towards June,
beginning with a trip to town,
but in town ‘town” is “here” [as, here, “here” is here] and the town is Reno.
Or so I was schooled by Mark [truck, below] when I said I was looking for Willey and he said
Willey was “in town”. So, back to “here”
land of skies,
‘pies
and sneaks…
unto the Friday, first of the June. Friday the day
for a different town. We saw golden eagles, an antelope and a whole lot of sheep going
up to Cedarville where the clinic was closed so over Cedar Pass to Alturas
[that white smudged triangle in the distance is Mount Lassen, really]
for errands and groceries where the Chevrolet/Buick Dealership, ancient-even-in-1972 when they’d replaced a torsion bar anchor* on my 1960 C10, has closed between last year and this. The suspension tore out on Poker Jim Ridge, first trip in that truck, and how I cobbled it together to get from there to that longago town I can’t imagine, but Carsten’s had the part [truck was only a dozen years old after all], made the repair while I waited, then waited for my brother Bryan, who’d started that morning from a blackberry patch on the Oregon coast and was hitching in from Likely…or so the Sheriff told me around nine p.m. as I sat outside what passed for the Greyhound station. Forty-six years later [to the day, could be!] I was checking the recycling center to make sure they’d accept my toasted solar batteries
before heading back over Cedar Pass to California’s most northeasterly pavement, which turns into Nevada’s SR 447 the bottom of Surprise Valley, crosses Duck Flat to tumble over and out
of the mountains to mile 84 where we turn, as always,
Down the Desert. And Home.
Home to the only trees that were here when we arrived in 1995
[Populus fremontii Cottonwood at Wall Spring
and our sentinel Jupiter on the playa’s edge], still surviving
along with many more by now
as are we, though currently experiencing an increasingly disturbing uneasiness, a nostalgia for those innocent days of what Jon Stewart so quaintly called “truthiness” but even more over Lefty’s decline and probable demise…or maybe it’s reading Michael Ondaatje’s “Warlight”, darkly addicting.
All worrisome, some more than others.
M
* adjustable suspension, just like the Corvettes’ and similar to that in the 1964 Belvedere wagon I had much later, though there even the heavy torsion bars could not quite cope with the weight and torque of a 440. The Chev had other [many] issues in those early Years of Exploration, but overloading the front end was not one of them. Shearing it off on rocks, however….
A perfect description. Our beautiful land has become a gang war battleground.
Photo 1: that view of the pond with the structure that to me always looks classical and ancient, somehow takes me to an imagined ancient Greece–perhaps a small temple “ruin” on, maybe, Corfu. And striking photo 3 suggest a whole world of new possibilities, to which you may or may not want to go. “Jupiter” is indeed a fine sentinel, and it seems like he may be taking over the land. You have to watch that guy.
Jupiter’s slow and patient…he was here before and I hope he’ll be here when we’re gone. Not a lot of progeny out there, but a substantial Presence.
I would trust him.
Full circle: Bones atop differential ring gear upon container for the squeezings of ancient dinosaur bones.
right, I actually hitch- hiked, and hardly remember, but it happened
right, I actually hitched it, and can hardly remember, but it di happen in
the good old daze
You remember the blackberry patch? That summer was the first big trip up into that country for me…
Sending Lefty and you-all positive thoughts and psycho comfort.
(‘member the song lyrics, back in the proverbial? “Paranoia strikes deep. Into your heart it will creep…”)
Don’t give that dyed blonde skin tag so much power…it would give him a viagra moment if he knew how much anxiety he causes in our hearts and minds. Resist.
National Propaganda Radio strikes deep doing the watercolors…gotta watch it. Tune out, drop in.
I agree with Fred K. about the Greek Temple…somehow this particular image really evokes that. Terribly smitten with the collage-like effect of the third image and just really can’t figure it out. The image of the tree seen with a closer tree covering the right hand side of the image was great as it made me think of the tree in a new way. Love the dog image….love the dog.
Looking through this again I was struck by how, with just a few exceptions, the sky is SO cloudless and SO blue. The depth of the blue in some of the photos seems almost surrealistic, and I don’t imagine you in there with photoshop. Of course I live on the other coast where the sky is probably never quite so blue.
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