Let Your Light Shine
Certainty is heavy cargo.
And it will be your death.
Storms in life will bring your soul to the place where your lighthouse is, and break you on the rocks.
It makes sense.
It’s the one place you agree is worth dying for.
And Love needs you to die.
Carry light in your hold.
Light rises, in the end.
Today is my birthday.
Spring in North Dakota in 1908 was dragging her feet and taking her time getting ready to dance in the rain.
On mornings like that one when the frost is snapping at her heels you think she might just hike up her skirts and leave us to wrestle with Winter for another while.
So I was born and so I grew up.
My head full of words wrestled from the ground and washed in the water that comes from the sky.
Chapped all day in the burning sun then gently oiled around the fire each night.
My family farmed. And ranched. And read books.
I’ve filled books with my stories, you know that, so we won’t do that here.
We’ll just skip a rock across the peaks of the waves that swelled my years.
High school dropped out of me in the tenth grade.
I punched cows for some years which is a term unfairly used, the cattle did most of the punching.
Baled lots a hay in New Mexico. It’s not all desert and most folks don’t know that.
Tasted dust in Nevada mines, Arizona saw mills and Utah lumber yards.
Did some actual punching on the pro boxing circuit. Won some too.
Hopped more freight trains than you probably should, they were going somewhere and I wanted to.
Hobo villages are somewhere and I lived in a few.
Bummed on the beach in southern California for a few months.
The ocean was bigger from the freighters I rode around the world, working as a merchant sailor.
And I wrote it all down as I went.
Guess I read a fair amount too. Usually around 150 books a year.
1945 found me fighting in France and Germany.
They made me a company commander before it was done.
Went back home, I just wrote.
Sold a story every week in those years.
All the kids always ask how it’s done.
Just write.
Kathy married me in 1956.
Stories came easier in the 60’s and 70’s.
And folks bought ‘em.
Somewhere along the way we passed up old Steinbeck, more than 41,000,000 copies sold.
A few years later it was 100 million.
The awards flooded in.
Golden Saddleman Award, Teddy Roosevelt Rough Rider Award, then it was a Congressional National Gold Medal and a Medal of Freedom.
All for a few good stories.
It was all for learning, really. I just wanted to learn.
“Ask and you will receive” they said. I believed it.
I learned the roughest hands can have the softest hearts.
I learned that saying nothing can be thunderous speech.
I learned the woman will always mystify, bewilder and bewitch a man.
She is both a part of him missing and something wholly other.
I learned to be friendly to a man who smiles at death.
He makes a good friend and a terrifying enemy.
I tried to fill my stories with these men and their hopes and fears and the mysterious woman.
“A dying breed.” they say. Maybe.
Somebody’s buying all these books. I’d like to think they’re finding themselves in that saddle.
I hope the words that spilled out of me over the years are filling their hearts with a bit of wonder and a reminder of how all good stories end.
The good guys win. The gentleman marries the lady. They live happily ever after on a ranch in Texas.
If a story doesn’t end that way, it must not be over yet.
All stories are good stories, in the end, you know.
Just keep reading.
A man always smiles at death, who knows how the story ends.
And I did smile.
—
Louis L’Amour loved life and learning, all of it.
And he put all of it in stories so we could too.
God bless Louis L’Amour.
Grateful to my Papa, for introducing us.
It’s up to me I’m as free as I claim to be!
Claims one as chained himself to a tree.
Be free as a deer and safely under steer my overseer!
Wearies priest and atheist whose closest to god is fear.
A salty sailor answered me best,
Freedom is what do you guess?
One chain deep and one thread high,
Your anchor in the veil your Star in the sky.
If it’s freedom you desire
Bind your self to her
Everywhere you go
There you are
I was exceedingly irresponsible on Wednesday.
I thought I might be turning into a bum.
“…if I keep this up, I won’t have a place to lay my head.”
It’s okay though, I snapped out of it.
Here’s what happened…
Work was stacking up, a real tower of babbling and beeping and buzzing.
Typical Wednesday morning for important people who do important stuff.
Something called me outside for a minute before diving in.
Then I just laid on the lawn and counted clouds.
For hours.
Horrendous, I know. And it gets worse.
I let the baby eat a dandelion and climb on my head and play with a piece of green hose so now he probably thinks playing with snakes is totally fine.
And I did nothing, still.
The dog snored.
The sun shined.
The chimes chimed.
We watched a snail labor for two hours over the fresh cut grass.
He was doing about 12 inches per hour, top speed. Working very hard.
Then our Rock Island Red named Julia came along and ate him.
Snails only live a few weeks, you know.
Even where rusty-feathered chickens aren’t.
Still, something was super important to this silly snail.
Something other than drinking today’s bluest sky and occasionally watering the greenest grass with my eyes.
His imagined destination (probably not a chicken gullet) must have been important indeed, for him to be striving so certainly for most of his short snail life.
Thank God I have a big man brain and not a tiny snail brain.
Everyone knows you gotta have a sense of urgency to get anywhere in life.
Anyway, I’m back to work on my tower now so it’s all good.
It’s a very important tower and lots of people are counting on me I think.
—
“Hey, how do you know the snail was a ‘he’?”
Good question.
Mostly a guess.
When it comes to work, women seem to know better.
But you already knew that, didn’t you? =)
Casual like a hand on your hip their right hands rested on their shiny Colts.
Surrounding the camp they squeezed in and the fire played shadows behind.
An old man with paint on his face just sat there. Was he asleep?
“Come on in boys. Coffee’s on.”
Their eyebrows played catch with question marks.
Bacon curling in a pan tasted his nose and the first boy was off his horse.
Boy Two shrugged and put leather on the ground.
“Where y’all headed?”
“We’re headed west to find…”
“Just passin’ through.” The third one cut in and daggered Boy One with his eyes.
“Thanks for sharing sups and your coffee.”
“Where do you come from, sir?”
The old man produced a few sticks from under his robe and fed the embers.
“I was born under this sky.”
They tossed more eyebrows.
“We’re headed west to find places of our own.” The first boy said.
He ducked as a mesquite bean flew for his head.
“Your friend is wise.” The old man said to Boy One.
“What you don’t speak about can’t hurt you.”
“Your friend is also wise.” The old man said to Boy Three.
“What you don’t speak about can’t help you.”
“Yeah that’s right! So we’re headed west to find places of our own. Have you ever had a place of your own? We all have different ideas about what makes a good place. I think a place should have a nice lake and a meadow. He thinks a hill for the house is most important and Tight Lips over there won’t say what he thinks, believe it or not.”
“So have you… have you ever had a place of your own?” The second one said.
The old man’s eyes went bluer as a mist rolled in.
“I mean, a lake just makes sense. And good grass for the beeves. An then there’s the view…”
All the crickets and a coyote wearing a coat of moonlight wondered how the rambling boy managed to speak without breaks for breathing.
“What do you think, sir?” The third one said.
More sticks.
“You sure you want to know what I think?”
Nodding.
“Truly, all you need is a spring.”
Eyebrows.
“A spring with living water. You can go the distance there.”
“Ha! Come on, I mean springs are great, yeah, but for all the other stuff everybody likes different things, right? You got to pick a place that really fits you.”
“Times change. People change. Even land changes. Pick a place where the water goes deep and you’ll laugh through the dry spells.”
The moon-coated coyote filled up the silence, for a while.
“I’ve passed a few places with springs, I know they weren’t right. How do
I know when I find the right one?” Boy Two said.
“The Great Spirit will tell you. She will still everything.” His eyes were closed again.
The first boy touched his temple and twirled his finger.
“Yes, I am crazy.” The old man said without opening his eyes.
“Crazy enough to have found my own place.
“Crazy enough to be happy, even.
“Crazy enough to be loving life to death.”
Then he tested the boys with his gaze.
“Are you crazy enough?”
“I think I found my calling.”
“Is it saying random things?”
The strange boy tossed his head back and bunches of bluebirds burst from the tree to speckle the yawning sky.
“That was a good one. You got me.”
Flinty steel in his eyes betrayed the glimmer playing around his mouth.
Whatever he said next was likely to set something on fire.
“Love is like cliff diving.
“On a trail you might turn back at anytime. You might see another trail more fair, more appealing and turn down there.
“On a path you might find great pleasure in each whispering fork you pass knowing your way is only yours, to split or not to split.
“Truly you may follow your heart to top of any mountain but the truest way to the bottom of your self is found when your feet leave the ledge.
“There are no off ramps in cliff diving.
“No take backs, no tap outs.
“After the toe tip it’s all out for the all in.”
I don’t know how I know that.
But… I do.
—
Love leaves the overlook of heaven without any wings.
Fallen to the bottom of my shattered shoreline.
Collided at the crossroads of eternity.
Perfectly laid beneath the waves of my curse.
Until bursting forth the Island rises.
Even salty death gives way to molten Love.
Come to the Island, oh my soul, and be melted.
Robert H. Cantley.
He is a great grandfather.
She drove north every young summer to visit him and the woman with him.
He’s like the dad she didn’t have because somebody ran a red light.
They shared homemade dinners and wine and would wind miles of stories at the stove every night.
They moved their lives over for that bright-eyed girl.
They believed in seeds and a harvest they wouldn’t live to see.
Sun up, top down he drove a 1953 Chevy Corvette, baby blue, shiny and cool.
He sold it with light in his heart when the heavy bubble burst.
He rolled right over the worst months in a 1994 pickup painted like raw milk.
He found the 4×4 far better for first-time-fishing in the mountains with great-grandkids and when they weren’t looking the lake shiny and cool would fill his eyes bouldered and blue and make him cry like a baby.
“He drives me crazy.” His wife will say.
He won’t argue with his lady. And he never says why.
He just makes music with his eyes.
“He loves like heaven does.”
He’s a stake driven in the ground his family goes around.
The bright-eyed girl gave his name, to her first boy.
They sent her boy to pick up his old fashioned Ford, last year.
Single cab stick shift saddle blankets on the seats.
Pneumonia hit him in the chest like a cement truck.
Death is one helluva red light.
So I sit in his seat and drive.
—
Did you know Randy Travis wrote a song about my great-grandfather?