Earth Shadow

San Luis Valley, CO & elsewhere

1.

On a drunk walk home I am nearly clipped by an Oldsmobile with its front fender half an inch from the pavement, and I can’t help but think of that shitty ‘91 baby blue Cadillac I drove all over the valley in, its peeled paint and the ripped seats and how it leaked gasoline about every other week.


I loved the silence that car demanded, how the radio and tape-deck stayed broken. The way I felt in it—when I slammed the door shut and looked over my jacketed shoulder and into the sunlight right before walking into Chief’s Liquor on a Tuesday. I felt like a cool motherfucker.


It was sunshine all the time there. Dry, too. Except in the winter. I can’t count the amount of times I ate it on sidewalks or parking lots in tractionless boots that I just couldn’t give up on.


I keep moving to places where it never stops snowing.


In the summer evenings I would open my small bedroom window, hope for a big wind that would shake the only tree in the backyard. In the dark—with my eyes closed—I could trick myself into the belief that the sound was rain.


The world bends in on itself. I was never good at the art of folding. I can’t do it with grace.


2.

That first summer I dropped to my knees at the base of the dunes, wrung the sand between my hands. It was the early evening and I sat and watched kids sand surf and lovers roll down the dunes together.


The air was thin in the late season. The temperature dropped with a breeze. I can still feel the dry static in my hair.


I think I knew then that I was on the edge of communion, if only with myself.


There’s a God and he putters around the empty parts of the American southwest; he spits into the cracked earth and wipes the paste on his forehead. He thinks: Maybe ash, maybe someday.


3.

That summer Austin drove us in his old Ford pickup deep into some national forest. June, dirt roads, all giggles and sloshed beer in the truck bed. The forks, the bends; the twists, the bumps.


We sat for forty minutes while farmhands moved cattle from one clearing to another. Sorry, man! It was fine by us, we had a cooler and bug spray and the clouds.


We went cliff jumping. Locals-only spot called Bottomless. After the hour and a half drive into the woods and up a mountain, we hiked the two-mile trail to the spot.


Jackie and I talked mad shit. It’s not that far. Oh, this is nothing. So we ran and jumped first.


It’s sort of like when you’re real fucked up and you’ve been laying down for a while and then you sit up fast. Like leaving yourself.


I closed my eyes as soon as my last foot left the ground, and didn’t open them again until I felt my feet touch the cool. Mountain water never warms up, even in the summer. I’d never seen in those colors before. I must’ve looked horrified as I gasped and flapped, because Austin yelled you’re okay! from forty feet up.


4.

I pull moments of desire out of memory like a hat. I am a magician of quiet wish. What would you like to hear about? Passing one another in a tight church hallway, throwing darts in an empty bar filled with our stupid grins? I could spend eternity looking for myself in other people. Other places.


5.

The space has to do with it, sure. The westerns. The myth. The Danger. There’s a reason people who grow up in the east can’t get enough of the west.


I house-sat for a family who kept horses for a few times. The place was a bit outside of town, right on the edge of the flats. Before I left for work I would get up with the sun and warm myself with instant coffee. I threw the hay over their stalls and lugged their five-gallon buckets of water. When I was finished I’d watch the sun hit Mount Blanca while the dog alternated between sniffing my feet and the dirt yard. I’d warm my red hands with my breath.


I saved shoveling their shit into a wheelbarrow for the evenings. I’d lock them in their stalls while I was in the pen. I was so afraid of them, even when they lowered their heads for me to pat their noses.


I miss using my body. I thought I would use my body more in this life.


If it was warm enough, I sat outside and ate my pathetic meal of buttered noodles and beer. Watch the sun slowly vanish and throw a tennis ball to the dog. The first time I heard a coyote, it gave me goosebumps. I whistled the dog inside.


One morning the calico barn cat presented me with a dead shrew. I assumed it was because I let her come in for a few hours at night, to curl up with me in front of the gas fireplace. I dug a small grave for it. The next day it was on the doormat again.


6.

The Mystic Highway. CO route 17. Straight shot until Poncha Pass. I remember that song played. Travelin’ light, we can go beyond. Passing a joint Jackie rolled in the backseat. On our way back to the valley from a day of hiking and a hot spring. Travelin’ light, let your mind pretend.


Everyone yelled at me because I wanted the windows down. It was twelve or so degrees out. The Belt of Venus was just appearing, that pink strip right there low in the sky. Patches of snow surrounded by the desert brush went right up to the snow capped mountains. We can go to paradise, maybe once, maybe twice—travelin’ light.


Marco said I might just be high but I never want to leave here. Jackie reminded him that last week he got puked on by a client at the shelter.


We all laughed, we all left eventually.


7.

Michelle asked me once, at the edge of a canyon, what are we going to do? I shrugged and handed her my water bottle. It seemed less urgent then.


The distance has begun to close up. What I miss isn’t out there. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. There’s something about the trees and the hills here that box me in.


8.

Please lick at my ear and whisper I can see for miles, please tell me what you’d do to me in red dirt.


I have thought of taking a vow of silence. What would happen if I were to roam in a canyon and let my skin flake off. I have dreams of being sunburnt. I would like to look up into the first light.