Now, if my fine Swiss watch is keeping good time, we are just entering the Cambrian of my spring, and I would tell you now about 2 visits that came upon me in a staggering Jersey Joe Walcott one-two.
This hearkens back to the days of early April, as we plow along through these Molassic oceans, sticking where we should plane, gumming where we should fly. In a fit of bonhominy, I sent out a beck and call to come and join me in paradise, for that is what it is here. In the quickest 5 minutes I can recall, I got one, and then two replies. This of course was not planned for, as No One Writes to the Colonel, and I feared they would overlap.
But no, they simply lined up like all the Italian kids in 5th grade gym class, plus that one german; Altobelli, Cotugno, Ianuzzi, Ialeggio, Signorelli, Traub.
And so from April 14th through the end of the month, I played host and delighted party favor to a lobster quadrille of my favorite people -- my parents, and then two of my best friends, Devin and Signe, late of the S.S. Samuel Enderby of Middletown, CT.
My mother and father were the first new logs in the sleeping bags, and it was wonderful to discover rather suddenly how proud I was of this place, how possesive I have become, how my own I have made it. I felt more invested than the requisite visit to the freshman dorm room, in the dead of night and stiff of rain, and I also realized that for once I happened to have some of the answers; it was one of the first experiences of my life at being realistically pertinent -- how marvellous!
The first day, in honor of changes in altitude and time zones, not to mention the lingering fingers of juniper nosejuice in the air, we took the wonderful meandering extended thought process that is Frijoles Canyon, after parking at the Ponderosa Campground. We napped in the sun, we ate apples and chocolate we fell behind, outstripped, and coalesced again. We met Lev Tolstoy, marooned on top of a pillar no doubt for his baiting of Turgenev, and watched with rapt attention as a waterlogged and still struggling fly went once, twice, three times around in a back eddy before *bamp!* the smallest trout in the pool was the only one who had eyes enough to look outside the main flow.
We met another personage high up in a rock face, stiocally staring away from you no matter where you stood; i cannot remember who it is, but my father knew immediately. I would love to tell you it was Uncle MJ, but I don't think it was.

My father and I wandered far afield and discovered caves that havent been surveyed in 70+ years (the archeologist confirmed) In front of one was a fire circle of rocks, a rusted out bowl, cups, and a few cans, and then right up inside the cave was 1930 LEO carved in the wall, just like some John Steinbeck characters had been there a few weeks earlier and left already feeling nostalgic for a not-yet past. There was a carved out bed, carved shelves in the walls, and adobe walls and blackened ceiling, in the local style of the pueblo indians. All of which means that the cave was just as old if not older when LEO found it, a remnant from the upper Rio Grande Indians of the 1200s'. Ancientness breeds stunning ancientness.

My mom showed me up by cutting and clearing trees with a crosscut saw, identifying every bird in sight, and pooping in the outhouse without care nor hair of the vestibulous legions of spiders that lurk under the rim, holding their fire until they saw the whites of our cheeks. we hiked all over the goddam place, ate many beans, drank many beers, and had a rare old time.