A Date with Mother Nature
by Perry Cozzen. Illustration by Gary Oliver.
B
illy Joe Shaver says,
in Willie the Wandering
Gypsy
and
Me,
“Moving is the next best
thing to being free.” They
say the Sundance Kid
couldn’t hit anything unless
he was moving. I believe
moving is what I love the
most. Big Bend is for
movers. Almost everyone
who lives here moved here
one way or another. Even
the original people were on
the move; nomadic, they
say. If you are a mover,
your imagination is your
only limitation.
To me there is nothing
better than a cool summer
night and an empty road.
Open the wing, roll down
the window, stick your arm
out, look in front, look
behind, pop a cold beer,
and turn on some Bob Wills
and the Texas Playboys.
Cruising through Mother
Nature: mesquite trees, dry
creeks, plowed fields, oil
field pump jacks, maybe see
a rabbit or notice a light on
in a farmhouse. Listening to
Bob, Wills that is. About
that time the one comes on
about the mule and the
grasshopper eatin’ ice
cream, mule gets sick, and
they laid him on a beam.
I’d call that acid country.
Ol’ Mother Nature, it’s
been a long haul for you, been some
floods, fires, earthquakes, hurricanes,
tornados, freezes, some terrible heat,
pestilence, and plenty of crooked
politicians. You’ve been drilled, blown
out, and dug into. You’ve had dams
built on your rivers, been scraped off,
piled on, poisoned, conquered, com-
munized, socialized, democratized,
lived on peacefully once or twice and
finally divided up: bought and sold.
I believe I’ll have another beer.
22
Cenizo
Yep, Mother Nature has taken
some lickings, but she rolls with the
punches pretty good. I was in
Wyoming one time, a couple of years
after a bad forest fire; you could hard-
ly tell it. The first-growth timber grew
fast and it was already tall. Poison
takes a little longer and sometimes
nothing will ever grow on the ground
again. Floods are not bad to get over,
except for replacing the stuff the
humans built.
Second Quarter 2016
Looks like we’re coming into a
town. Think I’ll get a little gas. There’s
a cafe across the street from the gas sta-
tion and it looks pretty busy. There
are a few people driving around, and a
movie letting out. I’ll just throw these
empties in the trash, and drive on
West.
There are lots of stars out, no moon,
just right for driving and thinking.
Humans have got to be the only
thing that embarrasses Mother
Nature. The other animals
live and die but don’t really
screw anything up. Humans
have multiplied way too fast,
they eat up all they can grow,
drink up all the fresh water
they can find and pollute the
rest. They also foul the air.
Plus they dump various things
in the ground that will be
there forever and will never
react naturally with the rest of
the earth again.
The worst thing about
them is that they can’t even
get along with each other, or
anything else for that matter.
They’re always done in by
their hate and ignorance.
Once they hate something,
they refuse to learn another
thing about it. Occasionally
you can get them to quit hat-
ing one thing, but it’s not long
before they’ve found some-
thing else to hate instead.
I believe I’ll have another
beer.
Don’t get me wrong, I have
known some good humans,
but on a wide scale they’re
pretty miserable. So to keep
from just shooting yourself, or
them, you have to scale down.
Find a few good humans to
hang around with and depend
on.
About the time the town
behind me has dropped out of
sight, I notice some taillights
on the side of the road ahead.
As I get closer, I see it’s a red Caddy
ragtop and a fine looking lady standing
beside it.
“Yes ma’am, having some trouble?”
“Oh, I stupidly ran out of gas; I
thought I could make it 20 more miles
to the gas station up ahead.”
“I’ve got about two gallons in a can
that ought to get you there. I’ll follow
you to make sure you make it.”
After we gassed up, the lady goes
into the convenience store, buys a 6