December’s weathers continued across the Valley as I, studiously avoiding NPR’s repetitious

alarmism, listened to Bombino and Tinawaren door to door

[with a nice ’53 Bel Air before Auburn]

and drank cold old coffee all the way as unseasonal sun and dry mountains emerged above

Blue Canyon. There was a pause at Eagle Lakes,

Verdi [the coffee!]

and D-M in Reno where I uncharacteristically splurged on a braided horsehair belt.

Gas in Reno too, Wadsworth for the Post Office and after Nixon

avocado and salsa on crackers with a view of The Lake*, more cold old coffee and less

than an hour later Gerlach, into the sun on CR 33, weather sneaking in as although sun lasted

all the way to Wall December weather caught up [along with Linda] at four and by the time we’d unloaded the afternoon had become quite dark.

Saturday showed up snowed in; a sparkling winter week at Wall after all. Or so the morning

promised…but with melting and one [only one!] lunch on the porch

most days after that were unrelentingly grey.

A few were intermittently blue,

a rarity,

a welcome rarity, the clarity, consequently obsessively documented, but ephemeral…

We’ll see, we’ll see…

*At a certain geographic remove or within a certain population “The Lake” ceases to be Tahoe and becomes Pyramid. The latter is where I lunched and is what I generally think of as “The Lake”.