Take off your pants and jacket. It’s SNOT time.
These weeds are growing fast. The sun is peeking out intermittently. 75 degree days are becoming more frequent, and soon every day will be like those days imagined back in December, and this drab and desolate February. It’s coming up fast. It’s almost here right now, and this is the time to scheme and plan for what to do with all those sunny days.
This year, I want to go back to Big Bend next weekend. The spring wasn’t fully there last weekend. The Creosote had yet to bloom. The bang of little red flowers spurting out of the ends of barbed wire Ocotillio had just turned the faucet. Big blooms from Yucca were waiting for nights to open up. The free unabted stretches of desert were filled with wild flowers, and the highway was lined with blue flowers, there isn’t a part of this state that old woman didn’t reach, but the back end, toward the river, around and behind the mountains, were missing the circles of flowers under shady outreaches. A mama and her baby had a cactus breakfast together. It was almost spring, it just wasn’t all the way there. Now is the time to seize these things. So next weekend I’ll drive all the way out there, hike the never seen before Marufo Vega, wear sun screen, and turn right back around and wonder why am I even going back.
A friend of mine are fans of Lucero. We’ve seen them like eight times. Twice of which were doing Christmas time in Memphis. They always play a big Christmas show there, and they play another, an enormous block party, every April. The plan as of now is to go out there for it, and probably for the last time. I got other shows to go to too: Daughters next week, Kacey in two weeks, Turnover/Turnstile next month, PUP and Earl the month after that.
I’ve been to the Grand Canyon every year since 2012, which started this disease. The first time I saw something inside me popped and bubbled. It was like true love on the big screen. There some horizontal stretches in the park I still want to mess around on. Maybe Memorial Day. If not, I have some friends on the East Coast and would like to go back to NYC and actually stay up super late in all that rot this time.
I got friends going to Mexico at the end of July. There are rivers to swim in after big long knee aching runs. There’s a hike in Mount Ranier called the Wonderland Trail, where you walk 96 miles all the way around Mount Rainer, that I’ve imagined doing. No water to carry. 15-20 mile days. All I gotta carry is food and some changes of underwear.
During Thanksgiving or Christmas I’ve always wanted to go out to the Smoky Mountains when it’s freezing. And crunch around those mounds of Earth when no one is up there. Every since I read Suttree I want to hit that same absurdist spot. If not, the Mojave and the desert is habitable again. While I lived there I never went to Mojave National Preserve. It’s a quick drive after a flight into Las Vegas. There is also the newly established Mojave Trails National Monument. It sounds perfect. One road, no hotels, and lots of places to walk. After reading Desert Solitaire again, reading and listening to The Desert Oracle, and watching that episode of The Sopranos, where Tony eats peyote in Vegas and greets the desert, I have that big itch, and am dying to buy some cheap land instead of a new car at some county auction.
Those are my big plans to splay myself open while everything is in bloom. What about you? Do you have any vacation or travel plans, or any spots I should visit along these paths, or new ones in general?
Anyways, that’s all I got. The rest is yours to talk about whatever you want. Enjoy your Saturday.
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