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Vo l . 7 N o . 2 desperate attempt to maintain some sense of ‘here’ in the rolling three dimensions of the sky. Then I see her. Nausea disappears. I stab at the window and holler, two heads and four eyes whip about like needles to a magnet. Sure enough, she stands next to a pond and a snag, a dead spruce so tall it tells of a very different forest that once grew here – but we have no time to listen. As we cartwheel around I lose her and take the moment to glance at a scribbled note on the map and relay the information: “She had a calf last time – I can’t see it.” We make an about face and our organs shift to the left as we hold our breath and hold out hope. Then ease seeps into the midst of the g-forces as it comes into focus, a tiny body pressed up against its mother in the deep drifts. I punch blindly at the GPS, trying to keep the pair in my sight for just a moment longer as time slows for heartbeat – then I catch Gerd’s raised eyebrow. He’s been keeping us just above stalling-speed, no mean feat during steep turns this close to the rocks and snow. I nod assent, we’ve got what we came for. We lean back as the little plane roars upwards in glorious release, giant grins plastered across our faces. *** I know that wolves and moose need each other as much as do death and life. I know that without top carnivores our ecosystems become shattered and dysfunctional. Still I feel like whooping and sharing a high five whenever we spy a gangly calf that has made it from one survey to the next. While scientific papers and management reports speak in a language of averages and statistics, it is the connection to the individual that is the privilege and joy of life-study, bio-logy. Later on this moment will come down to one line on a spreadsheet shared between two governments. The breathtaking context will be rendered down to a set of numbers that correspond to a ridiculously precise point on the surface of the earth. A couple of hastily scrawled comments might be transcribed, the aspect and angle of the slope perhaps, that tell more of the cramped quarters of the cockpit than of the spectacular or of the sacred. The cow moose herself will be represented only by the frequency of her radio collar, 155.310. And for that paradoxically fragile and resilient new life she shelters, a simple numeral 1 will stand alone in a column. Postscript – Alan Baer passed away in 2014. Clear skies to you my friend.
David Fewster
A Red Sky Poetry Memoir I made my debut at Red Sky Poetry Theater on August 5, 1989, after almost two years of seeing the name on flyers around town. The reason the date is so indelibly imbedded in my memory is it also marked my first appearance in the Sunday Seattle Times as a contributor to the “What’s Funny” page in Pacific Magazine. My piece was called “Tips From Temps,” a parody of the etiquette pamphlets that temporary employment agencies gave you to make sure you didn’t go berserk the first day of your assignment at some fancy high-rise office downtown. So, I was feeling pretty good about myself that day. I was 30 years old, and after a decade of moving slowly north up the West Coast I had started to develop a complex regarding the disparity between my nearmegalomaniacal opinion of my talents and my actual accomplishments. But now, all that was going to change. I was a Humorist in a Big City Newspaper, just like my heroes Don Marquis and Ring Lardner. Nonetheless, I was already worried about being a sellout, what with writing for a family-friendly publication where I would be forced to self-censor my deepest avantgarde, epater les bourgeoisie, revolutionary literary principles. In order to keep this aspect of my artistic self from withering and dying, the time seemed ripe to finally check out Red Sky. Merely entering the seedy portals of Squid Row Tavern on Capitol Hill served to metaphorically wash the accumulated grime of years of exposure to the compromise and hypocrisy of the capitalist system off my true essence. As I signed my name to the open mike list, Marion Kimes, the diminutive, rail-thin MC with a blond pageboy, Texas accent, and cigarette never far away, exclaimed “Did you write that article in the Times today? That was funny.” No doubt about it, the planets were clearly aligned on Aug. 5, 1989 to make me feel Special. Beside Marion, the elders of my new tribe seemed to be Don Wilsun, a bearded, burly, goodnaturedly macho fellow who looked all the world like the construction worker he was in real life, Robin Schultz, who resembled a taller, leaner version of Robert Crumb’s Mr. Natural, margareta waterman and Roberto Valenza, who I found, respectively, standoffish and scary. In margareta’s case, I decided after time it was because she