Ronaldus Magnus, President and Statesman


"Any day you wake up on the right side of dirt, is a good day! It’s another opportunity to do something… to be free and be in the fight. It’s another day to influence someone, to teach, to lighten the load of another and to try and give back part of what I’ve gotten from living in the greatest nation on Earth. It’s a gift from God that I hope I don’t waste."

Fight ‘em till Hell freezes over, and then fight ‘em on the ice!!


- Thanks to Trooper John Smith over at ://www.sondrak.com/index.php/P35/

It would be easy to reach out and take hold of the remote control and slip into a drooling, semi-sonambulent state, dumbed and numbed by post-modern, negative seeking, and decadent media.

There is some truth in the Wachowski Brother's film odessey, The Matrix. We are surrounded by Addictions and those who seek to placate us, remove us from the fight, keep us powerless and addicted.

Ronald Reagan chose to walk a separate path. He believed the following:

- There is EVIL in the world and we are called to name it, defy it and defend against its influence.

- There are those who are pluralists, grey in heart and spirit, servants of Communism and/or Social Fascism. They do not believe in a higher power, God, other than self or the collective state.

- It is our job, in this great land, to stand against the evil, fight against the godless and take personal responsibility for making this world a better place, by the gifts and grace of God.

I think it a good time to consciously take time to stand against the onslaught. Turn off the talking heads and their endless stream of their poisonous, soul killing drivel. Take a day to fish with an old friend or some lost member of your family. Split some firewood. Talk to your neighbor, help him or her fix a broken stairway, roof, walkway. Look your mate in the eye, take a breath and tell him or her that you love them...and say it with conviction. Dig up a forgotten corner of garden somewhere and plant a future. Read a book. Take ten minutes and be quiet, reflective, prayerful.

Take time to join in worship with those who believe as you. Join them this week at your temple, synagogue, church, chapel, some chosen place of praise.

Thank that being, however you choose to see that higher power, for the gift of life and citizenship in this great and powerful land, blessed by God. And thank that same God for the gift of Ronald Reagan, President and Statesman.

California Dreams

Over at the sadoldgoth, the thoughts have turned to times long past in California.

His tight prose rattled my soul and I was drawn back in time to write of Renee and this place:

Remembering Renee

In the rundown old town section of Orange, CA, a shabby and dirty pink stucco home stands entrapped by vines. The greenery has blurred whatever defining features the old house might show. I just know it feels ancient. It is September, 1968. Evening wanders up Almond Street, hot, humid and dark. I open the door of my old, rust bound Mercedes sedan and with a tentative sigh, step onto an alien sidewalk. "801 W. Almond, yep, that's the address." I whisper to myself, trying to crank up my courage.

No need, for she has opened the front door to the house. Light shines around the tiny woman, a halo of blonde welcome, her whole body smiles under thin, clinging, cotton print. She waves slowly, beckoning me.

Renee is her name. Her family has owned this house since the 1940's...and here I am, not more than 8 months out of Colorado.

One week ago, at a gathering of young hipsters, she sought me out, took my calloused hand between her soft girl fingers and pulled me into the darkness, pulled me deep inside her slippery, hungry woman's well. She told me she had been waiting for me....She whispered that I lived in her dreams.

Now, this night, I chose to respond. Dreams or no, I was accepted and engulfed in her sweet selfless hunger. Darkness covered us that night, a blanket of sweat and passion.

That was the way of her. She welcomed me whenever, wherever and held me close... no questions, no expectations, just quiet and deep.

Less than a year later, I left California, burned out, disillusioned. Renee didn't cry. She just smiled her shy smile and turned away without looking back. I often wonder, almost forty years later, what became of her. I have attempted to contact her through old friends. She seems to have disappeared. And the house, so long in her family, has been sold.

Perhaps she and the house were just the fevered dreams of a stoned and lonely young mountain man who found himself in that hellish paradise of SoCal in 1968.

I think not. I can still taste her sweet kiss.

Biscuits and Gravy at the Searchlight Cafe


The state of Nevada has an interesting shape. In the precise language of Mathematics, she is defined as a trapezoid. “She?!?” Oh beloved, I can hear the rumblings of the politically correct police. OK, I might be accused of being gender specific in my cavalier use of the pronoun “she”. This Eurocentric, sky god defined left brain trained male of the genus and species “Homo Sapien” still sees the earth as Gaia, very female, and a very fertile woman. It is who I am and it is just the way things are.

My Roman Catholic brothers and sisters perceive the edifice of church buildings as the physical manifestation of the Blessed Virgin. In doing so, they hold a reverence for these buildings as the blessed female body who bore our Savior Christ and now births, nurtures and educates the children of God; so I see the geographic parameters of these United States, most particularly in the Southwest. Her story is written in the sweat and blood of Indigenous Natives, Roman Jesuits, French trappers, British surveyors, Welch stonemasons, Italian farmers, Dutch merchants and the continuing fecund mass of immigrants who seek the approximation of perfection in this land. Their restless spirit is scribed in rocky desert trails, high mountain passes and wagon paths along cottonwood shaded rivers. However, this is a tangential thread, important to the core structure of my thesis, yet only a sidebar to the essence of this specific essay.

Let’s return to Nevada’s geographic shape. Up north, she’s very straightforward and square, akin to most of her sister states west of the turbid Mississippi River. On Nevada’s southeast corner, the Colorado River defines her threadbare and ragged underskirt border with California and Arizona. The river then heads south and comes to a point where it flows into California’s Imperial Valley wandering on to her final meeting with the ocean in the Gulf of California. All that is left of the once raging flow is a trickle of brackish water. The whole of the Colorado River has been portioned out and used up by thirsty humans in our quest to create a perfect Eden in the desert.

Back upstream, some thirty miles southeast of Las Vegas, Boulder City was built on the barren volcanic rock plateau above the Black Canyon of the Colorado River. Boulder City would not exist but for the need to house engineers, construction workers and their support personnel during the construction of Hoover Dam; that massive concrete impoundment, built between 1931and 1935 which tamed the raging red river to provide water storage and electric power for the swelling population of the Southwest.

One chapter of my part in this story takes place on U.S. Highway 95 that runs south out of Boulder City. The asphalt two lane runs past State Road 165, State Road 164 at Searchlight and State Road 163 that runs east to the gambling mecca of Laughlin on the mighty Colorado River. If you follow it on south out of Nevada, Highway 95 runs into Interstate 40 at Needles, California. This section of I-40, From Oklahoma City to Barstow, California, follows the ghost of Steinbeck’s “Mother Road” the legend haunted Route 66. That indeed is a whole other volume of stories.




Have you noticed how we define the Southwest is inextricably bound up in her water and roads? Rivers and asphalt, beloved, water and wagon tracks tell the tales. Roads are built to convey goods and personnel across the broad expanse and endless miles ‘tween mines, mills and growing cities. These cities cannot exist in the desiccate desert without a basic commodity, water. It’s a truth that cannot be overlooked. The history of the Southwest is written in her rivers and on her roads.

Between Boulder City and the turn off to Laughlin, highway 95 is a desolate, seemingly gunbarrel straight two lane through the northeast quadrant of the burning Mojave desert. There is a single major intersection in this harsh, monotone beauty. That intersection is the town of Searchlight.

Searchlight is an old mining community, founded as the "Searchlight Mining District" after gold ore was discovered in1897. The population grew to over 2,000 souls until the mines played out. Today, about five hundred folks receive their mail at Searchlight. On the main highway there is a Cafe/Trading Post/Gas Station and a small Casino (It is, after all, Nevada.). Searchlight is one of those crossroad towns that exist on the fringe of modern life. The few who call themselves residents are retirees, desert rats, ranchers and a few struggling miners. The town survives in part by providing services to sun seeking snowbirds and travelers headed for some other destination.

In the late spring of 1997, I was visiting a woman friend who lives in Las Vegas. We were having a long distance relationship and decided it was time to find out if we were "right" for each other. (This is one of the core construct desires in our search for the approximation of perfection, but that, dear ones, is another tale!) She is a tall, slim hipped, striking and stately Aires, full of fiery passion for her two grown sons and the hope of grandkids to come. Aires (not her real name) is a successful real estate broker and desert rat who hates the thought of cold or snow, and doesn’t think much of rain. Like sparkling red steel hot from the forge, she’s been tempered by Fate’s hammer and the Mojave’s desert anvil into a supple blade. We had left Vegas early one morning, headed for Laughlin and the river. Chance or fate, who knows which, caused us to stop to fuel up both body and vehicle at the cafe in Searchlight. And that, beloved, was when the glistening, greasy grinned god of roadhouse food dropped one of his greatest jewels right in my belly.

Now, beloved, you must understand a crucial point before I continue. When I began my short career as a hirsute student at Western State College in Gunnison, CO, I also undertook a minor quest of sorts in search of a culinary grail. That was in the year of 1967. Here is how it began:

There used to be a cafe in Almont, Colorado that boasted about serving the best biscuits and gravy in Colorado. Almont is a ranching community halfway between Gunnison and the skiing mecca of Crested Butte. The little town sits in the lush Tomiche Creek valley surrounded by mountains. And, like Searchlight, it derives much of its income from the service of travelers bound for some other place. In those early days of hippiedom, we who were hip, or thought we were hip, would hitchhike from Gunnison to Crested Butte to revel in the cool, oh-so-trendy renovated miner’s cabins of noveau mountain men and women, ski bums one and all. The cafe in Almont was a way station watering hole on our treks to and from Crested Butte. It was in that funky little highway house where I first had the vision of finding the best Biscuits and Gravy in the Southwest.



Since that day I have ingested plenteous platters of biscuits and gravy all across the Southwest. From cookie cutter chain restaurants to questionable greasy dives on back highways, in places with names like Tucumcari, Tees-Nos-Pas and Mexican Hat, biscuits and gravy made a cheap, belly filling fuel for footsore; road weary Kerouacian wanderers like myself. I knew what constituted a good plate of "B'n'G" and the cafe in Almont served up a fair plate of the belly busters. Yet, I knew in my hungry little heart that their recipe was not the best. There had to be better.

Then, in that little cafe in Searchlight, I picked up the menu and my eyes fell upon a description of biscuits and gravy that caused my mouth to drop open and my salivary glands to begin to work overtime. Obviously, my reaction was enough to cause Aires to wonder out loud about what I found so damn fascinating on the faded plastic covered menu. With a trembling index finger, I pointed to the description of B’n’G as I explained my thirty-year culinary quest. Her dark eyes brooded. With her head cocked to one side Aires looked at me and spoke that she was puzzled and a bit taken aback that some fool, her new found fool to boot, would spend so long a time searching for the best of a common, cheap, blue collar food. I made the mistake of replying with a statement that questioned her almost fiendish addiction to Coke. This was not the drug, but the drink, Coca-Cola. She literally drank quarts of the stuff from sunup to bedtime. We all have our own little strange addictive behaviors. Aires, well, she loved her Coke. This led to a short but heated dialogue about judgement of one’s individual behavior by one’s partner.

Our little verbal fencing match was interrupted by the arrival the waitress. I took one look at her and I knew that this was going to be an experience to remember. Waitresses can tell a knowledgeable highway hound much about what to expect from a roadhouse kitchen. Had she been young, gum chewing and sullen post adolescent or a hard bitten, bitter-faced bleached blonde, my expectations would have dropped a few notches. However, this lady was perfect. Here was a small plump woman in her late fifties or early sixties. Her wispy white hair was pulled back and tied up in a neat bun. A bright smile lit up her round, lightly tanned face. She did not wear a uniform but dressed in clean Levis and a simple white blouse with a crisp white apron. This beloved, was a lady who loved to serve her customers. She beamed with efficiency.

She asked if we were ready to order. Lordy, was I ready? Thirty years of eating everything from hard rock, tooth cracking lumps slathered with weak, watery gruel to feasting on gloriously light and fluffy clouds swimming in hot and spicy Red Eye gravy had prepared me for this moment. I had to experience the Searchlight Cafe's rendition of Biscuits and Gravy. I ordered the B'n'G with eggs over easy and waited, sipping hot coffee with a distinctly acrid and alkaline flavor. Southern Nevada is not known for the quality of its water. Perhaps this helps explain Aires predilection for Coke. Meanwhile, Aires opted for simple eggs over medium, hash browns and white toast. And yes, she ordered a Coke, winking at me with a wicked grin.

An expectant calm settled over the diner. Aires and I sipped our drinks. We talked of children and the desert and watched each other’s eyes. The slippery tones of a steel guitar solo from some Country-Western tune played in the background. The rhythmic squeak of the kitchen door announced our elderly waitress, her face rosy and smile angelic as she placed our orders on the faded Formica table top. And, beloved, the moment had arrived. I found myself staring at a most amazing sight. Two perfectly cooked eggs danced on top of the largest single biscuit I had ever seen. It was the size of a long haul trucker's fist. Hot, thick glistening gravy, lightly colored tan with specks of coarse ground pepper and tiny flakes of red chile ran down the sides and pooled around the biscuit. There was not an errant drop of grease to be found. Oh, this biscuit with its attendant gravy, this was a close approximation of perfection.



The round, light brown biscuit dough was not whipped up out of standard white flour. This delight was made with corn flour, corn meal along with the regular wheat flour. A huge, fried sausage patty (hot or mild, and I had ordered hot) had been lovingly tucked inside the biscuit dough before it was baked. The flavor of the sausage resonated through the light but hearty hunk of biscuit. The flavors in the gravy didn't smother other flavors or loose their own identity. They enhanced the eggs and biscuit creating a beautiful balance of down home, belly filling delight. Yep, I thought. I had found the best platter of biscuits and gravy in the Southwest United States at a most unlikely spot; The Searchlight Cafe in Southeast Nevada. And I wasted no time telling Aires exactly that. Her dark eyes sparkled and she laughed out loud, shaking her head. She told me I was nuts, in a loving kind of way. We finished eating, paid the tab and headed out into the bright desert day.

Now, that monstrous breakfast felt good in my belly, at least for the next fifteen or so miles. Then, oh beloved, that monstrous breakfast turned into a hot lump of lead churning and burning its slow way through my intestinal track. A quick stop at a drugstore in Lauglin cured the burn. So much for perfection in the gullet.

The search for perfection on this earthly plain is a path that leads us to some unlikely places and circumstances. There are lessons to be learned, taught by the most unlikely teachers, including God’s own revelatory spirit. There, in the center of a most inhospitable and tortured terrain, humankind had literally jack-hammered out a bit of paradise. In doing so, some mother or mother’s son had created an amazing platter of food. Had the Army Corp of Engineers not decided to build Hoover Dam where they did, had Searchlight not been founded where it was, this whole story would most likely not have happened. Had I not chosen to meet Aires, it is unlikely that I would have ever stopped in Searchlight Nevada and eaten what I still consider the best plate of biscuits and gravy in the whole of the Southwest. If Aires and I had not chosen to spend time with one another, we would both have unanswered questions about relationships and soul mates. The tapestry of our lives would be less rich in experience. We chose to meet one another with few, if any, unstated or unconscious expectations. This allowed us the freedom to simply enjoy one another's company while exploring some fascinating country and finding a bit of culinary joy at the Searchlight Cafe.

Bear Creek between Evergreen and Morrison, 26 September 2006.
That little figure is yours truly.

Home Water

There is this well worn two word phrase, seemingly politically correct and held out as conventional wisdom by the bulk of modern fly fishing writers. It conjures up ancient images of Grandfather in canvas waders, a battered fedora hat stuck on his head, decked in a worn flannel shirt with a pipe full of smoldering Union Leader tobacco settled against his unshaven jaw. The images were made complete as the camera pulled back and slowly panned the scene. Grandfather stood knee deep in a rushing, crystal clear stream. His horn hard and masterful hands worked a bamboo fly rod, forming long arcs of shining line in the raking sun while the latest hatch of mayflies created a luminous insect blizzard all around him. Idyllic, yes, and the writers would say, “almost Homeric, a true Field and Stream epic…ah, those were the days.” Then, with a sigh and an inward turn of their own eyes, they would begin to remember their own home water.

Now, don’t assume that I am going on the offensive, attacking the phrase with some kind of acerbic wit. I find it a good phrase and true in subjective concept and objective meaning. It holds a deep truth. Any fly fishing junkie who is worthy of their stained and tattered vest has a place that he or she considers “Home Water.” Whether it’s a New England spring creek haunted by Brook trout or steep and rolling pocket water on some western river in Oregon, or perhaps one of the treacherous, meandering oxbow legends up in Montana, it matters little. It might be a narrow little Appalachian creek overgrown with willow and alder, or a hidden brook in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. What matters, what defines home water is the relationship between fisherman and that particular stretch of water. It is history, a sense of place and that certain and comfortable knowing of what will be around the next turn, whether that turn be a physical bend in the river or the turn of daylight to dusk or the turn of the seasons.

Those of you, oh beloved, who know my writing, might assume that my own home water would be Cabin Creek, flowing down from the snow fields on Mt, Meeker. Divining just what Cabin Creek is in my own physiognomy; well, that’s a mighty tough read. I’m scratching my head here and wondering, thinking on the run. What does physiognomy mean and how does it relate to this essay? Here’s what the folks at Webster have to say:

Main Entry: phys·i·og·no·my
Pronunciation: "fi-zE-'ä(g)-n&-mE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -mies
Etymology: Middle English phisonomie, from Middle French, from Late Latin physiognomonia, physiognomia, from Greek physiognOmonia, from physiognOmOn judging character by the features, from physis nature, physique, appearance + gnOmOn interpreter —more at GNOMON
Date: 14th century
1 : the art of discovering temperament and character from outward appearance
2 : the facial features held to show qualities of mind or character by their configuration or expression
3 : external aspect; also : inner character or quality revealed outwardly

Cabin Creek (another story) was and is a spiritual gift. God gave it to me as a place of harmony, reflection and life affirmation. Walking its sub-alpine banks, drinking its waters, eating its fish and the fruits nourished by its flow shaped my youth and the direction of my life, my physiognomy, if you will. I know that might seem like a bit of a stretch in science and logic. Yet that creek is as much a part of my being as is the DNA that I received from my biological parents or the eggs, tomatoes, potatoes and onions I had for breakfast.

I am not a large physical being, nor is Cabin Creek. And like that little creek, I do not like crowds or loud and boisterous convocations. My being and its being are inexorably tied to the ebb and flow of the seasons, droughts and fecund years. Mankind’s impact, beneficial or detrimental, has effected us both, yet we both continue to flow and laugh, continually fed by the alpine air, the alpine snows. Comparisons abound, and I could continue till you and I both fell asleep from my droning on.

Ya’ know, that conjures up an image. Time now for a small tangential hike on Cabin Creek.

Are you ready? Make sure you have on sturdy boots and take along some insect repellant. Oh yes, don’t forget to stuff a flannel shirt and a rain jacket in your pack. It is, after all, late summer in the high country. The weather can change in a heartbeat. Walk upstream with me, deep in the canyon we struggle through a maze of willows past an imposing granite overhang. Breaking free of the willows, we enter a small, hidden meadow about halfway between Highway 7 and the bridge on Big Owl Road. Steep slopes rise on either side of this meadow and the upstream and downstream ends are both closed by thick willow breaks. It is an intimate place, hushed, private and very personal. The waters of Cabin Creek flow out of the willows, down from a small falls into a short and deep meander before splitting into two flows around a granite outcrop. In late summer or early autumn, the sense of utter peace seeps up out of the damp earth, almost sentient and very tangible. There is this droning on the edge of consciousness that exists here. It whispers of rest and home. The breeze in the Ponderosa high above, the tinkling of the water flowing over rocks and the hushed murmur of air in the deep grasses and willows all join in a concert of contentment. Yep, a great place to sleep the afternoon away, except for the ubiquitous mosquitoes and the ominous gray thunderheads building over 13'900 ft. Mt. Meeker.

Enough, I am certain that you have grasped the concept. And now it is time to tell you of my home water.

Bear Creek rises from three snow fed alpine lakes on Mt. Evans, south and west of Denver. This center most massif of the Front Range peaks is visible from the plains. The Evans massif boasts two peaks over fourteen thousand feet. Mt. Bierstadt (14,060 ft.), is tied to Mt. Evans (14, 464 ft.) by an uncompromising and wicked saw tooth ridge that runs roughly east by north east in a south facing horseshoe shape. It is here that Bear Creek begins it run to the plains from the eastern slopes of the massif.

The creek rolls east by north east out of the rugged Alpine and Sub-alpine Evans Wilderness area into the Montane region designated as a state wildlife area where hunting and fishing are allowed under strict management by the Colorado Division of Wildlife. Jefferson County Public Schools maintains and outdoor education lab here. Now the creek drops into a broad and long glacial valley. This is the very private, very expensive, hobby ranch community of Upper Bear Creek. Willie Nelson once owned property here, until the taxman caught up with him. At the lower end the valley narrows into a short canyon then opens out to Evergreen Golf Course and the man-made Evergreen Lake, one of two impoundments created as flood control and municipal water supply diversions. Below the dam, Bear Creek flows through the township of Evergreen, (called by long time natives with a bent towards irony as “Overgrown”) where its banks and flows are maintained by the local chapter of Trout Unlimited. At the downstream end of Evergreen, the growing creek flows through a camp owned by the Episcopal Church. It then enters a checkerboard of private and public land. Midway down the canyon it passes through a private compound of one of the richest families in the Rocky Mountain Empire.

The twisting snake known as Highway 74 follows the winding canyon cut the creek from Evergreen down into the touristy town of Morrison at the mouth of the canyon. Leaving the foothills behind, the creek enters the Southern Denver suburbs. Here, the second impoundment forms Bear Creek Lake, a state park maintained for all types of water recreation. The creek then flows east until it merges with the South Platte River.

There you have the basic geographic structure of Bear Creek. Why do I choose to call it my home water? I could have easily picked much more glamorous and legendary rivers or streams like the South Platte around Cheesman Canyon, the steep and technical St. Vrain, the wicked Big Thompson, or even the northern beauty of the Cache la Poudre. Nope, I like the egalitarian, workingman nature of Bear Creek. It serves all conditions of mankind with the same implacable goodness and boundless energy. Members of Denver’s high society have maintained summer homes on its banks since the late nineteenth century. Mayor Speer, Denver’s farsighted leader in the early 1920s, purchased blocks of land along the creek and turned them into parks that are still maintained for any and all city residents to use and enjoy. Despite the immense impact of man on the majority of its length, Bear Creek retains a wild and clean feel. There is seldom found such intense human pressure with such little pollution. It is a grand combination and sympathetic interaction between man and nature. This long term and intensive use by humans shows that, with a bit of sensitivity and responsible cooperation, man can do what the Creator called us to do, maintain and husband the gift of this, our planet home. Plus, I can be streamside within forty-five minutes of leaving my front door. Not a bad thing at all, given my affinity for solitude of any kind.

On top of it all, the fishing is good and somewhat predictable. The canyon between Evergreen and Morrison holds mostly rainbows and brown trout. They are normally seven to fourteen inches in length and feed on a broad selection of insect life, most of it sub-aquatic. Therefore, Bear Creek is a nymph fisherman’s heaven. Hooking up with a fifteen to seventeen inch rainbow has on rare occasions, surprised my fishing buddies and me. Most folks who do not know Bear Creek look at us with doubt in their eyes and the attitude that, like most fishermen, we are prone to exaggeration, particularly when plied with strong drink. The fishing pressure keeps the resident fish educated enough to make we anglers work on our presentations. Bear Creek doesn’t have any legendary hatches. Although, in a good summer, there can be a wave of caddis fly hatches that travels upstream around the Fourth of July.

I suppose, if I had to pare down to a single word, why I have chosen Bear Creek as my home water, that word would be comfortable. Like a well-broken in pair of Carhartt overalls, Bear Creek fits me well and does the job intended with strength and grace, year after year after year.It’s a good symbiosis, full of synergy. And I believe that we both enjoy this relationship. I can’t speak for the creek, yet if my feelings are mirrored at all in the laughing waters of Bear Creek, then yes, it is a good relationship between Bear Creek and this old grandfather.

Chosen of the Santa Veronika

The dragon and the human reached the sparkling ripples that defined the ford across the Santa Veronika’s laughing waters. Indeed, Eppy felt stronger, drawing strength from the dragon’s fire and power. In spirit and mind he was clear as the brilliant sky above, infused with a clarity unknown before in his short life. However, he was still a human form, wounded, dehydrated and physically spent.

Dræco spoke: “Little brother, drink first, fill your belly. Then I will speak to our beloved sister. She makes her home here. She and I will hasten your healing. This is ancient magik, uncluttered, unsoiled by him who we do not name."

Eppy lifted his arm free of the dragon’s neck. The long upper muscles racked tight, stiff. He felt cold migrating from his blackened fingertips, down bone and sinew, seeking his core. It was grave cold, slow and insistent. The tracker knew he was acutely dehydrated and would go into shock without water and warmth. He knew that the sun was still high enough to throw some heat, here in late October. Alone, he stumbled downstream toward a gentle sided wide pool at the foot of the ford. There was lay a shallow depression partially cut into the living rock by the Santa Veronika’s raging spring run-off, grinding away against the soft sandstone. The Adonii Clan engineers had added their own thought and structure, creating a clean water trap for man and stock. Eppy’s instinct drove him. He desperately needed to hydrate his tortured body.

Dræco eyed the human as he stumbled, listing side to side like a sailor too long at sea, unable to regain his land legs. If a dragon could show compassion, there was compassion deep in the red beast’s dark yellow eyes as he watched his little changeling brother.

The dragon turned his massive body upstream, stepped gently into the upper reaches of the shallow ford and bent his great head low until his heavy chin barely touched the racing water. Dræco drank in a long, slow and deep breath. He began to sing. His voice thrummed deep and resonant in what we humans might think a sing-song. It was subtle, slow and deliberate. The dragon’s mantra rose from the waters, rang off the hills and echoed wall to wall in the vale. Rock doves rose with the echoes and carried them high across the sun washed craigs and deep, into dark canyons above; speaking the power manifest in Cĕdro Park.

Upstream from the chanting dragon a steep vertical knife blade of schist and basalt cut across the river’s path. The stone gathered the Santa Veronika’s waters and dumped them over a short, vertical fall. Below, the splashing water gathered in a deep basin, darkened by massive twin spruce arching over the pool, like giant cathedral towers. Interwoven ilex, alder and willow brush limbs drew together defining a hidden hall over the pool. As the dragon’s song grew in complex intensity, a shimmering form, barely visible at first, slowly rose from the pool. Silky and flickering silver green, a distinctly sumptuous female form coalesced and began a sinuous dance in rhythm with the dragon’s song.

There danced Santa Veronika herself, called by the dragon, rising from her deep water home in answer to Dræco’s passioned call for help. She would minister to the tracker, to Eppy. She knew him well, his life and history and loved him well from the first day, as a giggling, summer boy child, he had played in the twisting skirts of her shallow ford under the watchful eye of his mother. Veronika’s form grew as solid as focused thought. Her deep green eyes flashed like liquid malachite. As she watched the dragon and dehydrated human, her undulating form shimmered full of water that poured in constant, shifting colors, reflecting the westering sunlight. Autumn wet leaves and moss wove in a wreath with plaited black hair, an oval framing her wide and deep, ever-changing countenance. Tiny Brook Trout, bright in spawning colors, danced in a woven necklace that fell deep between the flow and swell of her full breasts. When she moved, she didn’t walk, she didn’t swim. She drifted in a dance that could at once mesmerize and delight, or, quick as thought, rise up in power and destroy.

“What is this? Who calls me to rise in these bright Autumn aires? Veronika’s voice rippled; at once soft and watery laughter, it held a cold and fierce ice knife edge. Dræco lifted his wide head, slowly shook it side to side. He chuckled.
Twisted, woven steam chuffed from his dripping jowls and rose into the deepening western sun. “Svelt sister, you know me. I know you and your dark green eyes.” Dræco laughed again. His own eyes, cat wise, swelled bright, full of memory. Then quickly his vision snapped back, sharp and fully present. “The changeling, we must look to his health, sister.”

Nikolas Eponymous lay on his belly, nestled in a smooth, water worn trough of cool, damp stone. His outstretched arms, pinned like piers in the slow twist of water, held his upper body just above the flow. In a slow rhythmic cycle he first buried his face in the Santa Veronika’s flinty waters, drinking long, full draughts, then raising his head high, arching over his back, he drank deep the cooling afternoon air. It didn’t matter that he was growing chilled. His body reveled in the fresh water and air flowing, restoring power, focus. Not only did Eppy feel his strength return, he felt the strong resolve of the Adonii blood pulsing through his veins. This was his river, just as he belonged to her.

The human quietly chuckled out loud. While he tended his dehyadrated, wounded body, his mind wandered down the halls of family memory.

“Dragon’s indeed! Grandfather would have been non-plussed and grandmother would have been pleased, no, delighted to have proved her stuffy, old curmudgeonly husband wrong. What a sight that would have made.” Eppy laughed again, softly and strong. In the back of his mind he listened to the dragon’s song, paying no heed to it or what it had accomplished. He did stop his reveling when the all-pervasive sing-song turned silent in the brilliant late afternoon. He looked upstream to see what next would happen. Eppy gasped. All his newly regained strength failed him. He choked in mid breath and nearly fainted as his young eyes fell upon the flickering form of Santa Veronika rising in response to Dræco’s song.

Nikolas knew her. All of his conscious life, his dreams and visions had been filled with her flowing presence, persistent and powerful. Her shadow had spoken with him, her voice nurtured him. Now, on this auspicious day when Eppy first found dragons to be true, this came to pass. Veronika was real, alive. And he wept.

Thrice in an instant, oh beloved, a serendipitous dance exploded thus:

The wind changed, flowing swift and cool out of the north. The sun’s dazzling, low raking light spilled into Cĕdro park through a wide break between high peaks in the upper canyon and a glorious song rose like twisting incense into the bright Autumn aires.

Nikolas Eponymous burst into joyous tears, wailing the long and rising pulse of the Adonii anthem. Dragon Red and River Nymph joined the human in deep, rhythmic harmony. High above in the deepening sky, two falcon voices screamed, high and lonesome while the strident, repetitive coarse croak of a raven echoed one word:

“…ADONII…!”

Then, oh beloved, the haunting, hoarse wail of the thrice forbidden pipes joined in song as the upright form of the Elder of elders, head of the Clan Adonii, rose into the far North saddle between the sparkling quartz spires. The Clan’s best and brightest spread out in an arc around the Elder and those who served him, voices and pipes joining the refrain. Glistening spearheads danced a dazzling dance in the low sun. Human voices rose in harmonious clamor with Red Dragon, River Nymph and the wounded human changeling, wet and cold, yet filled with the Father of Father’s joy unbounded. High above in the deepening sunset air, hawk and eagle, raven and falcon voices echoed in wild born refrain.

Pipes and voices; joyous dragon, nymph and human; wondrous and wild the call of creation; bird and air, trout and water, stag and land…Oh, beloved, the song of creation there in Cĕdro Park rose high into the heavens. Intertwined voices rose like clear incense, sweet and unsullied.

Listen oh beloved:

Adonii…Adonii…Adonii…great and glorious creator God,
Father and Mother, wood and vale, fire and air, hear our song.
Adonii…Adonii…Adonii…great and glorious creator God,
Brother and Sister, peak and plain, water and earth hear our song.
Adonii…Adonii…Adonii…great and glorious creator God,
Beloved lover of all creation, hearken to the voices of your beloved.

…ADONII!

Oh beloved God, creator and lover to all who exist on this broken sphere,
You who know each broken heart and wicked mind that cries out to you,
You who weep at each unseemly death and rejoice in the redemption of one,
You who call each of us to choose ‘tween you and the empty darkness;
You who call all creation to choose ‘tween your full breast and death;
You who call us with patience and quiet judgment to choose…SPEAK!
“Choose oh beloved, ‘tween the tempting world and my broken Son.”

…ADONII!

Adonii…Adonii…Adonii…humbled and broken creator God,
Lost father and broken mother weeping on bloody streets, hear our song.
Adonii…Adonii…Adonii…humbled and broken creator God,
Raging brother, wicked painted sister wretched on mean streets, hear our song.
Adonii…Adonii…Adonii…humbled and broken creator God,
Empty souls cry out to you, weary of the world’s wrecked and wretched songs.

…ADONII!

Oh beloved God, creator and lover to all who exist on this broken sphere,
You who know each broken heart and wicked mind that cries out to you,
You who weep at each unseemly death and rejoice in the redemption of one,
You who call each of us to choose ‘tween you and the empty darkness;
You who call all creation to choose ‘tween your full breast and death;
You who call us with patience and quiet judgment to choose…SING!
“Choose oh beloved, ‘tween the tempting world and my broken Son.”

…ADONII!

Then, as the sun turned behind the sharp, dark violet mountain teeth, it’s light reflected red and gold shimmering on the high clouds, pouring a soft and subtle light into the park. There silence reigned. No breath of air, nor bird, nor animal, nor thought of man remained. Only the gentle voice of the river murmured in the quickening sunset. The elder of elders slowly raised his carven staff into the last rays of the sun. The lingering light caught one last ray and spread a soft rainbow over the depths of the Adonii Keep and all of Cĕdro Park.

The Great Creator’s quiet reigned, the quiet of the dawn before creation rested in every heart as darkness crept up the canyon, hush and soft. Only a shimmering, northern light and breath of wind stirred with the river’s subdued voice.