Not Bosom Buddies – June 15, 2024

2 minutes

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Rocky bit me twice.

Living here in what most call the “badlands” where it’s hot and dry most of the year and cold and dry the rest of it, you forfeit convenience and comfort for solitude and freedom from meddling. Save the most cantankerous sort, that doesn’t mean you don’t now and again need some sort of regular companionship, a living, breathing presence to remind yourself to imitate sanity.

I’ve the occasional wolf visit, lost and near starving. A foolhardy rabbit will do its best to get into and out of these mountains as quickly as possible.  Vultures attest to beasts daring to pass through whose journey failed. Birds are rare; what bugs there live here are vile and terrible, as apt to eat any bird as make a meal for one.

No mule. What I embrace civilization for once a year – coffee, dried beans, tobacco, a few bottles of rotgut, and whatever else I need – I backpack.  I sift enough glitter from these dusty canyons to cover expenses.

Doesn’t mean I don’t now and again need some living thing to talk to.  Talking only to yourself, you risk crossing from daft to crazy. 

Rocky showed up one day. Silently. Been mostly silent ever since. Ours is a relationship of tolerance.  Why he stays I dunno, but he does. Not normal for his sort to tolerate companionship. But he does. And so do I. Mostly it’s live and let live. Rocky shows up, I like to think, just to hear my voice. Never announces, just shows up.  Which is why he bit me the first time, as I nearly stepped on him in the dark as he coveted the warmth of my dying campfire.

The second time Rocky bit me was my fault.  I dunno.  In a spit of deep need for contact, I thought I could touch him. Certainly, a mistake. On my part.  Rocky showed not the least bit of remorse, went about our visit as always before. Emotionless.

It’s my nature to be a recluse, imperfectly, sure, but a recluse. It’s the nature of Mojave rattlers to be stoic.