Larry Bates (Raymond Laurence Bates)
Email Larry.   Phone: 360-683-0854

Home: Sequim, Washington
Occupation: Retired US Navy
Children: 2

After graduation I joined the Navy, not knowing what kind of work they would have me do, but intent on learning about Life, rather than attending Grade 13 at college. During boot camp I auditioned for the music program and passed, ensuring that my first duty station would be the Navy School of Music in Washington DC. I spend twenty years tooting my flute, etc., helping to produce two beautiful daughters (now both moms and successful professional women in Las Vegas), and suffering the slings and arrows of Life University. I attended various colleges and universities, acquiring credits enough for a couple of degrees, but was never interested in sheepskins or labels, so did not collect any. In ‘82 I retired to the outback of eastern Arizona and dedicated my energies to a self-reliant lifestyle, building a homestead out of the wilderness and growing much of my sustenance. On and off at various times I taught music at Eastern AZ College, worked as a radio announcer, drove a taxi and managed several natural foods coops, more than anything to remain somewhat involved in society. In 2002 I trimmed my twenty-year-long hair and beard and moved to Sequim to be near my sisters and to commence this “elder chapter” of the Journey. I now live quietly in a small “50+” community, playing in the gardens when weather permits, playing handyman around the house when health permits, and generally enjoying retired life.

Perhaps the most lasting and memorable event of high school (besides the pretty girls) was the “ambition” written in the annual...something about sleeping for fifty years and then waking up, etc. That idea had been born largely of my troubled dissatisfaction and discomfort with life as a teenager, but it serendipitously (and ultimately) became a reality of sorts. In my fiftieth earth-year (‘93), I experienced a life-changing set of events which resulted in a paradigm shift of such proportion that it altered the entire lifelong spectrum of wandering and wondering. After having practiced yoga and meditation for twenty years, I had the great good fortune to be invited to live and study in an Indian ashram. That transformational set of experiences could fill a book, and someday might, but after living there for some time I spent several months in wilderness solitude in the mountains of New Mexico, followed by a few more years of managing a meditation center on my land, also in New Mexico. All of these great events were filled with countless life-affirming experiences, the essence of which has truly amounted to the “waking up” so desperately longed for back in ‘62. In contrast, everything else in this life has consisted of stepping stones, important all, but after all, only way-stations on this great Journey of Discovery.

 

updated 4/24/12