The Weekend That Was, fragment

Thursday, Apr. 8, 2004 -
Ap�sl�min ida corbalanyrtne 'ls�o rohl'daathi�m v� nen�a iroyss�rd.

We were going away for the weekend, but we didn't. But then we did, on the day after.

The winter rains have put water in the creek. From a distance, the running water sounds like the buzzing of bees, but as you approach, the sound soon grows into the hoarse, gravel-throated utterances of this fugitive stream in its rocky bed�although "bed" is entirely the wrong word for the narrow stone-strewn ravine which forces the stream into its torturous path. The water is half-hidden by huge tumbled boulders that are so ruggedly picturesque one suspects they were trucked in, but no truck, not even the nimblest off-road vehicle, not even a dirt bike, could scramble down the 70� incline of these canyon walls. The massive rocks are evidence of floods that happened long before living memory, unless the stones themselves live and remember. The canyon trail, which switches back and forth through the broken shade of oak and sycamore glades, is thick with the all the earthly scents of a living planet. It is not an arduous climb�going down is trickier and harder on the muscles than coming up�but the path is thickly choked with the winter's load of leathery sycamore leaves, hand-sized, hand-shaped, and you take some care placing your feet, not altogether certain of the footing underneath. And of course, like all wanderers through California's woodlands, you are habitually alert to the ubiquitous menace of poison oak, although I wonder if it's too early in the season to worry.

This is the Fiend's creek, or the part of it he owns with his father and brothers. They own a few hills of California's Central Coast; the ocean is 'bout ten miles away. The Fiend has shown me a trail that will take you to the beach, if you're in the mood for a real carb-burner of a hike.

I am writing this in my faithful B&P journal (Miniature Account Book No. 667), scratching down the essential bones of my thoughts, to be fleshed into legibility later. The spine of the journal is cracked and loose, the green cloth is rubbed white over the edges of the cover boards, but it's holding up well after two years of use, especially when considering it was already a relic when it came into my hands. (A blessing upon you, Richard Lupinetti, wherever you are.) I am sitting on the Shoe Bench, which is an outcropping of stone that, from one side, bears a faint resemblance to the old-fashioned footwear with which Al Capp shod the denizens of Dogpatch, a kind of hillbilly hobnailed boot. From the other sides, it looks like a bunch of big rocks. Along the side that overlooks the creek 30 feet below, there's a piece of the stone that looks like a bench and functions as such. The bench is half in shade, half in sun, and I'm sitting on the shady part, with leaf-bound sunlight all around. Bright sunlight reflecting from the shiny leaf-tops of the young trees growing below; diffused sunlight coruscating overhead through the dappled canopy upheld by venerable monsters. White and dark gnarled arabesques of trunks and limbs, moss-splotched gray and moss-painted green. And always the joyful attentiveness of the black flies, so happy to have found a friend.

<~>
Ap�sl�min ida corbalan� 'lse nesgla ugar�-cham sa cru ogrulho bat�oltha al�mv�sde.

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