Lucky suns and ditches

A homogeneous, untouchable, lightless velvet cloaked the pines. We plunged zombie armed into the fabric of night, groping through the darkness for a spot to pee, fingers extended, ready to touch god or be obliterated against blackjack trunks. On the way back, we took cautious steps until our outstretched digits jammed into steel then slid them along the truck’s contours searching for the door handle to go back to sleep.

A last look at the sky through the window revealed towering silhouettes, pine shaped off-black cut outs in the stars. So many stars. None of them ours.

Our sun is a black pinhole compared to the biggest and brightest stars, but it’s our star and it was rising soon. And the Grand Canyon is a ditch carved by weather and time, but it’s our ditch, and watching the one rise over the other is a site we feel lucky to see. So, we drove out of the forest in twilight to catch the dawn properly from the South Rim.

After the solar rim ritual our pilgrimage took us to another ditch. A multi-component site. An overlooked feat of civil engineering that quietly spares the city from snow melt and monsoon floods. A heroin den or wayward home for some. A bordello, prophet’s tablet or canvas for others. For us, the megalith beneath the street was a shrine to the carve, where we paid tribute in turns, offering sweat for joy until lunch.

Heather’s first pipe. Over unders in the Tunnel of Love.