The Days

Quickly counting down to the start of The Season. We hadn't seen anybody for a week or so and then three vehicles not connected pulled up within five minutes of each other for bathroom, directions, and or to look at rooms. Same thing happened the next day.

Jax and I hike every day for about an hour and we're getting back into it. He's healing and getting a little crazier each day. It snows most evenings and melts in the afternoons, way more on south facing slopes than north facing. Not hard to look at pictures and tell which is which.

In the mornings the first thing I hear are the ravens talking to each other and shortly after the arrival of the ravens the songbirds know there won't be any hawks and they break out into song. The warmth is coming, the forecast changing, just a few more days, the songbirds will be looking for mates, and every one, all the little people will be doing the same. The ringtails, foxes, raccoons, skunks, and by late spring there will be babies everywhere. The big horn and mule deer made the selections back in the fall and in a few months they'll be more of them. I'm ready. I miss them. I see a few each evening but it's cold and nobody hangs around long. It's hot dogs and Kit&Kaboodle and then they're off. I don't take it personal. When it's not snowing at night the stars and planets are brighter than ever.

When we start to hike Jax always takes a drop, facing north, smells a few things. comes over to me and puts his paws up on my waist and licks my hand to thank me for the walk, then we're off. Use to be that somewhere soon into the walk happiness would overwhelm him and it was like he found crack. Suddenly he'd take off running, doing circles, zig zags, and then jumps into the air. Since the injury that hasn't happened. A few days ago he just couldn't help it. Shortly after his 30 seconds of crazy he was limping again.

Whenever Jax and I hike out to the Base Camp sign there are ten or so ravens gathered around the dead cow and one Golden Eagle walking around it while all the ravens are talking. It's like somebody was killed in a gun fight in the old days and while the Marshal is out checking the body in the middle of the street all the townspeople are gathered around murmuring. I can hear them talking and then when Jax and I come up out of the driveway by the sign they all quit like we shouldn't know the secret. I don't speak Raven.....maybe. I don't want to say for sure in case they're reading the blog.

Jax and I walked over to Last Hurrah garage today in the wind and flurries to turn the generator on. Only a few more weeks before Donn, the solar guy gets here and I'm dumping another $25,000 into solar next door. Donn's dad Ken was the solar guy before he passed a few years ago. At the memorial I heard one of the funniest stories ever. Ken drank a bit, ok, all the time. He use to go down the river before there were rules. Was hard to find anybody that wanted to go with him. He went hundreds of times. On one journey down he had a few guests with him and two BLM Rangers. He never really got drunk but the glaze never left his eyes either. While camped on shore having lunch a rattle snake came into the pit area. Ken ask if anyone wanted to learn how to catch a rattle snake and everyone agreed they did not. Ken said "Ok, I'll show you." Ken went around behind the snake and then ran in to snatch it by the neck but it felt the vibration of Ken's weight on the ground running and turned at the moment Ken reached down to grab it and bit him good.

The BLM Rangers were mortified. One of them, a bit hurried said "We've got to figure out how to get Ken to a hospital." One of the guests who knew him best and was telling the story said "Ken will be fine. We've got to figure out how to get the rattle snake to a Betty Ford clinic."

Walking back from Last Hurrah today we walked by what is my favorite basket on the new course set up in a gap in the rocks and my favorite tee box right after that which comes out of Hull's old place.

I don't see Michelle much. She wakes in the mornings and it's not long until I hear her Jeep leaving. She's off wandering around the property looking for a project. Something that isn't quite right that needs to be moved. Something broken, lying about, abandoned, not cared for, that needs to be fixed and have it's own space. Sometimes two things that are broken and can become whole again by being together. She'll find a can with no label on it, half filled with something, put a brush into it, and start to spread the liquid on her new project. When the can is empty she'll say "What do you think was in it?" I'll say "I don't know." She'll say "It looks better where it is now." She's right.

Over the next few days the new book, chair, shelf, table, lamp, picture, or things that I don't know what they were when she found them and now know even less about them since she's fused them and liquified them with something, I'll find at a location, then a few days later a different location, sometimes a third, and occasionally a fourth. Then one day it doesn't move anymore. It has a place and it is home.

She seems happy.

Michelle sent me a picture a couple days ago of when she first got Jax and then another one not long after he moved out here and went from designer dog to desert dog. I hardly see the difference.