Spring Water

The creek bed is clean, sand and rock. I take down a shovel, and a scoop made from a half-gallon milk container with a loop of line attached (so I can hang it in a tree) and I dig out a depression right in the middle of the stream, tossing the fines aside. While the water cleared, I walked up the creek, to make sure there was nothing dead, then scooped a gallon of water into a green tea jug. Arizona Green Tea jugs are very good, I think Loren brought this one up to the ridge five years ago, or more. This time, in the seasonal rotation, back roads, I always look for where houses had been, daffodils are a give-away, the way they frame a house that used to be. There's usually asparagus; herring roe, depending on where you live, something you could eat, cat-tail shoots, or even the inner layer of shag-bark hickory. That's the chorus, "Down In Low Gap Hollow". It's perfect for the play within the opera. We can bring in trains, bluegrass, and sacred harp. Tomorrow afternoon I'm going to listen to bluegrass music, it's on both of the NPR stations I receive on Sunday afternoon. TR needs a few pages, to work up the chorus. I missed meeting him for lunch today, his bride-to-be was graduating; and the pub was overfilled, a fucking zoo of parents and graduates. I had a draft at the bar and elected to eat sushi take-out, below the floodwall. Too much. I wanted to do several other things, but I couldn't stay in town, too chaotic, slipped into Kroger and bought what I needed. I just wanted to get back home. The long way around, up the creek, so I can drive back and forth at the ford, to clean the mud off the undercarriage. A vehicle drives better if you don't have the wheel-wells caked with clay. A forcemeat is a meatloaf on its way to becoming pate. Ground lamb, in the remaindered bin, so I made a small batch of a spreadable concoction, with large pieces of mushroom and smashed almond. Very good stuff, I'd eaten it all within an hour, but it was a frightful clean-up. Skillets that had to be re-seasoned, bowls, the fucking blender. It's a pain in the ass, to clean a major kitchen mess when you don't have running water. Still, it's nice to make good things to eat, nice to go outside and pee, and it's not that bad to confront your evil demons. I have to sleep somewhere, I have to live with myself.