I made this picture at a wildlife refuge on the way to having dinner with a couple of very great old friends, Lynn and Ann Marie, who I hadn’t seen in too long a time and over dinner they told stories of travels in Alaska and grizzly bears and mush dogs and Denali and helicopter rides and then the talk drifted to the set of Ellen DeGeneres’ TV show and meeting Clint Eastwood and we talked and ate Thai food — I had the pork fried rice with two stars and they brought us, Linda and me, a bottle of California Cabernet and when we were finished with our meal we took pictures of ourselves out on the seedy streets of downtown Olympia and we laughed ourselves around the block and I hoped against hope that the things I have right now, the people I have, of which fewer in number than in recent years, I can hold onto. Like the lichen the bark the tree.