From Ashland, Oregon

An uncomfortable night for Ellie, before resuming our journey south. The results of her episode on Clear Lake turned out, late at night, to be more severe than either of us had imagined. A sharp pain in her ribs suggested that she had bruised them nastily in the process of clambering back up to the dock, and we spent some time online before concluding that a stop at the local hospital would not yield significant further information.

Breakfast at McKenzie River Inn and a long talk with Bert, an immigrant from Holland who, with his wife, owns the inn and also offers guided raft and fishing tours on the river. We were sorry to have missed the opportunity to have joined one of his trips. Next time, perhaps. He gave us a fuller tour of the various cabins and rooms at the inn, including one that would be ideal for us on a future visit.


(A bridge across the McKenzie River...)

Having ruled out that visit to the hospital, then, we headed straight for the 5 South and down the interstate


under grey skies, but through lovely mountainous and forested country, with barely a pause until we reached our next destination, Ashland, where we enjoyed a great lunch at Pangea on Main Street, sharing a superb yam and curry soup and a wrap out in the sunshine. From there, a call to my very old friend, Bill Kauth, who had invited us to stay for a couple of nights, to get directions to his house.

Arriving there, we found Bill in the kitchen, engrossed in the task of bottling a batch of luscious, fresh-picked local peaches in Mason jars with different blends of liqueurs and his new bride, Zoe, off in her studio, painting in preparation for a show this coming weekend. A marvelous location, overlooking a wide expanse of golden hills surmounted by a crown of dark green trees, just three minutes from the center of town. It’s year since I last spent any time with Bill, and it was a joy to stand around and chat with him, catching up on the new—and old—directions of his life as he sliced the fruit and filled his jars.

Later afternoon, Zoe arrived home with a roasted chicken and we all worked together in the kitchen to prepare a wonderful salad...


... gently fried, sliced beets and green beans to accompany the chicken. Ellie and I contributed a bottle of Castle Rock Merlot from Mendocino, and we celebrated the reunion with joined hands around the table and a few words of gratitude from Bill. A lovely moment.




After dinner, Bill invited me to join a meeting of one of his men’s groups—there are, I gather, some 500 men in the immediate area who have been through the intense weekend training program that Bill pioneered with two others back in the 1980s, and which was of particular importance to me more than fifteen years ago as I struggled with difficult life changes, inspiring the book that has brought me more satisfaction, as a writer, than anything else I have done. For whatever reason, it turned out to me a small group—four men, only—but none the less rich for that. We sat out, first, on the patio behind a newly-built home set in those glorious hills; and later in the spacious living room, and talked for a good three hours about issues of importance in our lives. I do much enjoy the company of men—not to the exclusion of mixed company, of course, but there is a special energy when men get together, and it is one that I always find stimulating and refreshing.

We took a scenic route home, to get me oriented in the city of Ashland. It seems like a genuinely human—and humane—community, and one that is eminently livable. I returned home to hear an enthusiastic report on the events in Denver--viewed online, since Bill and Zoe eschew the vagaries of television in general and its wayward news broadcasts in particular--and a fine review of the appearances of Michelle Obama and Ted Kennedy. Sorry to have missed them… but happy to have made the choice I did.