David Lincoln:

1/25/48 - 8/18/99



A man of great life, he explored with vigor, bicycled NOT with speed, but with MUST SMELL THE FLOWERS - curiosity; (cannot miss a thing, you know,) hiked with enthusiasm and loved deeply. He loved so deeply.

Dear Dave, I recall in you in SO many things. You have been gone 20+ years, and it feels like 6 minutes. It was Spring of 1993 and the internet didn’t exist. The local alternative paper (Willamette Week) had singles ads. I gave it a whirl. I immediately wanted you to get back to me, after I responded to your ad, and after one or two letters, I was really eager to meet you.

Our first date was a breakfast at Sharri’s restaurant, followed by a bicycle ride up in Oxbow Park, mostly along the Sandy River. It was an immediate revelation of who you were and your personality and I fell; you fell, and we fell hard for each other. Years went by with terrific vacations, many weekends on a shoe string budget (often $20 limit; boy you were so frugal!), and an inventive way to get out there and have a good time. Oregon is so diverse, it was easy to fill our weekends with The Gorge or mountain, coastal, local hikes, bikes and constant other adventures.



You had the best nickname for me and I can still hear what you called me, I can still call up (my brain can STILL hear your voice), that name: ANNIEDEAR, like it was one word.



You were pretty tidy, lived clean, not a slob bachelor, but you were not too great about random hazards: i.e. fish hooks. Once, when I lay on your carpet, in front of the wood-stove, I found the back of my hand attached to a hook that was stuck in the carpet. That was not too fun, extracting my hand from a barbed fish hook, but the second time was worse, when the fishhook was in your van’s passenger seat, and I hoisted myself up, in, and attached to a butt fish hook. Seriously, I don’t know how you managed to extract me from either hook. I was not angry and you were always so funny; you invented a new Native American name for me after that: Hook-In-The-Heinie. Not to be outdone, I named you Whiz-in the-Woods. (Yes you did, why use a bathroom? If we were outdoorsing it, you would pee on a tree. Granted, most men do.)

It was a great love. A fantastic love. An ill- fated, cut off early, not a rocking-chair-retirement future, but it was a Rocking Chair love.



You were only 51. Too young to leave.



I Still See You!

I still hear you.

Te amare por siempre.

(I love you forever.)



****David Lincoln (Jones) RIP, 1/25/48 - 8/18/99****

It's such a colossal effort not to be haunted by what's lost, but to be ENCHANTED by what was.
I don't know how the heart WITHSTANDS it!

3 things... 8/2/16

My three things:





My lovely deck requires lots of tree detritus maintenance.

Currently, it's nuts to sweep off the deck.

Lots & lots of nuts.

My peaceful deck is #1

I decided to clean the deck and throw some nuts away from near my rock stack.

My peaceful stack is #2

Something moved near my rock stack.

The view from above:

Right where this arrow was, was the tiniest frog.

To be honest - that's a stock photo.

I ran in, got my camera, tried to find & capture him on film, there, resting in my rock stack - & he blissfully hopped away.





#3



While I was liberating nuts from my deck and trying to "capture" the frog on film, I kept hearing a young female "cry out" a few doors down. "Mike. pLeAsE! Pleeeeeeez! Don't." over and over and over. Mike. Please. (I know there are good "Mikes" in life. Lucky-them. Me, not so much; I had a relative, Mike, who was a merciless teaser. This felt reminiscent of child hood or other times, where I was "not heard".)

I could not tell what it was I was hearing, for sure. I remember recently reading a little thing on Facebook, where a father heard a sibling teasing the other, there was many times that stop was said and stop did not happen. The father got all up in the event and made it very clear that the word stop means stop and you have to listen and you have to listen and you have to STOP.



Mike. Clearly. Ignoring. Her. Pleas.



It felt like that thing from Facebook. The plea was loud enough and continuous enough, I was emotionally disturbed. I did not know exactly where it was coming from, and I was ready to go confront them.

Instead. I yelled in their general direction. I yelled: "Listen to what she is saying! Listen to her!"

It stopped.



Whatever had been going on, stopped.





Don't we all have to interfere?

Message in a bottle (nod to Sparks)

messaged in a bottle

I miss you, my darling, as I always do, but today is especially hard because the ocean has been singing to me, and the song is that of our life together. I can almost feel you beside me as I write this letter, and I can smell the scent that always reminds me of you. But at this moment, these things give me no pleasure. Your visits have been coming less often, and I feel sometimes as if the greatest part of who I am is slowly slipping away.

I am trying, though. At night when I am alone, I call for you, and whenever my ache seems to be the greatest, you still seem to find a way to return to me. Last night, in my dreams, I saw you on the pier in Garibaldi. The wind was blowing through your hair, and your eyes held the fading sunlight. I am struck as I see you leaning against the marina rail. You are stunning; I am stunned, I think, as I see you, a vision that I can never find in anyone else. I slowly begin to walk toward you, and when I think you’ll turn to me, you begin to fade. I think to myself... "Do you know him?" It’s a simple truth. "Better than my own heart."

I stop before I can reach you to take you in my arms. I long for this moment more than any other. It is what I live for, you cannot return my embrace, yet I give myself over to this moment, at peace once again.

I am here to love you, to hold you in my arms, miss how you protect me. I am here to learn from you and to receive your love in return. I am here because there is no other place to be. But then, as always, the mist starts to form as we stand close to one another. It is a distant fog that rises from the horizon, and I find that I grow fearful as it approaches. It slowly creeps in, enveloping the world around us, fencing us in as if to prevent escape. Like a rolling cloud, it blankets everything, closing, until there is nothing left but the two of us.

I feel my throat begin to close and my eyes well up with tears because I know it is time for you to go. The look you give me at that moment haunts me. I feel your sadness and my own loneliness, and the ache in my heart that had been silent for only a short time grows stronger as you release me. And then you spread your arms and step back into the fog because it is your place and not mine. I long to go with you, but your only response is to shake your head because we both know that is impossible.

And I watch with breaking heart as you slowly fade away. I find myself straining to remember everything about this moment, everything about you. Your voice echoes in my ears and the gulls cry, the briny scent of the marina, the wind in my hair... these never fade.

Where are you? And why, I wonder as I sit alone in my darkened house, have we been forced apart?

I don't know the answer to these questions, no matter how hard I try to understand. The reason is plain, but my mind forces me to dismiss it and I am torn by anxiety in all my waking hours. I am lost without you. I am soulless, a drifter without a home, a solitary bird in a flight to nowhere. I am all these things, and I am nothing at all. This, my darling, is my life without you. I long for you to show me how to live again.

This bottle, it was the right thing to do, write this note, seal it, travel to the Tillamook Spit and send these last wishes off to you. I could not be here when they scattered your ashes. My daughter got married. You would have LOVED the ceremony. The same day your ashes became one with this bay, she said her I-do’s to a wonderful man. I believe my son-in-law will care for her as well as you have cared for me. The cycle goes on. One of these days, I might be a grandmother. Today, though, I send these wishes to you, bottled up and hoping that by some delightful chance, your ashes and this bottle meet, and you smile that goofy smile with that "Mr. Ed" hat, and all is well in the “fishing place in the sky.”

My life began when l found you. And l thought it had ended when you passed. l thought that hanging on to your memory was keeping us both alive. But l was wrong. I am hoping to be brave enough to open my heart & love again, no matter how terrible my grief. lt will scare me and hurt. l know you'll bless me. And bless us all. lf l can't, then l'm still blessed because l've had the privilege of loving in my life. YOU gave me that.

Loving you always and always and always and always.


Your





Anniedear

"The Chains" (DLJ)

The Hardest Part of having the chains that we forged, that bound us together, is that they are figurative and who am I, if I am not bound to the love of my life?

Dancing: Dave and I

Hiking: Mt. Hood

The letter he wrote to me when he sent the bird nest to my house.

After over a dozen years the bird-nest deteriorated. Ah, molecules...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"In your dream one night, I knelt beside the bed we shared, to press my cheek against your naked breast and listen to your heart. Whispering, I am the ghost of Christmas past ~ I am your history. I wear the chains that bind our hearts ~ do you remember me?"



Annie-Dear!

I don't regret a moment spent looking in your eyes. I hear your "whoop" echoing a thousand times across the snowy forest in the night. And when I walk the beach at night, I will remember when – when our passion burned like a beach fire blowing in the wind. I am the Dipper in the North Sky. I'm a midnight bicycle ride. I'm a river float, warm hands, gentle touches. I'm fire light on the river with it's awesome midnight afterglow – I am The Chains.



When you sit beside your Christmas tree, I wonder if you'll think of me, so I give to you a link of chain – forged in adventure, tempered in love, and paid for with passion and pain. Please accept this gift – I think you'll agree – this nest belongs upon your Christmas tree.



Merry Christmas,

"The Chains"

David



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Biking: Bridge Pedal (the first one ever) and beach biking

Boating: Garibaldi, Clackamas River, Tillamook Spit

Hiking: Angels Rest, Columbia Gorge

If you ever find yourself empty from something you cannot know or name, find a stretch of ocean, a field, a mountainside, or even clouds or trees. Because there are a thousand simple ways to fill your tired soul, so you can remember how to be, how to see, and most importantly --- how to BREATHE.



~ Victoria Erikson

THE BEACH: Ft. Stevens, the wreck of the Peter Iredale --- always nostalgic for us