{"id":8287,"date":"2016-10-26T18:36:16","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T00:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8287"},"modified":"2016-11-06T12:56:51","modified_gmt":"2016-11-06T19:56:51","slug":"not-dead-and-the-house-is-still-standing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8287","title":{"rendered":"Not Dead and the House Is Still Standing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"william-f-schmalsle\"

Great-great-uncle Fred,
a dapper Old West sportin’ gent.<\/p><\/div>\n

Sorry about the lack of content. Everything went topsy-turvy on the 17th and is just now returning to normal, or to a “new normal.”<\/p>\n

I left home on the 11th for a trip to eastern North Dakota to go grouse hunting<\/a> with an old friend who himself was facing heart surgery on the 24th. It’s a thousand-mile drive each way, but I have done it for seven of the last eight years. Lots of restful prairie driving (perfect for audiobooks!), and I can chose a route where the biggest city I go through is Pierre, South Dakota<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This year I tacked on a day and drove via Miles City, Montana<\/a>, a place that I had never visited but where a number of my paternal grandmother’s relatives lived\u2014her uncles and brothers.<\/p>\n

I wanted to see sites associated with my great-great-uncle, whose r\u00e9sum\u00e9 in the 1870s and 1880s apparently included civilian Army scout, buffalo hunter, saloon-keeper, occasional deputy sheriff, and landlord of<\/em> and probably silent partner in<\/em> a couple of\u00a0 “boarding houses” for young ladies. My cousins and I are trying to sort it out. (He ended up peacefully retired in Pasadena and left my grandmother a nice inheritance from the money he made “in real estate.”) There is a street named after him, a minor street in a residential area.<\/p>\n

\"nd-badlands\"

Entering North Dakota from Montana on I-94.<\/p><\/div>\n

I bought a bottle of Montana whiskey t<\/a>o toast Uncle Fred.\u00a0 Another day’s drive east brought me to a little town dominated by grain elevators, where my old friend G. fetched up about 14 years ago.<\/p>\n

We had a couple of days together; then on Monday the 17th my phone woke me with an emergency call. My little rural fire department was being called (at 6:30 a.m.) to assist with a “100-acre grass fire.” The location was roughly west from my house, conditions were dry, and a strong west wind was blowing, I knew. My guts turned to water.<\/p>\n

More calls followed. The fire was blowing up: 9,000 acres. 10,000 acres.((4046 ha)). I could not reach M. at first, but eventually she called (after I was already packed and on the road south) to say she was preparing to leave for a motel in a nearby town as soon as the sheriff’s deputies said she had to go right now<\/em>. I did not try to reach anyone on the fire department, just texted the chief and told him that I was two days away but on the move. I told M. to pack my wildland fire gear: “Just grab everything yellow<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

What do you do magically in such a case?<\/strong> Something sprang spontaneously to my mind as I drove \u2014 a giant Smokey Bear, skycraper-size, standing with shovel at the ready at a key road junction.<\/p>\n

That sounds sort of comic book-ish, but it works for me. When I learned something about ceremonial magic in my twenties, I realized that my first (and to that time, only) experience of “assuming the god form” was as a 9- or 10-year-old\u00a0 wearing the Smokey Bear costume on the Forest Service float during parades in Rapid City, SD.<\/p>\n

Smokey was created by a commercial artists<\/a>, but what the heck, he is a demi-god by now. At least to me.<\/p>\n

Magical work should be reinforced by material-plane work. The worst of the fire was over by the time I got home, but I still put in a day and a half on an engine crew, plus another day doing engine maintenance etc. at the fire house<\/p>\n

The station also functioned as a disaster-assistance center, with various agencies setting up help centers there. In such cases, you are always overwhelmed with donated food. So I took a platter of two-day-old barbequed pork up to the wildlife rehabilitation center that I frequently mention on the other blog. <\/a><\/p>\n

They have a couple of bear cubs that they are fattening ahead of an early-winter release. The BBQ was a welcome high-calorie treat.<\/p>\n

“Thank you!” said the woman who runs it.<\/p>\n

“Not me,” I said. “Thank Smokey.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sorry about the lack of content. Everything went topsy-turvy on the 17th and is just now returning to normal, or to a “new normal.” I left home on the 11th for a trip to eastern North Dakota to go grouse hunting with an old friend who himself was facing heart surgery on the 24th. It’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[23,211,72],"class_list":["post-8287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-colorado","tag-fire","tag-magick"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-29F","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3285,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3285","url_meta":{"origin":8287,"position":0},"title":"Back at the PhD (Piled-high Desk)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"It was good to disappear. I geocached along the Niobrara River, hunted ducks in North Dakota \u2014 where \"to combine\" is the verb of autumn, and you accent the first syllable \u2014 and ended up finally at the Black Hills Powwow in my old hometown of Rapid City. I ate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"Rose hips and bufflo berries on the North Dakota prairie","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/rosehipsbuffaloberries%E2%80%94sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12523,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12523","url_meta":{"origin":8287,"position":1},"title":"A Libation for the Mother River","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 28, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"I wrote earlier about the hitchhiker whom I called Travis, a post writen on the 19th of October, mostly at the Twenty Below coffeehouse in Fargo, North Dakota, waiting to drive an old friend home to his tiny prairie town after he had been poked and prodded and MRI'd all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/missouri-at-fort-pierre-300x188.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12509,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12509","url_meta":{"origin":8287,"position":2},"title":"The Hitchhiker","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 20, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"The heart of western South Dakota: US Highway 212 near the town of Faith. Leaving Spearfish, South Dakota, on October 17th\u00a0en route to eastern North Dakota, I decided to skip the Green Bean coffeehouse, as much as I like it, and fueled up on motel-room coffee and a leftover partial\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ancestors\"","block_context":{"text":"ancestors","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ancestors"},"img":{"alt_text":"The heart of western South Dakota","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/US-212-1_5543-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":919,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=919","url_meta":{"origin":8287,"position":3},"title":"And the Corn Palace Too","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Victorian Slind-Flor puts the \"Loaf\" in Lammas, with photos of the Palouse region and, even closer to my heart, the sacred Corn Palace of Mitchell, South Dakota, one of the great Roadside Attractions of the northern Plains.A quick flashback to a 1980s cross-country drive with M.: camping in the Black\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Lammas\"","block_context":{"text":"Lammas","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=lammas"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":647,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=647","url_meta":{"origin":8287,"position":4},"title":"Gallimaufry: Tab Clearing","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 13, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Having been knocked down by a head cold the past week, I am just cleaning out some old links. \u2022 Should you use digital cameras for ghost-hunting? I notice that a lot of the ghost-hunting articles in Fate magazine count \"orbs\" as evidence of spirits. But are they just artifacts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1061,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1061","url_meta":{"origin":8287,"position":5},"title":"On the Road","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 12, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Blogging will be sketchy for the next week, as I am on the road, my destination being first, a small town and an old friend in eastern North Dakota -- and then possibly the Turtle Mountain area of that state.Tonight I fetched up in Valentine, Nebraska (more than halfway there!),\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"travel\"","block_context":{"text":"travel","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=travel"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8287"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8324,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8287\/revisions\/8324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}