1969-1974

 

WA1YKF

WARREN J DICKIE

 

Real Friends! I was pleasantly surprised when I recently received an e-mail from Warren Dickie a CB radio friend from my days as a youth. He was always faithful and particularly unique with his eloquent advanced English vocabulary. Of all people in the world, he is the one person I could most identify with as we were both loners of a sort.

The one single memory that is indelibly etched into the photo plates of my mind is one where he and I were walking on a road toward his house. I stopped and went up a small path I saw leading into the woods. After getting off the sunny road I recall turning back to look at Warren who was still standing in the sun light while I was deep in the shady woods.

The only thing that broke the momentary silence of my view back toward the road where Warren stood, was his voice asking the following question, �Why do you venture forth into such vast unknown wilderness?� This one single question has defined my life pattern of living and Warren knew that in a way no one else on this planet ever could.

From that day in our youth until this moment my life has been one of continuous venturing into countless �vast unknown wildernesses.� For me it has just been my life. I know it just doesn't seem to fit the norm for most humans who have a place called a �home town� but it is something I can say I have tried to fight all my life.

It is kind of like having a disability you just can't change. My only success with remaining one place for any period of time has been to accumulate so much junk that it forms an anchor. The anchor becomes more effective with it values and usefulness. However, these days the force to get moving is causing me to devalue my junk or attempt to find a neutral storage area that will allow me the freedom to cut the anchor chain.

Most people I have met at one time or another in my life have this great phobia that I will return to wherever they are and die on their front yards. I now figure if I leave wherever I am with a return trip ticket, it can be made a return to the storage ware house where my junk is stored.

Most sane people would wonder how in the world I afford to travel. I on the other hand look back and figure �how in the world can you afford to stay in one place?� I'm a teacher and I have found my pleasant nook of employment and income working with other people who are traveling but rather than space they move through time. The people I teach are time travelers, you know, children who have not reach puberty. They are my kind of people because there is nothing that can hold their attention for more than 15 minutes. Oh yeah!!! My kind of people. If I can play teacher with them and get paid, I can travel to see other children doing the same thing I'm doing on a smaller scale.

You see, my life never changed since I was a kid. I just love to run around and explore and as my body got older the area of the playground became bigger. At this point I have one more toy and one more playground I have not explored and that is the Great Pacific Ocean with my really neat sea kayak.

Cities are boring, cold and dangerous where the light is hard to see. The �vast unknown wilderness: is not. Every trip into a city leaves me exhausted and drained like I have just made a trip through a black hole; however the converse is true for every wilderness I have been in.

I guess my one dream is that if for just one moment my good friend Warren Dickie could step outside his (maybe even our) �home town� to experience the beauty of the great wilderness then all would be complete.

At this point I have three choices, explore the great Pacific Ocean, teach and travel until the dust that carries me from one place to the next is caught up forever in the jet streams of heaven, or hope that people I have met on the road of life can allow, send, create or pray for a way to meet and be friends face to face and not over some kind of technology and at this point I consider books the first piece of technology that broke the face to face story telling that made life so warm and friendly; like Warren and I were when he stood back on the road while I went off into the wilderness without a reason except for the fact that there was a path less traveled by that went into the wilderness and that has made all the difference, to use the words of the famous poet Robert Frost

 

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