Venom

When I was living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, my family did a fair amount of camping. The territory was beautiful, the streams clear, and the evenings reliably cool. There were a lot of black bears around, enough that we would see one about half the time when we camped out. Be careful, give them their space, and never get between a mother bear and her cubs were common bits of advice.

Then on one camping trip, when we were two families backpacking to a cabin in the Porcupine Mountains, we encountered a puzzlement. Miles into the forest and walking on a good path we came across two small black bear cubs in a tree. Our kids were young and very excited, dancing about the tree in hope that these cute little critters might come down where they could get a good and proper petting.

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I’m not quite sure what variant of ADHD I have, but I’m pretty sure I am somewhere in the spectrum. Finding out exactly which niche isn’t important at my stage of life, and so I am not pursuing it. But it does get in my way at times. Not because it has held me back in my education or profession, but … let me give a for instance or two.

Flickering images draw my attention immediately and drown out other stimuli. What’s the problem? It means that having lunch and a conversation in a sports bar is nearly impossible. Having a dozen television screens all screaming silently “LOOK AT ME” simultaneously is completely distracting. I mean completely. Robin and I avoid such places whenever possible, but even our favorite pizza emporium (The Brown Dog) in Telluride has several screens going and I wouldn’t consider it a “sports bar” at all. What I must do (to indulge myself in the pizza that I am certain is the one served in Heaven) is to turn my chair to where I can’t see any of the screens. It works but also means a lot of staring at unadorned wall coverings. A compromise.

Some early mornings, like this one, I get drawn down one rabbit hole after another by this cacophanous din. My filters can’t keep up with the stimuli, and I have to just shut things off. The computer, the television set, my iPhone … all of them. I step outside and shiver in the night air … looking up at more stars than this Minnesota boy ever saw growing up in a big city. Nature allows me to compose myself and get a bearing. Just before hypothermia sets in I go back indoors and attempt to keep the clamor at low volume by turning one thing back on at a time.

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You next open the small sealed packet and take out a pod that contains a potent enough attractant that it warns you to handle it carefully and wash your hands after you are done to avoid becoming very interesting to the pests. You put the pod into the device and walk away. Hundreds of the wasps come in and can’t find their way back out.

But the change we’ve made has been in the timing. Very early in the season the queens show up looking for places to set up housekeeping. They build their nests all over the house, the backyard fence – anywhere they get a little protection from the elements. If you get the traps out and catch the queens before they get a chance to fully establish themselves and raise their families, your summer is much more serene.

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In late 1972 Neil Diamond brought out a live album called Hot August Night. At the time I was an impressionable lad of 33 years with a family, living and working in Buffalo, New York. I was really just beginning my exploration of alcohol back then, never thought of it as a problem, even though if my life was a movie and I was watching it now I would say “Of course … there it is.”

After everyone else was in bed and asleep I would take my beverage of choice to the small attic room on the third floor of our home and put this album on, cranking the volume to the point where the groundwork for the ringing in my ears I now enjoy every day was laid. I did love that album then, and even now it can stir me.

I’ve included three cuts from Hot August Night here today. I suggest playing it loud enough that you can’t think of anything else. At that point it became, at least for me, an almost transcendental experience.

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