Like the American Legion and the American Medical Association, I am pleased to report that my mind has not been violated by an original thought since the end of World War II. If it ever ended. Though a sucker for philosophy all of my life I am not a thinker but—a toucher. A feeler, groping his way with the white cane of the senses through the hairy jungle of life. I believe in nothing that I cannot touch, kiss, embrace—whether a woman, a child, a rock, a tree, a bear, a shaggy dog. The rest is hearsay. If God is not present in this young prickly pear jabbing its spines into my shin, then God will have to get by without my help. I’m sorry but that’s the way I feel. The message in the bottle is not for me.

From Down the River (1982)

As for the woods, let us say that they lie in a slovenly manner across a disorderly range of middle-aged mountains somewhere between Sombrero Butte on the east, Noisy Mountain to the south, Malicious Gap on the west and several small rivers—a bit farther off—to the north and northwest, namely, those the Spanish called Fool Creek, Little Red, the River of Souls and the River of Dolors. (Not dollars.) These are honest hints, fairly offered. Anyone familiar with the geography of the American West can work it out.

What do I do up in that tower all day? Nothing. Or nearly nothing. Or to phrase it positively, I participate in the nothingness of Being, as Heidegger would say. Somebody has to do it. No easy task, which is why they pay me $4.25 an hour. And who are They? Another riddle. They live in the castle, that’s all I know. The paychecks come in the mail, regularly but always two weeks late. The signature is illegible, the code numbers indecipherable. A strange business and for a long time, when I thought about it, it troubled me. Then I stopped thinking about it and it troubled me no more. A form of grace, I suppose, this money—like manna—from Heaven. But it works, it’s legal tender, it pays for the bacon, the beans, the beer, the turnips and onions.

I’ve been mostly alone in this place since the year I was born, and there are times when I think the solitude may have affected my mental stability in a possibly unhealthy way. That’s why I descend each evening, rain or shine, for a walk in the woods. My dog Ellie barks with delight as I come, clanging like a jailer, down the fifty-two steel steps of the tower. I open a gate in the fence. We plunge off the brow of the mountain, down the trail into the twilight forest. The Dark Forest. Perhaps I’m a Ranger of some kind. Was I not a student of Dark Forestry, long ago, in that medieval school? Was it Heidelberg? Wittenberg? Edinburgh? In some former life? Pale phantom memories float like clouds across the eroded topography of a sick and disordered mind.