This one’s from yesterday. I was falling apart from the cold and snow and how we couldn’t get the car out—or was that this morning? All the days begin to feel the same in single digits! But when I walked out to scrape the windshield, something shifted. The frozen powder snow fell off the windows when I touched it. Ten degrees with no wind in the sun at seven thousand feet was almost comfy and glory lay all around. I just give up, you know? I just give up.
Almost a foot deep where I’m standing
An old familiar view, freshly photographed. “Old Taos” means mice, spiders, leaks, and dust. No closets. Bad septic. Impossible to clean. On the other hand, not normal.
Northwest corner
Be hold, the dead landlord’s apartment. Relatives took the good stuff seven years ago. Yes, he’s been dead that long. I have a key and permission. His niece gave me everything that’s left. All this. The upended coffee table keeps the bathroom door shut. The shelves and sink in there are black with mouse shit. Do not tarry long.
Morning light on New Year’s Eve
I remember when it hit me years ago in Maryland. There was nothing I could do. We’d only spent a little time together—a walk on the beach, a drink at the bar—and she invited me for dinner. I sat at the little table in her kitchen while she cooked so we could talk. It felt so right, I didn’t ever want to leave. Radical for the likes of me, especially at that age. There was just something about her. We hadn’t even taken our clothes off yet and wouldn’t for almost a month.
Yesterday I went out hiking for the first time in a couple of weeks. It was sunny and cold, a little below freezing. There was still a lot of snow out on the mesa that days of sun and nights near zero had turned into a crunchy overlay. It was hard going because my feet sank in a little with every step. I’d also just seen that video of Obama with Jerry Seinfeld and knew I’d never be that cool or have that kind of dental work. This was so depressing, I almost turned back right away but stuck it out for three whole miles. The teeth! The confidence! The ease!
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When I came home, I was moody and exhausted and not saying much, but she grabbed me by the shoulders, kissed me hard, and told me how glad she was to see me. Said it several times, in fact, and kissed me again. Her eyes were open wide and full of hot attention. Wake up, you idiot. Happy to see me, think of that, and I hadn’t done a thing to earn it. After thirty-five years of more adventure, melodrama, and uh, difficulty, on my part than most people ever see (much less survive), I get that much juice for simply being me. And sometimes I’m a bastard.
There are forces here no man should trifle with.
Take care, and happy New Year.
Feathers, blood, and physics on the brain at 7,000 feet
Oh no, not the bloody white leghorns again! Too late, alas. The memory of the brutal Arkansas chicken adventure was autoplaying in my brain, triggered by the offer of a flock of fifteen hens—free, of course—from someone in the nearby town of Dixon, New Mexico, as published in an email classifieds newsletter I subscribe to:
Does anyone want a flock of about 15 laying hens with a really mellow yellow rooster? Some White Leghorns, Red Stars, a couple Auracanas, and various other breeds. We’re up in Llano and you’d have to come get them in the evening after they roost (say 4:30 or 5). Free!
He makes it sound so simple: just come and get them after they’ve settled in for the night. Of course, you’ll need some cages—or maybe not, if you leap into the abyss like I did over forty years ago.
The events took place at Yellowhammer Farm, the name we’d given to 170 acres of Ozark hills and woods. There was no farm, of course, nor were there any buildings, and for sure there were no yellowhammers—a kind of woodpecker, apocryphal as far as I was concerned—although there was an awful, rutted, rocky track that Madison County called Yellowhammer Road, which crossed a steep corner of the property. “We” in this instance included Larry, Sue, Sylvia, Jim, Bob, and me, all dropping out to live a life of glorious independence on the land. At least I was, and possibly Jim. The others found the pull of civilization far too strong by the fall of ’71. I lasted until Christmas, when I decamped for Austin with Lady the Wonder Dog and six barfing puppies in the old Ford Fairlane my father had passed on to me after I’d ruined the hot rod engine in my ’63 Volkswagen camper bus—a tale of low-restriction air filtration and fine clay dust almost too sad to tell.
Easter break, ’71: visiting the land before the move
Some day I’ll write the story of the incredible deaf mechanic who built it for me. For that matter, I wish I could fill in the blanks about ’71 and the years that went before for you right now. That much is actually written down already in a half-finished book I started about a dozen years ago, entitled (oddly enough) Yellowhammer Farm. I stopped because it was such a chore to tell the story using pseudonyms the way I thought I had to do, and I came to feel embarrassed for recounting tales of sex and sin that showed me for the shallow whelp I was. It wasn’t bad, though—neither the adventure nor the telling of it. Perhaps the rest are dead now and I could resurrect the project. Publishing some version of the thing would flush survivors out, though, wouldn’t it?
Original animated GIF banner ad to promote the book
For our purposes here, all you really need to know was that by the summer of ’71, six people from Texas in their twenties were living in a motley collection of tents and one hand-built underground home on 170 acres of land they’d bought for fifty dollars an acre about an hour east of Fayetteville and trying their damnedest to make it work. We had a garden, foraged in the woods for wild persimmons, and ate communal vegetarian meals under a canvas awning beside a hand-dug well. There wasn’t any dope because we couldn’t find any. There wasn’t any sex because Sylvia refused and Sue was married. There wasn’t any booze, because, good God, who drank? Nudity was common, however, and we’d all ride down to the river or a nearby creek to bathe. We had no electricity or telephones. Whippoorwills shrieked scarily in the woods at night and wild hogs rooted in the leaves. There were three substantial streams and several waterfalls. It took about an hour to get to town unless we headed for the closer county seat, which we avoided if we could because the locals mostly loathed us. My contribution to the immediate ambience was ordering an Earth flag from the Whole Earth Catalog (where else?) and mounting it on a pole. The nearest fellow humans were several miles away, and that was fine with us.
(Yes, but what about the chickens?)
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