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Last night we had dinner with a man who refused anesthesia and simply left his body for a surgical procedure down in Albuquerque. (“He’s from Taos, it’s all right.”) This morning there was a peacock in our driveway eating birdseed.

It should not surprise you that another story from last night involved a barking bear. Our friend was cutting piñon in the wilderness and heard the sound. (Bears do make a noise like that, I’ve heard them, too.) Tracing the barks, he spotted the bear at the edge of a clearing in the forest, whereupon the animal turned and vanished through a tangled wall of trees. The man followed and discovered an old miner’s cabin with a long-abandoned claim nearby. Lying about were chunks of gold and silver ore too poor to haul away on the miner’s last trip out, when gold was close to twenty bucks an ounce. At the time of this find, the recoverable gold in those rocks was worth considerably more—current price, $1,167/oz—leaving our host very grateful to that bear.

The energy of the evening surely carried over to our morning peacock. When first observed, he was ten feet from the front door, about as close as the big black bull had been to the back door just the other day. Some time later, we were still reeling from the peacock sighting when a herd of sheep and goats went running past the top of the driveway, bells a-ringing. A moment later came a man on a horse with several sheep dogs, and twenty seconds after that, the whole procession trotted past the other way!

When we drove into town a short time later, we found the herder standing in the road around the bend a hundred yards away. The sheep and goats were grazing in the uncut grass beside the acequia, the horse was chomping flowers in the ditch, and the dogs were running back and forth the way they do, as proud as hell and fully manifested, all this taking place in what would be the neighbors’ own front yards, if such a thing existed, as bizarre a Fellini circus as I’ve ever seen along the dusty little road that no one owns. What do I want to find, the question is, and why have I not thought it?

The engine obviously works.

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I was so busy (apparently) on our recent trip to eastern Iowa that I never had a chance to post anything while we were there. No biggie, it was mostly family—eat, visit, and nap, you know?—and live in clean rooms with real closets and such. I only went crazy a couple of times. Oh yeah, my brother died, and it was humid, with a wild storm one morning when the city blew sirens.

But one afternoon two sisters and a sister-in-law went walking along the Mississippi, and of course I came, too. The river defines Dubuque for me. If I lived there, I’d be a river rat—exploring by boat and on foot, dragging odd artifacts back to the house. Fish, snakes, turtles, and birds. White pelicans, herons, and eagles, no less. Giant trees! Also quicksand, swatting bugs, and getting lost. Being swept away to hell or worse, Missouri, when I hit a snag and lost a prop.

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The sharp, loud scream from my wife in the kitchen startled me out of a delicious slumber at 7:00 a.m. “Are you all right?” I yelled, staggering out of bed. (Cue visions of sharp knives, rattlesnakes, dead cats, and blood…) She was, fortunately, but something huge had just walked past the window: this guy!

I couldn’t believe it. Not again! (See here.) I was naked this time, too, just like fourteen years ago in San Cristobal. The big black bull had come around the house and was now standing in the back yard eating flowers. “Shoo!” I yelled. Nothing. He just stood there looking at me through the screen door to the bedroom. Bulls generally don’t react to “shoo,” of course. Then I had the good sense to call for my camera.

Believe me, the photo doesn’t do him justice

“Where is it?” she said.

“On my desk! Near the desk! I don’t know, just find it!”

She did. After snapping a few choice photos, I tried to chase him away again. “Shoo! Git! Go home!” But nothing worked. Finally I opened the door, still in my birthday suit, and yelled again. The sight was too much for him, apparently, and this time he took his leave—slowly, I might add. I wonder what might have happened if he’d charged me, though? Would there now be a full-grown bull wedged into the doorway, or better yet, inside the house?

This simply cannot happen twice, and yet it has. (Here’s that earlier post again.) Both times early in the morning in New Mexico and me naked with a camera. I mean, come on. I emailed a photo to a friend in Maryland. She said, “Egads! What kind of spirit animal is that?!!!!”

“A big one,” I replied.

The Force is with me, obviously. The gods are beating me over the head with hints. “Just write!” my wife says, but what the hell? Nothing ever happens around here. I sure wish it did.

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Before I’d even passed the Iowa state trooper on the shoulder, I could see his wheels begin to roll. We’d barely started out from Osceola early under a wet gray sky and I was doomed.

The road was wide, smooth, and empty. Apparently I’d flown over the crest of a hill at seventy miles per hour, because who wouldn’t and I’m the king. There were six hundred fifty miles to go. I hadn’t set the cruise control at my customary five-to-seven over the limit because we still didn’t know what it was. The dearth of signage we’d noticed while driving across the state was maddening. But on a two-lane highway that could handle four cars doing ninety, I figured that meant sixty or sixty-five and I was safe—patrolmen in northern New Mexico wouldn’t blink at ten miles over, right?

Speaking rapidly and memorized, the fine young man instructed me that there was in fact a sign just outside of Osceola five miles back and that the speed limit on all two-lane roads in Iowa was fifty-five. (The reason why there weren’t more signs: everybody simply knew.) With something of a robot parson’s zeal, he went on, stabbing the relevant entries on the citation with a gloved forefinger. He’d given me a break, he said, writing up my speed at sixty-two instead of the captured seventy-one, which meant the fine was only $114 instead of $200. Oh boy! I could pay at the courthouse. I could mail it in. I could pay online. I could trade a six-pack of hogs. What struck me, though, was that rather than acknowledging the extreme variety of two-lane roads and setting speed limits to match, the legislature in Des Moines had decided long ago that no one would go faster than the slowest of our number—think old pickups on a county road—because you really shouldn’t anyway, and aren’t you sorry that you did?

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