Some Vignettes

This past Tuesday, after hiking the canyon down, I took myself out for enchiladas. The girl behind the bar recognized me and asked of my adventures. This got a stranger, a couple seats over, to start asking me about trails. The sort of questions I am often asked at obligations, because there is this ugly suspicion I am in the know about such things.

Often I have stated that work is the eight hours of inconvenience you put up with in order to do the things you truly enjoy. Then this shabby crap happens. Of course, I live in what is termed a resort area, and find myself dealing with tourists constantly, and not just in context of what I do for money.

It would certainly seem I live my fucking job...

***

Later that day, I went for a walk around my funky tiny town with a ginger beer in hand. I'd not had afternoon tea yet, so it wasn't near cocktail hour. One of my neighbors, who goes to Antarctica for rescue services and kicks, playing fetch with his dog, nearly brained me with a tennis ball.

How awkward. He apologized. To make up for the near catastrophic turn of events, he took some of my ginger beer-an apparent good mixer-and some Icelandic vodka to make me a Moscow mule.

What a town! What a time to be alive! I fucking love this place!

***

As a DJ for the community radio station, Sabina sometimes get sent free stuff. The latest CD was all the way from New York-New Your City?!? Git a rope!-and took us both back. Dark gothic tunes that echoed to past lives down below. We listened to the compilation as we daytripped it to Breckenridge, the irony of what we'd think of as city music being played being played up in the high mountains not being lost on either of us.

It doesn't seem goth has changed that much since I stopped hanging around the vampire caste. Those jams could've been the same from ten, twenty, even thirty years ago. At first I found this sensation of stagnation disheartening.

However, to be fair, listen to Americana, bluegrass, punk, or the blues, and there's not much change over the years. A genre gets a sound and sticks to it-if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Maybe there's nothing wrong with that. Perhaps someone with a more sensitive ear than I could tell me I'm full of shit.

***

Further debate and discussion on being mountain...

Sabina's friend, Pippin, got me a bumper sticker for Old Scratch that reads Jesus would slap the shit out of you. This is a sticker of wild popularity and uproarious laughter. Random strangers have taken pictures of my vehicle just for that sticker.

I told Job it was my jab at the Elmer Gantries of the world. The charlatan Christians who preach the word, but have no conception of the spirit. My thought is if said bumper sticker offends you, you need to look in the mirror. Job tells me he used that line in church.

As we walked out of whichever establishment in the environs of Breckenridge, we had someone asking if we were the ones who had Old Scratch. Said bumper sticker had given a good jolly laugh, for which we were thanked. I shook my head after the encounter.

"Do we fucking look like that was our car?" I asked rhetorically. Sabina shot me a look and a wry smile.

"Face it, you reek of mountain," she said.

I resented that. After all, I do bathe. Occasionally.

***

Announcing its presence with a authority, snow has returned to my mountains. A couple of heavy, wet, feet of spring snow fell. I sing my praises of thanksgiving to the shift in the jetstream.

Road closures were aplenty. I would've drank my treasured last infusion of Nepali black tea and snowshoed, but I had obligations to attend to. If I believed in it, I would say fate is not without a sense of irony.

A free day awaits with the rising of the sun. There is to be a dusting overnight, maybe even during the day ahead, and we mean to get out with the shoes for what may be the last time this season, although, obviously, you never know. This is Colorado. This is the mountains.

There are further chances of precipitation in the coming week. Nothing as powerful as this last storm, but something that'll help our snow pack. This past Tuesday, I wore a t-shirt whilst on walkabout and sandals after I got home. The last three days I've worn snowboots and wool socks. That's fine. We can use the water, and, I can do with at least one more snowshoe. Sandals can wait. After all, my patience is formidable.