Coochie

About the Book

What is Coochie? Maybe you think you know. Coochie, or Couchy, is the nickname of one of the most difficult to climb Adirondack peaks, Mount Couchsachraga. It was from this high point that Tripper Harris saw the true meaning of his life.

Imagine a man with amnesia remembering his life bit by bit, in no particular order, and trying to patch together the story of who he is. Since the author is brain-damaged, Coochie is sometimes disjointed and confused, and time blurs through memory.

The sordid tales of Tripper Harris have the appeal of a dark side revealed. Coochie is a book for those who came of age in the ’60s and ’70s and for those who wonder what this time was like for a teenager. It speaks to those who love the outdoors and are compelled to climb mountains.

The wilderness is Tripper’s only refuge from the fears that invade his mind. Coochie invokes Hunter Thompson or Denis Johnson in stories of a life touched by television, LSD, the deaths of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., rock and roll music and a search for something higher.

It all started when a ball hit Trip in the groin during a little league game. All Trip’s friends thought he was weird, sexually, after this episode.

His thoughts would later turn perverted and even violent. To escape these torments, Trip ran for the hills, quite literally. The sights, sounds, and smells of the mountains, the changing seasons experienced in the wilderness, were like a dream come true for Tripper. Beneath the conflicts, Trip was a simple man, like Rip Van Winkle. Trip was born near the cradle of Rip’s legend, the Catskill Mountains. As the story goes, Rip was unhappy in marriage; his wife thought he was lazy. One day he escaped to the mountains with his dog to lose his thoughts in the scenery.

Trip did much the same. It was Mount Couchsachraga, up north in the Adirondacks, that would change Trip’s life and give him hope that God was watching over him. As Tripper climbed and his thoughts about all the events of his life festered, he agonized over lost opportunities and broken relationships, letting the mountain air cool and clear his mind.

Tripper’s parents saw a light in their child and knew he was something special. It was in childhood that Trip developed his love for music and heard certain songs which would become the soundtrack for his life.

He started climbing mountains at 5 or 6 years old, and when he grew up, that childhood feeling of freedom, nurtured in the Adirondacks, made him a kind of wild mountain man who didn’t want to be tied down to the ordinary life.

One day, sitting in the bedroom of the family house, Tripper’s relatives witnessed a halo appear above his head. They believed this was a sign from God and kept the shine, as it was called, a secret. There was no doubt Trip was touched.

When not much later President Kennedy was shot, little Tripper made an oath to Kennedy’s daughter Caroline, a strange sort of swearing of love and honor that would stick with him forever.

In his teens, Trip began taking LSD on a regular basis, at the same time dealing with the usual troubles of coming of age, like relating to his parents, falling in love, and handling his sexual urges. When he couldn’t be out in the wilderness, he found refuge in the music of the Rolling Stones and the Eagles. Thoughts of the future depressed Tripper.

The family lived in Bethlehem, a suburb of Albany, New York’s capital city. It was there that Trip worked for the little newspaper, the Spotlight, doing odd jobs. And it was there in the Spotlight’s shed that Trip would meet his alter ego, Sparkey. Sparkey was Tripper on acid, and he played a magic nickelodeon, a time-machine jukebox that replayed all the songs of Tripper’s past and showed him eerie glimpses of the future. He could put hi

About the Author

The challenges of living with disabling brain damage motivated Tim Rice to write his story, hoping to steer young people away from drugs. Inspired by his experiences in nature, wilderness writers, and rock music, Tim spent nearly 30 years crafting his fictional autobiography. While taking a creative writing class at Colorado Mountain College, Tim met teacher Rachel Toth (née Meisler); for three years they worked together to “translate” Tim’s notes into Coochie. Rachel earned her B.A. in fine arts and creative writing from Loyola College in Maryland and an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Arizona.