About The Author
About Stephen
Stephen Wolfe’s Journey into Literary Exploration
The year 1969: There are things that inspire you to do things and things that cause you to do things. Carrying my balky genes through the moderately difficult 10 mile uphill hike to Grinell Glacier resulted in unyielding fatigue that caused us to drive back to Fresno and skip the last destination of our tenting trip a stop in Jackson Hole Wyoming. My genes and the trip were the penultimate cause of the nearly fatal heart attack and open heart surgery I went through 3 days after arriving home. The blonde, Patricia, standing next to me was the inspiration for my life thereafter.
At the time I was a medical director at a hospital, treating my own patients in an office of several clinicians and managing a brand new program we created to treat injured workers both physically and medically. First she suggested I cut back on my load. I tried but flunked. Pat said, change or die.My father and other male members of the family had died or were cardiac impaired at an early age.
About Stephen
ABOUT STEPHEN
Hi, I’m Stephen. I was a philosophy major, focusing on ethics at a small liberal arts school in New York. After that I graduated from Albany Medical School, practiced emergency room medicine for three years in Kansas, and then spent twenty years practicing as a board-certified psychiatrist, mostly in California. The majority of my working was helping to solve problems, be those of an individual, family or of an organization. The intensity of being entrusted with other people’s feelings was gratifying.
But physician, heal thyself. In 1989 I was forced to take that warning seriously. Pat, my wife, and I were on an extended tenting camping trip. Our interest in natural beauty and hiking inspired me to carry my balky genes through the moderately tricky 6.5-mile uphill hike in Glacier National Park to reach the Grinnell Glacier. This resulted in an unyielding fatigue that my wife Patricia, whom I thought was less athletically fit than I, did not experience. The fatigue led me to suggest and Pat to demand, to drop plans to head for Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and head home. My genes and the stress of the hike were the penultimate cause of the nearly fatal heart attack and open-heart surgery I underwent three days after arriving home.
Several male members of my family had succumbed to early fatal heart attacks. That suggested that my genes were indeed balky. Insisting that we practice what we preach, Patricia continued to be the inspiration for my life. Interestingly Bette Midler came out with the song, “Wind Beneath My Wings” that year. But I always had known Pat was that wind for me. She knew of my work’s stress and pleasures because she shared them. She insisted that I cut back on my load. I tried but flunked. “But what would be the plan forward?” I asked. “We’ve cut back to eating little but salads, and I’m on the treadmill exercising each morning.
“You’ve always talked about your passion to pursue more artistic endeavors when you retired. She stared at me and said, “Do that now, before you die. Maybe if you change for real you might live.” I tentatively agreed. Within six months Pat and I had left our practice behind. I had let everything go,
arranged for continuing care for my patients, and left the practice to those who had helped create it.
The photo of the handshake you see was taken after we walked out the door. It symbolized my agreement to step away from the practice of medicine which I thoroughly loved and never felt was a burden. As we shook she said “I deem you retired!”
Severely cutting back on our income, how would we live? We gave up golf, the country club, going out to eat, and buying anything but T-shirts and jeans.
OK, but what would we do? We had to change our environment or be sucked back into the vortex of a medical practice we shared with others. Winter was fast approaching, and we couldn’t tent camp.”
Our neighbor suggested we return to school, but a special school, “Quartzsite University.” He told us, “They have no majors or degrees, just classes in everything imaginable and all without homework. There is no pressure, just the excitement of learning new skills and meeting people who view life differently.”
So we followed his advice, bought a small RV, and lived in the desert among people interested in those “Other things.” Over the years, I became educated by other peoples’ stories and talents. I became an amateur acrylic painter, sculptor, rockhound, and silversmith. They educated me I learned to do all these things without seeking perfection, which was different from practicing medicine. Pat, similarly, found new hobbies, blowing glass beads, wire wrapping jewelry, and designing necklaces. With the passage of time we went through several re-inventions of ourselves.
Within a few months I had let everything go,arranging for my patients’ care and then leaving the practice to those who had helped create it.
My own doctors gave me a very limited prognosis. Sitting around, probably feeling helpless and sorry for myself was not tolerated by my wife. She said the doctors focus on stress, diet and exercise. “We’ve cut back to little but salads and you’re on the treadmill each morning. You’ve let go of the stress of practicing medicine, but doing nothing is stressful too. You’ve always been interested in doing other things. When? If not now.”
So we bought a small RV and went off to live in the desert among people interested in those other things.” There I learned to cut and polish stone, silversmithing, sculpting and painting.
Flash forward to 2012 and I was still alive.But the Fresno polluted air was dangerous to Pat’s lung condition. The doctors at Stanford insisted she move to the coast. We did, but I left my large shop of equipment behind. Covid limited us as it did others.
One day Pat asked me why I wound up a doctor instead of an artist. “That’s easy” I said. My passion was for both, but I was educated in one area and lacked skill in the other. That led to an interesting discussion of family values and expectations. We talked to and fro about our family experiences for days.
In discussing my family I was fascinated by more than what they did, but how they did it. I remembered an old story I’d seen written by my father decades before. In it he wrote how he pursued solutions to whatever confronted him. He’d ask:
How do I feel?
What can I do?
Why do it?
What are the upsides? Downsides?
Should I do it?
Did I do it right?
How did I get in my own way?
And most importantly he’d ask: “Do I still respect the person who stares back at me each morning when I look in the mirror?
At 5;37 AM I awoke terrified by a dream of losing my dog, Pogo. Anxiously, I bolted out of bed only to realize I had to pee. Calm and returning from the bathroom, I checked on Pogo lying comfortably in her cocoon of blankets where she had her own dreams most nights. Later, on our walk she slowly inhaled the smells from one bush to the next, experiencing pleasure with each new olfactory observation. Soon we passed three neighborhood boys walking together. They all had dark wildly handsome curly hair. Memories flooded back! At that same age I was similarly coifed but embarrassed by the look of an entangled bird’s nest on my head. For years I compensated with a buzz cut. Now I am growing bald. Pee versus dreams; beautiful curls vs baldness, I focused on these curious contradictions of life as Pogo focused on each different bush. Her habit didn’t bother me. That was her pleasure in life. In many ways Pogo and I are the same. We wander and ponder for pleasure. I pondered my father’s words as they applied to our families history.
“How was your walk?” My wife asked as I got home. She glanced up and saw that faraway look of the pondering me. She said, “Okay irrelevant philosopher, just eat your breakfast.” Her pet name came from knowing that I had a lifetime of pondering, wondering about things others took for granted. As a psychiatrist I was a professional who helped people, families and organizations solve problems, hopefully well, but their were failures too.
Pat said, “You’re bored. You’ve never written a novel. Why don’t you try that?”
“I don’t have a plot!”
“Yes you do. It your family history stretches for about two hundred years and involves horrible trauma, love, mystery, amazing decisions and the benefit of people who knowingly or unknowingly said something to you that altered the course of you life. We talked about it for two days. Finally, my wife knew inspired me to write about it. I did. I hope you are entertained by this fascinating odyssey that began over roughly one hundred and fifty years before we climbed to that glacier. This mysterious odyssey is the beginning.
