Tossing Shade At Decision Trees

The best possible plan is to plan on being surprised... that way you won't be too surprised when life comes along and surprises you, yet again.

Meet Annie, at least I’m gonna call her Annie. And that pal of hers in the back of the pickup, that’s Buddy, as faithful, non-judgmental and guileless a companion as you’ll ever meet. These two flagged me down, waving a crisp, twenty dollar bill the other day and asked a simple favor of me, several hundred miles from here. The rest of the whole damn world has looked a little different to me ever since.

I do not expect you to agree with me, nor do I need you to. We each make our own deals with the hidden universe and peer with our own eyes into those strange, wonderful, little cracks and crossroads where that universe chooses to reveal itself to us. Or, chooses not to. It’s never the same for any two souls. Your deal is different than my deal. We came for different lessons, have been and will continue to be dealt different cards. We bring different gifts and will inevitably stumble in different places. And yet, as far as I can tell we are, almost every one of us, continually looking across the aisle or over someone else’s shoulder wondering if their deal is better than ours, wishing we could trade places, if only just until things get a little too weird. Then, almost to a person, we’d like to be able to pop back into our previous lives where things still may not make much sense but are at least familiar.

We all fantasize about seeing life through someone else’s eyes.

“Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.”

Mary Oliver ~ Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

Decision Trees lack subtlety.

Annie flagged me down at some, way-the-hell-out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere intersection where a bone-rattling stretch of gravel road tees into a paved, two-lane at an odd, off-perpendicular slant reminiscent of my left-handed, third-grade attempts at proper cursive writing. I had not yet driven quite a hundred yards from the place I had been standing moments earlier, turning in slow circles in the middle of a carless, asphalt, two-lane, long, telephoto lens pointed skyward, doing my best to follow a Golden Eagle soaring in circles on invisible updrafts with no apparent source, trying desperately to keep it centered in my frame while firing short bursts of exposures, most of which would prove too blurry to appreciate as anything more than ‘proof of life encounters,’ consolation prize pictures. One of them and six bucks will get you a latte at Starbucks.

“Really?” the barista asks. “You saw that Golden Eagle way out in some sagebrush desert?”

She had stopped ‘polite-looking’ at the blurry photo on my outstretched iPhone screen several seconds ago, but continued to feign interest, understanding perfectly where tips come from.

“Seven foot wingspan, you say? Seriously?” she inquires further, but in the too-loud voice of a nursing home worker who assumes you’ve forgotten your hearing aids again.

“Well, wow! I mean, that’s just so cute.”

“So that’ll be $5.95 plus tax for your Grande, no foam, Pumpkin Spice Latte, Mr. Birdwatcher.” she says playfully. “How would you like to pay?”

I had first seen this magnificent, winged creature in silhouette from afar, perched comfortably atop this power pole, and had slowed gradually as I neared it, pulling carefully off onto the gravel shoulder with my window rolled down, then shut off my engine.

The eagle eyed me nonchalantly as I raised my binoculars to study it through my open window but tensed noticeably when I opened my door, camera in hand and exited my truck. I fired off maybe a dozen shots of the bird atop the pole before moving even a foot from my car, hoping to capture at least a few sharp photographs of this grand, North American raptor at such an impossibly close distance before it bolted. I quickly glanced up and down the highway; still not a truck or car in sight, then reviewed a couple of the shots I’d just taken to make sure I had a few sharp ones before stepping slowly toward the middle of the road in search of a better angle. She tolerated my moving presence for more than half the width of the highway before spreading her immense wings and with a leap and a few wingbeats reached some invisible, uplifting river of air I could not see but that she had known was there all along. My heart sank. She’s out of here, I thought.

She didn’t seem afraid though, and so for whatever reason did not immediately beeline away. Instead, she circled above me and then circled again, studying me and affording me photographic access for a good two or three more minutes, banking and turning, her burnished gold feathers glinting against deep blue skies in the glaring, past-noon sunlight before finally deciding she’d seen enough and slowly winging away.

That Golden Eagle was a gift that appeared out of nowhere in unearned response to a series of decisions I’d begun making the evening before, while contemplating three possible scenarios for my next day’s location and activities. Absent any clear sense of where I wanted to head next or what I really wanted to attempt after my initial, mixed-bag afternoon of birding at one of North America’s birdwatching Meccas, Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, where an afternoon and early evening on the refuge had failed to yield even one noisy cloud of migratory waterfowl or a single, distant sighting, or prehistoric crawk from a magnificent, Sandhill crane, I picked the scenario that required the least amount of driving and the best chance at a medium-rare steak for dinner, booking a motel room for the night, online with my phone from the motel’s nearly empty parking lot while sitting not sixty feet from the front door of the nicest restaurant in Burns and perhaps twenty feet from the casually insolent man-boy behind the motel’s check-in counter who refused me both the simple respect of direct eye contact and a ground-floor room because, as he mumbled, they were all, already ‘spoken for’ by people not yet arrived, though probably, more importantly, not me.

(I wondered just how many assholish, old, white guys this kid needed to get even with in this passive-aggressive, playfield-leveling moment, then decided I’d gladly climb that damn flight of stairs before arguing the obvious with him and adding one more asshole to his tally.)

Next morning, sitting in a family diner a half-mile to the west with a cup of steaming coffee, listening to two old-timers, each wearing different styles of red, Trump/MAGA ball caps and shooting the ‘it’s a goddamn conspiracy’ breeze, while the line cook hollered to the retreating waitress who had just turned in my order, that after ‘this one’, he was officially out of hash browns for the rest of the shift unless someone runs down to Safeway and gets more, I was still feeling restless with no clear vision for my day, despite my unfolded Oregon map laid out in front of me on the cafe table parked in the midst of this vital, migratory flyway.

It dawned on me while waiting for my eggs and bacon that if I dawdled just a bit, by the time I finished my breakfast, that Rite-Aid pharmacy I’d passed just up the road would probably be open and I might be able to pop in and get the new, updated Covid booster there in a small, rural town, where even the druggists don’t wear masks and hardly anyone gives a fretful shit, rather than waiting till I got back to Seattle, where you need to make an appointment days in advance and still might stand in a line for an hour before getting your ‘sheeple enslaving, 5G and Deep-State, microchip-laden, arm stick.’

I reasoned that maybe, if I could get that troublesome little immunization cloud off my horizon by nine in the dang morning, I’d have one winning bingo card banked already, which maybe, just maybe would reshuffle the ballcage just enough to improve my luck and somehow free me up for better adventuring the rest of the day. And yes, I am fully aware of how ignorant and superstitious that all sounds.

Turns out I actually was the only customer in the pharmacy department of the chain drug store for the half hour I was there, and indeed, the only one requesting a shot. I filled out and signed the immunization request form, showed them my ID, immunization record and insurance card, then waited fifteen minutes or so, presumably for the booster dose to come up to a more manageable injection temperature from its well below freezing, storage temperature.

Then, sleeve up, quick alcohol wipe and poof. That pharmacist was a needle ninja; I never even felt it go in.

“Wait! What the actual hell, man?”

“You keep prattling on and on about golden eagles and bacon and eggs, Trump geezers and hashbrown shortages …and freaking booster shots at the Rite-Aid store. But you still haven’t told us a damn thing more about that wild looking old dame in the pickup truck. You opened this supposed story up with that haunting picture of her and her dog, hooked us with her mysterious gaze and his apparent bliss. So enough with all the mystery, woo-woo, ‘I can’t figure out what to do with my day’ crap. Cut to the damn chase or lose me for whatever else you think you’ve got in store for me!”

Uhhh, yeah, OK, excellent point.

Two Cups of Coffee:

So Annie is standing there at the termination of a jangly looking stretch of gravel road with her cattle dog, tail wagging, eyeing me from the back of her idling pickup, maybe thirty feet beyond. Her blue eyes are intense and her arms are waving me over. I stop, quickly check my rearview to be sure I’m not about to be rear ended, then back up far enough to turn onto the road she’s travelled to meet me here. She immediately walks up to my open window and extends a crisp twenty dollar bill.

“Is something wrong, I ask? Something wrong with your truck?”

“No brakes.” she deadpans, “But that’s not my problem.”

“I need you to do me a favor,” she says, eyes pleading. “I need you to go over there to that cafe. You see it there just up the road there on the other side? Well, I need you to go up there and buy me two cups of coffee. My coffee maker’s broke, can’t get it to work anymore. So I need you to go up there and bring me back two cups of coffee. Will you do that? This should more than cover it.” she pleads, extending the twenty toward my hand.

“I’d be happy to go buy you a couple of coffees,” I reply, “but why don’t I just clear off my seat here and give you a ride up there so you can buy them yourself. “

“They won’t serve me,” she says, her lip quivering now but eyes unflinching. The combination holds me captive. “I’ve been banned from there.” she says. “They put an extra charge on my credit card so I complained. They said I was wrong and wouldn’t fix it, so I reported them. That old red-haired woman, she told me I was banned from there for life. Won’t let me even in the door, now. Refuses to serve me. So I need you to go and buy me two cups of coffee. No cream. No sugar. I got them at home. Just plain black coffee. Will you do that?”

“Uhh, …sure. I was just gonna turn in there anyway and see about getting a burger for lunch. But first, let me run up there and procure two cups of coffee and bring them back for you. Won’t take a minute. Lunch can wait.”

Her eyes look hopeful for the first time since they’ve locked onto me, studying every inch of my face to see if I might help. She pushes the twenty at me again. “This should cover it.” she says. “Just bring me back the change when you bring the coffees.”

“Tell ya’ what…” I say, “why don’t you hold onto that for now. These two coffees are on me. Seems like you’ve had enough hard luck for one day. Might be about time for something nice to come your way. Won’t take but a few minutes. You go ahead and wait in your truck. I’ll be back with your coffees in a minute.”

She smiles, no …almost smiles and doesn’t argue. While I back back out onto the paved road she ambles back toward her truck. Her smiling dog shakes all over as she approaches.

In the cafe I order two large coffees to go and say nothing about where they’re headed. You get it. I don’t dare say a thing. Can’t bear the thought of blowing up this covert coffee mission, those pleading eyes, by saying the wrong thing. The same red-haired old woman who apparently banned Annie pours two large coffees and puts a plastic lid on each one.

“Five bucks.” she says.

I hand her the money, stack the two cups, one atop the other, stabilize them with my chin and head out the door to my rig. I set the coffees on my hood temporarily while I empty the two cup-holders in my center console. Then, coffees safely stowed, I head back down the road to Annie’s waiting truck. I get out. She gets out. I hand her the coffees and she tries to hand me the twenty, yet again.

“They really did it?” she asks, a little incredulous, “They really let you take two coffees out of there.?”

“Nope.” I wave away her money. “These are my little gift to you, today. Just let me buy you a couple cups of coffee, won’t you?”

Her eyes seem fretful.

“Tell ya’ what,” I say, “How about we trade? Two coffees for a picture of you and your Buddy here. Something to take with me. Something to remember you by and show my Mary when I get home and tell her the story. What’a ya’ say?”

Now she smiles, shyly and nods. A trade feels better from a stranger than a gift.

With my phone I snap a couple of quick portraits, Annie standing there beside the pickup truck that has no brakes, holding her two cups of hot coffee and that same twenty dollar bill she kept trying to hand me. And blissful Buddy smiling there behind her like the whole world is an adventure and life, unerringly grand.

I hold the coffees then while she climbs up into her truck and pulls the door shut, then hand, first one cup in, which she sets on the seat between her legs and the second which she holds outside the window in her left hand. Everything in me is screaming what a bad idea this arrangement is, how we really oughta find a way to stow those coffees for the bumpy ride home in a way that they won’t slosh or tip and either scald her or fall over and be lost. She’s having none of my logic.

“Well how are you gonna turn around with no brakes?” I ask? “and a big ole cuppa hot coffee in one hand?”

“No problem.” she deadpans, putting the truck in drive and slowly easing out onto the highway, one scalding cup still gingerly held between her legs and the other suspended between work-worn fingers, and safely beyond her rolled-down window.

Her ancient, knobby tires trace a wide, slow arc then that skillfully utilizes both paved lanes and leads back onto another spur of the same gravel road which I had not previously noticed, some forty feet farther up. She shoots me a final, determined thank you grin across the cab as she eases forward on the gravel and heads ever so carefully for home, where her coffee maker still won’t work tomorrow and where, one assumes, she’ll need to attempt to reenact some variation on this entire, surreal exercise, yet again.

Damn if this isn’t the most amazing, humbling, crazy, convoluted, way-beyond-imagining, world we find ourselves alive in! I’m standing there in the early afternoon sun on a rutted, gravel spur grinning like a damned idiot and sputtering to myself. She’s rolling away like a high wire act who lives for danger, where any jolt or sudden, errant movement means a painful scalding or at the very least, losing her precious joe. I have to shut down that worrying part of my brain that wants to imagine the worst possibilities and honor instead, every competent, confident thing I have just witnessed. At first glance I’ll admit it, Annie seemed just a little bit crazy, but in talking with her and working with her for even just those few minutes, in studying her eyes and making her portrait, I never once got any delusional, ‘crazy’ energy off her. At every juncture in conversation and deed, the woman I encountered seemed absolutely lucid and in full integrity. She never complained of life’s unfairness or badmouthed the red-haired woman who had banned her from the cafe. She simply stated the facts of her situation and took full credit for her role in it. She didn’t portray herself as a victim even once, just a woman with a problem that could, with a bit of my help, be resolved. And she never once asked me for a damn thing without trying to pay a fair price.

Who the hell flags down a total stranger in the middle of nowhere and trusts the universe enough to hand him a crisp twenty dollar bill and asks him to drive away with it? Everything about Annie told you that life had delivered a hundred cruel lessons to her about living with hardship and being treated less than fairly over the years, but that didn’t seem to have diminished her sense of faith in basic goodness or fair play. I never sensed bitterness or heard a single word of ‘poor me’ or ‘someone’s done me wrong.’

Got a truck with no brakes? Don’t whine. Just ease your foot off the gas early and roll to a stop well before you reach the intersection. Coffee maker broke? No need to go without. Just drive down toward that RV park cafe and wait. Someone’s bound to come along who’ll go in there on your behalf.

Annie, girl, you and Buddy have just rocked the living shit out of my world and now, nothing looks quite the same as before.

Decision trees can’t anticipate what they can’t imagine, nor can they comprehend life’s poetry.

I’d have never met Annie if I’d had some tight, smart, pre-decided schedule in front of me demanding to be obeyed. If, in my dismay at the mediocre birding the day before I’d decided to head on towards Bend, or back north to John Day, no Annie. What if I’d gotten up while it was still dark and immediately drove toward the refuge’s famous Center Patrol Road? Again, no Annie. And if I’d skipped that little Covid booster adventure after my leisurely, restaurant breakfast in order to get out there in the wilds a half hour, or an hour earlier? …I’d certainly have missed both that immense Golden Eagle encounter and Miss Annie. And I most certainly would have missed both of those plus the amazing birth of a dragonfly if I’d failed to ponder that lonely, north/south aligned gravel road west of Burns that I had never driven before, but that looked as if it would lead me out through some rocky hills and rimrocks, across an expansive, sagebrush plateau, down a side road to a remote desert lake which, as it turns out, was sheltering and feeding hundreds of times as many migratory waterfowl as I’d seen in all my wanderings the previous day on the refuge, a road that then would eventually lead me back out to the headquarters of the wildlife refuge, anyway.

One’s unease and lack of a clear direction are not always one’s enemies. They may in fact, prove to be one’s friends. Of course, they don’t leave you feeling all warm and comfortable like a good plan sometimes will, but that discomfort was precisely the thing that enticed me to consider just rolling the dice, taking a gravel road I’d never taken before across a barren landscape.

Decision trees: pros versus cons, clunky and often hand-drawn, analog algorithms that help you examine your possibilities and supposedly, make stronger decisions. What are the odds that a woman with a broken down truck would have appeared on any Bingo card I might have written up for that day? In a thousand years of imagining I’d never, ever have come up with that face, those pleading eyes and that guileless, smiling dog.

So, any decision tree that I might have created and sworn some fealty to in the interest of comfort and having a plan, and being able to make the most of my time and meet certain objectives would have very likely made for a wildly less interesting and far less educational day. Which isn’t to say that such planning is inherently bad. It’s just not necessarily ‘better.’ Or safer. Or more likely to make for memorable memories.

Is it possible that Annie’s needy situation sent waves of energy outward, somehow through time and space, to align with my willingness and future availability, then pulled those seemingly unrelated threads inward, toward one another, setting up the golden eagle to land on the power pole that got me to stop for several minutes to photograph it before Annie finally rolled up to the highway, not a hundred yards farther down the road, for our totally unexpected but not at all accidental meet? Who knows what all was going on in Annie’s world that day, ya know, beyond simply needing coffee? Maybe she really needed a bit of human kindness to keep some part of her from throwing in the towel, and the coffee was the one way she could be granted that other thing she needed in addition to those two cups of coffee. Was she being given some needed thing she didn’t recognize or know how to ask for?

I don’t know and I really don’t need to know. But I wouldn’t trade a hundred large coffees for that encounter. Not a thousand. And thing is, you don’t know either. None of us do …though, ok, perhaps someone knows.

How many wonderful things come from saying yes to some not quite clear sense or call? Drive down that road. Yes. Stop here. OK. Turn there. Got it. Get out and look around. On it. Yes, it’s almost time to leave but just, “Oh, would you look at that prairie falcon?” …not quite yet.

If your world view says you need to carefully write out your itineraries and hew to the decision trees that you brainstormed up at the kitchen table a week before going on your adventure, then by all means play by the rules that your deal with the universe proscribes. But don’t expect everyone to play by your rules, or kid yourself that they are the only responsible and respectable way to navigate a lifetime, whittling down the unimaginable number of possibilities to some more reliably predictable set, …lest you become one of those “smilers and talkers” Mary Oliver writes about who is therefore unsuitable to accompany her to the woods. I’m guessing that religiously disciplined, decision-tree adherents do not often ‘hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.’ or ‘sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned.’

Someone recently said, “You’re so lucky for all these wonderful encounters you get to experience…”

I smiled. Said nothing in reply.

No need.

My answer was not even a possibility on her decision tree.

“The best possible plan is to plan on being surprised... that way you won't be too surprised when life comes along and surprises you, yet again.”