After over three weeks of camping, it was time to go home.
We left Rangers Kevin and Joshua about to set the porcupine trap. I asked Gary what they could possibly use as bait for a porcupine. They love to chew on bark but there's a forest out there to chew on why go into a trap, matter how cleverly it's hidden. Gary, my sweet environmentalist, said the answer is salt. The best bet is to put salt on apples. I wonder if that's what they did.
Gary drove home hauling the camper with his van. I went separately in the Subaru.
Over over five years, I didn't have a car with a CD or tape player. Now I have one, so I was playing CDs I haven't heard in years on the Subaru stereo. One was "Opal Miner: The Songs of Bill Scott" performed by Penny Davies and Roger Ilott. There were songs from his years as an engineer on steam engines; silly songs about bunyips and a tanglefooted fellow who can't do anything right; love songs with Aussie twists; and a lullaby I used to sing to my grandson.
I met Bill Scott the first time I went to Australia. Ellen Kort, then Wisconsin's poet laureate and a friend, met him first and told me to go see him when I went Down Under. I visited Bill and Mavis Scott, both writers, in Queensland. Bill was a marvel. He was a singer, a poet, a writer and a storyteller. We hit it off right away. He was an old man then...and probably not so much older than I am now. We jawed for hours, especially when he discovered my preferred drink was scotch.He knew all the traditional Australian songs and stories, which he collected in several books. His nation in time would designate him as a national treasure.
We kept in touch over the years, and I visited Bill and Mavis one more time. They put me on a bus to Sydney and that was the last time I saw them. He wrote me and told me there was a fresh case of scotch waiting for me but I never got back. It was too late.
Mavis sent me this collection of his songs, written over a lifetime, and sung by his young friends. The last selection is "Old Man's Song" about Bill's times as a miner and at another time, a merchant marine.
The last verse says:
"Now I am old and I sit in the sun,
Thinking and dreaming of things I have done
Remembering laughter, forgetting the pain
And yes I would do it all over again.
And it's weigh ho, lift it along
What good is your life if it isn't a song?"
As I listened to Bill's music, I asked myself about my own life: would I do it all over again? The answer is simple.
No regrets.
We left Rangers Kevin and Joshua about to set the porcupine trap. I asked Gary what they could possibly use as bait for a porcupine. They love to chew on bark but there's a forest out there to chew on why go into a trap, matter how cleverly it's hidden. Gary, my sweet environmentalist, said the answer is salt. The best bet is to put salt on apples. I wonder if that's what they did.
Gary drove home hauling the camper with his van. I went separately in the Subaru.
Over over five years, I didn't have a car with a CD or tape player. Now I have one, so I was playing CDs I haven't heard in years on the Subaru stereo. One was "Opal Miner: The Songs of Bill Scott" performed by Penny Davies and Roger Ilott. There were songs from his years as an engineer on steam engines; silly songs about bunyips and a tanglefooted fellow who can't do anything right; love songs with Aussie twists; and a lullaby I used to sing to my grandson.
I met Bill Scott the first time I went to Australia. Ellen Kort, then Wisconsin's poet laureate and a friend, met him first and told me to go see him when I went Down Under. I visited Bill and Mavis Scott, both writers, in Queensland. Bill was a marvel. He was a singer, a poet, a writer and a storyteller. We hit it off right away. He was an old man then...and probably not so much older than I am now. We jawed for hours, especially when he discovered my preferred drink was scotch.He knew all the traditional Australian songs and stories, which he collected in several books. His nation in time would designate him as a national treasure.
We kept in touch over the years, and I visited Bill and Mavis one more time. They put me on a bus to Sydney and that was the last time I saw them. He wrote me and told me there was a fresh case of scotch waiting for me but I never got back. It was too late.
Mavis sent me this collection of his songs, written over a lifetime, and sung by his young friends. The last selection is "Old Man's Song" about Bill's times as a miner and at another time, a merchant marine.
The last verse says:
"Now I am old and I sit in the sun,
Thinking and dreaming of things I have done
Remembering laughter, forgetting the pain
And yes I would do it all over again.
And it's weigh ho, lift it along
What good is your life if it isn't a song?"
As I listened to Bill's music, I asked myself about my own life: would I do it all over again? The answer is simple.
No regrets.
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