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Yearly Archives: 2010

Three Snakes Across the Road

September 24, 2010

I had one wish before we left California, and it was that we wouldn’t be too late for summer thunderstorms in the midwest. We weren’t. It’s rained half the time we’ve been here, hours of silent sheet lightning flickering cinematically over the white-sided houses, followed by hours of rolling thunder and speeding clouds. Then rain.

With all this wet and rain the snakes and toads have been migrating out of their burrows and onto the gravel roads. Our car tires are speckled with the colors of creatures who did not know that the bright light heralded imminent demise and stood still while we were forced to drive over them. The snakes are easier to avoid, as they keep moving.

Last Sunday I wrote and we fished. It was a perfect day. Whatever we caught we ate on Tuesday thanks to grandma Louise skinning and filleting our catch, then frying it up for us. I wanted to stick around to learn how to do it but the kill took longer than it should have (this was Josh’s part in the play, not Louise’s) and I disappeared into the computer while the catfish writhed in the other room. I usually make myself bear witness but everyone has limits.

Tonight we head to the Lake of the Ozarks, and as always I look forward to the long drive as much as the weekend away. Grandma made apple cake that we’ll take with us and on this drive eight years ago I saw the first round haybales I’d ever seen (they didn’t make ’em that way in California when I was a girl). I’ll have my notebooks with me, and Anne Carson’s “Decreation”, which we ordered and had delivered to us out here at the farm. Anne Carson’s writings are a good companion when you are trying to write true sentences.

I would post pictures, but can hardly be fussed to rig up the daisy chain of electronics that requires. I am unwired, wireless, free.