The eagle-like bird-thing flapped and thrashed with all its might — I knew what it wanted: WEST!
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BUFFALO LIGHTS: Free Chapters from the Book!
Part of the original Digital Potlatch, these sequentially republished chapters from my book about moving to New Mexico take you quite a way into the story. (Because these category pages list the latest entries first, however, you’ll have to work your way back via the “Previous Entries” link at the bottom to start at the beginning.)
BUFFALO LIGHTS is available in all digital formats and in paperback. Just visit the “More JHF Links” sites or check out the sidebar for more info. In the meantime, enjoy! – JHF
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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They’re everywhere, I thought. A road not taken, a treasure missed. The realization was maddening, too, as I walked to the beach a mile and half away. A wide concrete jetty extended fifty yards or so out into the bay, and I walked all the way down to the guano-dappled end to behold a grand view: the upper Chesapeake Bay stretched out before me, and in the crisp clean air I could clearly see the forested bluffs on the distant shore. A steady west wind aroused my dormant sailing instincts, and I noted that there were no ships in sight — if I’d been on the water, I would have had the whole scene completely to myself…
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When we returned from our errands that afternoon, and pulled up to the garage out here in our country paradise, with all the birdies singing and fighting and the sun shining down on the fresh green jungle, I knew a certain singular moment had come: Time to Cut the Grass! Yes, the first grass cutting of every year is a kind of religious ceremony. (By July it will be a hot, stinking, deerfly-swatting chore, but for now it has special significance.) I must approach the task in just the right frame of mind and only after going through all the required exercises, the first of which is, of course, Raising the Deere from the Dead…
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For me, nature has always been key. All my life I’ve been pulled, guided, and enthralled by nature. When I was a boy it was a mud puddle that lasted long enough to grow tadpoles, or better yet (and most incredibly) a pond, seething with life and brimming with mystery, or woods with trees to climb and look out from. The main thing was to get away from the houses and the people and find the other things — animals, plants, secret shrines of nature — things I could only see if I went “exploring,” as I called it…
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We were driving home after dark from Taos to San Cristobal the way we usually did, past the Indian lands to the east. As we neared the place where Kathy liked to spot the pueblo’s dark brown buffalo herd at the foot of the mountain, she stared into the deepening gloom and mused, “They sure would be easier to see if they’d put lights on them…”
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