Suddenly I am walking again amidst stands of cottonwood trees that parallel the Rio Grande,
thinking about the Mad Dreamer who, when I left for Santa Fe, gave me his blue tent not
treated in a more fantastic manner or given any special attributes or qualities that would serve
to separate it from living animals, except of course those features that would serve to identify
it as a particular imaginary ‘species’ that had no waterproof fly. Then, in the middle of
summer, naive of montane weather, I was caught at 12,000 ft. in a hail and
rainstorm; the tent, inside, dripping along its spine.

Thirty-five years later, on a dry California day,
"the upper sky and distant mountains appear

blue."