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Douglas Alan Ward (aka Pilgrim) grew up in the Crescenta Valley, about ten miles and two mountain ranges north of Los Angeles California. Looking back at himself: he was optimistic and ravenous for adventure. He dreamt himself a storybook hero: like King Arthur, Robin Hood, or other protagonists from a storybook-littered bedside. Successes of his last years at high school, a scholarship to USC, and love of a confident, smart high school girlfriend were "wind at his back". It never occurred to him other people wouldn’t notice: or some Christian like angel appear at proper moments to light his path!
He got a rude awakening. Anyone without irony might sour at this success-less memoir. Young Pilgrim wasn’t fated to slay dragons or become President of the United States. He tried and tried: acting out his life like we all do. His one skill was to describe mechanics of anything: from autos to workings of science and nature, and then social currents that motivate our species and determine its actions!
There’s an “otherness” to him that might be traced to oxygen deprivation at his breach-birth. His first "geisha": an occupational therapist and told him he had "intention trauma". That causes his mouth to "fly open" while doing fine motor skills. This combination of uncoordinated body with acute perception: creates blindness to his place in social strata. So he hopes and proposes and then blunders about: talking of what we ignore and all those greater meanings behind "the normal".
He’s was also born with sustained capacity to love and seek out females, then lose one after another! He lived out his fascinations in front of them stubbornly and honestly, and they had to react to his changing, everyday worlds. Above all he was a poet. As he spoke: women seemed to recognize. It’s what he thought himself from the beginning, and hopes he still is!
He was an English Literature student with a college scholarship early in LA’s Beach Boys era. He hitch hiked cross country in the summer of 1967 after High School graduation, then joined the counter culture and moved to Berkeley as Viet Nam war protests closed the UCLA campus. He co founded "Brother William Press": publisher of three books including "Get the Buzzon": a drug smuggling travelogue from Southern Mexico to Maidu Indian bear dance grounds in northeast California.
After that: he spent twelve years camping on and off the road. He lived in the Rocky Mountains above Denver, was a six month Poet in Residence of Seattle, worked apple harvests in Eastern Washington State, Orange harvests in Florida, lived in Bronxville, New York City, Key West, the Hawaiian Islands, and Flagstaff Arizona. After that he returned to UCLA spent a summer surveying Hawaiian coastline aboard the NOAA Fairweather, then graduated as an Ecosystems Geographer.
Then he set up another camp in an industrial district east of downtown Los Angeles. He lived there ten years in its newly forming Artists' District and helped build two art studio complexes, with a summer in Alaska wedged in between.
All eight books in Life of Pilgrim are episodic
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At present, he’s a seventy five year old man who embraced the anti war and drug cultures of his time: then “hit the road” to find Gardens of Eden. He helped create some: and when they disappeared, picked himself up and “skated away". Finally he returned to a practical citizenship and used his skills to teach first and third graders and afford a modest urban life. At age 45, he married and created a family: adding layers of pragmatism and practicality to that wandering and wondering boy.
Whether you can understand these books or not: is a coin toss! There are eight to read if you can agonize with: even celebrate this narcissistic character’s wayward thoughts and opinions.
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