Icarus’ cause of death was always a lie.
He did not die flying too close to the sun.
Icarus was shot out of the sky.
His frightened death-screams long faded.

An ambitious dreamer dashed violently to the ground.
His drifting feathers meant to frighten us.
Icarus’ murder is a powerful message:
Dreams have a power of their own, even in death.

Daily, I earned slightly enough to buy groceries in the evening. Each day went by quickly.

But now it was October and getting much colder in the nights. The family next to my tent had a woodstove. I had nothing, and besides my tent and what was in it.

Bitterly I decided to leave. Soon the weather would change from cold to deathly freezing.

Returning to the highway, I passed water towers, homes, outbuildings, and a factory, then hitched a ride to Reno. The driver dropped me off in front of a Walmart.

Inside, I bought bread, baloney, and a beer, then sat on the low retaining wall in the back of the store and made a couple of sandwiches. As I ate in silence, I knew this was the end of something worth noting.

I could feel the pull of my own life calling me back.

When the sun grew high and the day too hot, we trudged to the end of the field. There we unloaded our burden and picked up my day’s wage.

Back across the highway, I borrowed a bicycle and rode to a mom-and-pop grocery store. I bought cans of Spam, Ravioli’s, baloney, bread, instant coffee, and a case of water.

On my little hiking stove, I warmed up the Ravioli’s, made instant coffee in the now-empty ravioli can, and ate one of the best meals of my life. Hunger satiated, but still, achingly tired, I reclined on my bedroll, sighed, and drift in and out of dreamless sleep.

Dogs barked in the distant cool of the night. Music twanged, vibrated, and carried across the fields.

All was right with me.

That morning I got up, put on my pants, which were all torn, went to the blockhouse to wash, came back, put on an old nearly worn-out straw hat, and went across the highway. Every muscle and bone in my body screamed for surrender.

In the morning, I got up, washed, and took a walk around the place because the work had not begun. That night I went to bed in the sweet night air beneath a dewy tent.

Three days and nights: no work, little food, warm beers, all freely given to me by others in the same shape as me. We huddled around a bond fire each night, where I would listen to their stories and the songs of a hard life.

Finally, we began working.

In a large tent near mine lived a family. They consisted of the grandfather, his wife, their son and daughter, their spouses, and half-a-dozen children.

Each filed every dawn across the highway to the field and went to work. And each morning, I followed behind them.

We bent down and began picking. Soon my hands began to cramp, fingertips to bleed; I needed gloves or more experience, and my back ached.

Each day I strived to catch up to the children as they moved along the cultivated rows. Each day, I fell behind and was never able to match their speed or skill.

But I never surrendered to the feeling of defeat that often overcame me.

The truck dropped me off in the early hours of dawn. I got out and roamed the quiet town of Yerington.

I chuckled about having talked of this place, actually making fun of it when I worked in radio, calling it Yeringtonburg, without ever having set foot inside the city limits.

As dawn began to break, I lay flat on my back on the lawn near the old courthouse. I could lie there all day but finally decided I should look for that farm labor job I felt I needed to be a man.

Along Highway 95, I went to find the mythical farmer and his fabled farm. The fields all looked long and wide, filled with clots of dirt, each growing vegetables and lonely.

He pointed me to a small, cement block building. Behind it was trailers and tents.

I set my tent up, and by nightfall, guitars tinkled, and harmonica hummed as I gazed at the stars.

My Cousin Elmo says, “Sometimes I make a joke in my head, and we all laugh.”

Born July 12, 1951, in Arcata, California, Brian Ferguson passed away June 20, 2021, after a battle with cancer at 69 years of age.

He graduated from Arcata High School and attended Humboldt State University. Following graduation, Brian was a teacher and coach at Del Norte High School.

His two favorite sports were football and track and field. It was in track and field that I knew him.

In all that time, I never knew we were roughly eight years apart in age. I thought he was much, much older than me.

Back then, I called him Coach as he pressed me to better myself each time I took to the oval. While I often disappointed him, he never gave up on me.

After I graduated from high school in 1978, I never saw nor spoke to Brian again. Simply put, our paths never crossed again.

Sadly, only after his passing did I learn he was active in land rights following his teaching and coaching careers. For over 30 years, he sat on the Del Norte County Farm Bureau Broad and several times as President of the organization.

During his time as Farm Bureau President, he formed the Del Norte Resource Conservation District. Brian also served for several years as Chairman of the Del Norte County Fairs Jr. Livestock Auction Committee and as President of Lake Earl Grange #577.

Rest in peace, Coach Ferguson.

My Cousin Elmo says, “I told my wife it was okay for her to get rid of everything in the kitchen that did not bring her joy. Now, all we have is a cork-screw and an ice cream scoop.”

She vanished in the winter of 1990, coming to Bodie to research the history of the town. A snowfall hid Vancouver Martin’s tracks, and it was assumed that she had become lost in the ensuing blizzard.

The state park service towed her truck. Her family showed to it claim it after notified of her disappearance.

However, it wasn’t her family who showed up to claim it, but herself. She was a careworn woman, ragged, wary, and her story was plain.

She claimed that she’d heard a woman crying and had gone to help her. She never found the woman, and Vancouver Martin almost didn’t make her way out of the long-abandoned town.

She said she had walked endlessly for three years but refused to speak of what she saw, with whom she spoke, or what she had been forced to do to survive.

“But you were missing only nine-days,” the junior ranger said.

Vancouver Martin, her eyes vacant, said nothing.

“Are you going to write that book you were planning?” the senior ranger asked.

“Not that one,” she answered.

When she finished filling out the paperwork, Vancouver Martin stood up, left the office, got in an Uber, and never looked back.

It was the quaking of the ground beneath her as she tried to get some sleep. Kimie had wandered off someplace she should not have gone, and she was now lost.

There were no longer the friendly trails to lead her through this forest. Instead, Kimie found herself racing headlong through a brush that the hand of man had never touched.

Still, she could feel that rumble underfoot, and still, she ran and ran until exhausted. Finally, Kimie collapsed by a stream, ready to accept her fate, whatever it might be.

Then Kimie saw him as he lumbered ever closer to her, a cyclops wearing glasses. She breathed a sigh of relief.

“What are you running from?” the giant one-eye fellow asked.

“You,” Kimie answered.

“Then why have you stopped?”

“I’m too tired to continue.”

“I see. Are you not araid now?”

“No.”

“And why is that?”

“I have never met a so-civilized ‘monster’ in my life,” she said, air-quoting the word.

“Really? And what makes you think I’m civilized?” he questioned.

“You’re wearing glasses,” she smiled.

Laughing, he gently picked Kimie up, took her home, and placed her in a stock pen with his sheep.