Times that the Henry Vilas Zoo does indeed have an Amur tiger. Her name is Mariette, and she has not yet been put out for exhibit. Through unfortunate coincidence, Mariette is the twin sister of Tatiana, the tiger that escaped her confines at the San Francisco Zoo and killed a young man last Christmas Day. That was an awful day for that young man and his family; it was an awful day for all of us. It was an awful day for the tiger. In all the world there may not be more than six hundred and fifty Amur tigers left. How and why Tatiana made that incredible, desperate leap up the wall, we will probably never know. I seriously doubt she was hungry. I think Jim Corbett would agree. As we crowd the tiger out of its habitat and into cages and compounds, sometimes the tiger may strike back. The tiger, like us, only wishes to survive. The extent to which we respect its wish for survival may very well reflect upon our own ability to survive.

Other books by Jim Corbett:

The Temple Tiger and More Man-Eaters of Kumaon

The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudrapravag

Jungle Lore

Goatwalking: A Guide to Wildland Living

The Oxford India Illustrated Corbett

My India

If you want to know more about what you can do to help protect the tiger, visit the following sites:

World Wildlife Fund

Save the Tiger Fund

Defenders of Wildlife

Save the Tiger Blogspot

Tigers in Crisis

Tiger Friends