My name is Stephen O’Brien
Some call me Doc, not the kind that can do you any good, not medical that is. I am not the Gaelic hurling champion of the same name; or the Scot rugby hero. I don’t toss cabers, never did. I’m not the musician. And while I have earned the title, “Doc”, I am not the world famous geneticist. I’m a retired professor, looking for a little cold cash, so I can stock up on sanitizers and KN95 masks during any future COVID outbreak and quarantine.
I live the life of a recluse with my wife Claire in the North Woods, some spell it as one word, Northwoods. I am surrounded by a forest that stretches north to the Canadian Shield, where the muskeg meets the tundra.
I am told I am a product of the decade in which I hit age sixteen. I am an upward mobile Beaver Cleaver. I watch reruns of MASH and Monty Python. I listen to Fleetwood Mac, Bruce, Pink Floyd and CSNY. I still love Blazing Saddles and A River Runs Through It, for cinematography. I once lived there, on the banks of the Yellowstone, in the shadow of the Absaroka Mountains. And the Gallatin River, where huckleberries and grizzlies abound.
Claire needed a career path. She wasn’t cut out for the life of a camp cook, shepherd or elk hunting guide. We moved east to this forest. We traded one trout stream for another, and pronghorns for white-tail deer. We also found new neighbors. You can read about my neighbors in Secrets In A Forest. Just don’t come looking for them. Any of them. I’ll leave it at that.
I am told we become what we own in life. I have a laptop soldered to my knees, several remote controls in one hand and a cell phone in the other. I have no idea what some of these remotes control. My son, Matthew, gave me a universal remote. One of the buttons looks like it could launch a missile. I’m afraid to use it.
I am told we are what we eat. I am seventy years of locally sourced, fine dining on fast foods and good home cooked meals.
I like to travel. I toured England with my family in pre-COVID times. The trip was a culminating event, an attempt to unveil my wife Claire’s family tree with a tour of ancestral castles. I turned the experience upside down and into historical fiction, Whit’s End. My mother-in-law (Whit) and her sister (Hazel) descend from the monarchs of Europe, especially the Plantagenets of England. A certain constable, Sergeant Walpole, believed we were in England to steal Whittington castle and perhaps the Crown. He convinced Scotland Yard and it was Game On after that. My son Matthew suggested we engage the Queen and stir things up a bit more! Not the peaceful vacation I needed.
There comes a point when we all look in the mirror and ask: “How and when did this happen?” It might be a nose hair, bags under the eyes or a crease in an earlobe that indicates, a pending heart attack. “It’s part of aging,” my wife Claire tells me, as she slips kale into my diet.
Claire and I share the same laptops, Wi-Fi, and various software packages. I can’t keep my Google Search separate from Claire’s search.
“Why are Bonobo Apes showing up on my web browser?” she asked one night.
“Oh that? Our ancestors.”
“You’re not thinking about writing another book, are you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” I slipped away from the coffee table and into the forest in search of Wilbur ‘Rancidbatch’ Denton and his latest homebrew. Wilbur’s story can be found in Secrets In A Forest.
