Old Roads, New Stories: A Literary Series
When I was growing up, the weather reports always seemed to track and update the snowfall in Buffalo. How many feet so far? How many inches on top of that today? Like Buffalo’s snow was the baseline for the nation.
Not anymore. Our oldest son, Ozzly—he lives in New York City—was home for Christmas. It wasn’t a white Christmas in Salt Lake this year, and it wasn’t in New York either, and when Oz checked the temperature in Buffalo, it was 54 degrees.
In fact, the whole country is warmer than the forecasters can remember, which might not sound too bad to some, but here in Utah, you could say I’m a little freaked out. Last year’s snow was like a miracle (I mean, our governor had actually issued a statewide “plan” for people to pray about having the drought end), but we’re back to zero snow again, and the Great Salt Lake is on the clock: five years to extinction.
I’d say it’s lucky, then, that now is when our legislators gather for their 40-day session (Ha! Like Noah, only upside down), only I can’t. I can’t because they won’t do anything. They won’t plan ahead, won’t mitigate, won’t curb the water allotments to desert alfalfa farms, won’t put a moratorium on the doubling of new developments, won’t conserve. Nope, it’s just going to suck. You can count on it.
And that’s why I wrote a new manuscript called The Book of Drought. Reporters don’t seem to make a dent with facts and coverage, and opinion pieces don’t ever seem to persuade. So in The Book of Drought, I just skip ahead to the outcome, thinking that maybe if I set it in the near future, in the after, if I drop people straight into the imagery of permanent droughtscape, if I give people the experience of a life of loss to come, then perhaps this might have a better chance to make an impact.
This is one of the eight movements in the manuscript. I know it’s not a “Happy New Year,” but maybe it’ll lead to resolutions:
Rules for the Name-That-Memory Contest:
- Nothing anatomical, please.
- No kissing stories either. If you don’t believe me, go and ask your kids.
- No one wins a prize for this. The prize is the act of remembering, and of finding out that language is a span bridge—here to there, from nowhere to somewhere new after.
- Try to act responsibly. Your memory will enter into other people’s memories.
- Drop your entry in this coffee can, unsigned.
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Entry 1:
My nana and papa had a peach tree, with peaches, and I wish I could eat them like we used to. Drowt.
Papa would lift me up to see if they were loose, or maybe needed five more minutes, and even up under the leaves where some would hide. He was strong ’cause I was big now, four.
And when one of the branches poked Nana in her eye, he got a saw and set me on his shoulders so I could cut it down ’cause I never ever did it before, but I can. I said, “You asshole branch,” and Nana laughed, and then her eye didn’t hurt.
That’s how strong my papa was. This much.
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Entry 2:
I guess I took up paddle-boarding just in time. Enough to get a few years in. It isn’t too hard to balance, but enough, like you sort of feel good, like it’s a challenge. And the water, when there used to be water, wasn’t too deep. It was still pretty warm if you ever fell in, especially for snow, and this was all snowfall melted from the mountains.
They’d be white at the top, whether sun and blue or overcast, and stayed white until the end of June. And the only real sounds were our paddles—swooshing and swooshing but musical, kind of, and the wind. That was the other sound too. Like these short and long Sky-Breaths skuffing past your ears.
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Entry 3:
I understand why the cities had to do it, but it makes me sad: to never see a pond in a park.
And no grass, of course. That’s a goner like everything else.
I used to like the blue jays there, how they’d cock one eye and squawk at me for peanuts, ’til the seagulls and squirrels took over and drove the jays away.
Still, I’d settle for a seagull again. Something that loops on the wind, or just drifts there.
Wings out, remember? Wild and easy.
Like a living kite.
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Entry 4:
Sorry, all I picture are the wildfires everywhere.
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Entry 5:
I used to think, Who would ever come here? It’s not a concert. It isn’t theater. And it isn’t a cult, not that I would join one. There are too many wind-up zombies already. Anyway, I wondered, Why come here? but I did, so this is my memory:
When I said we should paint the dead riverbed blue, nobody laughed. And they came back with brushes.
No one ever thought I had a good idea before.
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Entry 6:
Even if you never dropped a line in the water, so you don’t really know what that’s about, just trust me: The sound of it, plunk, casting out was a kind of proof that there was meaning.
Even before you felt a strike. Before that voltage came spiking from the water. Up through your hand, through your blood-jump, and all the way down to your heels, two pulses in your boots.
Even on the days it would rain, and every drop—a million billion—drew a circle on the surface. And someone brought their dog along, with that wet-fur smell that carries everywhere.
And of course all of this was just catch-&-release, so you’re never going to get that trout-taste sizzle… even then, that plunk was worth everything.
So where did it go?
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And the titles of these entries, if you’re wondering, in no particular order:
- “The First Time I Thought, Really Thought, I Might Have Friends”
- “Why Blue Is My Favorite Color”
- “Helping Papa Eat Peaches”
- “Fishing”
- “As If the Whole Day Is Talking to You”
- “I know you meant well, but I don’t like this game”
Rob Carney’s first collection of creative nonfiction, Accidental Gardens, is out now from Stormbird Press, and his new book of poems, Call and Response, is available from Black Lawrence Press. Previous books include Facts and Figures, The Last Tiger is Somewhere, The Book of Sharks, and 88 Maps.
Read an interview with Rob Carney appearing in Terrain.org: “The Ocean is Full of Questions.”
Read Rob Carney’s Letter to America in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, published by Terrain.org and Trinity University Press.
Read poetry by Rob Carney appearing in Terrain.org: 6th Annual Contest Finalist, 4th Annual Contest Winner, and Issue 30. And listen to an interview on Montana Public Radio about The Book of Sharks.
Header photo of the Spiral Jetty at Great Salt Lake by wnk1029, courtesy Pixabay.
