It was back to the campground for some of us back then. Law enforcement and militaries were slowly but surely helping stabilize a world that "voted" in various ways to:
We found a bunch of books, too heavy to carry, just the thing that wouldn't fit in overpacked cars. The most interesting to our little group was about 20th century art. Like the travel/hiking guide gave overview of trek plus bits of history, local lore, and other stuff to be interested in, the art book did the same.
Trying to fit sketches done over the summer into the book did and didn't "work". That made me cry then laugh then marvel at life. And, for me, at God, a God who gives us just the time He gives us for our TO DO's and lists of accomplishments.
In my mind I have a multi-media assemblage of processing that summer. As it was we managed only snippets. Raging hormones found outlet in the scrambling up and down slopes, sliding off rocks into definitely getting colder¡!!!! There were many gender-specific things learned that needed to be somehow matched up to our ages in the law and in our own views of maturity.
We called it Sliver Rock. It was the mountain not to climb. It was the backdrop to a book held up, showing a photograph. Some old black&white showing a human near a staircase, canvases in myriad forms of stretch, magnifying glasses and mirrors erect on standing ready. Ready for anything, but the artiste sitting perched on stool.
Sliver? Pie. Crazy bird appetizer-snacks. Salt-watered chiggers and some lice. A she tapped the tweezers together. "None for me thanks." In the soundscape a small boulder dropped, dogs sniffing, people barking, Pick It Up. Sorry, a facilitator offered in passing, Everyone's got their traditions.
Tell me about it.
Y'all having a good time?
No, I mean tell me about this tradition.
The mountain?
Sort of can't tell too much.
The mountain that's not a mountain.
Not a time for too many whys.
I guess.
Public spaces. Private groups.
They x-rayed it or whatever.
A geologist-type told us.
And anyway, we walked around it. You can see it's skinny, a sliver of a rock core. How about your rocks?
I guess one of the founders of one of the rehab programs stayed clean or whatever the longest and so his method is being transferred as a model for other programs.
Well, the science guys did not work out the snafu in time to win a collegiate-level contest on rock x-raying or whatever.
Ginger, our old lady on that trip started rattling the pan. By which I mean rapping it on the picnic table, girating it a little harder, a little harder. A person turned towards her, Yes, to get YOUR attention. She wanted to show us how to cook a fish in a frypan. And continue explaining about war.
She'd seen "this" in her generation too. She swirled the oil around the floured fish. Hopped the fish into a flop, like it wants back into the ocean. Sometimes they come and go too quickly to do much home. And these young ones they her voice faltered, they, it's coming too quickly to process the
We'd seen and felt and smelled the jets
the What It Does
And so does to us?
Had to move the field hospital piece by piece
Ginger almost pivoted her actual feet and uppercutted with the fork. Was pointing it towards God's sky and Sliver Mountain. A friend pushed her forearm down and brought it back to the fish, cold, in the pan. More seasoning? She dipped a wedding'd finger'd hand into the oil not soaked up by the fish. Licked the oiled finger, flicked the excess gunk into the ground air.
The air between God's heaven and the ground's stink. It had been filled with fiery fight. Not chasing tail now motherfuckers, a good guy who'd come for barbeque (and found none) had bravado'd. But it was several more days of smoke and mirrors, air foams for towing and parking "space debris", catching up to planeloads of people who'd had the air knocked out of them in rough take offs and landings, necks wrenched grounds-keepers let know.
Sliver Mountain had seen it all. We kind of felt like we already had too.
"You can't have it both ways," my Dad was in that glow of party pulling ahead, when principles are matching up with actions. It even seemed symbolic that the man in front of them in the hot dog line was holding up two thousand people also starving. He'd launched into lecturing everyone via no one in particular.
"Dad."
He kept on talking until another guy packed up with him to espouse about the Country.
"Dad!"
The guy holding up the line was arguing about what kind of beef was in which dogs. "Daddy,"
The backed up crowd started to make fed up noises and mocking the guy making everyone else wait. At that the guy practically straddled the dog stand and really started riffing about different ingredients.
"What is it honey?" Our dad looked down at his youngest girl pulling on his pant leg at that point.
"You said not to lie and I don't think I am but
"PORK! NOW there's a jewburger ingredient."
"COME ON,
"FOR CHRIST'S SAKE
"Where's your mother?"
"Well, that's just it. I didn't want to throw up but now I might."
"WHERE'S JOE?
"DAD
"Huh?"
"A flying saucer took them. They're all gone now."
We'd made Ginger hot cocoa. She helped us piece together timelines which included world events. She sipped her cocoa while we savored every morsel of backstory.
"Yeah, can laugh about some of it after the fact. For a long time my Dad would say, the family that cries together stays together. But after some of those really intense times even he would say Now that sounds like an adventure when one of us had an idea for "family time".
All of our families and neighborhoods had been through the mill. And we kept pushing each other through the pains of bruised and bloodied to get back to American. We also put tenses to events and actions like the past is the past. This helped us in-action as well, especially when it came to fighting crime.
"You know, no," Ginger said to the people that had walked up just as dusk was settling. I followed her lead and we just sat there. The winds had settled down too. Traitors/Traders my friend and I stuffed words into a crossword puzzle frame. The newspaper got damp with our sweat. That crazy bird had warned the sonograph charting fresh earthquake.
We took walks. Friendly waves to stay on the path. Still marveled at depressions in the ground, holes clear through rocks. No needleballs, a man had assured.
"They really rolled that thing all tje way from nowhere to somewhere, huh?"
"You should've seen it. Everything."
"Must've been something."
I looked at the charcoal eyes of my friend and did not know what I could tell and what not to say. Plus, people had been there in various depths of "it", so
"I'm not going to break."
"Already did in my opinion."
So many levels to every conversation. With everyone and anyone, but
"Why hold back?"
"It's not crying, and if I did it would be relief-crying."
"Need to?"
Arms uncrossed. "Let's tell the funny parts to each other first."
"Okay, but there aren't any."
"Oh yeah."
"Let's bypass camp and tell each other what would've or might've been funny but
Okay
Comfortable silences came easy.
Rounding a bend in the path I made us come to a complete stop. I put my hands on her shoulders, facing her, and turned her caddy-cornered to a spot. Dropped arms swung into W.C. Fields mode, a postguidedtour of the circus. But no elephant droppings. "In reality
"Ah, but what is 'reality'?
"It wasn't a circus at all
"What was it?
A car jerking on brakes.
"It was this, THIS," my arm waved all around almost involuntarily. She ducked like a long ago couple of guys around the not activated swinging arm of the tank. I forced my writing arm to point at the ground. "Even when a really higher upper came and it was knees knocking
""Knocked her up?" A head nurse practically slammed a potential father against a wall WITH WORDS.
"THEY all had
We drew a collective breath.
Letting go. Jerking on brakes.
Some were flying through touchbase exercises, others planted on the ground and in seats above. Looking through rotating blades made things the same and not for everyone.
A task had been to move hospital and supplies. While nations were up in the air about
Not nation one of the old ladies interjected to my reading. "It's not a speech."
Continue. But I dove back into my campchair in a penblot of that makes me have ten more thoughts at the same damn time! Exactly.
"May I suggest whittling?"
"FUCK YOU."
A jeepish ATV pulled closer and didn't move on stop it on a dime. "Where's my brownie biotch?"
"Should I get any closer?"
"Not without the brownies."
The ATV pulled away almost turning without cussin'.
Across the way three or four more people added sticks to
Justa just a ah
Stickpile! That's a uh our stickpile.
Someone better go for a Ranger. A guy who'd been asking me about the rock potatoes all summer's arm yawn-stretched right into my relaxed gut. I recovered quickly enough to ask, Me go? Sir? Everyone maintained frozen silent but the order had aleady been issued.
Reading Constance Squires' Along the Watchtower again. Also found online snippets of more of her writing! Has a website and the site also tells about a literary "rag"/magazine. So cool.
Bookshop had a couple copies of Sugar by Bernice L. McFadden so I bought one at an at-the-moment reasonable price.
I feel like both books are so apt for this point in things.
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