My Good Friend Andrew Finley.

Today is the birthday of My Good Friend Andrew Finley.

Occasions such as this cause me to peer through the hourglass, if just for a moment, to reflect on the times Andrew Finley and I have shared. There have been many of them. I only remember a few, however. This is likely due to the aforementioned hourglass, which is not optimal for time-looking.

In aught-eight I first happened upon Andrew in Kalaallit Nunaat, (Greenland) where I was in the employ of prominent local herpetologist Dr. Nuuk Yothers. My day often began at the crack of dawn, which in the land of continual daylight, was essentially any time I pleased. Sunny day after sunny night I would scurry across the glacial swells in search of the elusive Mexican Burrowing Ice Snake, Loxocemus bicolor- a rare, perhaps even fictional reptile that neither burrowed, nor originated from Mexico. Dr. Yothers viewed this snake as an essential player in the realization of his dream: An all-snake revue, featuring minstrelsy, burlesque, and an abbreviated performance of Oh, Calcutta by the androgynous Mexican Burrowing Ice Snake him/herself.

After several years of fruitless glacier-scampering, I became a bit disillusioned. I was becoming bored. I volunteered for the Qasigiannguit Fire Department, the only one in my region, as a way to meet people and contribute to the common good. Fires were alarmingly frequent, and I made fast company of the rag-tag scamps in our hook-and-ladder company. Evenings were often spent halibut fishing, shrimping or sitting around a giant snowball, pondering what we considered the best and worst sled-dog names. What lively banter filled those sunny nights!

On one of our snowball-sitting evenings, I heard news that a lodestar from The Warm Flat Place (Kentucky, I think) was arriving in port that very evening, and in his company he possessed none other than the storied snake I so desperately used-to-somewhat-want-to-possess! I hastily tied out the dogs, set up the wall tent, gathered wood, made an outside cooking fire to melt water, procured some fine melting-ice, set up the woodstove inside my wall tent, started dinner, set up my tarp, ate dinner, fell asleep, woke up, loaded up my dogs and made off for the harbor posthaste! Three short days later, I arrived to see the silhouette of a man standing atop a schooner, The Gilded Swine. “This must be the lodestar!” I said aloud.

I ran to meet him, and called to him in the most-friendly manner, addressing him in the Greenland language, which, to my inexpressible joy, he understood. We began conversing at once! As it turned out, there was no more a Mexican Burrowing Ice Snake than there was a Yeti, and no, that man was not Andrew Finley, though in retrospect, he kinda looked like him. In the midst of my tale-swapping with Not-Andrew Finley, we were besieged by ice pirates on ice skates seeking to plunder what I can only guess was ice booty! Their leader, a ferocious rapscallion bearing little more than a beard, eye patch, billowy blouse and said ice skates, was Andrew Finley.

He stabbed me, but in a nice way. Eighteen years, seven wives, two continents (there were only two at the time, I believe) and countless sled dogs later, our paths would cross again.

I promise to tell you of that very meeting as soon as I get the gas leak in my study fixed. For now, though, I am sleepy…very…sleepy…must...sleep...

Happy Birthday Andrew Finley, with all the love, reverence and ardor in the world.

Shine on, you crazy diamond.