to GPB

(( we were cowboys and that was all there was. we were cowboys and the land was ours, outside, it was ours. we were cowboys and everything outside was precious to us, every grass irreplaceable and every tree an entity of its own. we went down into the darker grass where there were sticks on the ground and the trees were moving. i saw trees reaching and yearning and i felt that pull on my heart and the trees, they were recreating every moment of human history. it was dark down by those trees and we searched in the tall grass for sticks that weren't hollow and that would catch on fire. together we gathered these sticks and we brought them up to the fire ring and that was our goal. we were cowboys and we had only one task in mind and that was to make that fire. we went to the horses, i don't know why we went to the horses, probably just because cowboys go to horses, and i held their cheeks as i fed them hay. their cheeks moved, all three horses in very different ways, and it was this horrible, ethereal still when they stopped chewing. they would stop chewing and it would be a deafening silence, their eyes looking at something beyond what any of us could comprehend. so we were cowboys with our horses, and we were cowboys congregating around something sacred. there were others, but they were inside, they were battling, they were squirming in heat and intensity, and they were the others, and we wanted no part. instead we trekked on the grass that made patterns in the wind - we scoured the land, we stood silent as the coyotes were yelling - they were yipping, squealing, crying - what were they doing - did they find something that we were looking for? this is the thing - and this is the very essence of it - we were cowboys and we were in another time and place and we had a mission - a mission that was the simplest and most beautiful and yet most deadly thing in the world - we were searching for control, for the ultimate symbol of dangerous and beautiful power - we were lookin' to fix a bonfire. )) - 12/2005

that fall might have been one of the best.