Teachers

I'm sitting in front of a log fire (well, okay, gas-log fire) in a beautiful little chalet nestled among cedar, Douglas fir, Ponderosa pine and giant live oak trees at Mount Shasta.  Barely 20 yards from my deck is Lake Siskiyou, sparkling green and blue and gold on this exquisite fall afternoon. I come here as often as I can -- it's my place for pondering. At this very moment the focus of my pondering is a couple I met last weekend. 

Judy and I taught full-day, back-to-back, energy healing classes on Saturday and Sunday.  The couple I want to tell you about borrowed a car and drove two days from Vancouver Island, British Columbia to Ashland in order to take the classes.  

Janett and Jerry have lived on a deserted stretch of Vancouver Island coast at the mouth of Juan de Fuca Strait for the last thirty years.  Jerry is with the Canadian Coast Guard (non-military in Canada).  Janett is an astronomer.  There are three houses in their little "community" -- the one they live in, one occupied by a single man who tends the lighthouse, and a mostly unoccupied guest house for Coast Guard visitors. 

Groceries are brought in once a month by helicopter.  Mail is delivered once a week, weather permitting.  In the summer the way out (or in) is by boat or hiking the Pacific Coast Trail for three days.  In winter there's no way in or out at all except by helicopter. 

"But what if you forget to put something really important on your grocery list?" I asked.

"We wait a month," Jerry said.

"But what if you get sick or have an accident?" I asked.

"They try hard to get the helicopter to you before you die," Janett said.

THIRTY YEARS!  They've been there for THIRTY YEARS!!  They raised and home-schooled two children there.  And it was only two years ago that they got hooked up to satellite TV and internet.

Just thinking about living so far from civilization with the same person for thirty years made me twitch and blink and muffle a scream.  No friends, no movie theaters, no restaurants or wine bars.  No Safeway or Albertsons or Rite-Aid or Ace Hardware.  No Starbucks or Macy's or Shakespeare Festival or Halloween parade or football games.  No New York Times. No Co-op. No car!

In short, NO DIVERSIONS.

"We have the ocean," they said.  "And the whales and the trees and the clouds and the stars and the creatures.  We have our books and the labyrinth we made with paths of grass. . . and we have each other."

That, I learned, was the key.  These two remarkable people who were friends before they were lovers, have something I've certainly never known in my life.  They have such an enormous appreciation and respect for nature and such an enormous appreciation and respect for each other that their egos seem to have melted away. 

"Janett sees and hears only truth," Jerry said. 

"Jerry is so gentle and patient," Janett said. 

They came to Ashland to learn, not teach.  But teach they did.  And I, for one, will never be the same.