What Chadd Taylor Wrote

Dear Dani,
Okay, Danielle. :-) But when you first came to us in Lost River, you were definitely Dani, and of course, it's hard for me to alter in my mind the imprint you and your family made on me the first time I met you, including your name.
We were about 6 or 7 years old. It was 1975, and school had not started for the year. I was outside playing on a hot day, as your dad spotted me while he was driving down Windom Road, from the definitive "boonies" of Rusk. (I can't imagine how you try to paint a picture of that for folks in Kirkland, Washington). He got out of the beater car, and walked up to the house, pony tail trailing. Rumor in those parts that this outsider from California must be
a drug dealer. He told my folks that he had a daughter who was about my age, and asked if it would be okay for me to spend the day with her and the family at their home down the road. Sometime later, Mike and the crew of kids pulled into the driveway, and I joined the pile. I distinctly remember a hole in the floorboard in the back, where we could look through and see the road streaming by, not even an armlength's away. I didn't know what a drug dealer was at the time, but I sure thought this was pretty cool already.
After picking up some supplies in Shoals, we headed back south, far down on Rusk Road, across Lost River, and onto a gravel road, which I understood to be the driveway, but it seemed like it went on for a mile. At the end were two houses. To the north, a traditional, midwestern mid-century white house, which I think you described as your grand-dad's. And then this wooden structure, with a flat roof, and huge window panes. I never had seen anything like it. A single room, with areas divided by curtains I think, a huge wooden dining table that seemed home-made in the backyard, and no bathroom, save the outhouse, all tucked deep in the woods, the surrounding grounds filled with chickens, goats, cats dogs, and probably other sundry beasts appearing. We explored the woods together, then returned to lunch on -- get this -- goatburgers and drank goat's milk at the big table, overlooking the thickness of the woods through the expansive glass. I think that I didn't know they sold goatbugers or goat milk at Tredway's, and the answer was, of course, they didn't. And most insane was the fact that there was no television in the living room area, and as it turned out, nowhere else within miles either. Just masses of books on shelves and lying about.
That may not be wholly accurate rendering of the day, I'm not sure, but it's how I in fact remember the house that Mike Bird built. And, my deep impression with the strange crew from California who shared the same name as a local basketball hero.
As a part-time resident of the Bay Area, and just a bridge away from Oakland and Berkeley, I
have more than once found myself ruminating, indeed marveling at the great leap and transformation that Mike and your mom decided to take by leaving one of the most populated, action-packed, metropolitan, progressive, and stunningly beautiful places on earth, to drive across the country and re-reroot in those boonies of Lost River (itself, of course, a beautiful place in its own right). Looking back, it didn't take me long, despite being small, to figure out that the move was about ideals. To me, what I saw, and what developed into a formative part of my life, was a quite foreign way of thinking; a view that merely because society has built itself in a way that tends to engulf us, drive our decisions and behaviors, outline our modes of living, we do not have to accept those structures as a must, as somehow the only "Good Life", the only principled way forward. I always thought of Mike as someone with such depth in principle, and love for his family, that he was willing to actually pick up and do what most people would consider a "Mosquito Coast" folly, a windmill chase.
Now, as everyone who has been around any of the Birds knows, Mike and Diane raised great, smart children, some of the brightest and best athletes Shoals has ever seen, some of the kindest people. So it seems like it was all for the best. But speaking for myself, I know the influence of Mike and his family has been part of what has made me tick over my life. The discovery of formative books like Jonathon Livingston Seagull, the very idea that books other than religious-oriented ones can be sacred and life-changing, the insight that how we look and live doesn't necessary tell the story about how educated or kind someone is, the quite radical and seemingly lost idea that more stuff doesn't make us or our children much, if at all, happier, I think all came in whole or part from your father, either directly or otherwise. I'm no Henry David Thoreau, but to this day, I have books everywhere, and unfortunately treat them better than my plants! I haven't had television reception throughout most of my adult life, and in fact for a dozen years in a row now, and sport my full set of The Great Books of the Western World, which Mike's dad Otto originated, and you and Eric studied in college.
I value all these little aspects of how I like my life to feel, but I suspect that they -- or at least like to think of them as -- isolated symptoms of something that I've gained that permeates who I am.

Of course, who is flawless, and we all have beefs with our folks and how we grew up over life. And also we change, naturally, over time. I would think that Mike's life and passions, and perhaps even his ideals, evolved over his life. I'm guessing golf was in a fairly remote recess in the back of Mike's brain back in 1975, if it existed there at all, just as boating the kids down the river-flooded "driveway" probably seemed like another life when putting for "Birdie" on the lake. :-) Regardless, I would have loved to been around him more as life unfolded, sure, but you take what you get, and the touch that I received from him and your family's presence I will always be thankful for. It was a blessing to have known Mike and his strange clan at such an early time in life, both early in his existence and in all of ours who were so young.
I'm sorry I could not be in Martin County for the celebration of Mike's life this week. But I wanted you and the family to know that I have been thinking a lot about Mike over the past week, and wanted to try to do something to express some of my feelings.

You are free at your discretion to share any or all of this or not, to your liking. Take care and please say hello to everyone. Have a safe trip home.
Christian Chadd Taylor