On a generous day, you think of them as free-thinkers. On a tight-fisted, grudging day, they’re crackpots and a danger to themselves and others (mainly their heirs).

They’re the wildcatters. They invest in high-risk, high-reward ventures. They look for elephants (giant oil fields), and they want to find giant oil fields and “resource plays.” They’re looking for legacy plays – an oil field, a rich gold deposit, a reservoir the size of Delaware.

They believe in their own technologies, which they themselves invent – crystals to dangle over a map, Reichian orgone accumulators, Chakra-energy-driven wands and devices.

Wildcatters are at their best after their 80th birthdays.

I’ve long learned I should not be fooled by their appearance – the wildcatters dress themselves in L.L. Bean, but sometimes old-school rancher and sometimes Rotary Club. In a nutshell, they look conservative, straight-laced, Sunday school. But the straight-laced among them predeceased them by decades.

If you’re tense and by-the-book, do you die young? Or, does your behavior somehow reflect an inner malaise, a chemical imbalance, or spiritual malaise that puts you right in the cross-hairs for a heart attack in your 40s or 50s or 60s? I don’t know.

All I know is that I think they live longer because they give themselves permission to believe whatever they want to believe. Sure, it might look like “magic” to the outsider. It’s not mainstream, and it opens a world where we can live with freedom from the facts. We don’t have to be slaves of science, they seem to be saying. We ARE science. That’s all there is to it.

Their belief is both exhilarating and frustrating to the children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren – if the children try to implement the same philosophy, they will soon find it to be ruinous. When you’re starting out (and don’t have your own successful business, cash flow, nest egg, retirement), it behooves you to play the game, and to learn the social norms and the societal paradigms, and play them as best suits your personality in the best way you can.

Apparently, you have to play within the system and learn how to find joy in the acquaintances you make, the milestones you can share with others, and the team-spirit energy that leads to building something tangible in our material, phenomenal world.

The wildcatters will have nothing of that. They want to transcend the material, phenomenal world. They want to have power and they want all the things any good Faust would want – infinite knowledge (mainly of the arcane things – think Witches Kitchen), infinite power over the elements in our world, and the ability to cast spells (think Prospero), infinite treasure-hunting for precious metals, stones, substances, and infinite power to heal (think an L.L. Bean-garbed shaman).

That’s not so out of the ordinary, right? Well, you might be surprised to know how many L.L. Bean-garbed gentlemen in their 70s through 90s believe in crystal power, have detection/dowsing devices, and claim to be able to heal by laying on of hands and by beaming chakra energy from their own bellies to a person through their image (a photo, for example). What do you do when, upon entering their home, they offer to check your aura, and then, if you offer them food, they measure its frequency (by means of their own frequency) to see if it is good or bad. That seems nice and harmless. It’s all a matter of degree, I guess. Are you a devout disciple of Christ, or do you claim to be Christ himself? I think we see the entire spectrum, and it’s nice to let people have their beliefs.

Here’s what people say: Insane people are happy people. They have the power of their convictions. On the flip side, insane people are unhappy people. Insane people are like blindfolded drivers on riding lawnmowers of paranoia.

You just hope that the charming eccentric who wanders around with a tolerant, “let your freak flag fly” cheerful bonhomie does not turn into a cornered rat, sharp teeth bared. I guess the one way you can turn your smiling, easy-going great-uncle who wears aluminum foil over his breast pocket and carries around a crystal on the end of a gold wire, into a cornered rat is to put him in a cage. Anyway. The charming eccentrics are everywhere.

The wildcatters have outsider beliefs.

Some claim to time travel.
Others commune with spirits.
Others spend time looking for treasure and cures for cancer.

They’re kind-hearted, sometimes hard of hearing, sometimes detached as though they’re focused on something else. Sometimes they’re grumpy. That probably can’t be helped. They’ve taught themselves the art of hallucination. They’ve taught themselves the art of living. Just don’t invest with them, or pay attention to their career advice if you have a deep need for conventional socialization and a comfort zone.

Perhaps one of these days, I’ll be a wildcatter.