Last week the morning after Winnemucca

as well as afternoon went to prepping for the annual Burning of the Slash…

come Friday’s dawn, still and bright and every bucket frozen solid,

we had ignition

etc.

followed by lunch [chillier than it looks]

and visitations about the artpark until

End of Burn,

further visitations

and Dogs.

Sumi kept up her immersion therapy despite the 20 degree mornings as elsewhere

Others made lives on/in the desert

and the afternoons blended into mornings, suddenly warmer; unusually warm, dry as ever.

Eventually there were visitors from Afar [Brent Fenty outa Bend, Oregon] and not so far [Seth

and Sonny from just up the road to try again on the ’82 – still not quite there but maybe soon*].

Brent stayed over for a tour of the Parker, where I’d not been either in quite awhile, though

had to cut that short and rush back

to catch a call from Loreto which never came**.  After lunch I and the Inkies, left alone,

tried to gather our wits about us for a last day…

a day of packing, loading and hoping that maybe

next time there’ll be time for the studio beyond just crashing there in afternoons’ sun.

– All the while intermittently wondering what the f-k happened to those batteries I spent so much time on tracking down and ordering.  Well one assumes it’s all gonna get sorted out; at least there wasn’t a palette of them abandoned out at the gate…

The winds picked up along with meadowlarks’ elaborate vocalizations in the brush which might

portend an early end to winter 2022, a winter which it seems Finnegan and friends

yet again survived so…

out the gate, not too late, Thursday 03 03.

 

*

**Not realizing the phone was turned off…that afternoon I did eventually reach Chris Ross, who once spent a lot of time around here gathering oral histories and much else, for a long rambling conversation.  A Life, about a life, now in Mexico.