When did you meet Mickey?
1975
Where did you meet him?
In Atlanta through mutual friends, Bob and Rosemary Wells
Memory of Mickey
I would hear stories about Mickey from time to time from Bob and Rosemary Wells, and I became a big fan of his exploits as told by them. Two come to mind. The first was his attempt to build a boat in the basement of his house on East Rock Springs Road in Atlanta. I understand that the boat was to be quite large, maybe big enough to travel on the Mississippi. To move it to Jasper, he had to take the door frame off his Atlanta house. Once in Jasper, the boat grew even larger. An edifice was built to house it. Jasper is not close to a navigable waterway. The logistics of moving it from Jasper appeared likely to be ever more complex. I was filled with admiration for someone who was willing to build a boat without caring a great deal about where it would ever reach a body of water where it would float. The task was more important than the final product. Over time, Mickey’s interest shifted in other directions. I understand that a storm finished off the boat at some point.
The other exploit of Mickey that I know about was his effort along with Mountain Stewards and others to geocode the locations of bent trees used by the native Americans as trail markers. As he geocoded the locations of more trees, he became aware that they lined up, in effect indicating trails, often trails leading toward water. This effort allowed Mountain Stewards and cooperating Indian tribes to recover parts of their history that left no written records. We were hiking the same mountains at the same time and were always on the lookout for trail trees. Maybe Mickey’s psychoanalytical mind drew him to this effort — his belief that an important reality can exist below apparently miscellaneous events. It was and is a wonderfully inspired way of looking at the world. I’ll miss him.