Leslie in a natural state

Wenbin Yuan

I had an opportunity to watch Leslie in a most natural state while backpacking with him for seven days on the Appalachian mountain trails starting at the northern tip of Vermont. Vermont is the most nature loving state of the nation. I have been feeling guilty about telling an unconfirmed tale of Leslies life at his 60th birthday party during a short moment while Leslie was not there. I told the tale to his inner circle of invited guests when he was not there to defend himself. This is the story I told behind his back with probably a good amount of untruths. However, history is written by people who were never there for things that probably did not happen, so at least there is this much little history of Leslie in the records, to say the least:
Leslie attended an all-boys uniform-required private school as the eldest of three boys in Dr. Martins farm located somewhere in a remote suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During the process of growing up he wanted freedom from his strict surgeon father and his Quaker loyal overpowering mother. He had heard of the London School of Performing Arts where Chaplin learned how to perform and told his parents that he was accepted by the school and that upon high school graduation he was going to go there via Paris. He was going to become an actor or a superstar and come back to Hollywood if he got lucky. His parents were worried about releasing their first son into the wild, especially since they never could confirm his acceptance letter from the mail. In the back of his mind, Leslie had also heard about LSD, Dali, Picasso, Dr. Seuss, and the fantastic freedoms enjoyed by young people in Europe. Most of these are restricted from most American young boys that attend well-protected private schools.
Leslie’s story resembles what Dr. Seuss did: telling his proud grandfather that he was accepted by Oxford University with a scholarship. In turn, his grandfather quickly published the news in local newspapers. Then Dr. Seuss told his grandfather that the acceptance was true but the scholarship was not, so he forced his grandfather to pay for him to go to Oxford. Dr. Seuss finally used his pen name: Dr. Seuss, and later told his grandfather who owned a local brewery in a small town that he should feel good that the four-year tuition bought a doctors degree back home and a lover! a bargain that his grandfather could not deny. Although he was not quite completely honest at the time, he did become the most famous doctor in the world after selling Dr. Seuss books to many hundreds of millions of young readers! On the contrary, Leslie told his parents that he would be going to the London School of Performing Arts, worrying his parents to death so that there was no proud local newspaper announcement like many other Ivy League tending parents did and there and then he got lost in his trip to France.
It was like taking a hard brake before setting off a jet in a runway. Once you release the brake, the jet propels high. To set a brake to Leslie through a strict religious private all watched all boys uniform required school was like slamming a brake to his restless, curious, freedom searching, constantly romantic mind. It only made his mind run that much more wild!

Upon his arrival in Paris on his intended destination to London, or at least that was what he told his parents, he met the freedom searching young French people. Their love of humanity and art andtheir immense desire for romance and personal peculiarities truly influenced Leslie. After staying there for half a year while sending letters to his father that he will be "enrolled sooner or later", he was persuaded by a bunch of freedom-seeking French youngsters to seek their destination of Freedom where all true free artists came from: Southern Spain!

Leslie quickly enrolled in a rugged cave of porcelain artists making and baking clays every day, thinking they will eventually get to the equivalent fame status of Dali or Picasso. Life went by fast, but he had fun and Leslie found out that he cannot generate any porcelain art that can be sold enough to buy clay and charcoal to sustain his caveman lifestyle. While he was struggling to stay on and listening to his fellow Spaniards encouraging him by repeating Winston Churchills famous words, "Never give up, never ever give up!" He got a letter from his father stating, "Enough is enough! Where is the School of Performing Arts and shall we publish an announcement in our local newspaper that we have disowned you?" That is how Leslie grew up.

Reluctantly, with a huge hole in his heart, he dragged himself out of the cave near Grenada of Southern Spain, went back to Paris and saw an advertisement that the School of Medicine in Paris was recruiting new students. Leslie applied and got accepted.
His father was not too happy, as it was not UPenn near their home or an Ivy League, but at least it was medicine! He will continue the family tradition as a doctor, which was comforting to his father who’s father and father’s father were all doctors. There, Leslie enrolled in one of the most famous medical research programs of the world where the least side effect and most beneficial vaccine, BCG, was invented. As one of the biggest gift Frech people has given to the world, BCG has been used for 99% of the new born in China and India as free and required social medicine since 1950, saving tens of millions of lives and probably protected China and India from COVID-19 as it also provides vaccination for similar tuberculosis similar viruses based on many recent publications.
Upon graduation, Leslie started his practice and also taught medicine at the medical school for a number of years in a small town near Paris where he bought a home and traveled broadly until he started to attend a medical program in UPenn. That was when he met the crazily good looking medical school student Sabina. She was in her early 20s with a newly lost love and a broken heart. Leslie rescued her soul right there for her life!
There is a famous painting in the Milwaukee Art Museum that shows 90% similarities to Leslie. Through the long seven day backpacking journey, I have chatted with Leslie so much. However, the more I talked with him the more I found him interesting. I learned so much about how he grew up from a Quaker’s mother and how he was set to learn to explore himself as well as the world. Quakers were usually organized by women and they can trace back their religious root to England 250 some years ago before they came to settle in Pennsylvania.

Leslie has a broad interest in religion but I still do not quite know if he is religious or not. When we were asked about why we took a great effort to endure the pain to backpacking, he answered: Wenbin told me that we will find the meaning of life from the journey.
Did we really find it? I asked Leslie towards the end of the journey, he smiled to me with deep thought and a long pause. But did not really say anything or at least to my recollection.
Mostly what I remember is Leslie’s long strides while walking up and down the steep trails where there were no real trails but some traces of road. We got lost all the time, trying hard to make sure we were on the right trail, or trial.

Leslie liked to recite long poems during our journey. Once sitting aside by the bonfire shared with a bunch of young U of V boys and girls, Leslie asked us to be quiet first, to listen to the humming of the insects and birds in the dim moonlight, and then started to recite a long peom. He gave the huge pauses between the verses during the recite that we all thought he was sleeping from time to time and we were also worried that he might forget the verses. However, the moment we felt that we need to wake him up, the moment he continued on. One poem sounded specially awed and horrified through the dark forest was Alan Poe’s Raven, with his deep voices and trembling, ethereal and somehow carrying sermons that make our hair standing up in midnight……

After I told Leslie that I wanted to throw away the food that we realized as extra ten pounds too heavy for me. He got very emotional and mad: "there is no way you leave any trash on this trail, no way! Bring them to me and let me carry them." He the opened his backpack ready to take the extra weight for me.
I swollowed my protest and carried it to the next stop and met a 72 years old guy call Tim. Tim was in his last leg of finishing the 3,000 miles arduous journey and I asked Tim if he wanted any extra food that I felt as an extra weight to carry out of my ignorance. He asked me to put them on the table to examine and then I saw strange looks from Leslie’s face. I did not say anything knowing I was wrong again. I told Tim not to worry about the food but Tim was sound at sleep snoring huge. I was however so sleepy myself so I planned to take the food back next morning.
The next morning, Tim was gone with the extra food before I wake up. I felt guilty imagining the 72 year old 250 pound Tim carrying extra food for me in the rugged mountain slopes that you have to use all four limbs from time to time just not to fall off the cliffs. I was too selfish as what I could see from Leslie’s look the rest of the day. His silence was bothering me...

"Isn’t this Invigorating" is the word Leslie told me when I almost collapsed climbing up the big J mountain top where there was no vegetation due to its height! Leslie told me that "if you can continue your climbing to the top of this big J, there will be a lady with margaritas waiting for you!" That was how he "lured" me to exert the last drop of juice to reach to the top. When I arrived, he WAS talking to a lady with a backpack standing by a ski left at the barren Big J peak.

We got lost all the time when Collmann had to check out where were we.

Coming back from the trip, Yeye had a great time to celebrate our survival with his calligraphies.

Our pictures to commemorate our final stop of the 7 day journey. We still couldn’t believe we did it. Burger King was our next destination for a clean cup of water!

Ozark’s National Scenic River stop where Leslie was almost completely out taking a sleep.

I finished the first chapter of Leslie fiction book late Friday night, sent over to Leslie’s two daughters who were busy preparing for Leslie’s 70th birthday which would be the second day at a camp site where Leslie was coming from Missouri to meet up the two girls at a southern Illinois camp site. Once Leslei met up with the two girls, he received this freshly "published" book as a surprise birthday gift. However fictional this book may be, but I am suresome truths are imbedded into it.

Leslie is seen reading the book about Leslie published hastily overnight by his two daughters after it was written only a few hours ago so that Leslie can read it at the camping ground during his 70th birthday.