Buffalo Lights

What a scene: wind-driven snow, brilliant sunshine, clouds and sky now allowing a view across the open spaces, and in the middle of the snowy pasture, the big black beasts snuffling around ignoring it all. A few minutes later the clouds closed in again around the setting sun, the snow tapered off, and I was standing there watching one lone vaca negra about a hundred feet away in the adjacent pasture, looking solid and alert in the deepening gloom.

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What, me appreciate?
This probably doesn’t mean anything, but I just learned that there are eight copies of my book, BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico, for sale right now on eBay. One listing is $22.59 plus $3.49 shipping for a “new” copy. There’s a used one for sale for almost that much. But why do [...]

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As we left the adobe cottage and headed off for a sunset walk, I glanced back at the smoke coming out the metal chimney. There was only a little, but it was distinctly dark, almost black, with a rather unpleasant industrial smell. I stopped and considered the situation. “What’s wrong?” she asked, coming back towards me, boots squeaking on the icy snow.

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Suddenly the brilliant unconscious reasoning behind waiting until the last minute to start packing was revealed. Of course!! I had to fail at packing in order to leave my burdens behind. If I had started a month ago like the moving company’s brochures urged, I’d have had twice as much junk to deal with on the other end. I wasn’t a fool, I was a fucking genius!

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We’d returned from New Mexico to Maryland to finish the packing postponed from earlier in the summer, but my mind and body just weren’t with the program. After weeks in totally new and often strange surroundings, finally getting adjusted and starting to settle in, to drive two thousand miles all the way back to a place I had shut out of my mind was more than a little unsettling. After we got there, I felt I was losing my mind.

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After I’d used a sturdy long-handled shovel to cut and lift away the sod and uncover the lid, I put the shovel back in the garage and went inside to clean up. But coming through the back door into the kitchen, I had a singular experience: I felt taller, properly aligned and proportioned. I felt good. There was a bright blue light coursing through my neck, shoulders, and upper arms. My God, my shoulders were high!

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They were getting ready to move, or trying to, as the days flew by in a headlong rush. He was planning on the fly as they tumbled toward the inevitable, but every day brought more questions he couldn’t answer.

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The eagle-like bird-thing flapped and thrashed with all its might — I knew what it wanted: WEST!

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Over the years I had witnessed some doozies, all right. There was the amazing dream I had in the woods in Arkansas years ago. In that one I was in a huge, gleaming city with tall buildings surrounding an open plaza…

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Saturday was supposed to be a big day for showing the house, and it was truly bloody hot. I walked to the back door and put my nose to the screen, peering out at the white sky and greenish-brown grass. Twenty-two straight days of 90 degrees or more on top of a 20-inch rainfall deficit for the past 12 months had worked their evil magic on what had once been a perfect Maryland backyard. Instead of a cool, spongy, dark green carpet of grass, there was a stubbly, prickly scattering of semi-green stems and dried-up leaves…

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