Heat

 I never liked the hottest days.  I'd keep to the trees, plan my route near water.  Or just swing the days away in the hammock I'd set up in the shade of the pines along the riverbank.  The most earthly of sounds: the rush and roar of running water, the lap of waves, thunder before a fall of rain.  Water flows, you see, in the country I remember.

Ice flows, too---I know, I know.  But not on a human scale.  There's no playfulness to ice.  Its creaks and groans stand in for thunder here, and children whimper when it rumbles and shakes our walls, just as they did back Home in the heart of a storm.  This new world is cold and drear most days, and the years unending. 

Yes, there's majesty here, majesty galore.  But my mind keeps going back to the hottest days.  Painting Cooper's old barn in the baking sun of an August afternoon.  Crossing the talus slope beneath Chalice Pass in a late September indian summer.  Changing a flat on the shoulder of the freeway by the Great Salt Lake---evening, but the asphalt's still bubbly and sticks to my shoes as the rigs blare past in a swirl of fumes.  OK, so that wasn't so great, but by god it was heat.

A better memory: it's the 4th of July and the clan is gathered.  It's too damned hot to rest inside, so we pack up the kids and head for the river with every raft and innertube we can muster.  The first plunge into the water beneath the bridge takes our breath away.  Everybody's squealing, splashing, gasping.  Then back out to warm up on the rocks.  Water is liberty.  Another plunge.  Another bake.  Another plunge.  Heat.

I'm there.