• So pull away me hearties, and we’ll raise the mountainside
• Together we shall plunder and together we will ride
• We’ll gallop across the prairie and ride across the planes
• No more to live in slavery bound up with iron chains.

 --Wild Colonial Boy (folk)

Dec 13: no more Moodies. Maybe never again, who knows. Can’t dwell on them forever, Christie. Onward, somewhere there is a real life. As much as I wish it could be otherwise. "If wishes were horses, then all men would ride………"

 Next stop Lawton, Oklahoma, home of the Comanche Nation. The wind was doing the true "sweeping down the plains" by this time, the sky was beautiful and full of gorgeous feather clouds. Big turkey ("tukkey") buzzards circled overhead (someone somewhere claimed turkey buzzards were endangered, I don’t think so!) I went "back-roads" eventually finding the Chisolm Trail in the town of Marlow, IT. So named for the Marlow Brothers. Anyone ever watch Simon and Simon? There’s a brotherly connection.

 Ambiguous and improbable Come Hither glances from Justin Hayward, rock god extraordinaire, are not really advancing me very far on the Path to True Love I’m afraid. So I do have other friends, however equally improbable a serious relationship might be there too.

 My friend Patrick is not easy to explain (especially to my family!) Long ago he should have been locked up gibbering with Post Traumatic Stress, but in his words "the monsters are my friends". He’s a real "other side of life" kinda guy, and understands it out beyond the streetlights. On the surface, he’s a normal 47 year old, gruff, gnarly fellow, weathered but in very good shape, indeed I feel he has the best shaped levis in the Western World, not to mention some very beautiful limpid Irish eyes. Roll up Colin Farrell, James Dean, and an aged Al Pacino into one, and you might get a visual on Pat. We’ve managed to corrupt one another not once, but many times over the years, and he’s a very dear friend. I’d insist he be more, only he has that peculiar feature in life called a wife and family, so I haven’t made much progress I’m afraid.

 He’s one of those good men in life who are quite literally taken, and belongs to a nice red neck family in South Carolina, many of whom he is apparently supporting and none of whom are blood relation. Well, it’s not my family, so I shut my mouth and let him do what he does. I just value the sweet moments we can glean together, and drop him an email once in a while. And savor old memories. And continually remind myself that he's Irish, but then again, I'm a little Irish myself.

 Lately he’s gone aircrew on Chinook choppers (but one occupation in a long, interesting and sometimes criminal existence, not that you could prove it of course). When we met, we were both electricians on jet aircraft. He’s my soul brother, and it was incredible luck, karma or magic that he happened to be doing training in Oklahoma during the same week I had planned my Moody trip. They are training for Afghanistan tho, and in true military fashion, the commanding officers love to take up your entire day with silliness, wasting valuable time. One day we’ll cancel all military and police action, then everyone can go home and have a good day doing what they like. In the meantime, as long as there are dangerous people out there, the military will keep doing their thing.

 Cell phones are beautiful things, so driving into that wild Okie wind, I headed north for Fort Sills. We called back and forth, he finally figured he could glean a little time off. I finally found the furshlugginer base, pulled up to Pat’s barracks, and there he stood, looking damn heroic in "full battle rattle" as he calls it. At some point, he peeled out of the body armor, handed it to me…….. Good lord, it weighed over 40 pounds! They have to walk around in that all day! This is not to mention the helmet and goggles, boots etc. Then he got into my car wearing a GUN. Jeeesis……. He made a timeless soldier joke about that time, "this is my weapon, this is my piece" hohoho. Yeah, he’s good folks and a lot of fun.

Oklahoma around Lawton is perfect for training in Afghanistan. Same terrain. Under their night goggle flying, they can see buffalo out on the plains. They don’t fly in high shear winds, which it was today, so Pat had some leeway in his day’s schedule….. It was a perfect day for spirit quests indeed. He was taking a long lunch break to do his laundry, so during the dry cycle, we went up behind his barracks to a place he runs, and had been telling me about. Fort Sills is where the Feds held Geronimo until his death. Apparently this place Pat took me to was a sacred site on the Medicine River, called Medicine Bluff. It is super unusual geologically, from one side it looks like a normal rolling Oklahoma hill, but if you go around back, a sizable river runs at the base of sheer cliffs, it looks like God reached down and sliced the hill straight in two, like a cake. Back a hundred years ago, apparently a lot of Native Americans felt that was the place to mingle with the twinkling stars, and leapt to their deaths into the river. And as Indians are very human, I bet a few people went over the side involuntarily too. Quite a drop. Pat was muttering about some of the helo crews doing rope maneuvers off the thing, or climbers rappelling down it.

 It was assuredly a sacred, magical place, so Pat and I paid homage to the Goddess, and spent some quality time together. Then he had to go back to work, so while he did that, I went to a little wildlife "zoo" further down the river. The whole area is lovely, there was a huge herd of Canadian geese there, not to mention a psychotic wild turkey in a cage that kept making pitiful chirps (bird talk) to me, hoping I might let it out of its cage. Poor birdy. I don’t know why they had him caged. Little red cardinals hopped around in the weeds (a treat, I haven‘t seen cardinals in a long time!) and I found an American chestnut tree, if the nuts on the ground were any indication. (These are highly endangered, due to a blight that wiped them all out on the East Coast).

 There was other wildlife in cages too, a couple of red foxes curled up nose in tail, and they ignored me. Patrick said he had to be careful jogging out there, as there were razorback hogs in the area. In fact he said a fellow aircrewman claimed to have seen three hogs take down a deer in the night, while flying with IR goggles. The deer were huge, like the size of horses, and a dark color.

 Snow Goose and Arctic Wolf: Patrick had told me about a lone wolf in a cage in Lawton. Said she had howled sadly to him once when he ran by there; so I went to talk to her......... .. her mate had died a few weeks before, and she WAS really really sad (you can tell if you are a dog lover). This goose was standing near her cage, I know how geese are, and growled at it, telling it to back off. Sure enough the moment I turned my back on the goose, and sat down to look (commune) with the wolf, the goose started going for my butt. I jumped up, whacked at it, growled, and the damn thing ran over and bit me on the knee anyway! OUCH! It really hurt! That was it, I swung at the vicious creature in earnest, connected (I could have grabbed it and eaten it, it was so close and so mean!) It ran off hissing to stand next to the wolf cage! I gave it room.

 Then the wolf laid down next to the goose, the goose put his head up and leaned against the cage....... ... they were FRIENDS. It was impossible to mistake. I was really shocked, at an act of compassion like that, between wild species. Geese and wolves both mate for life, and I’d have to say they were both widows, orphans. I sorta got tears in my eyes, it was so sweet. I just hope the goose doesn’t get lost from her flock, and if I could spring the wolf from her cage, I would. She was an older wolf, and will probably not last much longer, sadly.

 Pat finally got off work, and since his laundry was all done, we went out and just talked in the car, looking over the base lights, and at the stars. He told stories too, most of which were probably true. Some of the most interesting: he said sometimes he travels in uniform, simply because it speeds things up (and he looks good in it too, the vain thing). All the time he has people pay for his drink, or his dinner, often it’s a case of the waiter coming over and saying "someone already paid for it". Citizens on the street understand that we do face a real threat in our world with terrorism, and our military is out there protecting us. Pat claimed it was "old hippies still feeling guilty over Viet Nam". That could be too. Anyway it’s something to think about. I do know Pat is very professional about his business, and I feel better knowing guys like him are doing the expeditionary thang right, and not being assholes to the Natives. Patrick is a very kind soul, and wouldn’t hurt a fly, unless it shot at him first, and then they had better hope they can run fast!

 I would have stayed the night, but he wasn’t even supposed to leave the barracks, so there was no sense in it, and I really wanted to see my cousin the next day. And he had to fly the next day. So………. Yeah I tore myself away. The angels cry. I found the turnpike, and headed for Oklahoma City one more time.

(No Moody content) Chapter Nine: Dec 14-17: Family, Heinlein‘s MO, and the trip home