Black Friday. Snow falls gently down through the last soft gray light of day; a band of wild turkey make their way across the front field, the oak and maple along the canyon slope a smudged gray in front of the softer gray cedar ridge across the canyon. It's a nice, quiet end to a vibrant Thanksgiving.
Wednesday, I received a call at work from Marci saying Thanksgiving was being moved from Dry Creek to St. George. I wasn't happy. Neither was she. We'd put a lot of work into getting ready to host it here. On top of that, I simply didn't want to go anywhere, especially somewhere with more than 10,000 people. I seldom do. I've achieved my desire in life--to sit in a recliner, look out the window, and watch bands of turkey move slowly across the field, pecking at the slender blades of bent wild rye poking through.
I thought of our past Thanksgivings here. I like moving around the circumference of the action, going out to old pig shed to get fire wood, or over to the trailer to get food from the extra fridge. I like placing sparking cider bottles in the snow bank on the north side of the house, as well as the regular chores of feeding the chickens and taking the trash out.
Because of health reasons, it's been a while since I could enjoy such things, but I'm feeling quite a bit better now. I could do some of that again, and no matter how much or how little I could do, the cedar ridge, field and wild turkey would be here. Everything I'm thankful for is here. I love this land on the edge of an insignificant town on the edge of a great western valley.
I remembered a couple of our Black Fridays. Once we went to a bird refuge just west of here (which I'll leave anonymous to protect it's anonymity); another time we went out to some lava cliffs (which again I won't name) and the boys did some repelling off a long, black wall of basalt.
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| Black Friday in our valley |
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| My brother, Lloyd, on one Black Friday outing |
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| Various family members on the same outing, including Tyler, standing on 1 hand |
I love the alkali flats, the small dunes, the lava escarpment, the ancient volcano, the distant horizon, the great expanse of deep blue sky.
Who wants shopping malls, deals, and a hazy brown horizon?
So, I found myself filling up the car on a cold, windy Wednesday to head to someplace I deplore--the city--for Thanksgiving.
The only good thing was that I'd be headed down a vacant, desert highway for two hours before I'd run into anything that resembles modern civilization.
I put George Harrison's All Things Must Past in the CD player, hoping I'd find the brighter side of whatever bad Karma I was justly or unjustly receiving.
Headed down the highway, a straight and narrow rail line on the left, some small rubble mountains on the right, I thought of a southwest Texas Thanksgiving trip long ago.
It was midway down my decent into the death valley of my life, but like with most memories, time has a way of shining its golden light, and so it wasn't at all an unpleasant journey.
I remembered the high golden valley of Marfa in the late afternoon, shadows from the tree yucca long and dramatic. I remembered pulling into Terlingua after sundown, a slight glow of turquoise over the rubble hills behind it. I found a cold motel room with no TV that costed way more than I thought it should.
That lonely Thanksgiving I was searching for escape, for better times. There was a different Terlingua, one where I sat across the table from a beautiful college girl from Germany. We spent hours in a clean, white-walled cafe, drinking Blue Sky soda as we stared out the window at the rubble ghost town and rubble hills. Patsy Cline played on some CD player or tape deck somewhere back in the kitchen. I was in heaven.
I had come back in search of traces of that same magic. Instead I found a cold room with nothing to do.
Thanksgiving Day was damp and overcast. I headed into Big Bend National Park with the goal of getting to Boquillas, Mexico, in a vein attempt to resurrect another mirage.
The first Boquillas was pure magic. Karin and I had arrived one hot spring day--which in southwest Texas, can be extremely hot. It was Spring Break, and the only camping was in the overflow area of Rio Grande Village. We'd set up camp and gone off into the desert--I don't remember where. While we were gone, a thunderstorm had moved in and dumped on our tent. As it was hot and dry when we left, I hadn't put on the rain fly. When we came back, we found soaked sleeping bags.
I remember sitting that evening on a high, chalky stone ridge watching silver ripples on the Rio Grande as we waited for the sleeping bags to dry in the laundry mat back at the campground. Sprinkles of rain continued, golden darts of piercing cold in the last light of day. I was in heaven, rubbing wet splashes into the smooth skin of Karen's bare legs.
The next day we took a canoe across the river to Boquillas, Mexico, and spent the day eating tacos, drinking Coke from nicked-up bottles, kissing each other randomly, frequently, and playing with the village children. Apparently, I'm not the only one to experience such a thing, for Robert Earl Keen captured a day in Boquillas much like mine perfectly. I was young, in love, and away from the city, in God's country. What could be better?
I found the second Boquillas under a dark, brooding sky on a winter's day. The wind howled across the small, stony mesa above the Rio Grande. The river was choppy and gray below. Only I and the goats walked the gavel streets. The kids were inside the small adobe huts with smoke coming out of the small, metal-piped stacks. I saw one boy in a blue-framed doorway leering out with dark brooding eyes. And then his mother called him, the door was shut, and I was left outside, pelted by small bits of sleet. I found my way to the bar and joined a few drunks inside. A wrinkled old gringo couple who looked like they hadn't bathed in months played guitar and sang "Mind Your Own Business." By now, I'd moved on from Coca-Cola and spent the day drinking shots of tequila while hating the lonely, miserable person I'd become.
The musicians were good. Good and drunk. So was I. And they were scuzzy, victims of a gringo honeymoon gone wrong. Two sad old people that couldn't get out of the rut of youth, couldn't leave those glory days behind, stuck here, living that special day over and over again, until everything yellowed, decayed and stank. To grow up here, now that would be grand. But, to get shipwrecked here--what a sad, sad song. I drank myself sober and headed home, realizing no matter how low I sank I could never sink low enough to try living a honeymoon forever. Whatever reality I had to live, I'd live it. The past was gone.
But, you know memory is a funny thing. With time, both versions of Boquillas del Carmen became equally beautiful. As I drove down a similar, gray highway towards another Thanksgiving, the bleeding of past and present mingled to create some sort of strange joy.
By the time I pulled up to the house in St. George, I was feeling fairly good. I had a strange yearning to go to a bookstore. Perhaps it was because of all the hours Marci and I had logged at Bookman's in Flagstaff, many during the holiday season. Perhaps it's because I realized I do have a happily-ever-after story, and unlike that couple in Boquillas, I don't have to remain drunk to keep it alive.
As for Marci and I, our honeymoon ended the day we returned from our trip to Monterrey and Big Sur and had to get back to raising two boys and completing school. But the beautiful reality continues on, whether here at Dry Creek or in some stinking city.
We went to Barnes & Nobel where I bought a leather-bound collection of five novels by Charles Dickens to replace my copy of Tale of Two Cities, which my son Rio gave away to a girl he'd helped recover from a suicide attempt. Someday his memories of that gift will mingle with his present and add meaning to whatever drive he is on.
After Barnes and Nobel, Marci and I went to the DI (Deseret Industries) where she picked up 10 books for 10 dollars. It wasn't quite the same as going to Bookman's in Flagstaff, but close enough to jump-start a great Thanksgiving with the family.
And the road goes on.
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| Marci walks with fresh cut flowers at Dry Creek in the early fall |
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