[about which I got nothin’ to say] we were treated to some perfect autumnal weather and

a sweetly distanced dinner around Bill and Mu’s bonfire bucket with, as ever,

lots of catching up to do and good times though they were both pretty wrung out from an ongoing project which had left a temporary canyon [not shown] across their driveway.

Indigenous Summer days dazed on and before he filled in Bill’s canyon Orly brought

a much-anticipated and welcome load down to Libre’s lower well, generously financed by L.

Although hints of smokes [Cameron Peak Fire, East Troublesome Fire, Calwood Fire] crept subtly in from the north it was all pristine up Dry Creek where little firs sported fallen fall leaves

like some premonition of Christmas and dogs would be dogs.

 Nancy and Mike paid me my first studio visit of the year which resulted, somewhat obliquely, in Various Revelations including but not limited to the possibility that a couple of little paintings might be close to completion, a title – “A Dog of the Sagebrush Ocean”*- which lent a sense of direction to a larger confused narrative piece and a revelatory reading of another larger one set IT off anew also…all before we went down for wine on the porch until the chill metal chairs drove us in to L’s studio for salmon at separate tables.

Not long after we were down the road to Mountain Water for a lunch considerably lovelier than our accustomed quesadillas followed by a mellow little walk across Maes Creek [dry, for years] to the adjacent abandoned Mayan temple Joan and Robert inherited [along with several many

truckloads of scrap and nameless detritus] from Jimmy Robeson, the eccentric late artist

and perpetrant, then returned through the mildness of an October afternoon to our usual

rounds; Dry Creek and

midday meals on the porch

preceded a brief trip to Walsenburg to shop, visit the Habib with its priceless stash of unseen

Art within and witness the sad ruined site of Snida’s Antiques next door, long gone and now abandoned…

*The title occurred to me later…for Lefty in belated memoriam.