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I caught Her again after
thwarting Death several times up all alone in the lonely Warner
Mountains wilderness. On the wild bleak east side of the mighty range
that marches up the east side of the nonsense state of California,
endless open expanse of dry salty lake beds and stunted little fragrant
junipers and piles of jagged lava and volcano volleys from turbulent
times that rumbled years ago. Smoke from wildfires searing the Sierra
and southern Cascades had seeped into the vast emptiness where I caught
Her, imitating mist, rising our relationship to mysticism. She was
riding high and free in an old Toyota Four Runner, dull black tough
rims, bumper a little crumpled, weathered aqua-blue paint seasoned with
rain and snow and dirt and wildness. Her long golden mantle soared out
Her window, like the banners of Muir's favorite peaks, once again. I
didn't want to lose Her, so I kept close in my old wagon, and we
hopscotched a few times when either She slowed, absorbed in evening
something, or I slowed, absorbed in evening something. Have to think we
were absorbing into similar impressions, feelings, somehow attaining
union in the netherspace of sixth sense.
Then I lost Her, again. Spacetime
determined that I had to veer west to return to my little house in the
bland, damned, stifling squalor of suburban Davis. But She, Bukowski's
dream, She veered south, remaining in that limitless, bleak, wild
expanse where the energies of mind, of love, can expand unencumbered,
without interference, the beautiful yellow sun streaming out Her window
like the sunlight of Heaven, wild and free. At least I got to see Her
again.