long trail home...

what a weekend... our basketball team lost it first round match of state tournment to panasco. I enjoyed watching it through a camcorder. If anything that kept me watching the games. I get really board at basketball games and other school functions.


I did get to see my mother at the game. I hardly see her now days (me being a hermit and all). She was interviewed by the local Gallup newspapers about a month ago after the big snow fall in February. I missed the artical that week, on acount of being a recluse. I was told about it when I got to work. Everyone asked me if I saw my mom on the front-page of the newspaper. Of course you know the answer.


So about a couple weeks past by and my mother shows up at my door asking about my sister's storage and it's where abouts. I couldn't give any good directions to the thing. I had to show her where. I get ready and cleaned up and we go. I tell her about work, and she tells me about work over breakfast at a resturaunt in Windowrock, the former Navajo Nation Inn place. I ask her how did she get interviewed by the news paper and she told about it. I tell her I haven't read the article yet. She tells me that she has one in the house at Crystal, at summer camp. She goes on telling me about my brother Dale and how he read the news over the internet in Chicago, but at first he just browses over the article and he doesn't notice anything. A day goes by, and he gets an email form our cousin in Pheonix of the same article he just browsed over and finially gets that its about our mother. He calls her up and talks about it what I just put down.


I spend the rest of the day with my mother at the flea market looking at the crap people try to push there. I find an old book by Steven King, The Shining, hardcover edition and bought it for three bucks. It's in good condition too. And run into old friends and bought the jacket I'm wearing.
The day was alive at the flea market that day; not much wind, cloudless skies. My mother and I go back to Navajo and watch the movie Across the universe.


By the time the movie is over the day is almost over around four or five. My mother ask me to go and carry some stuff with her up to the house in Crystal. I follow her up in my truck. She tells me that I can read the article when I get there. What we have to do is stop just before the gravel road turns into a dirt road and park the cars. She gets ready and packs a backpack with some of the stuff she purchased at the fleas and another handbag with the bag of dog food I bought for the dogs and cat food, too. She hands me the a shovel and the handbag to carry up.





So began our walk. First, down the muddy road that wines west to north ward crossing the the stream. The water was higher than usual and cloudy from the rapid current kicking up silt and sand. The mud was five inches thick on the surface, and the trenches a foot deep from water flow. Crap. I forgot most of what I was going to write about the trip up to the house in Crystal. I spend too much time remembering the words I was going to used to discribe the road and the trial my mother made along the dirt roadside. The word was meander. The trail meandered through the tree, in the dusk of the day. The trail went through mud and sand, water and snow. It was a tough walking on melting ice and mud in some parts. There were some parts of the road that thawed out and dried up during the day. For it hasn't snowed for few weeks by then, and the weather started to get warmer... My mother and I did talk on the way up... but what about I can't recollect.
By the time we reached the house, the sunsetting was near completion. I walk inside to see about some stuff in my old room and I grab a Beatles' album I left behind. Mean while more talking about what are we going to do about Gina's storage shed.
My mom starts up a fire and perpares to feed the dogs. She makes herself a peanut butter jelly sandwich with raisen bread for energy with a bottle water for rehydration. Then makes me a sandwich as well before I go back down. I sit and eat in oil lamp light with the sound of the fire crackling. She comes back in from feeding the dogs.
I get ready to leave and just before I start walking down the road. I turn around and go back into the house and say where is the article of you in the papers.
The contient of the paper is of the winter mud and the large snow fall just a fews before. The Monday the Navajo Nation call for their employees to come in anyway they can, but the roads were under a foot of snow in Navajo and two feet and up in Crystal. So many employees around the area called-in saying they're not going to make it to work. But low and behold, my mother walks into work that day bundled up driving a ponitac named "little red." Thats how she got noticed. Of course the word gets to a newspaper reporter. They tract down my mother to interview her.
This is the jest of the article. And that's how came to finally reading her story by walking with her and spending the day with her... my goodness it sound like the book I'm reading. Crap.