johnsonboy

My motives were complicated, yet simple. It was a question of needing to be somewhere else, although noplace specific. And I more or less had to end up in Lemmon Valley yesterday, to check in with my brother.
What can I tell you about it? I saw mountains and valleys, eagles and coyotes, water and snow.
Sometimes a snow flurry scraping over a high mountain valley at midday is so beautiful one simply cannot go on. All one can do is stop. Watch the eagle manipulating the draft. All the weather is wide open and raw.
Beckwourth Pass, the lowest-elevation summit in the Sierra Nevada range, is cold but not uncomfortable. A bird sings on the rock pile where the local kids race their machines, digging scars into the earth which will remain a part of the archaeolgocal record.
The freight train shuffles over yawning space.
The hamburger joint halfway down the hill takes a full twenty minutes to prepare the burger, warning me as if they expect a complaint. Just cook it good, I'm thinking, there's no hurry.
A man comes into the place asking about opening day of trout season, drives away, into the national forest in his sagging Ford Courier with a camper shell. He looks like he lives in the old truck. He looks like he doesn't give a shit.
The other guy comes in to buy a six of Bud. He declines the offer of a shopping bag, claiming it would just make a mess. The cashier tells him he could put his empties in it but he claims he already has something to put them in.
Obviously he puts the empties in his sordid kitchen next to the can opener. He gives the impression of someone who has given up, and just wants to stay slightly drunk as much of the time as possible.

My brother thinks he might be offered the job of manager for the power plant he works at.
We drink grappa, and make a bunch of videos of each other standing in the desert firing assault weapons two at a time. It's actually kind of impressive.
Firing two assault weapons at the same time is like being married to someone a little more dangerous than you had bargained for. In all the pictures, I am walking backward from the recoil, dust and empty shells flying, the remarkably brave and energetic dog, Milford, running around in front of the guns.
It was an effervescent and cathartic moment.
We saw the antelope about a half-mile away over the blue sage. I spotted the buck by his profile as he stood on a ridge.
Antelope appear pale, and they move in the distance, running, but it's more like flowing because it's so far away movement is interpreted by the eye as liquid.
An golden eagle sailes a few feet over the sage, beating its wings slowly. Golden eagles are the largest birds in North America, as far as I know, with the exception of the few Condors still alive.
It's an impressive thing to see a bird that big flying with purpose and precision. You sort of envy their power and independence.
My brother and I are always trying to get to know each other, forgiving the years of silence while we have each tried to make a way.
If he gets the management job he'll be making great money but have to move. Hel'l also have to deal with office politics, something I know a little about but that would be new to him.
He's a no-shit guy, does what he says he will, and doesn't claim to be able to do something he can't do.

Grappa is a powerful substance, a distillation of leavings.
Don't trifle with it.