.A Well-tanned Memory

There is no real story here—just a well-tanned memory.

It starts with my my five-plus-decades-past Model Cities identification badge from Little Rock, Arkansas. I rediscovered an image of the badge when posting a link on Facebook to “Little Rock Story #1”. I noticed that the tan I had earned during the previous two years as a Peace Corps volunteer near the Pacific Coast of Guatemala still lingered on my face.

For reasons more, I hope, than narcissism, that tan memory caused me to search for an almost four-decades-past photo of me with my parents and siblings at my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary, in St. Paul, February, 1985.

I could not find it in my archives, but my sister Judy (2^nd from left) and her husband Leaman found it in theirs. I had remembered correctly that, despite hints of resemblance, I looked out-of-place because of the Central American tan I brought to a place where everybody else was well into their annual acquisition of winter-white. I had flown up alone to the celebration from Costa Rica where the Colorado Komives family was in the midst of a 28-month residence brought on by my work in watershed management. I did get out into the field some during my work around Central America. However, the tan came mostly from weekend fun on an outdoor basketball court near our home in Turrialba. It was not until I was back in Costa Rica and photographs of the anniversary celebration began to show up that I saw how not-Minnesotan I had looked. I don't recall anyone mentioning the tan during my visit. Of course, Minnesotans can be close-lipped about personal things, but there is a more likely explanation of why nobody mentioned my exotic look. After all, they work and play outside in myriad ways through the extra-long days of their long-hot summers. The same can be said for guests from the several other states represented at the celebration. They had most likely arrived at September well-tanned and failed to notice a gradual tint change in their mirrors as deep summer moved inexorably into deep winter. 

Thus, again, there is no real story here—just my well-tanned memory.

 

 

(c) from date of posting, by Bob Komives, Fort Collins

Kickapoo and the "White Hair"

 

In 1984, between shaving off my beard and moving to Central America to regrow my beard and work on watershed management, I consulted with the Kickapoo Indians of northern Mexico who were to choose land for a reservation on the U.S. side of the border in Eagle Pass, Texas (as authorized by federal legislation). I visited them in Eagle Pass and also  visited briefly their ejido in Mexico. Later that summer I met with them and the Oklahoma Band of Kickapoo at a city park in Fort Lupton, Colorado near where members of both bands were working in agriculture. 

Top: Múzquiz Mexico, the Kickapoo ejido. 

Bottom: meeting in Fort Lupton Colorado.

The Fort Lupton meeting used three languages--most of us fluent in only two. For example: when I spoke I spoke in Spanish to the Mexican Kickapoo; they translated my words into Kickapoo for the Oklahomans who translated them into English for the Sioux lawyer and the Texas preacher who were also involved. The little "game of telephone" helped me and others know if our words were understood. It was a great meeting! 

I learned that in the Kickapoo-Kickapoo conversations I was called "White Hair".

They acquired their land, but I know little of its subsequent development and the ongoing welfare of the Kickapoo. I see they have a casino.

Satellite view of Kickapoo land in Eagle Pass, 2021

 

 

 

 

(c) from date of posting, by Bob Komives, Fort Collins

Height Privilege: Solo Backpacking

My two (brief) solo backpack trips into Rocky Mountain National Park are multi-emotion memories: exhilaration, freedom, beauty, utter foolishness, and then an embarrassing certainty of my superiority to all others in the 9:30 a.m. meeting I attended after starting my morning at Stormy Peaks Pass high up in the wilderness.

(c) from date of posting, by Bob Komives, Fort Collins

Origins of a Tuesday Symposium

(c) from date of posting, by Bob Komives, Fort Collins

Don Emilio

During the two-plus years we lived in Turrialba this dignified man of little means, Don Emilio Alvarado, was the only person we ever hired to help around our house. When needed, Don Emilio arrived with his machete (yes!) to cut our two patches of grass, to share a few quiet words, and leave. We never knew where he lived. Shortly before we returned from Costa Rica to Colorado, someone was kind enough to come by and tell us Don Emilio had died. We mourned.

(c) from date of posting, by Bob Komives, Fort Collins

Wool Socks

I fell so in love with wool socks when we started backpacking in Colorado. that I decided to wear wool socks all the time.'great idea until my feet began to smell and sweat all the time. It took several months after I stopped the regimen for my feet to get back to their dry-not-so-smelly selves. I kept wearing wool socks for backpacking, cross-country skiing, and serious hiking and continued to love them. Unfortunately, cycling (in feet-friendly, quick drying synthetics) has replaced those beautiful activities and my beautiful wool socks languish beautifully in my sock drawer-- except when I find an excuse to wear them as imperfect slippers or as expressions of nostalgia. 
 

(c) from date of posting, by Bob Komives, Fort Collins

Snow Tunnels and Kitchen Chairs: Fantasy of Youth, Practicality of Adulthood

Outside,
for hours
and days
I would tunnel in snow,
carve out a frozen world
of passage way,
shelter,
castle,
fort,
and igloo.
I would shovel snow into a large pile in the back yard, or make use of a pile my father had made as he shoveled out the alley behind our garage. I had friends, but this was my time to play alone. Seldom would those I did invite show necessary enthusiasm and endurance.
Inside,
for lunch,
stiff wool mittens or jersey gloves
to the radiator
where melting balls of snow
turn today's mittens
to limp and wet
and yesterday's
to warm and dry
to wear back out
after bowl of soup
for afternoon tunneling.
A coal shovel was the tool no bigger than I, but big enough to make my work productive. I would do finer work with bare hand or coffee can, but my work was never fine enough.
I never made the perfect tunnel,
nor perfect igloo,
nor finished castle.
Yet,
for so long
as cold and snow and mittens held,
I went out most days to try.
Some days I overworked my quota of dry clothes and mittens. Some days there was too little snow, or the Minnesota cold was too bitter. I did not object when my mother bade me stay in.
Perfection came imagined
during inside days
on bed or living-room rug.
I could play with toy figures
across snowfields visible only to me.
I could make believe my way
to architectural perfection:
snow walls carved thin
to let sun in
to glimmer
like cathedral window.
Outside imagination is different from inside imagination. Snow and cold are quite real. They were my immediate environment for a few months each year. My clumsy skills at tunneling were real but improving. I only need imagine that the world outside my snow tunnel was free of back doors leading to warm kitchens, hot bowls of soup and motherly protection.
During outside daydream time,
alone in a snow tunnel,
I would imagine my life
if real life included the tunnel.
How fun it would be
to be an expert
among people who live in snow.
When I grew big enough to be in fourth grade I found out about children who actually lived in the snow. They were Netsook and Klaya of Baffin Island, north of Canada and west of Greenland. I read about them in Visits In Other Lands, my 4th grade geography book at Saint Columba School. Yes, I had always remembered them, but, yes, I had forgotten the name of their book until my sister found a copy in an antique store during a visit to our home in Colorado. It had been her introduction to the world also, but she gave the book to me, sensing that I would treasure it and even read it again. This time around, I read the Foreword To The Teacher and discovered that these were imaginary children. The brother and sister in each chapter were created by the authors to give us an idea of different environments that challenge peoples of the earth and shape their cultures. In fourth grade I did not know these lofty goals, I only wished I could learn and use what these children knew to do.
However,
I lived among people who look out
to snow, rain, fog, and darkness
from warm, bright kitchens.
In the world of my people, I often became bored with my figures and their perfect snow structures, or found myself satisfied with plans for tomorrow's tunnel. During such days I would spend hours under kitchen furniture.
Inside our kitchen
I became an expert in chairs.
Four wooden, high-back chairs
became cockpit, wings and fuselage.
I would build airplanes
and fly the sky.
My mother seemed content to work around my obstruction. Now, I realize that as long as I was under foot in my airplane she need not worry about what trouble I was making. Back then, I just knew she was patient and kind. Mostly, I did not notice her.
Kitchens require concentrated imagination.
Chairs look nothing like airplanes.
Linoleum floor is neither cloud nor sky.
Nor should there be radio,
hissing pots,
telephone rings,
nor sky-walking,
loud talking
visitor giants.
I am sure I spent more time in my kitchen airplane than in my backyard snow tunnels. The airplane was as good for a rainy day in summer as for a winter day that was too mild or too bitter.
I know I loved my kitchen-chair airplane.
I know I gave piloting more time than tunneling,
yet, I remember snow tunneling better
and miss it more.
When my daughters were four and six years old we lived in a house with a picnic table out back. This was an unusually snowy winter for the island of Martha's Vineyard. As the table became a mound of snow I saw an opportunity. My daughters could experience some of what I had experienced. I wanted to play again.
For my children,
I shoveled snow
on top of snow
on top of table,
a marvelous mound
for a marvelous igloo.
I tunneled part way in
before putting them and friends to tunneling.
I was out of scale
and a damper to fun.
From inside the house,
at a window,
I could watch,
catch a glimpse now and then
of their tunneling and their play.
It was my day for joy and envy.
That day came before our move west, and before rediscovery of Netsook and Klaya. In Colorado I discovered the joy of summer in the back country. For a long while I thought I would also enjoy snow camping. It would be fulfillment of my childhood fantasy. Away from back doors and warm kitchens, I could live for a few days each winter in and around a snow cave a snow tunnel I would make out of necessity in a real world of snow. I held to that fantasy of winter perfection until a friend reminded me that the winter night is fifteen hours of darkness. For Netsook and Klaya a winter day would be all night. Would they if they had a choice choose to spend even fifteen hours, night after night, in their igloo? That is not for me to know, but question alone was enough to make up my mind. I would learn how to make a snow cave for a real emergency, not fulfillment of fantasy.
Today,
a winter day,
inside
among fantasy of youth
and practicality of adulthood,
I look out into cold and snow
wishing dining room chairs to be large enough
to be
for me
a good airplane.

(c) from date of posting, by Bob Komives, Fort Collins 

On My Wall: a Stolen Mayan Artifact

I consider the stealing and selling of items from ancient sites to be a great crime. History that could be discovered and enjoyed is lost, because, even if the item is recovered it is of little use to archaeologists because they are unlikely to know how to place it in geography and history. In short something of great value to mankind is made virtually worthless. Sadly, I display such an object on my wall. 


In 1986 on a street in Guatemala City, a dignified indigenous Guatemalan (dressed in traditional clothing familiar to me) approached me and asked if I wished to buy the small stone icon he held. In the dim light, the piece seemed crude, probably recently and incompletely carved, touched with shoe polish to make it look older. Impressed, however, by the dignity and courtesy of the man, I gave him the $5 he requested and took the icon. It returned with me to Costa Rica where we were living then, and in 1987 got unpacked in Fort Collins when we returned from Central America. Within hours of buying the object and for years after I worried that it might not be a fake. It lay on various shelves, sometimes served as a paperweight. Then soon after the turn of the 21st century, we hosted in our home the director of Guatemala's national park at the Mayan site, Tikal. I begged him to confirm that it was a fake.

I made detailed photo images of it for him to share with a colleague at the University of Pennsylvania. Both told me it is most likely a true artifact of the ancient Maya, probably carved from Jade or Jadeite. I asked our guest to take it back to Guatemala where it belonged. Both he and his colleague said that it would just wind up in a drawer and be of no help in research, because it was impossible to know from which site it was stolen nor the era when it was carved. I reluctantly accepted their judgment. Eight years later, 2014, a good friend convinced me the icon needed to be displayed. He made a mount for it, and we placed it on a wall in the bathroom he had just helped me relocate and construct on our main floor.

(c) from date of posting, by Bob Komives, Fort Collins 

Yes, Yes I Was

Bob Komives :: Fort Collins © 2017 :: 1708