Shirtless Sabbatical

I write from a dingy hotel room in Grants Pass, Oregon.  I woke up early yesterday in Middletown, Connecticut, after having given an all-day workshop for Wesleyan University faculty the day before. Flew home yesterday, packed, and then left campus this morning for a lovely six-hour drive through the rain.  Tomorrow I’ll begin a writers residency with the Spring Creek Project at the Andrews Experimental Forest. This is a two-week residency, and from here I go directly up to the North Cascades Institute in Washington for a month-long residency there.

Only problem is that I don’t have any shirts.  Well, that’s not technically correct.  I stopped at the Eddie Bauer outlet in Reading, California and bought three flannel shirts to hold me over until the other shirts can be shipped to Oregon.

What a world we live in!  A hundred years ago, three new flannel shirts could get a fellow through the winter. Now I’m hoping to make it until Monday. And I’m not all that worried that a dozen fresh shirts can be delivered to a remote outpost in the Willamette National Forest near Blue River, Oregon.  No, they don’t have cell-phone coverage there, but surely FedEx or one of those outfits can reunite me with my clothing.  

A couple years ago I read the journals of the Corps of Discovery Expedition better known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition.  When those fellows needed a new shirt they would shoot a deer, tan the hide, and then sew themselves a new shirt.  ​

A shame they didn’t have FedEx back then!