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You wouldn’t believe how big and tough they are, these mountain raccoons. Sometimes tourists mistake them for bears. The last time they came through, shoving grapefruit-sized rocks off the bird feeder to get at the seeds, they left this evidence in the mud. That was also the last time the ground was damp enough to dent. (I took this on Saturday!)

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Meet my new friend Larry Peters from O’Neill, Nebraska. That ’54 Chevy was his very first car and he still drives it! We were walking down the block from our hotel (which rates a post all its own) when I saw the car across the street from a bar with a bunch of Harleys parked in front. Naturally I had to take a picture. While I was doing so, Larry and his wife came out and caught me, so we introduced ourselves. Man oh man.

The first thing he did was open the hood. Damn, do I like that. These days it’s hard to find someone who even knows where the latch is, much less appreciates what’s underneath. Besides, engines live inside plastic covers these days. But what Larry showed me wasn’t plastic. Have a look:

For anyone who doesn’t know, that’s a small-block Chevy V-8 with a four-barrel carburetor and headers at the very least. And no, ’54 Chevys didn’t come with those. [Ahem.] I knew exactly what I was looking at. Larry is a 65-year-old guy with a nose like W.C. Fields’ and a Harley-Davidson T-shirt but he might as well be some kind of angel sent to flesh me out. That motor is exactly what I always dreamed of in my early teenage hell years back in Abilene. Not so hopped up you can’t drive it on the street, but plenty hot enough to make that rust heap twist and scoot.

I used to buy Hot Rod magazine and read it cover to cover every time. I didn’t know what all the articles were about but studied them regardless, hoping I’d eventually grasp the mechanics. Believe it or not, that actually worked, although I never had the wherewithal or gumption to get down and greasy. Larry still does, tucked away in darkest north Nebraska. What’s more, he and his wife belong to some kind of club that drives 600 miles every summer, going through all the little towns and never leaving the state. In a beater hot-rod ’54. With dual exhausts and a fine, fine rumble.

Larry, do you have any idea how glad this stranger is he met you?

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Nebraska should be so lucky. Everywhere we’ve been around Dubuque, the world is green and lush. It’s like a joke, almost. A cosmic face-slap.

Today we sat out in the “garden room” and had our drinks while rain fell constantly but hardly made a sound as the great green sea of grass absorbed it like a living sponge. (Back in the woods, one might have heard the plop-plop-plop of big drops falling from the leaves.) I watched it with a wonder never felt in 25 years of living back in Maryland. The terrible high desert of New Mexico that stole my heart has shifted my perspective and I see the life the water brings. It wouldn’t rain like that in Taos without cracking thunder or great wind and later mud of course. It is a crazy, wretched thing.

On the way to visit the alpaca farm we passed by more green fury. All the grass was screaming bright and reaching for the sky. Mowers mowed and farmers sowed. The undulating plains groaned heavy with desire, not so much for corn (I thought) as prairie grasses, wildflowers, and the like. Too bad. And yet the gleaming white farmhouses and red barns were perfect in their way, invasive though they were. I wanted to live in each of them and watch exploding gardens as they grew.

But I have a fatal sickness. A need to grapple with the unimaginable Darkness makes me steal the best of what there is that’s easy and move on. Not long would I look out from my window at the happy cows or someone else’s barn a quarter mile away before I’d feel I’d fallen in between the velvet jaws of normal and go mad. There is no cure for this nor should there be—it’s just the way I am. The decades spent in futile purpose trying to adapt aren’t wasted, though, because they brought me to this point of recognition. It is a huge and monstrous gift.

Next time around I want to be a tree instead of a mistake. Plant me in a corner of the yard and hang a tire from my arm. Cut me down and burn me when the lightning splits my trunk. But that is then (perhaps), and this is now.

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The downtown art show in Dubuque did give me a somewhat unwelcome sense of deja vu—memories of when I used to sit for hours in a booth trying to look cheerful while no one bought anything—and it was hot and humid, but I don’t think either of those are what my wife and sister-in-law are reacting to in this photo. It’s a hoot, regardless.

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