Nature’s Masterpiece…

During the “Covid Year” I’ve traveled through nine western States, making camp in more than twenty places.  In cities, towns and countryside I’ve witnessed the effects of the National lockdown, the mask mandate, social distancing, hyper-hygienics and so much more. The relentless conditions of fear, isolation and disconnection seem to have tested the structures of our culture. 

We should not be surprised by the passionate outbursts and violent expressions which have erupted from all ends of the political spectrum. As the old saying goes, “When the pot boils over, it’s been on the fire a long time”. And isolation is a slow burn. Still, when you think about it, it’s remarkable that we all get along as well as we do.

Everything comes to pass. Now a difficult time in our lives is gradually ebbing into memory. Slowly and with caution, folks are coming out of their confinement. The America I have pined for, that we’ve all pined for, is re-emerging. But again, I am amazed that we all get along as well as we do.

For the past month I’ve been traveling and camping in the Northwest. Two of my oldest friends live in Oregon and Washington. I’ve not seen either of these fellows in nearly twenty years. Being that we’re all getting seriously old, I wanted to have one more rendezvous while we’re still having our days on the earth. 

My lifelong friend Stuart Muller moved to Eugene, Oregon last year from San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. A fellow wanderer he’s retired now from his last profession as a clinical psychologist. When we were in our twenties, Stuart and I were aspiring filmmakers in Los Angeles. While I was a bootstrap-learn-by-doing-guy, Stuart had graduated from USC Cinema School in 1967. Among his classmates were John Milius, Caleb Deschanel, Walter Murch and George Lucas.

In the early 70s, Stuart worked at Walt Disney Studios. I was an independent filmmaker at the time, producing modest commercial projects. Stuart approached the head of production at Disney with ideas about developing and producing feature films. He was told that the Studio would be interested in a film about the Andes Mountains in South America. We threw in together with another artist, Sheldon Lea Jones, and made a plan.

In an effort to come up with story material, the three of us drove up to a town on the eastern slopes of the California Sierras and packed in for a few days. On our second night in the woods, we were hit with a major snowstorm. The next morning, with everything blanketed in snow, we found ourselves disoriented and unable to retrace the trails we took hiking in. It was touch and go but eventually we found our way back to the staging area where we left our car.

From this experience, we developed a storyline for a screenplay. The timeframe was the early 20th Century. The central character was a Professor of Anthropology from the University of Chicago, a scholar-adventurer who traveled to the Andes in search of the lost treasure of the Incas. Stuart found old National Geographic photographs of Hiram Bingham who discovered Machu Picchu in 1911. We used those images as part of our presentation to the people at Disney. As it turned out, the Disney execs rejected the whole idea. 

At that point in time, Stuart’s old USC classmate, George Lucas, was enjoying success with his film, “American Graffiti”. Stuart suggested he take our script and visual aids up to San Francisco to present to Mr. Lucas. He did and they met. Lucas appreciated Stuart’s visit and wished him well in developing the project. But he said he wouldn’t be interested in participating. As time went by we were unable to raise the interest and financing to produce our film. We continued to work on other projects. A few years later I was sitting in a movie theater watching the first Indiana Jones movie when I realized that the ending of our project, “Sanctuary of the Hawk”, was the beginning of “Raiders of the Ark”. When I asked my attorneys if we could sue LucasFilm they told me I didn’t have enough money and would be buried in a legal paper storm. In the end, we never even got a thank-you note from George. 

It was good to see Stuart again. I enjoyed springtime in Eugene with the street fairs and reminiscing about old times with my old friend. 

Then it was on to Washington and the Olympic Peninsula for a visit with my old friend and fellow rover, Paul Groesse.

Paul Groesse… In the 8th grade, Paul and I played the Congo drums in a duet for a school musical revue. A few years later, we were dorm-mates at an Arizona boarding school. In our twenties we traveled the world together… from the ruins of Ancient Babylon to the wilds of the Alaskan Wilderness. 

What I always admired about Paul was how he encountered everyone on his path. The man never met a stranger. Though rugged, even fierce in appearance, he had an affable nature that would put anyone at ease.

In the Spring of 1967, Paul and I and a third fellow traveler, Jim, were holed up in a backstreet hotel on the Greek Island of Rhodes. After spending nearly six months in the Middle East, the three of us took a passenger ship from Haifa, Israel via Cyprus to Rhodes. 

Our plan was to find a local fishing boat that would take us to the south coast of Turkey. This was a twenty mile crossing that saw much daily boat traffic. Once in Turkey, we planned to travel overland to Istanbul.

The morning of our third day on Rhodes, Paul got up early and walked down to the harbor to canvas the smaller ships that were docked there. By mid-morning he returned to our hotel with a story of how he chatted up a couple of British sailors who were in port on a British Navy air-sea rescue ship. These fellows informed Paul that there was a ship tied up at the end of the dock with an American skipper who was looking for crew. Paul promptly went to the end of the dock and introduced himself to the ship’s Captain. The upshot was that he found us jobs crewing on this ship.

So began the voyage of the Copper Queen, a 45 foot, ketch rigged motor sailer. The skipper and owner of the ship was John Burgess, an American mining engineer who was straight out of a Hemingway novel. There was also a young Irish woman, Eileen O’Shea, who had hired on as cook and ship’s keeper. For the next two months we all shared an adventure that took us to a dozen Greek Islands, then along the South coast of Turkey, through the Dardanelles and finally to Istanbul. There we all signed off the ship. This was high adventure, which would never have happened absent the guileless charms of Paul Groesse. 

Many years later our lives took different paths. Paul remained in Alaska and became a successful commercial fisherman. After many years he moved to Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. I settled back in Los Angeles and pursued a long and colorful career working broadly in the Arts. In 2007 I moved to Taos, New Mexico.

I’m glad I came the distance to see my old friends Stuart and Paul. They were the boon companions of my youth. What we shared is beyond measure. I agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson who reckoned that “friendship is nature’s masterpiece”.