After the homecoming game my junior year, we stood in the parking lot talking about what to do next. My best friend put forth the timeless teenage suggestion that we should “drive around.” The freshman guys with us suggested we play tag instead. That didn’t sound too bad until they explained that we should do it with our vehicles. They started to get really excited about that idea. Too excited. Especially considering none of them had cars.
My best friend, the principal’s son, showed no excitement. After much discussion and some shoving, we decided to play hide-and-seek with our cars instead. More rules were quickly established. The vehicle that was hiding could only drive for sixty seconds and then had to remain parked until found. No going on private property. Boundaries bordering the town were agreed upon.
We split into two teams: my best friend, Eric, and Zach, in his little truck, and me and two other guys in my 4Runner. We had a hoot. Driving and parking on the quiet streets between the two signs that read: Welcome to Kettle Falls, home of 1550 friendly people and one grouch. (Our one-stoplight town elects a grouch each year for Town and Country Days).
After a while, the guys in my car and I drove out of town and pulled over where Greenwood Loop turns into Mingo Mountain Road, the southern boundary we’d agreed upon.
The two guys with me asked me to roll my back window into the tailgate. They then sat on top of it with their heinies hanging out to moon the other truck when it approached. I won’t say their names, but their initials were Kody Hart and Tua Tuipulotu.
We waited. We giggled. We heard the hum of Eric’s Ford Ranger climbing the hill from the Colville River. I saw Kody and Tua begin to shake and watched their faces literally light up as Eric flashed his high beams and Zach shouted. They parked and got out.
We were all seized by the power that often afflicts groups of teenage boys and started laughing uncontrollably. None of us could catch our breath for some time.
These were the same guys who always tried to listen to rap whenever they rode in my car. I never got into it, but I did decide to give myself a rapper nickname. When Zach pointed out that you can’t have a rapper nickname unless you can also rap, I came up with the following:
I’m Nilla like the wafer, Nilla like the folder
Nilla like your ice cream that can’t get colder
‘cept I’m hot —
Steaming up the room when I take a shower
Guess I’m in there for at least an hour
Brother’s yellin’, sounds kinda mean
Can’t he understand I’m just trying to get clean?
And so on and so forth. (That was pretty much it, actually).
When I graduated from high school, we all said we’d stay in touch, and they all promised to visit me in Chicago. That’s where I moved. The first of many attempts to get as far away from the small town I grew up in as possible.
The first decade of my life after high school, my driving focus was to distance myself from my past and problems. I worked and lived in several different countries. Tried all kinds of jobs. And even with all that practice, I never got good at goodbye. I believe we were not designed to say goodbye, and that is why it is so damn difficult.
Last weekend, Zach Redding died in Lake Tahoe, California. The details are still being gathered, and out of respect for him and his family, I will not speculate here on the cause of his death. What is known is that it was unexpected and tragic.
Shakespeare called death “The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns.”
Tolkien described it as sailing toward “white shores, and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”
The idea of death as a journey has resonance for a reason.
In all my travels, no matter how far I went, in my mind’s eye, I could always see the brown hills of Kettle Falls lining the Columbia River beckoning me home. I carry with me an abiding love for the place and its people. But there’s a good reason why they say you can’t go home. Either it’s no longer there, you’re no longer you, or like the City of El Dorado, it’s next to impossible to find.
Life is not for the faint of heart. It takes courage to face your own mortality and prepare to journey from this country to the next. None of us are guaranteed to reach old age, and even then, our lives are but a breath. Zach only lived to be thirty-four years old. The present is a knife-edge; on either side is death. Even now, we are teetering.
How do we confront that which we fear instead of running from it?
We can start by looking to those who came before us. G.K. Chesterton called tradition the democracy of the dead. Wisdom and rituals offer comfort and meaning. Seek them.
On Tuesday, I am hosting a small gathering for Mardi Gras. We’ll light a campfire in the backyard and eat too many pancakes. Hopefully, there will be a bit of dancing and laughter. We’ll blow off steam and over-imbibe before the forty days of fasting and prayer that mark Lent. Wednesday, I will go to church, kneel, and confess my sins. Then I will stand in line, with the rest of the condemned, and wait for the priest to impose ashes in the sign of the cross on my forehead. He will tell me, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.”
Drinking on Fat Tuesday, I will raise a glass to an old friend, and say, “this one is for you, Zach.” Kneeling on Ash Wednesday, I will pray for his family and that his soul will find rest in the mercy of God. I will remember his smile and the regal look he had about him. That he was once innocent. How he was a boy who grew up among the brown hills of Kettle Falls and, after sojourning through darkness, found his way home.
Zach Redding’s inscription on my yearbook, 2005.
Zach Redding and Nate Clemons, Kettle Falls High School, 2005. Look at ALL that hair!
If there are any more details, such as a service or an obituary, I will post them when they become available.
God bless