I have a practice. While I am out here, I’ll think of a person and focus on them for much of the day. Today, it was Denny.
“The orange dragon of the green valley.” One spring that sentence arrived in my mailbox, no explanation from its author, Denny Alsop. Talking about it later, he explained he’d been high in the mountains around his home in Stockbridge, Ma. and saw an orange salamander crawling through green grass. He hoped to use the sentence in a story. Far as I know, he never has. It’s a good sentence that captures his imagination and poetic sensibility. He’d hate that last sentence, or my focusing attention on him, but if I don’t, who will? He won’t.
He built the best canoe I’ve ever paddled: Loon. He built it in his living room over a winter. He built a handful of canoes. He has been a timber cruiser in western Massachusetts. He was a natural gas scout for a small company playing a game of battleships with large companies. He’d figure out where the larger company wanted to purchase rights, and beat them to it, forcing them to buy his leases. He was a winter trapper. Perhaps his most unusual ’employment’ was to drive from Stockbridge to New York, in June, picking roadside wildflowers to sell to the New York flower market. He lives his life listening to a different drummer (I’m not even sure it is a drum). He is devoted to the ‘barely there,’ what others overlook, or never notice, especially in nature. He’s diplomatic, humble, and stubborn.
When together we often trip into synchronicity. Raising funds and equipment for our first long canoe trip down the Eastmain River in Quebec, in 1971, we had finished a day in New York walking in “cold” on companies to ask their help, believing the idea of a canoe journey would quicken the heart of any sales manager (not a successful approach). I wore a tatty blue jean jacket. Denny had on boots and work clothes. We were kids with enthusiasm, and little know-how. Walking past the Empire State building, Denny decided the view would cheer us up. We bought tickets. It was the end of the day. After the first bank of elevators, we were faced with a sign saying the observation deck was closed for a private party. That didn’t strike us as fair. Standing there we heard the ding of the elevator door opening behind us. A suave, white haired gentleman in a dark suit walked up, pushed the button for the observation deck elevators, looked at us, and said, “Going up?”
In the elevator, he explained the private party was in honor of Fay Wray and the King Kong movie. It was her birthday. She’d be there. He was one of the building’s architects. He drew a black plastic comb from the breast pocket of his suit and ran it through his white hair. When the elevator stopped, he said, “Stay close to me.” When we stepped into the crowded room, the man in the dark suit was swept away by friends. We lost sight of him, but there was Fae Wray. Soon, too soon, because we did not have an invitation, or know our sponsor’s name, we were asked to leave. There are many Denny stories. Encapsulating them, though, it’s fair to say Denny is the orange dragon of the green valley.
