Epoch Times

We haven’t listened to our recording from Wednesday night. We left for the mountains the next morning. The gig with Bernie was an odd one in that the crowd, mostly regulars, was especially intent on listening. Bernie had sat in with us before but not on the Little’s new stage. He set up in a way that we couldn’t hear what was coming out of his amp for the first set. So Peggi and I were playing sparsely as we strained to hear Bernie, afraid to run over whatever it was he was playing. It was especially nerve-wracking. We talked during the break and the second set worked.

We left after breakfast and stopped at the Fastrac in Walworth to go to the bathroom. The only newspaper on their stand was the Epoch Times, and they had a whole pile of them. I looked it up on Wikipedia and found it described as right-wing or far-right, known for its strong support of Donald Trump and the promotion of conspiracy theories. We made plans to stop at the nearby Mi Hacienda Jalisciense on our way back.

Driving up to the mountains at this time of year is like traveling into the future. Here, by the lake, our fall colors are just rolling in, but as we drove north the colors grew more and then less intense until we arrived post-peak. Our hosts live off the grid, so in one sense we arrived in the past, no internet or running water, but in a very real sense we were far more grounded in the present.

It is always tempting to take detail photos of their minimal but artfully constructed home in the woods, the perfectly stacked woodpiles, the burnt pots on the outdoor grill, the titles on the bookshelf and the glass tabletop on the hemlock stump.

Shelley took us down to the beaver dam on the marsh, where she pointed to the vertical supports the engineers used to support their thatched wall. The dam had raised the level of the marsh by three and a half feet, and the creek, where I was standing when I took this shot, had slowed to a trickle. So Shelley suggested I remove a few pieces to refresh the creek.

After a few days in the woods, we pulled up in front of the Mexican restaurant in Alton. It sounded like they were having a party inside. At four in the afternoon, some farm workers were just getting off work, and there were twenty or so, all men in their early twenties, eating at tables. Mexican music was cranked in the kitchen, and the subwoofer was rattling the building. Peggi went back out to the car to get our earplugs. Another couple showed up and sat next to us. They ordered margaritas. Peggi and I were having Negra Modelos with guacamole and enchiladas. We came home, made a batch of pimientos de Padrón and watched Atlético defeat Alavés 2–1.

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