DAY 31: camp fire pastoral

TYLER STATE PARK, CAMP SITE 126 | TYLER, TEXAS | Friday, April 9, 2010 - All trees, forested, here on a low hill shot through with light and shadow, above a lake full of bass. Birds all wound up, calling, singing. Spondees of talk, voices of people unseen, on next knoll over. 43 degrees. Toes frozen, comfy as comfy. Already cooked delicious breakfast. Scrambled eggs with spinach, bodine, grapefruit juice and fresh coffee.

You do have to keep keepin on. Just the way driving, the roads are always linear. They’re necessarily anchored to the ground. No buoys. No float. But the mind continually disengages, unhinges, rises above the road and the car, through the windshield, to configure things, to wrangle a convergence.

Each day you configure again, reconfigure. On the road it is more so. It is naked, stripped down to the tangible, even if almost every sense of meaning, whether momentary – a shape approaching, what is it, a mirage of sky cutting into the road – or more fully realized, approaching meta, approaching narrative closure, comes from the symbolic. Everything is so literal on the road, so corporeal. Remaking home each day in a different place. Filling the tank and emptying the tank. Each car passing begins to take on more significance, amount almost to a transient neighbor. And still, like everything else, gone in a flash. The road is theoretical timeless stasis in unending relentless linear movement. So you have all the grains on the conveyer belt, and nothing else. And you are just driving, looking. And from this we make up this story of a voyage, of transubstantiation. 

Leaving New Orleans, two days ago now, we ran aground on the brutal. One thing after the other. Not until afternoon. The morning was beautiful, easy, walking the streets, sazeracs and pate at napoleon house, the spring breeze blowing through. Café au lait and beignets at Café Du Monde. Easy. Good. Happy. Then rush hour compounded by bridge under construction. Then crap strip mall roads compounded by an accident. Then a campground on the map, not being here on earth. Out of the way, along the flawed path, leading to nothing. The heartache part.  

Related thematic: There was a cyclist, back in the mid-1990s in San Francisco, who was struck by a bus in the early afternoon and killed. I was on the F-Market, a street car, headed home from my first office job, the former lobsterman stuffing envelopes, etc. Word of the fatal accident spread through the street car. I overheard a husky business type, easily, he probably hoped to be heard. He said, “Raw deal. Guy works all morning. Gets hit by a bus. Doesn’t get paid. What a waste.”

I knew the statement had some beauty to it, even if it was flat wrong. And it was this, at least for me: actually better to die in the afternoon, even if you don’t get paid. Because every morning, most workday mornings anyway, we get up full of sturm and drang, everything seems mountainous and unusurpable. To die in a morning would be to die with an unnecessarily elevated heart rate. But by afternoon, most often, things have settled in. We’ve reconfigured the mountain into a low knoll. The lake is in sight. It is only this succession of steps down to water and a swim, in. If you can, die in the afternoon. When the light is softer, when the day has warmed you into taking off all the grandeur we’ve been taught.

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After escaping the traffic of the outer rings of New Orleans, we made it to a Motel 6 outside Lafayette. We were exhausted, not even hungry, but we ordered a pizza anyway, carnal, full with convenient bourgeouis shame.   

Adrienne called her friend Amanda, and I listened to the story of New Orleans. It was all about the traffic. About the heartache. The peace of the late morning, the sazeracs and café au lait, the streets and the early street musicians - this time, the morning was usurped by the travails of the afternoon. The ease had not been enough. I asked why she hadn’t mentioned the good things. The good along with the bad. “Because I’m negative.” Which of course she isn’t. And I didn’t mean to press either. But I wanted to say it out loud, for the record.

She was talking about wanting to go home, to finally again be home. Of course that was then. You try not to make big decisions in low moments. And this morning, we awoke in the tent in the cold in this place so good, in Texas of all places. When we crossed into Texas, on Rt. 79, we expected the earth to go scorched and brown. But just the opposite. It has gone more wildflower, green hills and curving two lane roads, black cows against fields of yellow mustard grass.

We’d had a fire last night. I’d forgotten how good it is to live, however briefly, out of a cooler in the woods. With our strange foodstuffs, what we could find. With our lanterns. Our makeshift assortment of bowls and silverware, keeping track of the flashlight, the sound, so deep in my gut, of a tent zipper, zipping open the tent entry. Then, after the meal, sitting down in the fold-out canvas chairs. The one-match fire I’d already constructed, with paper from a Texas real estate mag. The wood, a hardwood from a bundle outside a package store. A flick of the lighter, the one match. Going, flickering up. Licking from paper to twig to branch to split log. All ventilated, each with its own space, to pull in the night air. There is nothing like the architecture of a camp fire.  

sldkfs;ldfj;asdlf*end*

 

 

Thru Day 28: fotos with text, like blackbirds in a pie

SLIDELL, LOUISIANA | TUESDAY, APRIL 6, 2010 - I am up late at the Deluxe Motel, in Lucinda Williams country, workin' hahd to bring you people who are actually workin some small amount of entertainment, some word from far-flung places.

I will start with the freshest pics, and work back to DeLand, where the fotos last left off. Well then.....

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Truck passing

This is something we're working on. the blurriness of it all. how we pass through places so quickly, even in the slow lane. how do we talk about these places? how can we set about photographing them in a somewhat honest way? some of the first blurred fotos of course were accidents. But now we're trying to control the blur. So this is the road coming into Slidell, us in the slow lane, at night, looking for a motel just far enough out of town so that it might be quaint, safe and cheap. truck passing.

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Ocean Springs, Mississippi

this is an arty little town. Maybe Slidell might be cooler still, but this is a good spot, just east of Biloxi. A friend of Andrew, back in DeLand, told us about this place. Otherwise we'd never have found it. The Government St. Grocery bar felt like Seattle. We cooled our heels there. Late afternoon light. People smoking at the bar, watching Deadliest Catch, skinny humpbacked bartender with gravel drawl. We happy, ate right there with the smoke.

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Adrienne on the porch at Beauvoir

This place is the Confederate answer to Mt. Vernon, Geo. Washington's old farm near DC. In Biloxi, it was one of the few structures to survive Katrina. An old plantation. Everyone else there for the tour was from towns nearby, and a few from Texas. Seattle? We had to repeat that. "Seattle. Washington." The guide was none too pleased. He just left the words hanging, in the breeze, under the trees.




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The view from the front porch of Beauvoir. Place was built in the 1840s. Jefferson Davis lived there awhile.





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with some reservations, we put the "powered by biodiesel" decal on the rear window of the camper shell today. ideally, powered by biodiesel. When available, powered by biodiesel. You get the idea.




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more blur

this time, just west of Destin, FL, after we slogged thru Panama City ad nauseum, finally reaching untrampled dunes white and cold as snowfall






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Seaside, FL

how could this be spooky? go see for yourself






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slash pine alleys

all thru florida we passed slash pine planted in perfect rows. they are beautiful as you pass by, at top speeds of about 62 mph. similar to the way rows of corn pass by, radiating out from you one after the next, but different





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Apalachicola, FL

that's a shrimper beyond the trucks, Sunhippie, home port Key West. beyond that is deep water marsh. you can feel the deep water, even if you can't see it





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I liked this old white building, also in Apalachicola. Turned out to have housed a printing press on the ground floor for years. Most of the equipment still there. I liked the sway in the roofline and eave.



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all thru the Big Bend area of Florida, sort of inner Panhandle you could also call it, you come across beaches littered with gorgeous stump driftwood. Seems like it would have to have been cypress trees, but you don't see too many live ones along the shore, so I don't know. Birds, mostly pelicans and cormorants, dot the pilings.










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 at the confluence of the Ochlockonee and Sopchoppy rivers. Adrienne is reading the New York Times, about the imminent closing of the last sardine cannery in the U.S., in Maine. I still need to read the article, to see if they got any of it right.










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a night shot of our neighbors at the waterfront campsite. turns out he'd driven an 82 toyota diesel years ago himself. "Be good to the diesel and the diesel'll be good to you," he told me. And many other things. Including the fact that he had retired in 1979, again in 1993, has been in every state in the U.S. at least three times and every Canadian province three times. Many more things too, like last year he and Carol drove 40,000 miles during an 88-day voyage. He was from Sebring, FL, apparently a professional vagabond. Nice guy.

Adrienne has some impressive night shots, of stars and the tent. You will have to come to the house once we get home to see those.




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Blur No. 1 | Live Oak Island, Florida


looking south over marsh grass to the gulf of mexico. this mistake got us going on the blur series. lovely stuff.  very honest. free and unfettered.






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Yellow Truck getting a drink. 

Closing in on 228,000 miles now, yellow truck is allowed the occasional drink of 15W 40 heavy duty oil to soothe his tired rings and seals. We want to keep him happy, carefree, like our fotos.







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Where the sun doesn't shine


This is one of hundreds of windowless chicken houses we've seen coming down the coast. It's the new factory way. The chickens are raised these days in near complete darkness. If you haven't already, check out the documentary Food Inc. Pretty compelling, interesting stuff. Really worth seeing.

Back to DeLand, finally, here is a muscular green pickup truck leaving the riverside park we like. That's a tank of nitrous in the bed. Apparently this truck is speedy. 




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Dave Heeren and me. Dave put Adrienne and I up for several days. Among other talents, patience being high on the list, Dave can find any book, comic or rare architectural artifact that you never knew existed, but covet as soon as you see it. Often it is a gift, it's a gift for you, from him. No problem.






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Empty plastic jug and grapefruit




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the garage under the cottage


this is part of the south wall, a collage of memory and function. It's a sacred spot.






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red marble poem


We set this marble on the back of the camper shell before leaving DeLand. We did so in the same spirit as the sages who write poems in the forest and then drop the paper into a river. We let the marble go. It contained memory, dream and all our unpaid receipts.  



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DAY 27: quick rundown of Florida's Big Bend

APALACHICOLA, FLORIDA | MONDAY, APRIL 5, 2010 - Just some highlights, quick rundown of towns to jot down, to skip or to visit, whether as tourist or anthropologist may determine decision.

Apalachicola, FL - a beauty. small, walkable, fishing port with seiners, draggers, shrimpers, other boats. but a small port. no wharves to speak of. but deep water access. old settling buildings with idiosyncratic bone structure and organic rooflines. streets pleasant. coffee delicious. We stayed here for a bit, had first meal of day around lunch. had only driven about 47 miles. but put off the call of the road, put off the duty to get some mileage in. The place was just a good little town, maybe eight blocks at most. plenty of cafes, shops, antiques, saltwater sponges, work trucks coming thru hauling boats, that kind of thing. menfolk can entertain themselves in shady courtyards, look around, while womenfolk glean the sparkly things

Seaside, FL - this is one of urbanisms great triumphs of city planning. Established in 1981, mostly from scratch, Seaside is eerily perfect and appears to successful. The inhabitants, anyway, are happy. The Truman Show, if it wasn't filmed here, easily could have been. There are children everywhere, or robot children anyway, unaccompanied by adults, taking pictures of themselves, riding one-speed, old-fashioned Schwinn bikes. The planners appropriated airstream trailers for a line-up of picturesque food carts along the main street, which drew us in, almost, but we were repelled by the weirdness of all the homogenized, somewhat racially diverse, but upper middle-class only perfection. A child brought up here would have the strangest expectations, and probably tepid passions. It feels like Buckminster Fuller's bubble city, at least that image of it, of being hermetically sealed up from any outside intrusion. This place has no connection to the actual world, to actual conundrums, difficult or intricate things. Even the beach is perfect. Nothing washes up on it. The sand is pure crystaline, white. We left without eating, as quickly as we could.

Panama City and coast line west to Fort Walton Beach - Skip it. Infernally slow, menacing traffic. Shoot up to I-10 as soon as West 98 starts to clog up with traffic lights, probably around Port St. Joe. This area is just another succession of binge strip cities, like Daytona Beach and Myrtle Beach. Nothing but mini-golf heaven, artificially colored waterfalls, smoky volcanos, giant shark entrances to t-shirt shops. The one exception, a brief moment of hilarity, we were passed by a squadron of drunken shirtless boys on mopeds, they went flying past us in the breakdown lane, hooting to each other, and then were gone. It was a brief moment. But it stirred us awake. At the next turn off we sped away from the coast as fast as Yellow Truck would take us.

strangely, at this point, we are beginning to look forward to Texas. Alabama and Mississippi will go past quickly. but then there's Louisiana, and New Orleans...haven't seen since Katrina....closing in on B20, we hope, this morning, in Pensacola.

DAY 26: At the Ochlockonee and Sopchoppy Confluence

PANACEA, FLORIDA | SUNDAY, APRIL 4, 2010 – Here where the Ochlockonee and Sopchoppy rivers meet, and the Gulf of Mexico breathes up into their delta, mixing the fresh with the saltwaters, we pitched camp just after sunset. Men were fishing on a pier. Cars were passing, bleeding taillights into the night, over a long, low humped bridge.

Much earlier, in the morning, around noon in DeLand, we had said our last good-byes. I’d gone over to the old cottage around 9 am, after coffee with Adrienne and Dave. A guy Andrew, tall, thin, a dreamer, graphic designer, lives in the cottage now, above the garage. I got old towels to wrap two planes in for the voyage, and sheet plastic for my old violin. I stood there in the garage, the morning light brightest at the open bay door, fading along the walls. The garage was once the workshop. So I stood there a little while, holding whatever it is we hold when we pause before leaving spaces we know.

Andrew was moving across the floorboards above. A person alone in their house moves much less than you would think. In the morning anyway. Just a few steps. Then nothing. The pipes rush with a surge of water. Nothing for awhile. Maybe he is looking out the windows, through the lime green bamboo. Maybe the person is waiting for the right moment to begin the glass of water.

I texted him. I heard his phone ring. I was looking for the rent. Last day at $600, I told him. He could post-date it if that helped, I said.

In a few minutes we were drinking coffee, check in hand, good by next Friday. One ceiling fan to be switched out. Running. We both run. We talked about that. He knew of an island, he said, with wild horses, a ferry to it. He thought it was Apalachicola way, where we were headed.

Then goodby to Dave, old friend who now keeps things going at the old house, has all the keys, has made the old workshop his staging area for the thousands of books he finds, the old doors, the salvaged wood floors, cypress, maple, beautiful, odd lost valuable things. We took photos in front of the house where he stays these days, where he is caretaking. Adrienne took them. Of him and me, flexing our elbows.

A few doors down, Magda and Wyatt were getting ready for Easter dinner, a ham with family, with her husband Chip’s family I think, up in Pierson where all the ferneries are. Pierson, where the families have come from central Mexico since the 1970s, growing the delicate ferns under shade cloth to wrap bouquets of roses around the world.

“Chip’s across the street,” Magda said. The parrot was out on the front porch, squalling away crazily. “You’ll find him. He’s out in the back. Bye!” Big smile, up the stairs to get her daughter going.

Adrienne and I snuck up on Chip. We hid behind the giant smoker Succubus parked in the grass as Chip rode his mower away from us. You could plant 32 orange trees easy in this back yard, four wide and eight deep, still with room for a garage in back and a sand path to it wide enough for cars. It’s all grass, hot, wide open, uninhabited. The neighbor who owns the place works for the State Department, isn’t around much any more. So Chip looks out for it.

He’d seen us coming somehow. Our ambush was foretold. We talked. He invited us for dinner. He put us in team shirts for his sideline business, Fre-Wil BBQ. Succubus, the smoker, is his and a friend John’s creation, a giant black propane tank they’ve converted into a goldmine, brisket, ribs, half-chickens. Delicious.

We headed out of town, Yellow Truck freighted, but hardly showing it. The leaf springs seemed to like the load. The ride was better over bumps, more cushioned, the springs having to do a bit more work absorbing, to recover their stiffness. So we were off. North and west along Rt 44, then 42 and up 27, so on, two-lane back roads cut through forest, then through fields of cattle, past long low chicken houses, through swamp with cypress trees, hot, the windows down, the shirts Chip had given us a blessing, being button-down lightweight workshirts that let in the breeze.

“Remember Bricker’s Automotive,” he’d said. “When you go through Missouri, look for him.” Not that we are headed that way at all, but Bricker had installed AC in Chip’s Gran Marquis when he and Magda, Magda pregnant with Wyatt, had been driving east to Florida, to land in their first house here, the old Orange City house, that Magda wrote plaintive songs about once they’d moved, that while they lived there, they laughed about and scorned ironically, called the Chateau de Po-Ver-Tay.

No A/C in Yellow Truck though. Won’t be. He’s a West Coast truck, on his way home.

We ate lunch by the river. It just worked out that way, one last time there, Ed Stone Park, on the way out of town. We split another Subway $5 foot long tuna, sitting at a park picnic table, one of about nine tables under a shade structure that we liked, we liked the laminated beams, sitting alongside the St. John’s River, at Whitehead Bridge, old metal drawbridge. People eating Easter hot dogs, grilling right there under the structure. People in the fold-out chairs in the sun at the river bank fishing. The boats parading by slow, manatee zone.

Adrienne made a joke, said something I can’t remember now, but the idea was that we could stay, live again in the cottage. That we should just stay. Such a good spot like that, sparkly water, making her want to stay.

The day went on, the road went on, until the sun cooled. We got no dice again on biodiesel this time in Perry, Florida. This time they were advertising it on a billboard even, but when we got there they were out, and they only were out of B5 anyway, not the B20 advertised online. By now we were hardly phased. We got seven gallons of regular diesel, giving us enough to get to Pensacola, probably the next mirage of the famous biodiesel blends so hard to find.

The sun started to set. I’d siliconed the three leaks in the camper shell. We’d found them the other day spraying with a garden hose, marked them with a red marker. Things were good. Everything fit when we packed. Now, with day ending, we just needed a place to stay. We didn’t really have a firm plan. We’d talked about camping but never gone grocery shopping. Maybe we’d start with a little motel. Maybe we’d be ready for camping the next day.

We ended up on an island, Live Oak Island. Every house was on stilts, with enough room for a small tsunami to flow through. Beautiful, marshland looking south to the Gulf of Mexico. Deserted except for three awkward bicyclists tottering down the middle of the road, slow getting out of the way.

We headed back up to the main road. Thought we’d go to State Park. But one of the locals we’d talked to was a bit off. We didn’t like his way. So we changed route. We came back to the coastal road. We kept going west, looking for a quaint motel now. But then the Holiday Campground, which we’d seen billboards a few times for, finally was there, in Panacea, just before a long curved concrete bridge, spanning the confluence of the Ochlockonee and Sopchoppy rivers.

I made an executive decision. We were camping. It was riverfront. So what if it was all RVs. The far corner site was free, wooded with pine trees, the river waters lapping, almost lake-like, a bay, call it, about 20 feet away. The sun was gone. It was just suffuse light left, orange fogged in below deep blue. We snapped a bit as we put up the tent. But it’s a beauty and it was our first night in it. Both of us can stand up in it.

The stars came out. It was the most stars I’ve seen in years. All stirred up, deep and whirly. Adrienne got out the tripod. We sat there. We took long exposures. We ate beef jerky with beer. The tent glowed with a lantern. We had the air mattress pumped up inside. We were super comfortable. The loons called twice, unseen on the river. It was Easter. Panacea, Florida had come through, better than aspirin.

DAY 25: Minutia Notes

DELAND, FLORIDA | SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010 - Pressure-treated crosses at each storefront downtown. The edges and ends of the 4x4 posts rounded soft, each one a donation by a local congregation. People out, shopping, sun, drinking in the coffee shops, at tables outside restaurant bars.

This morning Adrienne and I juiced two gallons of grapefruit from the tree and put them in the freezer. Stripped the bed and washed the sheets. We're gathering up our things. But in slow gear still. Wouldn't quite make it out of town in time to make any distance. So will stay one more night, leave for the open road again tomorrow, Easter morning. 


At a coffee shop now, looking for the nearest biodiesel. And campsites. Tent is all ready, sleeping bags, cooler, lanterns. Tools are boxed up, ready to push deep into Yellow Truck's bed. 

Long-haired kids on mini dirt bikes pass by outside.

Thank you Dave Horne for the mysterious phone call, Cousin Mike, Mum. 

Happy Easter to all and to all a good Saturday night.

Day 24: Fotos and bonus text

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orange trees like surf
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grapefruit on the kitchen counter. every morning I climb into the tree outside the house we're staying at and pick some to juice. we drink it alongside fresh coffee








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Adrienne about to negotiate her first left turn in Yellow Truck. This is Standard Shift Driving Lesson No. 1, in the sugar sand parking lot of the Stetson Baptist Church on W. Minnesota Ave. A super historic moment.






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Here is your faithful bloggist, dreaming of the next steak fry while holding it. Note the way I am protecting my bacon burger no cheese all-the-way extra hot peppers sandwich. Delicious. Custom food by Belly Busters.






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Adrienne's first (and last it would turn out) boiled peanuts. The Confederate flag is not shown, but is de rigeur in the boiled peanut trade.








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a beautiful barn








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changing the oil on Yellow Truck. We've already logged over 2,500 miles. The fresh oil should get us to San Francisco no problem.










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Singer-songwriter Magda Hiller and her handsome husband, future-DeLand-Mayor Chip Wilson, shoot the breeze with Adrienne out front of the garage. The red bicycle is Dave Heeren's homemade six-speed. The one-eyed jumping dog is Tiger. Stairs built in 216 precision cuts by the unpictured bloggist.


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moonrise over the marsh








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anhinga, also known as snake bird, at the marsh. cousin of the cormorant, or, shag




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Yellow Truck awaiting next leg of the journey

DAY 24: You can plant anything

DELAND, FLORIDA | FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2010 – Ahhh, Sunshine State. Without history. Here today, full. Erased next day by termites and hurricanes. But not now, not spring. Becoming. The monsoon on arrival passed after a day. Then sun and more sun each day since. The air is thick now with orange blossoms, more than before, everywhere you go, the perfume, heavier and sweeter. Adrienne said, blown away by it, wanting to speak it, so full in the air - we were driving past a grove, Dick Marshall’s old grove of 500 trees, navels and hamlins, she said, “It’s like jasmine. Jasmine tea. It’s like a tea.”

Ambrosia. And so hot. The air is hot and dry and dusty, not yet muggy, not yet stratified by degrees of wet. Yellow Truck’s windows rolled down. Bouncing along familiar roads on short trips, to the marsh, to walk, to count gators and haunt birds, to the river to sit, and again, back to the river, again to sit, the breeze whipping over the black water, the sun blindingly bright, the boats idling by, smell of gasoline, people in chairs on the banks, fishing.

March is Central Florida’s month of heaven. It is the time to visit, in March, and now, the first days of April. Guineas on a farm, those odd, turtle-backed birds that are territorial enough to stand in sometimes for rottweillers - when they charged Yellow Truck we were after fresh eggs, easing in second gear down an unmarked sand road – the scuttling birds, Adrienne said, were like masked Venetians. Strange, hot, transforming light. Spring. You can plant anything.

We have been here five days now, give or take, and not once to the beach. I have to think, but that is true. Not once to the beach.

And not one bit of work. Not until today, finally we broke down. But it’s true, too, the day before, I chopped and sawed at trees until my shirt was dark, sweaty, cutting from the ground and up two stories on a 28-foot ladder, and in the trees themselves, I cut away until I’d carved back alleyways for the breeze to run and rise beside the house's old siding. We said when we got here, and before, when we were on our way down, driving along, This time we won’t work. We won’t be under the gun.

This time we wouldn’t be renovating a bathroom or whatnot from arrival until the mad dash back to the airport in a rented car, things still unfinished, depending on our man in Florida, Dave Heerin, to be the closer, to swoop in with his easy ways, his days that join together only at Bill’s restaurant, the only fulcrum in his lateral days of McSweeney’s high rhetoric, the coffee and sandwich he orders across the counter downtown at Bill’s – this time we wouldn’t have to ask Dave to complete the job. We wouldn’t start one, not anything we couldn’t finish ourselves.

Today it was so easy though. Georgia, the young cellist who is studying down the street at Stetson U. for her MBA, had come out to the back stoop the day before, let us know about a leak below the kitchen sink. Dave and I looked at it, sized it up. It has been a stubborn faucet, always wanting to leak and then fill with rust and then stop up and then leak again. It was the first faucet I ever put in, with my Cousin Mike. He came down by Amtrak from Maine, brought clamps and sawhorses and I half-watched while he repaired window frames. He told me never to hurry, to not push on with a job when the steam ebbed, instead retire for the day and return. We put in a tile countertop, a double sink, repaired the porch threshold. We worked away. All of that work is still good and still ours. Just the faucet that finally tired.

Dave said he’d put in the new one, so Adrienne and I could keep going on getting packed. We were planning on leaving tomorrow sometime. We’ve been hoping a guy in Holly Hill, over by the beach, would come through with a fresh batch of pure, one-hundred percent recycled biodiesel. We've cobbled together three extra cans to fill while digging through the garage. But the biodiesel guy was waiting on something, someone, before he could run his first part of the process, something about methane burning off. So I said I’d put in the new faucet. And then I asked Adrienne if she’d help and she said she would. The old one came right out. No whining, no beating frozen up washer rings for an hour. And then the new one went right in. Me under the sink, my head above the plastic pan catching the drips, and Adrienne above, twisting in the faucets while she talked on the phone. Done, in maybe a half-hour, just as Georgia and her mum came in.

Maybe we should paint some, me and Adrienne were saying. Maybe we should scrape the bad places and paint. Or maybe paint the whole house. We had the fever again. We could get something done, we could work a couple days, brighten up the house. And then the biodiesel would be ready and off we’d go.

As we drove down a back road, moving through the afternoon, the orange blossom in the air, pole barns, cattle in the fields, on our way to the Shady Oak for a sundown drink by the river, all our errands done, I said - I’d been waiting and the moment seemed to be right, Could you see living here for a few months out of the year? Two or three? When we’re a lot older, toward the end, down the road?

A few, yes, she said, emphasizing the few, holding it to about two without saying it exactly. The west, the pacific northwest, is our plan after all. And she was smiling. It wasn’t only my idea. I'd spoken it, but it had already been there, between us, around us. All this, the road, and maybe nothingness, was materializing, like a mantle, settling, blinding bits of light settling on us from the spaces between the trees rushing past.