At The Foot Of The Big Horn Mountains

Don’t You Know Where We’re Goin’ Is Not Where We’ve Been
I Believe It’s The High Road We’re Taken’


Juan's Basement Sitting On The Bed
May 30, `72

At the bar, two Mexican Indians struck up a conversation with me.
Apparently, they had watched me ride up on my bicycle. When I told
them how far I had come, they were surprised. We drank some beers
together, and Juan told me I could sleep in his basement if I wanted
to. I agreed, but before arriving at his place we went out into his
fields and I helped him redirect some irrigation water. Now it was his
turn to impress me. He told me that he was under contract to provide
all the barley that went into making Schlitz beer. Back in Michigan, I
drank a lot of Schlitz, but in Wyoming it wasn't available. Juan
couldn't even remember how the beer tasted. I assured him it tasted great.

Standing four inches deep in mud, surrounded by a field of green
barley, and after another one of Juan's friends had stopped by to help
us drink the beer that Juan had stashed in the back of his truck, I
guess you could say I made my way back to Earth, but even then, in
that relatively innocuous moment, poetry flourished. The four of
us--two orthodox Catholics, one agnostic military lifer (the new guy),
and myself, at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains, in the cooling
twilight of a very hot Wyoming day, talked God and religion. That was
the second time in less than a couple of hours where language failed
me. Words did not help me then and even now, in my attempt to describe
that situation, I cannot find the words, so I won't try.

In Juan's basement I was sitting on the spare bed writing in my
journal while trying not to listen to Juan argue with his wife
upstairs. When I walked up to the house and entered through the door I
could tell that his wife wasn't happy. Juan, before we met his wife,
told me that if I wanted to stick around for a few days he would put
me to work. I said, "Sure." I even told him that I would work for
free because I wanted to get a feel for what it's like living at the
foot of the Big Horns, and that for me was worth more than money. He
said, "You can thin sugar beats and I will pay you, maybe not much,
but you'll make a few dollars." It didn't look like any of that was
going to happen now. Judging from what I was hearing upstairs, I
decided not to unpack my things.