Reconnecting with Old Friends

What happens when you revisit lost relationships, human and otherwise

Salmis of snipe. A salmis is an ancient French dish, one I haven’t made in decades.

Over the course of a lifetime, we accumulate vast neural files of people, places, activities, tastes, aromas — even sounds — deep within ourselves. In the space of a week, three chance encounters set me to thinking about all this.

Our “files” can languish on the mental shelf for decades. What happens when we dust them off and reacquaint ourselves with them depends on the file. Sometimes they feel like they’ve been preserved in amber, clean and pristine. Occasionally, they have aged so poorly that you decide to remove them from yourself entirely. Control-alt-delete.

But more often, at least to me, what happens is that you are reminded of eras in your life now long gone. Of a you that is no longer you, but which is worthy of remembrance. And once in a great while, worthy of resurrection.

This can happen with old friends and former lovers, but also with experiences, habits, even recipes.

The most recent was a lunch I had with a former coworker named Chuck, a teammate of mine on the St. Paul Pioneer Press’ investigative reporting team. I hadn’t even really thought about him in years, but my friend Chris had stayed in touch, and when I wondered aloud how Chuck might be doing, Chris set up the meeting.

Lunch at Gabe’s, a venerable St. Paul haunt, was a grand tour of the past 22 years, as the three of us caught each other up with adventures, job changes, life changes and the like. Chuck is now retired, but still has some investigative reporter in him. It felt good. I felt like we should hoist a few Hamm’s together again soon, preferably while watching hockey at a dive bar.

Another meeting was in fact at a dive bar, Frenchman’s, with my oldest friend Andy. We’ve known each other so long it predates even kindergarten; our mothers were good friends. We’d been thick as thieves for the first 15 years of our lives, and even though we’ve grown apart, we are forever bound.

Andy was in town on business, and while he and I agree on almost nothing politically, there was so much that was simply human to catch up on we managed to largely avoid politics. There are vast stretches of time between our meetings, and it was sometimes hard to remember our childhood bond. But it held. It holds.

The last reconnection hit the hardest.

About a month ago, I received a message from a woman named Kari that stopped me in my tracks. Kari and I had had an intense relationship in the 1990s, but I had not heard from or thought of her in more than 25 years. She’d learned I lived in St. Paul and was on a long layover at the airport. Would I meet for coffee? Sure, why not?

Kari was there when I walked in, and even after half a lifetime, I recognized her instantly. Crazy how a spark you thought had long been snuffed can flare up so fast. We talked about old times, leaned in, laughed at who we used to be, caught up with the decades. I left that encounter understanding that meaningful bonds do not become meaningless simply because circumstances change — they just move out of the foreground of our lives, sometimes returning years later in ways we could never have predicted.

I left all these meetings with my head spinning.

What other “files” resting inside me should I take out and examine? Bluefishing. Antelope hunting. Gathering morels on a burned mountain. Picking beach plums. Walking the rocky shores of Block Island. Catching porgies or herring or great big panfish. But also cooking classic French food. Making pasta. Going to a farmer’s market.

I have been fishing and gathering my whole life. I have been hunting for a quarter century. Hunter Angler Gardener Cook has been online since 2007. All of these are periods long enough to experience love, fascination, obsession, mastery, and then, after a time, movement.

My life has long been lived under two mottos. The first I was born with, as it belongs to Clan Shaw: Fide et Fortitudine, by fidelity and fortitude. I was also born in the Chinese Year of the Dog. And indeed, I have lived my life fiercely loyal to and protective of those I love, with the strength to endure pain and adversity within those relationships.

But I have also long lived under the maxim: Always Forward. It has fed my restless mind, allowed me to gain competence in a great many things — but in places it has led me away from people and things worthy of revisiting.

These meetings with old friends have made me reflect on all that. Relationships evolve, whether they are platonic or romantic, with a human or a place or a practice. Sometimes they feel like they’ve faded away, but in reality they just grow quieter. And you never know when they might reappear in a new way. And sometimes that way floods you with fresh excitement.

I will still dedicate my life to forward motion. But I now feel like I can allow that motion to occasionally loop back to reclaim something worth carrying onward.

I’ve already hatched plans to chase bluefish and tautog on the East Coast this year, something I’ve not done in decades. I’m wondering where I might be able to score an antelope tag. I am definitely going to revisit the classic French recipes I made when I started Hunter Angler Gardener Cook nearly 20 years ago.

And as for Chuck and Andy and Kari? I won’t wait another decade before I see them again. That’s for sure.