As by October third Nina was backpacking solo in the canyons of Utah and had turned the dogs loose on her sister Erin it was the latter who welcomed us home and, once we’d unpacked

and walked around the block – feet relieved to be dealing again with rocks and dirt after all those Omaha cobblestones to which they never quite adjusted – presented us with soup,

lively conversation and a freshly made bed.  Early the next morning she was gone for an interview having to do with her important exhibition “From Source to Mouth” at Colorado College while we, with a major Libre water project on the horizon, dove right into two loads of

laundry as the tank filled and took incremental walks up Fossil Hill and beyond to the library,

where Izzy’s bequest of books was awaiting archiving, perhaps by Maryann the librarian…

Once things settled down we had a good long talk with Bryan as he awaited his ride out of Jordan but then distressingly just two days later the land without people began lobbing rocks and much worse out of their concentration camp-by-the-sea at the people without land and…the rest became shitstory, ongoing or, as my friend Steve Stern described it, from the

covid cocoon of a car somewhere crossing the Midwest; “Hamas has killed Israeli babies, children, and innocents in a spasm of hate and terror. Israel has answered with, “You want to kill babies? We’ll show you killing babies on an industrial scale.” Fuck!!!”  Meanwhile out here,

worlds away if not entirely insulated from all that, if only we’d had a freeze we’d be having

an Indian Summer about now, what with breakfasts on the porch in weather weirdly warm as

Libre, personified by Bill, Muriel and Leon with Orly on backhoe, began replacing a quarter mile of the waterline upstream of us, the work precluding going beyond Fossil Hill with the dogs on Monday not to mention any navigation of Bill and Mu’s driveway.  I missed the next couple of

days of the work as well as Tuesday we were in Gardner to see Desireé about those pavement ailments and Wednesday, already a week ensconced, it was time for another trip to the ‘burg

followed by an end-of- summer lunch at La Veta’s Legends on Main bookending July’s beginning-of-summer lunch with a similar cast of characters.  Sometime during my chicken enchiladas with green sauce Bryan texted unexpectedly, two days behind schedule, from an airfield in Bulgaria.  It turned out the Israelis hadn’t caused the delay; waiting for the plane to fill up had added the days…and so he was on to Texas, to our considerable relief.

The town trips done I was finally able to get a look at the waterline project’s considerable

progress in the course of trying [and oft times failing] to push a little farther uphill each day…

to the steps, at least, and once [8480, below] a bit beyond

[though coming down from there was a bit sketchy], followed every afternoon by the requisite

studio visit and exercises No Matter What.  One morning we bordered on an eclipse, though

had nothing to show for it but some strange breakfast shadows…

With the house at 8140′ the best I’ve managed this summer is a 340′ gain in elevation, making those days when we used to go up the creek every morning and to the Lone Pine every evening

seem to be long gone; long Covid, old age or…Fossilization?

Whatever it was it appeared Orly had to bring up some Serious Iron [turned out the backhoe developed Hydraulic Issues] before the waterline project was finished but all through it all

Linda, true to form, never stopped working…

Meanwhile I never got past the steps again but then

Saturday we ventured out near sunset for a most pleasant evening with Mike and Nance and their neighbors Chris and Nan who this summer [after thirty years in a yurt] have begun building themselves a house down the road from us…sounded most interesting.

[not shown – that’s Bev’s barn next door]

The truth, they say, is Out There, just not on X.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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