Thursday, January 28, 2010

And now for something completely different . . .

 So I read through my blog just now and realized just how much it sounded like a laundry list of bus rides. All of you apparently think fondly enough of me to read it anyway, but I decided to spice it up a little by throwing in some field notes. Great, you think. Now something that IS a laundry list. But these are the unofficial field notes that I´m not turning in, which means they morphed into something much more enjoyable. To write, at least. But after all this explaining you´re really not gonna stop reading, are you? 

The Evolution of Field Notes
Actually, it´s more like the original idea of descent with modification. I didn´t mean to do it, it just happened that way. Note the pivotal transition to sentence form.


Pine plantations
good wood, economical
planted in rows
so that those closest to the road
are simply stripped, shortened
used as living fenceposts

Same is done @ park entrance --- recognizeable only for the sign that marks it.
These ones are cut to a point, and the tops are painted white to deter rot.
They look like giant pencils.

I want to pull one out and color the Andes - big triangles with jagged snowcaps.
Then the angry volcanic fissures, almost poked there with a tightened fist.
Then the boulders awkwardly littering the paramo
like foreign pebbles cast from a giant´s shoe.
slate grey looming on a brown cover that looks deceptively fertile

Then I would shade in the washouts and a tiny whitetail would spring into penciled existence, bound up the hillside and away. 
Perhaps a rabbit would skitter frenzied from the shrubby cover lower down - reduced, mouse-like ears flattened against the harsh wind, heart bashing equally against the ribcage.
Then a hawk, with shiny black wings caked in graphite, might seize it for the biggest meal it would land in a week. Anything left would be pounced on by one of three naked-headed vultures, each one twice as black and four times as ugly as the last.

Then suddenly the wind would change, and all would go about their lives alone
And I would put the pencil back 
because it is alive, 
after all.


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