[the] last week, our last Colorado week, began with a Sunday most subdued, processing [not entirely successfully] the events of the previous numerous days, and somewhat in a state of Collapse.  Monday was better; walk up the creek, work, studio work and…

…an enjoyable evening of gossip, Cava, talk and good foods with two dear friends from across the valley.

[not shown]

 Not until they’d gone and dishes were done did the Weekly Monday Disaster manifest itself in the form of the three-day eviction notice one and all who’d innocently given up their information the previous Wednesday had been served with that evening in SF.

Well, well; Monday, Monday…at least the Burning Man WebCam is up and sort of running, as I belatedly [having been otherwise distracted] discover. Not the BMWC of years ago, when the camera fired up days in advance and never stopped; sound synched to radio, books on tape [“1984” for long stretches of 395], whatever was happening all the way to the playa where BMIR became the soundtrack for the duration. Up the tower and round and round [with random zooms] until exodust and, coupla days later, back down the lengths of Nevada and California to its secure undisclosed location; beautiful!  But apparently too much Information = expurgation.  Anyway, this year’s, despite no sound and endlessly annoying pauses to reload, existed; an addictive way to track the weather where we’ll be all too soon;

Are we having fun yet?

This iteration, though admittedly an improvement over last year’s lamely stolid focus on The Man, merely panned back and forth a chaste hundred and eighty degrees…still, it does reveal the weather, soundlessly.

Come another dawn, hmm, maybe, fun…

…at least SOME peoples’ idea of a good time.  Our idea being getting ourselves up the creek, where evidence of an early winter, though barely September, is beginning to appear…

Are WE having fun yet?  Well, with the unrest out west we hang by the phone at times we might otherwise be elsewhere or watching bugs…

…but nonetheless and despite there still end up being a couple of days, actual productive last days, reminding one of how things ought to work around here for the work…

…and for the walks and evenings on the porch, too;

On a warm Saturday afternoon we fill the tank and become mediated grandparents-via-Skype…

That very evening BM, likewise mediated, approaches its apogee 1100 miles to the northwest, followed by Sunday’s exodust, which has barely begun before BMWC is off the air. Ah well, they wouldna shown it anyway…

…while we here persevere;

…and studio-emptying begins;

Wrapping the summer paintings took up much of Sunday afternoon, followed by dinner on Muffin’s sunset porch for goodbyes to numerous people I’ve known not well [though am glad to meet at last, or know better] as we emerge from a week of solitude that could have maybe gone longer, though the drive west will provide more of that after these last social rounds, the rounds of goodbye, and then the leaves, half wilting, half turning…leaving.

On a last rare walk to the lone pine Monday met a horned toad and hoped he might mitigate the Curse of the Mondays before a last dinner alone unto dark…

Tuesday’s Last Walk up the creek preceded some serious loading and once lunch was over the true trip began…

enough, enough…

 

M