These are the days

Japanese Enso.  Fairly well represents my view from the seat of the car, although the circle became nearly all black by the end.  Read on...
 

Hip surgery last Tuesday.  Unreliable narrator.

My wife and I leave surgery at 4pm.  We head to the Bengal Smiths and park in the shade.  She goes in to grab some 'key' items from the grocery and pharmacy; I do a couple short laps with crutches on the sidewalk.  Hot outside. I open the car door and sit down in the passenger seat, legs out on the curb.  She returns just as I lose consciousness.  *** Later, as I became more oriented in the ER, I say, This is not the hospital I started in.  

(Note to self: next time, follow the pre and post-op instructions and go all-in on hydration  and electrolytes. Maybe pass on the laps in the parking lot under the Godforsaken sun.)All’s well.


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But a couple notes from this summer - 

My friend Ricardo these days Bends the Marble.  I had no idea what he could do with that infinite whiteness, that infinite possibility.  They call it Colorado Yule or Calacatta Lincoln.  The name doesn’t matter much, but the fact that he can bend - picture it - bend that marble to his will, to his mind is something.  Ricardo, though, reminds me that the marble won't agree to anything without its consent.  Or something like that.  

Though fit as ever, Ricardo’s getting older.  But what gave me pause was his mention of the excavator out in Castle Valley.  He’s had this property out there forever (as a longtime Moab local), with an unruly garden of sage and rabbitbrush, a few Utah junipers.  But he said to me, It’s now or never, man.  

Blichfeldt photo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Late spring we floated into the Labyrinth.  I’ve always managed to come out the other side.  This time Duba accompanied us Down the River.  He’s in his late 60s; a desert elf.  Bluest of blue eyes.  Knows every set of Moki steps on the Plateau.  The same bleached and sun-faded khaki pants and button down river shirt that he wore in my memory.    Leather belt with leather holster to hold his channel lock pliers.

The channel locks were for the fire. Duba endlessly kept and attended to the fires each morning, each evening.  The 12” cast iron dutch oven bubbling with peach cobbler or cornbread.  Always the fire. Finding the right type and size of wood.  

Toward the end of the trip, exhausted, I went over to Duba in the early evening.  He was bent to his craft and so he couldn’t see the twinkle in my eyes.  

Duba, all that attention to the cast iron.  The fire.  It takes too long.  It’s too much work.  

Duba slowly puts his pliers back into their sheath and stands up.   

Exactly.

These are the days.