This wasn't supposed to be a philosophical morning. I had it figured for your standard early fall almost winter morning. I'd finished my morning chores by sleeping thru Malmo's breakfast+bus routine and gone to have a simple cup of java at Sandy's. After wading through a couple of behemoths who'd strayed from the Tee Pee I found my usual table and ordered my usual double dose of macchiato.
Just as I'm settling in for a good old fashioned stare at the ceiling, the kind where you feel your brain draining out the back of your head, Shelley darts over and asks if I've heard? I'm like yeah, I've heard, I have ears. Not deaf yet. Any day now though. And she's like "Dan Deegan." I'm like yeah, I know Dan, he's a bud. Then her voice darts forward just as she had, "Did you hear about the accident?" So I laugh and make some joke about how Dan's always forgetting his Depends. She doesn't hear a word I say. Who's deaf now?
"I mean the HUNTING accident" she says. I say no, I haven't heard a thing. Then she says a bear got him. Some monster. She said Mimi is beside herself, that she'd always hated Septembers, that she'd always warned Dan that someday a bear was gonna have his number, that someday there would be a reckoning for all that his bow had done.
So I stared at the ceiling, listening to all my prana departing. Deflating couldn't be a more accurate term. I mused over all the classes on Sartre and Kierkegaard I'd never taken at RRCC. I remembered Bud Grant pacing the sidelines. How would he respond? I remembered Gump Worsley. I always seem to think of ancient goaltenders in these moments. Maybe they guard the not so pearly gates. I thought about vitality and mortality. Vitality in the warmth of the coffee, mortality in its consumption. I did some basic math on average male lifespan, where I was on the scale, and computed about what I had left. I calculated in a few extra years thanks to years of asanas. The numbers still weren't pretty.
Then I threw thoughts of myself aside and thought about Dan. Dan wasn't just a friend of Cheever Yoga, he was a personal friend. More than a friend, really. He gave little Malmo his first bow. A red Genesis--really a sweet setup. Around here that makes him a godfather. He was maybe the first bow hunter to understand the deep connection between archery and the warrior poses. He was a warrior. Never had a student do a better Virabhadrasana II. What do you do when the godfather of your child passes on? I turned to Shelley for the answer.
"So what happened?" I asked. Shelley says that Dan got too close. He'd been told not shoot bears with those stupid tracking collars on and couldn't tell if the bear he had in his sights was collared or not. Thing is if a bear is collared you can know pretty sure, but if not, you always have doubts. Is the collar hidden in the fur? Is it hiding in shadow? Some philosophy could be useful here. Can you prove a negative? Seeing as how you can't just ask a bear if it has a collar on, he had to creep up on it. A younger archer with keener vision might have survived. So Dan gets real close, and just as he's got his answer and turns to go back he slips on some spoor. His falling thud spooked the bear and that was all she wrote.
Namaste Dan. We'll miss you.
Dallas
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