Upon turning 50

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald two days after my 50th birthday on October 3, 2006.

Today I’m thinking and wondering about Stephen Gibbs.

I’m thinking about him because a few days ago I turned 50, and turning 50 makes a person think about things. And I’m wondering about him because he’s my best friend and it’s been five years since Steve and I spoke with one another.

While I’ve certainly been busy these past few years, I suspect that’s not my excuse for not staying in touch. How hard is it to jot a note to his Oregon address, or reach over and pick up the phone? And why hasn’t he called me?

I met Steve at a seminar in 1977, when I was 20. We’re about the same age, and the moment he said a few words I knew I liked this guy. Picture blond hair, clear blue eyes, a square jaw. His mother was British, and his father was an American soldier in World War II.

Steve and I appeared to have little in common when we met. While I typed up essays for English classes, Steve worked odd construction jobs and lived in Santa Cruz in a weathered shed surrounded by geese on the wooded property of a friend. He often wore second-hand clothes, and made life choices I never would have made.

But we shared a connection, a similar view of the world, and his remarkable wit captivated me and everyone he met. I remember us musing one day about women, and I asked, “What’s your ideal girl, Steve?” Without missing a beat he said: “A semi-organic wood nymph into granola and trucks.” His timing with humor was excellent.

But his timing with women was tenuous.

Typical of this was his experience at a garden center where he worked after graduating high school when one morning a young woman saw his blond hair and broad shoulders and asked, almost breathlessly, if he was a surfer.

An honest fellow, Steve said no, he wasn't.

“Instantly her eyes faded,” Steve told me. “Without a word she turned and walked away.”

Steve had several girlfriends over the years, and I met all of them, just as he got to know the girls I dated. One girl I didn’t meet, though, was his high school sweetheart, Mary. In a picture Steve showed me, Mary wore glasses and her long black hair was parted down the middle. He also showed me a shard of clay from pottery she made for him in art class.

The day he told me about Mary, Steve said he sometimes thought about going back to find her. Maybe because in your twenties everything seems possible, I said I’d help him find her if he wanted. I liked her for loving him, and I pictured the two of them putting together the pieces of the broken ceramic bowl.

After living in Santa Cruz and then Los Gatos, Steve moved to Humboldt County and lived in a tent on a rambling, rustic lot where he helped his brother build a house.

When I went to visit that first fall, I felt the chill of the changing season. We walked the property, watched the afternoon arc of a hawk’s silhouette, and then, as we stepped into his tent, I saw a primeval verdant mildew in the shockingly familiar goldenrod rug that for years lay beneath the coffee table in my parents’ home. Steve must have salvaged the rug from my parents, and there it was: my past; his present.

For years after his move to Humboldt, I visited Steve each October. He eventually found an apartment, and we spent lazy days talking over bagels, playing backgammon, and going on long runs. We enjoyed running, having come of age when Frank Shorter won the Olympic marathon in 1972, and when a college track star named Steve Prefontaine became a legend even before his tragic death in a car accident in 1975.

So why, then, haven’t we spoken these past few years? Do friends just sometimes drift apart? When Steve last visited, we enjoyed our time together. We said our goodbyes in no different way than usual. And yet something between us must have changed.

Today what has changed is that I’m thinking about Steve. I'm wondering about him as I settle into the skin of a 50-year-old man who 30 years ago met a fellow with blue eyes who made me laugh and became my best friend. And today I’m even wondering if I ought to go back and try to find him.

. . .

Dialing for Steve...

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald on October 17, 2006.

In my last column, I wrote about how turning 50 prompted me to wonder about my best friend, Stephen Gibbs. Steve lives in Portland, and I mused about why, after 30 years of friendship, we hadn’t spoken in five years.

The column elicited many responses from readers who’d also lost touch with friends, and while most encouraged me to call Steve, I hesitated, uncertain about our friendship.

Then Denise Rousset wrote in an email, “Go find your friend because our lives are peppered with the friendships we've made, but the ones we remember are like sinew and bone. . . . It will give you peace to tell this person how much his friendship has meant to you, and I'm sure it will mean a lot to him as well. Maybe even timely for him. Maybe even vital at this moment.”

That did it for me. I took a deep breath, picked up the receiver, and dialed.

As the phone at the other end began to ring, I wondered if Steve even lived at the number anymore. When I last saw him, he was renting a room in a basement from friends. But maybe that arrangement had ended.

I also harbored a deeper worry about Steve because twenty years ago his father, who was manic-depressive, committed suicide by swimming out to sea. Though Steve had never exhibited the slightest sign of depression, his silence scared me.

On the other hand, perhaps he’d gotten married and simply moved on with his life. I just didn’t know.

After a couple of rings, the phone picked up. It was a recording of a woman’s voice. She listed the people who lived in the household. Sure enough, Steve was one.

I stumbled through my greeting and left my number. Then I waited.

After three long days, while listening to my messages, I heard a voice I’d know anywhere. He sounded good.

But hidden in the background of his call was the unanswered question: Why had we lost touch?

When we spoke the next evening, I learned the answer. But before I share it, here’s what’s new with Steve.

“I’m passionate about pulling barbed-wire,” he said. “I’m a volunteer.”

Steve said he works with people committed to restoring wilderness to 175,000 acres in the Oregon desert by removing miles of fencing from federal lands no longer used for ranching. Removing the fences allows antelope and other wildlife to roam freely.

Because the area is wilderness and machinery is prohibited, volunteers trek in by horse and manually coil and remove the wire. It’s a difficult and dangerous job, and Steve loves it.

Since volunteering pay no bills, Steve works odd jobs to earn a meager living. Each year he helps organize a rummage sale that raises money for Portland’s Catlin Gabel School. He works part-time for the school, but receives no benefits.

“In other words, I’m looking for an heiress with a health plan,” Steve said, laughing, though I could tell he was serious. “In the world of money and power, I’m on Baltic and Mediterranean.”

I also learned that Steve’s mother, who as a little girl in England had a Nazi bomb plummet onto her porch, is alive and well at age 87. “I wouldn’t be here today if that bomb had exploded,” Steve said.

Along with his relentless wit, Steve continues to make life choices that intrigue me. He still lives in a basement, though he managed to take an expenses-paid trip to India a few years ago. He doesn’t have email or even own a computer, but he’s saving for one. If asked for a business card, he uses obsolete cards from a company he worked for years ago. He turns the card over, applies a label with his name and address that he gets free from his insurance agent, and jots down his phone number.

In other words, Steve hasn’t changed a bit.

But why, then, did we drift apart?

I asked him this toward the end of our two-hour call, and I pictured his blue eyes when he said simply that over the years he has often lost track of friends, that staying in touch with people in different places in life seems to take too much effort.

As he has done throughout our 30 years of friendship, Steve was able to articulate what I couldn’t. His words, of course, described my own reason for not trying to reach him.

As we made plans for a visit, I felt as if we’d cleared a path in our friendship, as if we’d pulled away the barbed wire of a needless fence.

. . .