My dear friend and mentor passed away unexpectedly in 2018. A number of his closest friends were offered a chance to share some words at his memorial a few months later. I had this prepared statement but, standing behind the microphone in front of all those people, realized there was no way I’d be able to read the thing. So I just “wung it” instead and spoke from the heart. Still, this draft of my aborted speech gives a good idea of who this remarkable character was.
Awhile back, I was listening to the news. Some random European person was expressing their dismay about what’s happened to the USA. He observed that lots of people the world over disagree with many things America does, but the whole world wants America to succeed…because it’s not just a country—America is an idea. I’d heard these very words before but, for some reason, never thought about what they mean. But now, hearing a foreigner’s perspective perhaps, the line really grabbed me.
Naturally, after he was gone, I began reflecting on what my friendship with Lorenzo meant…what Lorenzo Stowell actually represented in my life and how he’d affected the way I look at things. And what it was about him that affected so many people’s lives so powerfully. A little while after hearing that bit about America-as-an-idea, one of those little cartoon light bulbs flashed on over my head…a minor epiphany: Lorenzo the person and Lorenzo as…an IDEA. So I began to think about him in that light. When someone you love is dead and gone, asking “What did this person mean to me?” can be a fairly easy question to answer. But this guy was so…different. And the more I think about him, the harder it is to come up clear-cut answers.
Despite the up-front, straight-talking, completely irreverent persona Lorenzo presented, he kept his core self in a pretty guarded place, out of the light. I can’t recall a single conversation where he shared deep feelings or self-doubt. Never saw him cry, but he told me about the time he found his favorite horse dead in the corral and bawled. He had a few oddly contradictory features: he was extremely social but also very private. He loved nothing more than hanging out with friends, yakking it up, but equally enjoyed solitude and silence. Alone and needing to talk, he always had a willing audience (himself). One thing I always found really strange: he bought lottery tickets! I would’ve thought he knew that his innate luck didn’t extend to winning jackpots. The man was surprisingly conservative in certain ways. I never saw him naked—not once—but no one would call Lorenzo “shy.” He refused to talk about feelings—something that came right out of one of his allegorical constructions, the “John Wayne Handbook.” Sure, to some extent, these were generational and cultural things. (Let’s not forget—he was born and raised in a third-world country: SouthTexia.) And as much as he loved and respected the women in his life, Lorenzo was full-on caveman in certain regards. I think it’s fair to say that he considered woman to be something just shy of a separate species. He was completely baffled by the lot of you.
Actually, his bafflement extended to men as well and the human race in general. L. Stowell was a student of humanity…a bemused psychoanthropologist. His more casual friends and acquaintances may not know he earned a bachelor’s degree in History and had briefly taught school. He was a voracious reader of history books—practically the only kind he read. The guy would bring home a stack of ‘em from the library—on various cultures, all eras, biographies—and short time later there’d be a new batch. He was at once fascinated by, appalled by, and amused by humanity’s collective dumbness. (He often referred to humans as the species Homo bozo.) I suppose some of you thought of Lorenzo as a cynic. Lorenzo? Cynical?! No, not really…he was a pragmatic realist. Reality couldn’t make him flinch. Human barbarism and suffering? “Oh well,” he’d say to that. Change society, save the planet? “Ho-hum.” He didn’t even try to analyze worldly matters, knowing the activity was…maybe not a waste of time, but a waste of his time. He saw human nature as the source of all our problems and preferred to laugh at what he knew couldn’t be changed, and didn’t seem to ever let things really get to him. There was a fairy advanced Buddha-like acceptance of reality going on in there.
Most of you have heard the story about how I met Lorenzo in Frickel’s café when I first showed up in 1983. Well, I didn’t see him again for a few weeks after that first encounter. By April, I’d decided to make my stand in Lone Pine. To make it final I rented a P.O. box and, kind of excited, immediately went over to the café and told Robert. His response was, “Great! How’d you like to live in my barn up at the ranch?” Yes, I would like that very much, and drove straight up there to check the place out. And I soon found out that this Lorenzo character was staying in a trailer just uphill from the barn. Thus began a distinct phase of my new life. Actually, I don’t have too many clear memories of what happened up there…it’s something of a blur. But I remember how it felt.
Those were magical evenings with Lorenzo in his little trailer. I’d never been around a skilled raconteur, had no idea that storytelling was more than for entertainment—that it was a type of interaction, a way of communicating things by coming at them sideways…sneaking things in while the listener’s not looking. And as we all know, this was Lorenzo’s special talent and craft. Those evenings in his trailer, sitting at the little table, flickering candlelight shadows: he sucked me right into his world. I soon found out that this wildman was employed only half of each year…worked for the Forest Service…was the manager of a “wilderness area” where he hiked around, camped out, rode horses, chopped trees with an axe like a friggin’ lumberjack. He liked to bag peaks. During his off season he’d travel, gypsy-style, usually in the southern hemisphere. He traveled with and lived with his partner—some kinda red-headed Amazon, from his description of her—near Yosemite Valley in a place called Foresta. He lived with the red-headed Amazon in a cabin and she was a ranger as well.
Well. It was all just astonishing. Here was a guy living—as if all this were nothing out of the ordinary—what I considered THE DREAM LIFE. I was sitting in this funky little trailer with a fella who was clearly not a normal person at all, who was actually living a fantasy-life. My fantasy! At that point I was still under the sway of my quintessentially middle-class, suburban upbringing and, honestly, didn’t really believe such a thing was attainable. And this master-of-gab said that it was all because he was lucky. He was Lucky Lorenzo! And he told all these stories, continually modulating tone and volume for effect, interjecting crazy made-up characters he’d briefly inhabit before zinging off to the next thing. His eyes glittered in the candlelight. He laughed, passed his pipe, offered another mugful, and gave me a brand-new vision for my own future.
Now, about all the different places Lorenzo lived—they were so much a part of his person. There was Doroethy Leonard’s guest house and Dario’s magic shack up at the Great Space. And before we met he’d lived just a couple of miles away at Lena Norton’s—another oasis in the sagebrush where he lived with Cindy Leask. There was Laurel Munson’s cabin in Foresta and Jeanne’s lovely home in Swall. All the backcountry ranger stations—how many?—and let’s not forget the fire lookouts. Lastly, his alpine outlaw-hideaway up at Virginia Lakes, Avalanche Acres. How did this self-described knave end up living in so many virtual-paradises, either rent-free or for a pittance?
This was a big part of Lorenzo’s specialness…this luck thing. From hearing his stories it was pretty obvious that he learned at a tender age how to seize a moment—how to recognize when the universe was about to throw you a bone. Now, Lorenzo would never phrase it this way but I think he subscribed to the notion that we as individuals have the capacity (to some degree, at least) to create the basic framework of our lives. This capability extends to recognizing which doors lead to those places one really wants to be. And when the right doors open, walk on through. It includes knowing which doors to definitely stay away from.
Lorenzo cared a great deal about…certain things. But there were vast swathes of modern life that he just didn’t give a rat’s ass about. “Fuck it!” was one all-purpose response to anything he didn’t want to be entangled in. The man cared less about “stuff” and owned fewer possessions than anyone I’ve known. Aside from Place, relationships, friends, libations, cookies, and maximizing his enjoyment and appreciation of the now, nothing leaps out at me that he particularly cared about. Ball games on TV maybe. He didn’t like complicated anythings and tolerated machines only out of necessity. He had a complete disdain for normal social conventions. As far as routine maintenance and personal grooming, things like that, it was about “meeting minimum standards.”
Lorenzo knew that he was a sojourner—a transient visitor on this beautiful planet. To an extent that we may not fully appreciate, he simply lived as a curious witness to whatever world he inhabited at the moment. A dispassionate witness at that. He was entirely contented when alone and, I think, simply enjoyed being entertained by the sound of his own internal dialog. Not many people experience being so comfortable in their own skin. Or pretty much manage to always have everything they need. Lorenzo was a bit of an island unto himself but in a psychologically well-adjusted way.
He placed high value on rationality. He’d pounce on anything that smacked of superstition or magical thinking. As for “feelings” and matters related to emotional stuff: it was extremely important to him to feel he was in control of himself and not swayed by emotion—to maintain that rationality and calmly assess things from outside. That’s one way he protected himself. And, by and large, he pulled off this solitary approach. With better success than most who try it.
Now, I’m just going to toss this out there. Something to think about….
All those years of hearing wild stories of his unsavory past down in SouthTexia and Mexico…his various, ahem, “adventures.” A few of those classic yarns referenced houses of ill repute or took place in such establishments. But he never confessed to actually taking advantage of the services provided by employees therein or of any generalized sewing-of-wild-oats. Those of us who got to hear these stories knew better than to ask for particulars. Lorenzo never talked about sex except in the broadest terms, never shared any explicit details about his love life, even from his deep past. (Well, there was that story from when he was quite young about the older neighbor kid and the cow….) So this one time, when the mood felt right and I thought there was a slim chance I’d get some sort of answer, I asked him point blank, “So…those years you were spending time south of the border—any chance there might be one or two ‘Little Lorenzos’ out there?” His response was, well…interesting. No flat-out, cool denial. Instead, he looked away, grinned, did a little exaggerated bit of shuck’n’jive, “Why, er, uh, no! What an outrageous suggestion!” Now, that’s not what he said—I really don’t recall how it went—but his response was very shucky and jivey and, like I say, not a stone-faced, unequivocal no. As I say: just something to think about. Personally, I really like the idea—just the concept—that he might have left a copy or two of his genes in the pool.
The last time I saw Lorenzo Stowell was at Lacey and Michael’s wedding. The time before that had been at his 75th. We hardly saw one another after I met Dylan and moved to the coast. (I feel bad that he never got to visit Crooked Creek—he would have really liked it there.) At the wedding last year, we finally sat down together and chatted, just us two. I remember thinking it might be our last talk. At first he seemed bitter—actually made a snide crack about no one listening to him any more because he was an old dotard. Then he lightened up and seemed more like his old self. I saw what was going on but also realized I didn’t really have a clue what his days were like. But I knew. There’s a whole crowd of fine people here, all you silver-tipped mountainfolk growing old with grace and style, and thoroughly outraged by the effrontery. Yeah, getting old sucks. And we all want to die with our boots on, do we not?
So Lorenzo was not adapting well to geezerhood, not having much fun. And we all know much enjoying time meant to him. A “good time,” to Lorenzo, was any form of uncomplicated engagement with friends or with nature. Or a good book or a mediocre ball game on somebody’s TV. That’s about all he asked for. The untold hours he spent in the company of friends, raging and laughing and blathering endlessly about whatever—that was quality time. He didn’t mind minor inconveniences associated with living out in the wilds. Like up at Dario’s every spring during ant migration when he’d have to move outside for a week because the bedroom walls were a swarm with thousands of stinky biting ants that would drop off the ceiling into his hair—No problemo. And he’d sleep under the stars up at Virginia Lakes during mosquito season, getting eaten alive, because he just didn’t want to hassle with a tent. Lorenzo despised tents.
He had no patience with the sort of standard activities and contraptions that us moderns fill our lives with. Can you even imagine, for instance, Lorenzo washing his car? Shopping around for the best deal? Trying to knot a tie? Or, for that matter, tie a proper knot? But the man would happily (well, maybe not happily) endure two weeks in Three Rivers for pre-season training or wait in long airport lines. Because he knew he’d be in the backcountry soon enough.
The Stowellian Code:
Travel light.
Keep it simple.
Don’t be greedy, don’t get caught.
It’s better to be lucky than rich or good lookin’.
©2018 Tim Forsell 5 Apr 2018, 17 Aug 2020
