The end of the week came and almost went without word from Granite but then John called late

Friday afternoon to say he was on his way from Silver Springs…figuring that that 110 miles

was at least a couple of hours away I did my end-of-day routines, returned a call from Dave in Nova Scotia to talk, as it turned out, about the retrieval of the burnt Owyhee trailer and had just gotten into the bath when John showed up on the porch an hour and forty minutes after he’d called.  He crawled under the house, fixed and tuned the heater and, once emerged, regaled me with tales of Stanley Steamers [his new ‘passion’, though the car thing for him doesn’t come out of nowhere] and the F.O. Stanley Historic House in Estes Park, Colorado.

That was not only exhilarating but once the heater worked there was a noticeable rise in the outdoor temps; 28 instead of 18 come morning, for instance.  Meanwhile I was looking back, courtesy of archival photos [courtesy of Mark Parker] which showed the Way it Was in 1931

next door at Parker Ranch and the Way it Was at Wall, courtesy of L. Fleming, sixty-six years

later. Twenty-two years after that I was hauling detritus from trees and reeds that hadn’t

existed then to the new burnpile before taking an hour of afternoon off, so nice

to have such a resource so close, for a drive to the upper 80 

where the roads had sufficiently deteriorated to require four wheel drive

but the views remained

[yes Aggie, a road]

from the springs

and elsewhere as inspirational as ever.

If you like that sort of thing, of course; I’ve heard the Great Basin and its silences can be

acquired tastes, but in my case they were acquired long ago.  We returned to level ground

for the last of the Saved Daylight, Saturday.  The Standard Sun appeared Sunday, as could

have been

foreseen and I investigated how far the waters had insinuated themselves onto the desert;

the furthest in over two decades, or ever, it turned out.

A perfect early November day; lots [well maybe six vehicles] of traffic on the road

and a last

fading

of the light,

for now.  Much to do before we see these sights again…