I am lying in bed an ice pack under my bad shoulder, the heat pad diagonal under my lower back & left hip, the little toe on my left foot swollen to twice its normal size throbbing, and I am running a fever.
"I feel bad for you mom." Beach says rolling over me.
"Why?" I ask but I am already laughing so hard it hurts, "That was one of the best runs of my life!"
"Mom, are you joking?"
"I'm not. One of the best I tell ya."
"He leaned
forward peering out the window to the high empty sky his own reflection
partially blocking his view of nothing.
September 11
The land here is hopeless.
Dry roads bleeding out into a horizon indistinguishable from the dirt
they cut. To say the desert feels apocalyptic
would lend a credit that there ever was the threat of life here. It is more comparable to a gas chamber,
offering only the promise of a slow, suffering death. I cannot remember a time ever desiring to
leave a place so badly in my entire life.
Abel Manning, somewhere in Utah"
~Excerpt
from Life With Man, mlb~
"At first he didn’t see what he was looking at. The pack of men approaching all wore the same color- desert brown. He didn’t notice the feminine curve slightly sway
out of step from the others until he was staring directly at it. For 4 days the tease of her coming in off the
mountain was like the chance of rain falling from the nightly
grumbling clouds which threatened but never gave. Then without warning there she
was, crossing a piece of flat ground beaten down by the weight of many men's boots in heavy
travel.
September 15
With the foolishness of a child who believes the night’s
moon is chasing them, one might be tricked into thinking her wildness has
something to do with them. Of course you can be wise enough to doubt her, or simple enough to not
believe, but her truth is never ending and yet it has no beginning either. I think she is the desert.
Abel Manning, Keeper Ranch, Utah"
~Excerpt
from Life With Man, mlb~
~
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