A Little Different

My friend Brett has loaned me The Line Becomes a River, by Francisco Cantu. It’s about his experiences as a border patrol agent, and also about the border itself, and of course about those who cross, for reasons both nefarious and heart-rending, though often it seems as if both are of the same cloth. I am reading it slowly, in part because of the writing itself, which feels like something to linger over, rather than devour, but also (and less flatteringly) in part because I seem to have arrived at the age when too much reading in the evening is a surefire recipe for premature slumber. Oh how readily we succumb to all the cliches.

I ski in the final light of the day, moving purposefully because I haven’t brought a headlamp and dark is coming fast. The temperature is dropping fast, too, it’s nearly to zero, and the snow is squeaky and slow, the top layer packed dense by the previous day’s gusting wind. I love that the snow is never quite the same; every day it feels a little different beneath my skis. And every day it sounds a little different, sometimes scratchy and coarse and sometimes like a long, drawn out hush and sometimes as if it’s coming from a great distance, almost like when you hold a seashell to your ear and you imagine you can hear the ocean.

I step out of my skis, and walk to the cows’ paddock, where I break the skim of ice that’s formed on their water, hoping they think to drink before it freezes over again.

Just some ole fashioned, high quality rock n’ roll from Whiskey Myers. Enjoy.