It was another beautiful day here in el Norte. The photo was taken in the middle of June, but who cares? My wife is as beautiful as ever, and everything else is still the same. Or is it?
Just yesterday the toilet wouldn’t flush (again), and I had to call Gilbert the Plumber. It had been a short two months since he was last over here to run the snake down through the roof vent into the septic tank, and we were both a bit subdued. This time I’d apparently called while he was sitting at the breakfast table in his pajamas eating cereal, but he made it over just the same—on a Saturday, mind you—which proves how blessed one can be, even in the midst of crisis. The issue is “roots” in the wastewater line, although I massacred and poisoned the guilty Japanese plum tree and lilacs sometime back in April. Maybe I should have used dynamite instead. I have a friend who used to stop his truck along the forest service roads and blow stuff up looking for gold. Talk about going directly after what you want, hoo boy. Anyway, he could have helped. (Now that I think of it, he probably has!)
Later that evening, the lady in the picture read me a traditional Navajo saying: “Coyote is always out there waiting, and coyote is always hungry.” No doubt intended to make us pay attention, there’s also something reassuring in the way it lets one off the hook.
John Hamilton Farr lives at 7,000 feet in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A. As New York Times best-selling author James C. Moore tells it, John is “a man attuned to the world who sees it differently than you and I and writes about it with a language and a vision of life that is impossible to ignore.” This JHFARR.COM site is the master writing archive. To email John, please see CONTACT INFO on .png)
Yes! Coyote rules in Taos. Yesterday there is a Coyote trotting along the sidewalk where the round-a-bouts are. They know their place.
Read my next post. I kinda forgot about Coyote, huh.
Coyote waits in suburban New England, too. This spring we had lots of bunnies and they ate the flowering quince (new) and all the flowers off the verbena. Now the verbena blooms and the quince has new leaves. Neighbor saw a big one when he let his dog out at night. Had to run out to rescue the dog and the coyote took off into the woods. No rabbits anywhere, and the chipmunks are scarce, too.
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