Last week was the last week on the desert for awhile, beginning Wednesday with a dinner for Fox and Frantz which included Bryan, the seldom-seen-son, who stayed on and helped immensely with some nagging and often toxic projects [not shown] until Saturday

[not Bryan]

when he took off down the desert, over Sand Pass, Donner and on to SF and the Inner Sunset.

Soon after he was gone we went the other way into Gerlach for the First Annual

Street Dance and All You Can Eat Buffet.  Though by the time we arrived the Buffet was seriously impacted by earlier arrivals there were still Tri-Tips, corn, beans and salad plus, albeit margaritas an impossibility and even wine by the glass were a stretch for the barmaid,

we did see pretty much everyone we’d hoped to and got to talk, or shout, over the ministrations of South Bound Train’s live oldies with most of them.   A fun and fitting last if not lost weekend

here on the high desert and home, to Aggie’s considerable relief, on empty roads in absolutely still and deserted twilight to vague breezes on the porch waiting for the house to cool.

The next day saw efforts to tidy up the trailer site [truck is partially hiding the Egregious Shed, which will have to be dealt with in October] as temps crept steadily into the nineties…

By Monday we were having smoke up the Smoke Creek from California’s first fires of what will most likely be Another Disastrous Season from which the house pond

offered welcome morning respite while reminders of earlier gnarlier times remain

[“desert landscape near east little Owyhee River, Oregon, 1976”, detail]

and here, ah here it’s all detritus…

as we row up our ducks for the ensuing exodus.

Second-to-last lunch, with dog;

second-to-last dusk, on a warm east-facing porch.

Los Burros.

Last morning, with dog;

afternoon in The Park

Vegetables

as the smoke creeps back,

blows through

ahead of a moon, fullish.

So much for that.