Late Night Memories

I worry sometimes that I am now capable of repeating myself.


That said, at the risk of showing signs of senility three memories came to mind tonight.


I have admitted in previous blogs sleep no longer seems to come easy to me. 


There is no question that with the stress of Lori's cancer and my fear of her prognosis should I fail to figure out a way to save her life, has made it so I no longer can blissfully drop of into dream land. 


I also am under enormous pressure to expand our production capacity for our company. The simple truth is I am very close. 


Once we get to about 2 million pounds of head on jumbo shrimp a year we become self sustainable. 


We really are very close. And I believe with the alliance I have formed with some very decent and honest individuals we may finally be tracking resolutely toward that objective. 


But tonight, it is late and I am tired but wide awake.


And for some reason three very special moments in my life have popped up in my memories. 


I have had a great life, full of adventure and wonder and frankly the life I would have picked given a choice has become my reality.


Tonight, unable to close my eyes I remembered a cougar I met that was in a rehab facility in Oregon. 


It is no secret I adore animals and I truly believe someday we will stop our war on them and learn to live with them as fellow citizens of our planet. 


Creatures that enjoy life as we do, have emotional bonds as we do and that sadly die as we do. 


As David Hume once wrote, "the difference between man and animal is one of degree not kind". 


In any case I remember this wild cat. I wonder what every happened to him.

Tonight, I also remembered a trip I made to Papua New Guinea around 2001. I was there to do a environmental survey of the possibility of a sustainable lobster harvest. 


A lot of good things happened that trip. I saved a sea turtle from being slaughtered for food in a market place, I visited a forgotten graveyard that had over 200 American servicemen buried and forgotten there that had died in WW11 for our freedom. 


But what I remember most was a blue starfish that I was told was a myth, that blue starfish did not exist. 


When I found it and held it in my hand I felt transformed and for me it was one of those rare moments when I realized that Darwin be damned, there is a  God and we might explain diversity through science, but we can not explain original cause without God.

And tonight for some strange reason Susan Butcher came into my head. The winner of three Iditarod dog races, a champion of better care for sled dogs, an insecure girl from Massachusetts who risked her life to prove she was brave, and a woman who became a dear  friend. 


Susan died a few years ago of cancer. I have never met someone since or before who lived life so fully. 


I wonder where her spirit is now? Is she in heaven watching, is she in stasis waiting, what happens to life forces so strong the entire planet shudders when they depart? 

I have lived a life most people would find hard to believe.


I have seen the world, seen sights in nature, and met so many "characters" along the way, that my life reads like a dime store paperback.


I grew up reading Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard and Jack London and Robert Ruark and Hemingway and have experienced in many ways more than they where able to imagine. 


I have always maintained that the only thing you take with you when you leave this world is your memories. If that is true I will someday leave this world a very rich man. 


If you have not read my book "Under Cover" you might want to. 


It (I think) is available as an E-book and very inexpensive now from Amazon.


Don't read it to look at my life, read it to look at what is possible for anyone's life.