Snake Redux

Morning protocol is to make a cup of coffee and put away a few books. Then I needed to go out to the Jeep and get the ingredients for the sauce I'd left there, what with the snake. Put on some jeans, one must wear pants outdoors, and open the door, and that pesky rattlesnake is back, coiled exactly centered in my sight, three feet away. Shut the door and go roll a cigaret, a wee dram to deal with the shock. I had to be shed of it, but I had time and I watched it for a while, pulled up a stool and watched out the panes in the back door. Watching a snake is a very slow event. She moves, after a while, to the opposite end of the porch, coils up, and apparently goes to sleep. Six feet away now, the first drops of rain fall and she slides over to the edge of the porch, drops down to the ground and goes under the house. I don't like her being under the house, the fact that she likes the back porch. Following B's lead, I'll try and relocate her down in the wilderness area. If you know where a snake is, in the morning (before they achieve escape velocity) you can often just shovel them up and put them in a five-gallon bucket. They give new meaning to 'slow-starting'. Still, that dry rattle is not something you want to hear very often. I went out to the Jeep just as a fucking sheet of rain swept across the ridge and I was drenched in seconds, bad timing, but I got what I needed out of the car and made it back inside. Resurrect the sauce. B calls, to remind me it's Friday. Waiting for a call from my sister about my mother's condition, I'm in no shape to be social. Military brats are raised in a matriarchal society, 50% of the time Dad was gone, so Mom was the only given, and I think about her struggles with that. Arguably better that her Holiness Pentecostal upbringing. Never snakes, but often speaking in tongues and rolling in the aisles, which is only slightly removed from hearing Beverly Sills singing "Traviata". My parents were products of the depression, tenant farmer families scratching a bare living. The options were limited, the military or prison, or working in the produce section of the supermarket for your entire life, shining apples. I can make a strong case for digging clams and eating wild greens. Read more...

Vanishing Point

Perspective. On the one hand, the stump had lasted a long time. The butt round from a chestnut oak I'd cut 15 years ago. I'd rolled it over to the graveyard and seated it, and, all this time I've used it as a rest stop. I keep a bottle of water there. It's only, what, 400 feet from the house? And it was, finally, today, what is the word, unsittable. I need a new stump. People have told me this for years. A soap-box or a packing-crate. I have no designs on higher office. This is it, as far as I'm concerned: meatballs on egg noodles. B calls with some questions about cooking an enormous rack of pork ribs. A couple of his writer friends will be visiting, and he wants me to come down. Which I certainly will, if I can. B has great friends, unfailingly interesting, and conversation, good conversation, is one of the finer things. As I think about it later, it might be the most important thing. I've been blessed with a long line of bright friends, and some of them have been quite batty. As most of us must, I consider myself normal, it's the only guide-book you're given; I have a few other guide-books, hidden under the visor: a field guide for amputation, birthing babies in the back of moving cars, how to plug gaping wounds with spider-webs, but mostly we're at a loss. In just a hundred years everyone has forgotten how to do anything. I volunteered to bring the sauce for the ribs, and I needed a fast run into town to get a few things. The sauce (over 10 years old now) needs to be brightened, after a winter of inactivity, so I need a sweet onion, to liquify, some red wine, papaya nectar, mixed chili powders. I keep it under a layer of rendered pork fat that makes a tight seal during the off-season. I get everything I need, stop at the pub for a beer, and when I get home, I'm in a mindless state. Unload the Jeep, rain is coming, onto the edge of the porch; up the three steps, grabbing what I can carry and I'm at the back door, key in hand, when I hear the dry rattle that can only be a snake. A beautiful timber rattler, a female, coiled tight and ready to strike. Six or seven rattles. I put down my groceries and backed away. I actually made a sound, a sweek, nothing like a real snake to shake things up a bit. Read more...

Creature Comforts

I've slept under a great many overhangs, and I'm always paranoid the ceiling is going to fall. I can't wait to get out in the morning. Feet dangling over the edge, a strong cup of boiled coffee, gruel bubbling away, hey, this is pretty good. Sometimes I have a light blanket draped over my shoulders. Another place in Utah, a huge outcrop of chert, and there's a campsite there, that was used for hundreds of years. The flaked debris is ankle deep. A huge number of failed points. The last time I went back the roof had fallen on the campsite. Further up the canyon, where I had never been, there was a perfectly preserved single family dwelling, Cistern, grain bin, sleeping nooks, fire pits, and I spent the night there, listening to the wind. The next day, halfway across Nebraska, I could no longer sort fact from fiction. The corn was reminding me of sunflowers. It happens, as you get older, one thing reminds you of another. Fact is, I think, a fiction. I don't remember anything the same way twice. Bobby Blue singing on Beal Street, BB King playing back-up; I don't know who the drummer is, but he should be sainted. There's a trumpet solo that would almost make you believe there is a god, and then Mr. King does a break that is a pure transport. I shuffle over to the island and put together a bowl of rice, with sesame oil and soy sauce. Sit in the dark and listen to the blues. I meant to go into town, for the farmer's market, but I didn't need anything so I blew it off. I'd rather not leave the ridge; den up, lick my wounds, attend to apparent needs. That outside world, I can take it or leave it. Sometimes it amuses me. Another trip, I was driving across Kansas. Read more...