THURSDAY MARCH 20, 2008
LEE ANN AND JO ARRANGED meetings at community and senior centers where only a handful of folks showed up, most to complain. The winter had been wet, but mild, so that not one session had been canceled and by spring, word spread and folks ventured out and began attending the rallies. With each opportunity, Lee Ann presented a new vision for county government and shared policies she’d long wished to see put in place. She proposed appointing a panel to review and record all federal and state funds awarded to the county. A check system would oversee all contract bids. An independent human resources department would be established to regulate hiring practices. Conciliatory meetings would be set up with the US Forest Service. The volunteer fire department would receive the money they needed to maintain and purchase new equipment.
Fat purple buds popped out on cottonwood limbs and baby cottontails bounced among the junipers. Robins poked the earth, elk started dropping antlers, and red-tailed hawks circled the field. The creek ran high and wide from snowmelt. On the equinox, she filled her pockets with roasted almonds and led the dogs up an elk trail on the west mesa to the rim rock. By noon, she’d worked up a sweat and she unzipped her jacket and loosened her scarf. The view encompassed all of the Walker Ranch and six miles of the valley from the northern plains at the base of Big Mountain, down the cliffs and along the creek to the store, a mere speck of the county. If six miles comprised a speck, a human body would amount to little more than an atom. Walker might be anywhere, inside or outside Dax County, inside or outside the US, but wherever he was the planet seemed minus his vibration. Even a windy day felt calm.
She hiked through pines and came to flat ledge and sat down, a dog on either side, and wrapped her arms around their necks until they broke free and shot off pursuing imaginary prey, leaving her with the opportunity to dream and plan. She’d resisted expressing excitement over running for office. The odds of winning were slim and even if she succeeded, skepticism and long-held attitudes towards women would test her resolve. Now she got on her knees and spread her arms, perched for flight. Of course, dream! Of course, plan!
The dogs returned and she took two nuts from her pocket and closed one nut in each fist. Their cold noses sniffed her knuckles until she opened her palms. Silly things, they ate them! She took Patch’s head in her hands and touched her nose to his, did the same with Blue.
“Okay, have another nut.”
Instead of returning along the elk trail, she forged her way straight down, carefully picking her way through juniper, prickly pear, and scrub oak, squeezing between boulders and scrambling over broken tree limbs, descending diagonally across a steep, sandy arroyo. Fine rock rolled underfoot and halfway down the slope she fell hard on her behind and slid before coming to a stop.
She caught her breath and leaned to push herself up. As if raising a hand, a weed not three inches tall cried wait. All alone, supporting one yellow flower the size of a baby fingernail, it claimed its right to thrive where no other plant survived. She reached to pluck it, to carry it home and identify it in one of Scott’s record books, but stopped. A seed had sprouted from ground dry and rough as sandpaper, softened by just the right amount of rain seeping between perfectly spaced grains of sand at exactly the right moment. She retreated to a place far beyond the sky and saw herself so small—a complex organism with its own destiny, containing a fate separate from her desires, to be nurtured or not by the intention of the universe. She touched the leaves and stem and stood, leaving the flower to its fate.
Below, a vehicle appeared, a dot at first, approaching from the southwest. A white truck slowed down and turned north at the store. She quickened her step, not so careful now, thinking she heard, did hear, the faint, distinct growl of the diesel.