June 8, 2002

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  Okay, someone is interested in why a basically high minded, spiritually evolved, peace loving person such as myself would surround herself with a small but versatile and supposedly effective (assuming I can aim and shoot) arsenal. Well, dear readers, like Topsy, it just grew.

  
  

  It started with the AR-7. I was headed out of Anchorage on a backpacking trek after my first year of living and working in that city that lies only a few short highway miles from the real Alaska. The man in my life at the time, whom I had not yet then married or divorced, Mr.X, advised me to carry a firearm.

  
  

  He grew up in this great land. It molded his philosophy. On boyhood wanderings in the same area where I’d be hiking, his rifle had brought down hares and grouse for his campfires, and one time when for days nothing else could be found, a seagull made a wholesome but distasteful meal.

  
  

  I carried rice, beans, trail mix, and some fishing gear, but he said it could take weeks to walk the Stampede Trail and to keep up my strength I’d need meat. Besides that, he said, although a .22 wasn’t much good against bears, it was better than nothing.  Okay, that made sense to me. He’d never steered me wrong before, in matters of long johns and such that first winter when I’d frostbit my kneecaps walking to work in parka and mini-skirt at 25 below zero. I let him give me this slick lightweight rifle that broke down and stowed in its own buoyant plastic stock. It fit in my pack and didn’t weigh much. The trip was a trip, but that’s another story.

  
  

  We married, had a kid, moved out of the city, and divorced. Still the best of friends then, almost twenty years ago, we are friends and neighbors even now.  When in his absence from here I started getting insistent unwelcome attention from my horny bachelor neighbors, I asked his advice on how best to turn them off.  He said he would think on it.  On his visit the following weekend, he brought the .357 magnum.

  
  

  I said to him, “But I don’t want to shoot anyone, I just want the bozos to quit following me when I walk down the road, and stop coming by late at night knocking at my door.” He, as he often does, said, “Don’t worry about it, come on,” and he led me to the gravel pit between here and the lodge, where most of the neighborhood goes for target practice.

  
  

  Whenever someone is down there shooting, everyone else in the neighborhood with ears to hear knows what’s going on. We burned about a hundred rounds of ammo, until I was familiar with the action and sure in my aim. Then we went to the lodge for refreshments. Amid the usual Saturday crowd, I dutifully handed my heavy gunbelt over to the bartender for safekeeping while Mr.X bragged to all present about what a good shot I was with my new weapon. The bozos never bothered me again.

  
  

  A few years went by, and the old fart and I hadn’t met yet but were courting through letters and long distance calls, when abnormally heavy snows created problems for the moose and everyone else in this valley. The moose were starving because they could not get around in the deep snow to browse on the willows and alders. Stuck in the plowed roads, along the railroad tracks and in our driveways, maddened with hunger, the normally shy and harmless moose became dangerous. We were advised by Troopers and Fish and Game officers to avoid confrontations if possible, but go armed just in case.

  
  

  One morning, coming home the long way around after walking the kid to the bus stop, I was trying to avoid a cow and two calves who had staked out a claim in the road north of my house when a bull charged at me out of a neighbor’s driveway a block south. When an evasive move up a steep and deep snow berm only got me mired to the hip, I resignedly fired the .357 and my fourth shot finally discouraged the bull and he turned.

  
  

  After making my shaky way home, I called on a neighbor who guides hunting parties for a living. He collected Mr. X and another friend and they tracked my wounded bull and finished the poor beast. Then the three of them did their best to convince me that a four-inch revolver lacked the power, accuracy and punch to put down a moose. Their joint recommendation was a pump shotgun, at least twelve gauge. The following winter, my new husband the old fart, bought me the Remington.

  
  

  When our son turned thirteen, Mr.X presented him with the .22 Marlin, a thing of elegant beauty. The kid had been shooting my AR-7 and various other pieces since age 5 and was ready to be trusted with one of his own.

  
  

  Most of the other guns around here were either left for safekeeping or just passing through as weapons do when one is married to an arms dealer.  The rest were that flatulent old arms dealer’s prized personal possessions. One particular piece I left out of the inventory I made for Dane Bramage was the old fart’s sentimental favorite, a Saturday night special of the same make and model as the one John Hinkley used to shoot Ronald Reagan.

  
  

  Now I’ve answered the question of why I have all the armaments, but that leaves the, “What am I afraid of?” question hanging there. That is easy to answer. I can do it briefly, too. I’m not afraid of much of anything, really. When I give it a lot of soul-searching introspection, I must admit to some occasional vague apprehension lest I make a big mistake of some kind. That’s just part of being a perfectionist, I guess. I want to get it right, all the time. But fear is a thing of the past. What do I fear? What do I have to fear? Nothing at all.

  
  

  Addendum:

  
  

  I was doing a final edit of the above after posting, when chastityrose left this comment:

  
  

  
  

  “Ok, LOL, but now I’m curious as to who “old fart” is, why you refer to him as only that and is he deceased?  It sounds like he’s either dead or very far away.  LOL

  
  

  No, I think I’m more curious about why you got married!  At all.  LOL  Sorry, but you just seem too together and mature to need anyone else.  No, that’s too stupid a statement too. 

  
  

  ‘Never Mind’.”

  
  

  I’m sorry, dear, but “never mind” will never do.  I can’t let such great questions go unanswered.  I just hope I can do them justice without going over novella-length.

  
  

  The infamous old fart is my husband, business partner, soulmate and co-conspirator, Greyfox.  I started referring to him that way here on the advice of those who don’t think we should be putting our real identities out there for all the world’s stalkers and spam artists to see.  That particular epithet is how he occasionally refers to himself.  My son and I, irreverent to the end, picked up on it with delight.

  
  

  “It sounds like he’s either dead or very far away.  LOL”  Honey, this is funnier than you will ever know.  I just read it to Greyfox and he got a good laugh out of it, too.  In a very real sense, the man I married is dead.  The one who is here now is a walk-in [and that is indeed a very long story, which I will reserve for another time].  With his absent-minded nature and his preference for solitude, he is usually “far away”, even if it’s only in another room of this house.

  
  

  Each of my marriages was for what (to me at the time) seemed like a good reason.  The first, in Bible-Belt Texas of the ‘Fifties, when I was fourteen years old, was for sex.  My mother thought my boyfriend and I were getting “too serious” and tried to break us up.  I was very serious and unwilling to give up sex once I’d managed to find a young man willing to relieve me of my virginity.  With his complicity, I pretended to be pregnant, and Mama signed the consent for underage marriage.  It wasn’t a good match; he was an abused child who turned into an abusive spouse and parent.  I swore to myself I’d never wed again.

  
  

  Lying to oneself, BTW, is a bad habit.  The next two marriages were to military men.  I lived with each of them in my own digs off-post until their first-sergeants learned of the arrangements and ordered them back into barracks.  Legal formalities were a means to get them back into my bed and to get the perks and benefits of a military dependant.

  
  

  My fourth marriage, to the speed freak and dealer known as The Hulk, was a misguided and unsuccessful attempt to skirt some probation restrictions and stay together and out of jail.  “Unsuccessful” says it all.

  
  

  The fifth and sixth, to Mr. X and the old fart respectively, were for the flimsy excuse that they talked me into it.  I lived with Mr. X for several years before we married, and he was regularly bringing up the marriage question.  I think he wanted some assurance that I wouldn’t wander off with the next sexy man who walked by.  When he had convinced me that I could get out of it whenever I wanted to, I consented, but on the condition that I could write the vows.  There was no “’til death” business in there.  By that time, I’d stopped making promises I didn’t intend to keep.  After eleven years, he and I split up over issues of honesty and secrecy, but we remained friends.

  
  

  Then along came my soulmate, Greyfox.  This story deserves a lengthier treatment, which it will get, eventually.  For now, the short version:  he found me through an ad for psychic readings by mail.  He was blown away by my insights, and then both of us started recalling past lives we had spent together.  First he came to AK from PA for a visit, then decided to take early retirement and move here to join me so we could work together and BE together.

  
  

  I was contented with that, but for his own reasons he wanted to marry me.  He said  it was for reasons of his “upper middle-class values”.  *ROFLMAO*  He, too, was insecure and wanted to stake a claim on me, not unlike Mr. X.  He had other reasons for wanting to move here as well.  He was going down from alcoholism and reached out to me for a lifeline.  I’m a healer by vocation and preference.  After extracting a promise that he would bear the paperwork and expense of a divorce if I asked for it, I married him.  I should have gotten that promise in writing.  And I’m going to leave the rest of that story for a later blog.

  
  

  Thanks again for asking.

  • 1:24 pm
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