More Notes from Camp...
Posted: March 31st, 2006, 5:09 pm
March 5:
Earlier today, a swarm of dirt bikes invaded the mountainside. Even three miles out, their tortured buzz is unique-- a cacophony of raucous elephant farts and drunken mosquitos. Coming out of silence, it beats the notion of poetic slopes straight out of a man. But I won't be the one to put up fences. Let them go. Long live sport! I'll have the same mountainside tomorrow, when they have only spoke and piston dreams, and I'll be left to my devices and the mountains and their entities. No surprise, really. They enticed me to begin with. Like Jerry explained, in his cryptic style-- "use them to your advantage".
March 7:
This canyon is a maze of low mesas and gulches. The oldtimers looked for flecks of gold carried down from high peaks in ancient stream beds, buried at points unknown inside the slopes. They guessed better than I might, no doubt, but they were guessing, just the same. There had to be an intuition to it-- extrasensory skill-- a lasting romance with the hill. Some early claims here did well, but these are not mountains of instant wild wealth. Take a wider angle. Desert space, gold-bearing or otherwise, is stripped down to a few essentials. Embrace them and thrive...
What of the entities? Deacon saw faces in every third rock he picked up, in my photos of cliffs. I tend to miss those things, but I see possibility-- a stark richness. From the bottom of each draw, creosote bush crenellations stand their ground. They take on the most blistering low deserts, while sagebrush and the stinking greasewoods take on brutal high desert winters-- relentless and numb. And the coyote passes haggardly through all of the above-- the desert's eyes, anchor of the empty. But "empty" is subjective. The hillside next to me is hardly "empty", flooded with birds, home from their rounds to convene with family and friends-- the gurgle and chortle of chukar and quail. Social hour. The quail enclave must number past sixty. They gather about thirty yards from here, emit a collective staccato laugh every ten or twenty seconds, like humans subjected to calculated comedy....
March 9:
The wind surges, the air turns bitter cold. No one is on the hill but me, the latest king of solitary unrest. I brought it in my luggage. Squalls pass throught the canyon, first as flakes, then wind-crazed ice bullets, hurled by a dying season of rage. Maybe I brought it on myself-- the rage. Maybe I went to that well too often. The noise won't stop, even here. I could use a place to hear my thoughts again. But if the noise stopped, would my ringing ears defeat the point of it? As the next squall down canyon coils for a strike, gathers fury, I notice I'm no longer alone. A cobalt Ford mammoth-cab, two stories high, pulls into camp and a manic man springs out-- a long man, perhaps six-foot-six, with a ponytail and terrible teeth. His name is Jarvis, and he's pure energy. He fought in Desert Storm back in '91. That's what he's here for-- the storm.... He can't believe I'm up here alone, without a gun. Neither can I....
March 11:
The storm eased from icy rage to simple passion. The wind checks me, but no longer shuts down my will. I see a pattern today-- stasis in motion. I see a garbled cumulus cloud, in puffed, backlit bronze, hang up on the mesa-- seep into it, not across. I see a red-tailed hawk, in wind-hover, glide into fortunate resistance, scan the camp with accuity. And not a damn thing moved when the sun and wind stalled near noon, yet textbooks insist that I hurtled through space the whole time.
Jerry says there are petroglyphs on the summit, but only a few. He's big on petroglyphs-- rock etchings of lost Indian tribes. Bedrock art. Some were scribed deeply over generations by hunting parties which returned to their place of reckoning, or connection. But most petroglyphs in this stretch of desert are sequestered behind military fences; so much of this place has been locked away.... For now, petroglyphs drift overhead, left to right.... a desert bighorn.... no, a pronghorn antelope.... gray puffs fly by, shape-shift.... The wind gets stronger-- that's what it does here. Gray puffs fly faster, muddy smoke.... a cowboy on a bucking bull.... a prancing horse, for godssake.... they keep coming. It will be dead-cold tonight, but it's a dry cold, so I won't feel it.... Thirty-knot gusts, now.... Ride it out. Tomorrow looks different-- new spin, same storm....
Note: edited for typos.
Earlier today, a swarm of dirt bikes invaded the mountainside. Even three miles out, their tortured buzz is unique-- a cacophony of raucous elephant farts and drunken mosquitos. Coming out of silence, it beats the notion of poetic slopes straight out of a man. But I won't be the one to put up fences. Let them go. Long live sport! I'll have the same mountainside tomorrow, when they have only spoke and piston dreams, and I'll be left to my devices and the mountains and their entities. No surprise, really. They enticed me to begin with. Like Jerry explained, in his cryptic style-- "use them to your advantage".
March 7:
This canyon is a maze of low mesas and gulches. The oldtimers looked for flecks of gold carried down from high peaks in ancient stream beds, buried at points unknown inside the slopes. They guessed better than I might, no doubt, but they were guessing, just the same. There had to be an intuition to it-- extrasensory skill-- a lasting romance with the hill. Some early claims here did well, but these are not mountains of instant wild wealth. Take a wider angle. Desert space, gold-bearing or otherwise, is stripped down to a few essentials. Embrace them and thrive...
What of the entities? Deacon saw faces in every third rock he picked up, in my photos of cliffs. I tend to miss those things, but I see possibility-- a stark richness. From the bottom of each draw, creosote bush crenellations stand their ground. They take on the most blistering low deserts, while sagebrush and the stinking greasewoods take on brutal high desert winters-- relentless and numb. And the coyote passes haggardly through all of the above-- the desert's eyes, anchor of the empty. But "empty" is subjective. The hillside next to me is hardly "empty", flooded with birds, home from their rounds to convene with family and friends-- the gurgle and chortle of chukar and quail. Social hour. The quail enclave must number past sixty. They gather about thirty yards from here, emit a collective staccato laugh every ten or twenty seconds, like humans subjected to calculated comedy....
March 9:
The wind surges, the air turns bitter cold. No one is on the hill but me, the latest king of solitary unrest. I brought it in my luggage. Squalls pass throught the canyon, first as flakes, then wind-crazed ice bullets, hurled by a dying season of rage. Maybe I brought it on myself-- the rage. Maybe I went to that well too often. The noise won't stop, even here. I could use a place to hear my thoughts again. But if the noise stopped, would my ringing ears defeat the point of it? As the next squall down canyon coils for a strike, gathers fury, I notice I'm no longer alone. A cobalt Ford mammoth-cab, two stories high, pulls into camp and a manic man springs out-- a long man, perhaps six-foot-six, with a ponytail and terrible teeth. His name is Jarvis, and he's pure energy. He fought in Desert Storm back in '91. That's what he's here for-- the storm.... He can't believe I'm up here alone, without a gun. Neither can I....
March 11:
The storm eased from icy rage to simple passion. The wind checks me, but no longer shuts down my will. I see a pattern today-- stasis in motion. I see a garbled cumulus cloud, in puffed, backlit bronze, hang up on the mesa-- seep into it, not across. I see a red-tailed hawk, in wind-hover, glide into fortunate resistance, scan the camp with accuity. And not a damn thing moved when the sun and wind stalled near noon, yet textbooks insist that I hurtled through space the whole time.
Jerry says there are petroglyphs on the summit, but only a few. He's big on petroglyphs-- rock etchings of lost Indian tribes. Bedrock art. Some were scribed deeply over generations by hunting parties which returned to their place of reckoning, or connection. But most petroglyphs in this stretch of desert are sequestered behind military fences; so much of this place has been locked away.... For now, petroglyphs drift overhead, left to right.... a desert bighorn.... no, a pronghorn antelope.... gray puffs fly by, shape-shift.... The wind gets stronger-- that's what it does here. Gray puffs fly faster, muddy smoke.... a cowboy on a bucking bull.... a prancing horse, for godssake.... they keep coming. It will be dead-cold tonight, but it's a dry cold, so I won't feel it.... Thirty-knot gusts, now.... Ride it out. Tomorrow looks different-- new spin, same storm....
Note: edited for typos.
