Now and Then, Then and Now

Friday 6-17-013  by Larry Levine,       Murdered on Friday Oct. 2, 2015

The eldest victim of those slain in the Oregon shooting Thursday is remembered as a multitalented Renaissance man and a lover of the great outdoors.

 Larry Levine, 67, was teaching an introductory writing class in Snyder Hall at Umpqua Community College in the town of Roseburg when a student stormed the classroom and killed innocent people.

According to witnesses’ accounts, the gunman first shot Levine at point-blank range in the head before questioning students about whether or not they were Christians and executing them one by one.

I somehow feel a connection with our age and love of the Outdoors and writing and I think a tribute to re-print just one of his similar views on the Great Outdoors, RIP , Larry Levine,

Larry Levine, RIP

An artist friend andI drove the river highway late in the morning, stopping
occasionally along the way. He needed to inventory his paintings at The Inn upriver, and I needed to get my drinking water from the spring where watercress grows, but actually, anything done on the river is done to be on the river. Along the highway, the Scotch Broom was invasively yellow, and the wild Sweet Peas painted with watercolors. We've both lived here for decades; we're in our sixties; we've got experienced perspectives. We've done this a bunch. I learn from him; he sees more than I do; he's got artist eyes; I've got writer eyes. If memory serves me well, I can't recall a time that we both, in a rush of deep appreciation, didn't proclaim the North Fork to be the most beautiful river in the world and the watershed paradise.   

This claim can and should be disputed by anyone who lives on a beautiful river, or on a moderately beautiful river, even on a pretty or cute little river, because learning the lessons the river teaches is gratifying, and if a place makes you feel as if you're in paradise, you are. Why wait. The lessons can be comforting or terrifying, but, if the learner survives, they're meaningful currently, and, over the course of memory, I can appreciate the progression of my education. The education is ongoing, never complete.  A headstone will be my diploma.

When my artist friend can look out at the river and say, "I remember when..." and 

I'm on the same memory page, that's the essence of sharing. When I stand in a spot where I have stood a hundred times and am still awe inspired, that's way cool, because I've got this personal theory about how awe has the power to transform, however temporarily and however permanently. I see the scene, simultaneously remembering its many manifestations over time, remembering the man viewing it twenty/thirty years ago, and, for too fleeting a moment, the old awe adds intensity to the present. Obviously, the river can also make a person a bit strange and esoteric, but its a fine madness.

Here's how I came to this eccentricity: Over a period of time, an eon ago, the 

river whispered to me so softly as to be inaudible. Little by little, its voice grew louder, until I could decipher the message. Much akin to the lyrics of The Band's song, "The River Hymn," it called, "Son, you ain't never seen yourself / No crystal mirror can show it clear, come over here instead."  It made me an offer to which I put up no resistance, and I've been here ever since.  I like that when it addresses me--and address me it does--it always does so as "Son."  It parents; it taught me to walk its rocky, slippery bottom, taught me to walk its banks; it taught me a language I work to understand, and it gave me hope that eventually my voice would be accepted into the choir that sang the language that I alone could not. I wasn't born to it; I'm adopted, and being here only gets better the more here I become.

Souce: Steamboaters Fly Club