On the Spawning Beds

On Saturday, right after a morning trip to the grocery store, I stopped by the spawning beds on Charlie Fox’s old property along Letort Spring Creek. It was here in the 50’s and 60’s that Charlie, Vince Marinaro, and other anglers and conservationists arranged rocks and gravel in the stream to facilitate the spawning of brown trout. The browns are not native, having been introduced from Europe in the 19th century, but they are wild creatures, bred and born in the creek. In November, they use the gravel here to make nests and reproduce. If you’re quiet and approach the stream carefully, and if the stream happens to be clear, you can sometimes watch them. Today the water is a little cloudy, and beyond the flock of Mallards I flushed when I walked up, I didn’t see anything.

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I came up here in part to help recover from a brutal and divisive election that didn’t end well for the candidate I favored. This is a quiet place, and the drone of bad news emanating from the news coverage and social media cannot find me here. Standing here along the Letort also produced a rueful admission, followed by epiphany.

My lifelong practice has always been to run away from real trouble. When confronted with ugliness and heartache, I have always been willing and able to duck into woods so deep, literal and metaphorical, that no one could even find me, much less bother me. Like the trout hiding in this creek, my instinct on sensing danger has been to duck under a rock, and wait for it to go away.

It has dawned on me that in the current circumstances, this is something of a character fault. This time, even in this bucolic place, the disquiet shows no signs of dissipating. It’s well past time to say something, and beyond the words, to do something. The things I have to say, and the actions I want to propose, go well beyond this little blog post. That’s fine, since I have at least four years. This is a marathon, not a wind sprint.

Let’s start with this, shall we?

Last Tuesday, a good many of my fellow citizens, including friends and relatives who I know to be kind and thoughtful people, were able to rationalize voting for someone who openly expressed racist and misogynistic opinions, bragged about laying unwelcome and uninvited hands on women, and who was openly and enthusiastically supported by overtly racist, homophobic, and misogynistic people and organizations.

That’s a problem.

These same folks rationalized that vote based on the hope and belief that this candidate and his supporters would usher in broad change in the political culture of cronyism and favoritism and extend the recovery from the 2008 economic crash more broadly. They saw in him a bold and decisive leader with their best interests in mind, and a person untainted by political or military experience who would drain the insider political swamp of Washington. They did this knowing that the candidate they voted for has a long and very public record of cronyism, litigiousness, acquisitiveness, double-dealing, dishonesty, self-serving and self-worship, nonexistent self-control, and business failure on a massive scale.

That’s a problem.

The breathtaking list of grotesquely bad ideas and uninformed interests voiced by this person extend to international trade and defense, health care, the environment, science, justice and other critical areas of public policy that will affect everyone in the country and much of the world. And lots of people who ought to know better decided that Mrs. Clinton was such a bad person and uninspiring candidate, and that some sort of ill-defined “change” was so important, that they put their country in mortal danger. They swallowed gallons of pure, concentrated liquefied bullshit from a vulgar trust-fund-kid-used-car salesman. They voted, in some cases with gusto, for a person none of them would allow their daughters to get near without being accompanied by a wary and heavily armed chaperone. Somehow these folks, again many of them reflexively kind and decent people, have decided to enable a person and policies that fly in the face of many things they themselves value.

That’s a big fucking problem.

And that’s the end of the rant.

I’m not second guessing them. Everybody has their reasons for how they see things, and everybody does as they think best.

But I’m not hiding under a rock until this goes away. I’m going to do something about it.

Understand, I have never been an active political person beyond voting and expressing my opinions. While I am currently a registered Democrat, that’s only because you can’t vote in a primary in Pennsylvania as an independent. I have voted for people for various offices in both major parties and one or two minor ones, and likely will do so as long as I’m alive. I don’t hate people with political perspectives that differ from mine, and I didn’t un-friend or quit talking to anyone during this election. I will never lose my sense of humor. After all, one of the most effective tactics to employ against the powerful and corrupt (particularly those with big egos and small hands) is to make them look ridiculous.

I’m not interested in yelling at or attacking the folks in my life who voted for the orange guy. I’m interested in changing their minds. I’m not interested in lighting things on fire or throwing rocks and bottles. I’m interested in fixing things. I’m not going to wear a “Not My President” button. I excoriated my friends and relatives who wore similar buttons during the Obama administration. He is damn sure going to be my president in January. In this country that means he’s going to be my employee (even for the nominal annual dollar he’s taking). Unlike him, I pay my fucking taxes. I am going to be a voice that holds him accountable. I plan on welcoming him warmly to his new career in public service.

I am going to spend my time volunteering for, advocating for, and fundraising for organizations and interests I support. I am going to look for and promote policies and goals that unify people and protect the vulnerable and persecuted. I am going to look for case examples of successful problem solving in this and other countries and highlight them as models our communities can use. I am going to help devise and support strategies that keep attract decent people to public service. I’m going to work hard for positive change and for peace.

I have been voting since the 70’s, and I’ve strongly disliked lots of politicians. Before now, none of them (not even Nixon) ever stirred me to political action beyond voting and the odd letter to the editor.

So I suppose the orange guy has already accomplished something of a first in the way of civic engagement, well before his inauguration. Given the results of the popular vote, I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.

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Sometimes, if you remain motionless, relaxed, and alert, a trout stream will show you something. After maybe five minutes standing quietly and screening myself behind a sycamore trunk and some spicebush, I see the damnedest thing. A submerged and substantial chunk of what appears to be waterlogged wood, something I had looked at closely half a dozen times and dismissed as flotsam, animates. It moves ponderously upstream and a little closer to my hiding place. I see there is an eye, spots, a broad tail fin. It is a large, probably female brown trout. It moves over a patch of light colored gravel, and I can see her from nose to tail. A big, lovely wild creature.

The water wasn’t empty. She was there all the time.