Hearing Voices

Not a good sign. Hot again, with ice and the fan to cool my computer, and some harmonic in the fan's motor creates the sound of men's voices outside. I can almost make out the words. Strange. Camping and fishing way up the Little Cimarron in Colorado, pretty high up, maybe 11,000 feet, just below snow-melt, where the stream was quite wild (cut-throat trout above the beaver ponds, native, and rainbows below, introduced), pebbles and small rocks, rolling in the stream sounded like voices in the night. Spring fishing there was extraordinary, 17 miles off a paved road so not much pressure and the fish were starved. A native cut-throat, caught in 34 degree water, is the firmest, finest eating fish I've ever tasted. We'd take in some bacon fat and a couple of lemons, some cornmeal for johnny-cake, a couple of skillets, eat fish three meals a day. Took my parents in, before they were so feeble, and Dad still tells stories about catching a trout on every cast and throwing them on a snow-bank. It is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, headwaters of a lovely stream, the very beginning of an extensive drainage, 12 and 13,000 foot peaks on three sides, virgin Englemann Spruce thick as fur on a dog's back, and at night the stars were thicker than the spruce. I went up alone one time, after the divorce, considering just disappearing, hiked to a ridge top by moonlight, and the Northern Lights sheeted and shimmered; it was August, and the last of the snow was melting in the northern lee of the rocks, there were hundreds of drips, and they sounded like voices, saying -maybe not love, but at least truth and beauty-, and I spent a really uncomfortable night wrapped in a space blanket with no dinner. My camp looked like heaven when I came down, fire-pit, fridge rack cooking surface, coffee pot, made a pot of coffee, caught a couple of fish, got on with my life. Sometimes the wind, when I'm carrying wood in winter, will be absolutely conversational. Sometimes I talk out loud when I'm alone and hear myself, reply, start a rant. Interesting experiment, don't know why I did it, but I needed to go to town, library, liquor store, laundry, and some other supplies. Once every two weeks I have to do this, make a trip to town, other than working days, normal working day I can pick up a few things but I will not stay in town and do a major thing after work. Desperately need home. Maybe an occasional function, but I've ducks to watch, crows to see, I completely ignored a very large spider today, because I was in a hurry, and that's just wrong. So what I did is the whole town run without ever saying a word, not a word, I nodded and gestured, but I said nothing: it wasn't actually necessary to say anything. And I did a lot of things. I listened to a lot of other people say things, most of it unnecessary, but maybe not, maybe necessary, for, you know, normal interaction. Fact is, I do all of the stuff I needed to do, buy the things I needed to buy, and I never say a word. I'm impressed by this experiment but I don't know what the result means. On my way home I was giving myself hell about hearing voices, went below the floodwall, walked down, across that first terrace, to the river bank, The Ohio, ditched as it may be, channelized, dammed, controlled, is still a significant thing. I watched for an hour, if I'd had some jerky, I might have stayed all night. Had to get home and eat. Milk was on sale so I bought a half-gallon and thought about the cured loin, milk is a great marinade for cured pork, I don't know why, lactic acid? bought a dozen organic eggs, not for their organic properties, they're just better packed, thinking I'll be eating breakfast a lot in the near future. If Wittgenstein came to visit, I'd feed him breakfast, easily reproducible. They went away. Advile.