No, not a mouse. But the lizards are timid too. They do not want to engage and they leave very quickly. These one is fairly large, a foot long, so she posed for a photograph. Let’s crop it.
The next one is going for camouflage and is really quite brilliant at it. I like the tiny blue dots.
I also catch sight of small things scurrying out of my path hiking. Also lizards, 3 or 4 cm long, and very fast.
Today I go back to the first clinic I worked at here. I am feeling mildly timid myself. Stage fright? I can’t sing a song that I know, because I don’t choose the patients. They show up.
I took these photographs on the Palisade loop trial, in July. The lizards like it.
The sky in Grand Junction is so open and big. And it is dyed amazing colors by the rising or setting sun. This is unretouched and right off my phone. Sometimes I don’t believe the colors.
Sunday I drove up to Grand Mesa, over 10,000 feet. Wow. The aspens gold and the evergreens green and the perfume of the clear air. The high temperature was much lower then in Grand Valley. A sign says that Grand Mesa is the world’s largest flat top mountain and there are hundreds of lakes on top.
I chose the word hospice for the Ragtag Daily Prompt today. Last weekend I traveled back to Port Townsend to see my friend who is in hospice. She is doing well, but I wish she had more visitors. She has a brother in Alaska, but has always been a fairly solitary person. Maybe I mind more than she does. She said that I was too far away, but no other complaints.
Last night I went to a dance and danced my socks off. This was a fundraiser for the plane in the photograph and the Commemorative Air Force that flies it and takes care of it. And I can’t credit the photographer, one of the gentlemen of the Commemorative Air Force, many thanks!
Isn’t it a fabulous poster? And a live band in a hanger at the airport, two food trucks, classic car and the plane and dancing.
This map is in the Betty Ford Alpine gardens along with wonderful flowers from along that road. Think of people passing seeds to each other for thousands of years.
I went to the post office Monday. I am in a rental house, and get packages every so often for the previous renter. This time I realized at the post office that one was misdelivered and was to the house next door. Ooops. But the post office said they would redeliver it.
I love snail mail letters. I have colored pens and stickers and stamps. The whole thing makes my inner child very happy. Once I got a letter from my mother-in-law saying that my letters are national treasures! I kept that letter.
I haven’t written myself a letter, but maybe I should. What would I write?
I sent the envelope above out, but it came back. I will be driving home soon and wrote to a friend on the way, but I must have the wrong address. I bought the stamps here. The stamp pads were expensive, though, so I only got two!
The naughtiest postcard I ever sent was to my friend B, when he was living the romantic life of a government tax economist in New Zealand. He had been working for the US government, but went off to work for New Zealand’s government for two years. I felt rather jealous. Uprooting as a physician with a husband and two children to go work in a foreign country seemed a bit insurmountable. There was an awful lot of difficult family drama and illness going on, so that is the real reason that I did not do it.
Anyhow, naughty postcards. I sent B a postcard from Georgetown. It is black and white, a man lying prone looking up. A sheep is standing over him, so that no naughty bits can be seen, but one certainly suspects that the man is nude. He and the sheep are looking at each other. The caption is “No more sheepless nights.” Eeeeee. I bought two of that one, because it made me laugh.
B sent a letter back, along the lines of, “Cut it out, you are getting me in trouble with the postman.” I desisted. I did not have any more postcards like that one.
I have bought and kept blank cards and postcards over the years. Good thing, too, now that cards are a whopping $4.00 to $7.00 each. People must buy them, right? I have picked up blanks at garage sales too, once in a while. And the ones I don’t like can go out in the Little Free Library for other people.
I plan to make a calendar and maybe some postcards of Elwha’s cat art. He did it more than Sol Duc does. The photograph is one of the designs, from February 2023. I did see both of them adding to it. Perhaps there was some sibling rivalry going on, I don’t know. This installation is quite complex, with two toy mice, the earbuds, one of those glittery balls tucked under a mouse and the toy made of pipe cleaners.
It is time to visit. It has been long enough and it is time.
He is in a dungeon. I have to go down flight after flight of stairs. It gets colder and damper and there is mold growing on the walls and puddles. Light comes with me.
I can hear him one flight above finding him. He’s having a tantrum and hitting something.
I find the door in the dungeon. It is thick and moldy damp wood with bars in the window and a huge lock. It is also open. My friend is screaming at the ceiling and hitting the ceiling and walls with a yard long heavy pipe. It clangs and I feel a tremor when he hits metal. There is no window, we are too far underground.
I lean on the doorway. “If you go deeper in to the earth, it will be warm and dry.”
He turns with the pipe held like a bat. He is huge and muscular and dressed in rags and very threatening. The room is mostly dark. He sheds a faint light. He glares at me and then lowers the pipe. He shrinks to his child self, like me. About age three.
“You are awfully cute at three.” I say.
He drops the pipe and lets me come hug him. The cell smells truly awful. There is a drain in the floor that appears to be working, sort of. There is a visible liquid level below the drain.
He is still while I hug him and then relaxes. “Ok,” he says. Silence for a minute. “I didn’t really think you’d come back.”
“Friends forever, right? That’s what you said.”
“Yeah, but,” he hesitates. “You were mad.”
My turn to shrug. “Yes. I got over it.”
“Took you long enough.”
My eyebrows go up. “You could have made the first move.” Now he shrugs.
“How about a picnic?” I say. “This is icky. Let’s get out of here.”
He looks at the ceiling. The stone is scratched and chipped. “Yeah. No progress here. Might as well.”
We leave the cell and go up. “Damn stairs.” I say.
“Your lungs are good.” he says.
“Most people’s lungs are pretty good at three.” I say.
“You are pretty cute at three too.”
“Thanks.” I get tired of the stairs and transport us to a meadow in my garden. It is summer and full of wildflowers. It is on a sloped hill with an enormous willow tree. “This is from when I was 7, really.” I say.
“Nice.” he says.
I have a picnic basket and get food out. We don’t really need to eat but it’s fun anyhow. We can taste food, a bit. His keeps turning black on his plate.
“Cut that out.”
A shrug again. “I like bugs now.”
“Did you at three?”
“Naw, but I ate them if I was hungry. Ants are not good. Grasshoppers are better.”
“Are you making any progress at all?”
He leans back on the hill, about as relaxed as he gets. Still hyper alert to everything around us. “No, and I don’t think I will. He’s 69 now. Getting older.”
“Well, he’s expecting to die of a stroke at 80.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty much too late. There is too much to process. And wine and pot do not help.”
“Using more?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s talk about something more fun. Politics or taxes or something.”
He laughs.
We talk about cabbages and kings. Why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings. The sun moves like the real sun.
He is starting to fidget.
“Time?” I say.
“Yeah. You know, it’s not fair that they need us even if they won’t listen.”
“Seems like it.”
He glances at me and away. “Yours listens.”
“You’ve seen the results of that.”
He looks down. “Is she happy?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes sad, sometimes lonely, sometimes impatient. You know, all of it.”
He nods. We start packing up and we trek back to the dungeon and the endless stairs. We have gone down two flights when the landscape shifts. A forest, dark and huge trees and overcast. Damp and cool. He is morphing. “Oh!” he says, “Asleep again! And it’s 4 pm. Must be tv. And wine.” There is a small clearing in sight with a shack. It looks run down, no vehicles. My friend has morphed and split. He is a huge bear with red eyes. And an older man who smells of alcohol and reaches into his shirt for a handgun.
“Really?” I say to the man with the gun.
“They are his memories,” growls the bear. “I have to go.”
“Well, the bear isn’t. Goodbye and good luck.” I say, patting a furry leg. “I will come back.” But he is not paying attention any more, he is focused on the shack.
I go home and he goes to try again. Wake up, my friend, wake up.
This morning is quiet, quiet and Sol Duc and I took a late walk for us. We could hear bugs and a train, across the valley. We went over to the fence where the farm starts. Barbed wire and an electrified fence, so we did not trespass. Sol Duc is wearing red, but get her in the weeds and she’s darn difficult to see.
Discover and re-discover Mexico’s cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - Flüchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflüchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
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