or rather the lack of them; no monthly working visits to Nevada, no dinners with friends,

the only social-lizing being distanced…not as radical an adjustment as so many are being forced

to make for sure.  Our early mornings still wake to gnawing, bone-dropping, squirrel-chasing

[the neighbors* must love us!] and then the same old out and in until

suddenly it’s Monday, garbage again, downtown quiet but Cosmos in a panic as the recycling truck comes crashing up the alley; a dog’s worst nightmare. I ventured over to Safeway

for the first time in more than two weeks to navigate their lane of cautionary signs, collect a freshly sanitized shopping cart and jostle amidst masked mostly male seniors in moderately thronged aisles to score paper goods as well as certain sundries lacking in our larder. Coming out into the sunny spring morning with such treasure brought to mind Linda’s seventies story about flying into Medellín seeking Dean [who proved much more elusive than that] and being in line behind an elderly businessman who paused as the steps were rolled up, reached into his jacket to pull out a revolver and check it was fully loaded before stepping off the aircraft.

With no one in ambush on Toilet Paper Tuesday I was able to take Aggie on her accustomed morning round-the-block as in my absence L. had assumed the MUCH more dangerous task of walking the Black Ones in concert under skies as clear, thanks the slowed economy of these weeks, as they used to be around Gerlach before the Environmental non-Impact of Burning Whatsis and all the rest.  In our confinement I’ve been revisiting past salient moments

[hence Gerlach above] and reminiscing with Dave about winter 1986, the first time we touched down together in Drummond Basin [I’d driven in on solo reconnaissances a couple of times in the late seventies], out of Boise in Vern’s helicopter.  Which led to looking up the last time

either of us were back, a trip I made from Wall up through

Desert Valley and McDermitt, Nevada,

out past Lucky 7 cow camp in Oregon to

Drummond in June 2011 for the purpose of figuring out how

to extricate the trailer we’d taken in in 1987.  Too late now; it burned in the summer of 2018

so it’s become all about how to clean up the mess…anyway, last visit, a buggy night on the

way out at Jackson Summit to then return from that distantly mediated past to a more

immediately virtual one on a weakened weekend night from which I, worried my reaction to the day’s lunch of last night’s tikka masala fortified with the addition of Mexican hot sauce might presage the onset of Covid, retired to rest.  Next morning, much improved, red kayak social

distancing on the straits, lunch well-insulated behind foliage in the vine-covered yard

and back into the ancient history of a three dog day at Radar Ranch, early 21st century, as well

as some crisp clear shots of Linda’s Bowl of Nails Mine project from the summer of 1988; exuberance of Youth and the Unknown…the shed remains at Radar and the Bowl,

removed to the Muse-Eum at Wall Spring [a place one hopes to see sometime.], still has its nails…awhile ago for sure.  Meanwhile in the Here, the Now,

the weeks roll on; avocado toast redux, citrus bounty gratis from the Fisher-Hanlon House,

grey mornings, fading paintings until

for variety we called the Union about paella, which Gaby improvised spectacularly and then,

uh-oh, before we knew it the trash trucks were a-comin’ down the alley

and another week began; overcast blustery days, dogs denied the Ponds of Wall Spring illegally

sneakily soaked themselves in the H Street fishpond…

In more disturbing news [ain’t all the news More Disturbing?] the Foremost Authority was scrambling to get out in front of rolling back the economy while simultaneously exacerbating Breitbart “rebellions” insistent, against all reason, on the right to get sick and infect whomever they pleased. But the news, a moving target, has of course moved on to other phony outrages as well as Circumstances of Genuine Interest like, say, Negative Oil…if you weren’t nimble enough to get in on the toilet paper futures you probably haven’t been quick enough to short Oil and Coal but the fossil fools are going to be kind of hard to bail out, ouch.  Ouch as you can bet there’ll be mucho resources diverted to ease THEIR pain…dinosaurs goin’ in, dinosaurs goin’ down.

McDermitt, Nevada, 2011, pleasantly prescient.

 

*When said neighbors aren’t worrying about those mysterious Visits from the Police…another story and one I don’t know much about except that while the Police were banging at the front door all their vehicles quietly vanished from the back.