so here's a wild story. a few days ago a fire started that they called the three rivers fire - out at the base of sierra blanca, in wild virtually uninhabited country. it grew quickly - 6,000, then 8,000, then 12,000 acres. everyone was alarmed.

but here are a few facts about that wild scrubby dry desert country. first, it's on the way to oscuro, a place where you turn off the road to go to the trinity site. so this is in the mild nowheres where they figured dropping a bomb would be ok, maybe seventy years ago. but sierra blanca, being a single mountain that towers over us all, is a kind of symbol of the area. we see it rise above the other mountains and into the sky. these days, a lot of smoke out there.

there was, it turns out, a campground out there. maybe it was one of those nomadland type places. there are some poeple who love the desert, and love getting away, way away, from everone. and it was so dry you could start a fire just thinking thoughts, let alone lighting cigarettes.

but then, all these firefighters out there trying to figure out how to contain it, and what happens but a big old storm comes in and dumps about six inches of snow on the mountains. now out there, it probably wasn't that much, maybe just a steady drizzle. but what they got, helped the firefighters. that fire didn't grow any more.

we had a power outage due to that four to six inches, and had a wild day getting snow off the tent and the cat trailer, and getting the generator going. the mountain thing to do is to say, well we really needed the moisture, and that's real true. but school was canceled, kids were home, and there was no power, so it was a pretty wild day.

school is about to wrap up for the semester, and kids are trying to finish make-up work, etc., so this whole weather deal put a crimp in their plans. but i'm all about staying home at every opportunity. the last place i want to be is some muddy gravel road with six inches of fresh snow, and a steep cliff on the side.

the other good thing that happened to that fire, was that it came up against the 2012 burn scar. apparently the eastern part of sierra blanca got it in 2012. and got it real bad. people up there will never forget that huge fire. one time i was at this place, the flying j ranch, and the lead singer got into witnessing. not so much for jesus, although you knew which side he was on, but more just telling the straight-up honest truth to this huge audience of cowboy music fans myself included. and what he said was, he'd never forget 2012, because the mountains he'd grown up with, that he'd taken for granted all those years, lost all those trees in just one fire. and it would just never be the same again.

three rivers is a remote outpost way out on the road to oscuro. i always think of trois rivieres, a major city in quebec, when i go through there, but really it has only one building, the only stop for about eighty miles in either direction. i sometimes think it's ironic - that they would name anything after a "river" or "rivers" when there is so little water out here, or that it would share its name in a way with quebec's major city. but it's just a place, with a lot of wild desert brush all around it.

and that's the news. hope it's the only fire in the area this season, as the snow has kind of soaked everything, and we're good for at least a week, probably.

 

my hearing seems to be slowly slipping away. a lot of people are alarmist, as they have to yell at me all the time and it gets them, most notably my wife who makes doctor's appointments, gets me to take allergy meds, gets me to wear my hearing aids, and still has to yell at me all the time. i've become fatalistic - nothing seems to work, so i just retreat into silent worlds like my garden or my writing, and wish people wouldn't bother me.

when i drive kids around they play music or shriek at each other and now of course i'm wearing my hearing aids and it seems like an incredible endless racket. i slip them off and i hear less and less. i do generally get the ambulance sirens though and i get the general tone of their voices if not the detail. i hear that there are voices which i suppose is better than hearing nothing at all.

then tonight all of a sudden, doing my writing in the silence, a huge background noise starts up. it doesn't even sound like it's coming from my ears, yet no one else seems to hear it. it's like crickets magnified by twenty or thirty. who knows what's going on? i can't seem to do anything about it. shutting my ears doesn't help, or anything else. in fact it sounds so much outside my ears, that i keep asking the kids if they hear it too.

eventually i'll just give up and tell everyone i don't hear so well. i started this at walmart today. the lady was actually pretty nice to me. it's partly because i'd stood in a long line, whole overloaded carts full, and had only about five things.

it tends to make me more of a fanatic - in particular, about my writing. checking my ratings every time i open the computer, reading in deals that make it so people read mine, checking the facebook & twitters for people who are interested in connecting. the world of authors is vast and interesting, and all of them are on the hustle, and there's a lot of desperation out there. i am looking for certain ones, ones that can read my books, and i'm doing it mostly because i reached the point where i wanted anyone reading my books. i do generally find that when they read them they like them. that doesn't always mean they get more of them though.

in general i see it as kind of like the sea, putting a tiny boat out into an infinite sea. there is absolutely no guarantee that anyone will find you ever, but in general your chances are better if you make some noise and dress up real nice. nice big signs help too. but as for what part of the sea has more traffic? one soesn't know until one gets out there.