Waiting For Apocalypse

Looking out over the valley... The Pilgrim River valley, or actually a little bend in the river near my home.

I received a call from an old friend of mine who lived in Alaska for many years. He was written of by John McPhee in Coming Into the Country. Since those days, Mike, a man once known as the toughest trapper with or without his fists on the Upper Yukon and Glacier Peaks, had a fundamentalist Christian religious conversion. He became a changed person, as far as his life goals, read the Bible when he had never read any books except pulp westerns, left Eagle with his wife and daughter as a missionary (with work done in Alaska, Wyoming and Mongolia), inherited a bundle from his father after years of financial support from his parents, and now has a sailboat on an island in Hawaii from which he wants to conduct a ministry to anyone he meets on his sailing travels. Mike knows that the Lord will bless him if he is faithful...
He spent much of the summer on the island in Lake Vermillion in Minnesota that his family has owned for 3 generations. He is now down in Arizona with his daughter and grandkids until he and his Native wife Adeline fly over to Hawaii for the winter.

When Mike called, it took me about 20 seconds to begin to begin to feel that Mike was listening carefully to what I said and was critically scrutinizing my speech to see if I had fallen away from the faith that he holds so dear.
On the National election, Mike is true-red Republican. He places stock in what Sean Hannity says on Fox News and holds tight to the doctrine that Jesus will come again to earth and reclaim the degraded planet for those who remain faithful. What happens to the planet is important only in the context of the theological and spiritual battle of good and evil as determined by his sectarian fundamentalist world-view. Firmly a backer of pro-life as the main issue in American politics, nothing more really needs said. When I said that Fox News pundit, Sean Hannity reminded me of a mad dog, Mike laughed and said that he agreed with Hannity "on most everything".

I hung up the phone feeling depressed about the smallness of the my fundamentalist friend's world. This is the Mike that many years ago said that if there is one service that a country should help its citizenry with in life, it is health care. This is a non-issue for him now. His wife as an Alaskan Native receives free health care. He receives it due to his inherited wealth buying it for him. This is great for Mike and Adeline, and I would wish such good fortune for all Americans. Not to say that Mike is against socialized medicine nowadays, but the topic doesn't concern him. Spreading the gospel and converting others is what drives him.

With our materialist world cracking and eroding down, with the Republican non-change agents trying to keep the status quo for themselves, I now have to count Mike as one of them. I'll be thinking further about the Republican faith-based voters of our country; and praying that they go to a new level of understanding and compassion for all creatures great and small.

Don, walking it off on a woods trail, mulling over the world's problems.