…sitting on the porch watching yet another sunset?  Probably, same as me, nothing, just watching the light change on the ranges to the east.

My parents, grandparents too, watched the sun set over the sea in the west, but less often, I.

I currently get news of days’ endings reflected on the Granites, the Limbos, the Selenites…

For ten years at Radar [http://radarranch.com/] we looked west, watching days fade out over Auld Lang Syne, King Lear Peak and the Jacksons [come to think of it I know two people [more!] who share names with Nevada mountain ranges; the poet, mountaineer and curator Bill Fox is most likely not connected to the dry peaks I depict in my daily watercolors, but local ranchers Andrea, Tilley, Chuck and Grover Jackson may very well be associated with the eponymous range east of the Black Rock]. [Not shown]

But the dogs and I, thinking nothing, sit and watch…or suddenly, thanks to the wonders of recorded music, shuffling fifty-four years back to “Miles Davis at the Blackhawk, Saturday Night”, I remember me and Porter there in April 1961, plotting our trip to Central America for the subsequent summer.  Meanwhile, well, what ARE the dogs thinking?  Having no connection to Miles, nothing, aside from, doubtless, “when am I going to get some of that leftover meat”.

Of course it all wraps up by early dusk when tiny flying peoples, seeking their blood meals, become ever more difficult to apprehend while we, large and hot, become ever more evident …as every night, as another, with another train coming around Phil Siding and California smokes moving in, the light increasingly reminiscent of fall in L.A. long long ago…

Onwards to…a last week of heat, continued…more Oasis, a last run to Alturas…

etc.

M