Rooster Rock State Park. Standing on what, in Spring, is the riverbed: this time of year, with the river low, it's a wide expanse of drying sand. The wind blows steadily. We lean into it and walk upriver. Rivulets of dryer sand come flying over the surface at us, staying ankle-high.
Turn and look back. Down on the river, the kite-sailors' wings rise and fall over the horizon like monstrous birds flocking. The rivulets run away from us.
I remember to tell Martha about the vultures a couple weeks ago. Above the 82nd Avenue train station, I counted 46. Not wheeling, as they usually do, like in a cowboy movie -- they were more rumbustious than usual, like crows mobbing together, flapping their wings, going every which way. And not anchored: they were drifting south. I've never seen them do anything of the sort, and I don't know what to make of it.
Now, worn out with the wind and the sun. Wondering.
We walked back, carrying plastic water bottles, a quart Pennzoil bottle, two small plastic bollards, an energy drink can. Martha took a stick and threaded the bollards and and cans on it, and carried it before her like a scepter. "I'm a new age shaman!" she said. "Woo."
October.
Good night.
2 comments:
Good that you have a shaman to guide you through the wilderness.
Liked that outing! Especially the weird little rivulets. And Martha the shaman, of course.
Did I tell you that we have a large bare tree that the vultures love close by? I was yacking about fultures with somebody on facebook... Was it you? My head, alas, is a sieve.
But now the vultures are addicted to some hemlocks (maybe it's not hemlocks, but sad draggled things, very tall--shall have to inspect, but don't want to go to the close) that line the sidewalk as I walk south from home. And they make everything smell horribly--old fusty, musky pee-and-blood horrors of a stink!
It is hard to hold your breath for that long. I walk by, ignoring the vulture pee and looking at the big pee-and-blood feathers sticking up out of the grass.
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