| western watershed romance |
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Obsidian mornings on the mountain, when I had to
roll to open the little grocery store that employed us all. Cold, and
dark, and so alone that early, as I weaved my way west along the
precipice from Running Springs, towering cedars and white firs and
pines looming like sable specters in the cold darkness, ghostly sleeves
of hardened snow on the upside of their limbs. I often dreaded the
morning back then, still being a kid, and I emerged from the dreamworld
groggy, somewhat resentful yet somehow allured, still seemingly
drifting in that dangerous netherworld where all was possible. Sisters
of Mercy's "Driven Like the Snow" flowed softly through my truck's
speakers, expressing perfectly my somnambulance, the frosted twilight
trees, the expansiveness in that time before domestication's time. My
own little sliver of time, still in that natural light, however dim,
that vestige energy from the last day somehow still bouncing around and
sparkling the snow, and me, and me, the only person alive.
Then into the bleaching, staring light of the grocery store, where I
cinched up my tie on my starched-white button-up shirt and plastered a
smile on my groggy, entangled visage for the early patrons. Dawn rose,
bluing the scene, and then nice, local mountain people came
occasionally into the store while I straightened wares on shelves,
bagged a few groceries. And outside, the snow glowed with a calming,
pristine hue, giant old second-growth firs and pines shading with
violet. Then after nine hours in the static, robot light of the grocery
store, I drove back home, an exhalation, quaffing a giant plate of
cheap macaroni and cheese, snow on the deck softly glittering like
little stars in dusk's twilight, and me, paradoxically fearing and
pining for the following obsidian morning when I'd once again be
rolling on that lonely mountain road in my own ancient sliver of time.