Shakesthegrounds Rumblings

[Wayne]

shakes decending

 

Thanks for the story Shakes... WICABT!!  (wish I could a been there!!!      )

     

        AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!   

[ifyoucantfixit]

        i am truly sitting here panting like i had been climbing that hill with you.  I have finally decided, it was a good thing i didnt make that trip, as much as i had wished i had.   I dont think I would have survived it.  The climb up on Brokenback was difficult enough...That seems like the climb for a climber, not for a senior,  Thank you for taking the trip, and surviving for us. 
        Even after my exercise regimine I would not have made that.                thanks again I salute you.

[BBM-Cat]

Hey Truman,

Mike and I enjoyed meeting you on the trip - we hope you have a GREAT BIRTHDAY! Cheers!

[Shakesthecoffecan]

Thank you folks! I just got back from the shoe store, where I got a good deal (tax free this weekend) on a pair of running shoes.

This morning I weighed 221 lbs.

One year from now my goal is to weigh no more than 190 lbs. 

And I am gonna start tonight by going' dancin' up on the mountain....

[RebelWithASmile]

i'm don't know if this is too late or too early

[Kelda]

I busted two pair of jeans in Alberta.

The first was a rather new pair I had bought a couple of months before. The crotch could not take Mt. Inflexible.

Tuesday morning The Yaris headed out 742 again, Rayn beside me, Mouk in the back seat, getting lost in Canmore and then heading past the Goat creek parking area where a Ram grazed on the dust of the road, perhaps craving some mineral, or injesting small stones to aid in its digestion. On down the road a Moose on the road side made its exit into the woods, but the next one, was a good ways away, taking a bath in the lake and unconcerned with who watched her. We sat in the road, stopped in silence with a few other dust generators, still with no clear idea how far to the Provincial Park and the Sawmill parking area where we were to meet up with the findingbrokeback guys. We were doing a hike called "Jack Asscending".

So, dumb old me thought Jack Ascendsing was when Jack rode up to the sheep the first night on the mountain. Wrong, it is that scene, computor generted, in which Ennis, reaming out a coffepot in the stream with his pants leg rolled up, looks up, and sees Jack moving across a high meadow like and insect across a table cloth. The effect is real good on the big screen.

We thought we saw that mountain top three times. Rayn, like a kid in a candy store, sapping each one. So happy.

When we reached the Sawmill parking are we were an hour late. We saw a car with THE "Welcome to Wyoming" sign like in the movie, in the rear window. This was the vehicle of one of our peeps. We looked about, no sign of them. Rayn called out, as loud as he could "HELLO BROKIES!!!!!!" and it was decided we would go on and see if we could find them or the trail, thought I was apprehensive as to the remoteness of it. It seemed like a place one could easily get lost on no trail in the wildness.

I wrote on the side of the Yaris with my finger in the dust: Shakestheground so if they came back they would know we where there. And Rayn called again: "HELLO BROKIES!!!!!" and Mouk tied her shoes and what, did you hear that? And another call was made and yes, there was deffinatly a responce. We consulted the trail maps posted there on the stick and headed out, we did not get far before we met Jim.

Now I will say this about the findingbrokeback bunch. They are a different breed. I feel strange saying that and I say it with only the most honorable intent. While we have been sitting in front of the computor and pursuing our passion in a cerebral manner these folks have been out on the ground, searching, hoaning their detective skills and locating, one by one, the sites where the scenes in the film were made. Documenting them, developing an understanding of how the movie was made, what went into making it, who was involved, they have come to an intimacy with the movie that is unmatched in the phemonina. They have talked with the Basque, the bartender, learned one of the men Jimbo goes to talk to at the pool table is gay. They know where to find the old guy counting the sheep when they come down from the mountain. They are the rangers, the foot soldiers, and they are unstopable. They are for me personally, Giants among us.

That day we met Jim, from Vegas, Nova, goaboydc and saw again Tamarack, who I had met in Boston, Tamarack, who first turned me on to findingbrokeback.com, whose card I left on Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. Tamarack, the foot soldier in every respect, I see them all as equals in the quest. And there are more who I met later, but these are the folks I met that day.

The story was that they had recently discovered the sight of the road paving that Ennis works on with Timmy. As I understand it it was Tamarack who went looking for work orders with the authorities in the time period when it would have been filmed and got the permit. Genius.

Their creation: findingbrokeback.com, was printed out in its entirity by Paul the night before his departure. It became our Bible.
Once introductions were made we started forward thru the lodgepole pine, up the bike trail and as I expceted all were faster than me, I needed to remind meself to set my own pace and not obsess, but when we turned off the road into the blank wood, off the trail to asscend to where Jack would have had to have been 100 feet high for Ennis to see him, it became an adventure. This was going to be work, and it was going to be hard and I thought about turning back. I'm glad I didn't now, but once I was up in them woods there was no turning back. My heart pounded. I told Mouk: If I have a heart attack, just let me die, it will be alright. She encouraged me and kept and eye on me, as did Jim, who made sure I was not left behind and kept encouraging me. Getting to know one another climbing under limbs and negotiating rocks, grabbing a feeling for who we are based on the location of our formative years. The hill becoming almost verticle, crissed crossed with moose paths and moose droppings, jabbed by dry dead limbs and offering flowers for our crushing heals, the wild columbine, the cinqfoil, the devils club. Scratched skin, screaming lungs and goals made of five feet more. Hands and feet becoming equal partners to propel us onward and upward.

I had wished that I wore a belt to hold my pants up, and then with one certain streatch I hear: rip! The crotch begins to rip diagonally. O-well, Mouk has come prepared and has iron on patches we could try on it, but we never do. 

Three hours. Up a rock strewn drainage we came, Rayn saying he could see a clear spot ahead, the trees growing shorter, surely we were not far from the tree line. The water flasks that had waited in my house in plastic from the factory for a decade soon drained of water. When we would stop I could look out on the mountain across the valley, towering and studded with snow, the quiet, the wind the bird song and buzz of dragonfly. Have to keep going.

I caught up with them on a nearly verticle shale strewn clearing where they elected to eat lunch and announce they had reservations as to continuing. goaboydc is smoking a cigarette. I ask them if they regularly hike up mountains like this. No way, this is very unusual for them. (Maybe I need to start smoking?)

 I found me an indention in the ground at Mouks feet and relaxed and ate my sandwich and looked out over the valley below, way below, I was in a place few if any people ever see. The sun, crept into my gaping shirt and scorched my skin red. Here we pass an hour in conversation with Tamarack above us while the guys continue up ward to the top, to report if it is worth the effort to try to make it.

The verdict: we took a wrong turn some place, we were on the wrong ridge. From the top you can look down on the spot we were aiming for! O-well. Perhaps we were in the wrong place, but with such beauty all around us it was hard to think of it that way. Jim apologized, but no appology was needed. I had a new screne saver to replace the one from Lightning Flat I have had for a year. I wet my bandana in the creek and tied it around my neck for the shakes decending hike.

Down at the bottom there was towellettes to wipe the pine rosin from our hands. Rayn, pumped up on endorphins added his name and Mouks to the dust on the car and we posed for group pictures, one with our target, and one with our destination. We would see these folks later at dinner in Canmore, and until then they were eager to tell us where we could find more filming sights nearby.

Just up the road was the last campsite "Gonna snow tonight for sure" Here was the last place in the movie Jack and Ennis had slept together. Here they had smoked a joint by the fire and passed the bottle and shared their truths and lies. Just right off the parking lot, a hundred feet from the road. A hawk sailed across the water. Had this bird seen our boys, and the entourage?

On down the road, on the left, we saw the fist, and looked after it till it was in the right spot by memory and turned. There was the spot, Ennis and Jack riding horses after the Thanksgiving scenes, Jacks horse jumping a small branch. I was too tired to get out of the car, and watched Mouk and Rayn in the rear view mirror as they chattered about it.

Further down the road we recognized nova and goaboydc's car on the side of the road and shortly saw them, standing at the foot of an embankment. The spot where Ennis was leading the mules up the hill. An embankment on the side of the dusty Rt. 742. They had discovered it moments earlier. We all got out, and a car slowed to see what it was we were looking at, a moose maybe? No, only ghosts.

 

wow o wow o wow o wow!!! Brill!

[SFEnnisSF]

That was some High-Class readin' Truman.  Thanks for sharing your experience with us. 

And Happy Birthday! 

[Shakesthecoffecan]

Thanks Eric and everyone. I am sitting here at the keyboard this morning as the sun begins to light the world outside and wondering if the window for writing about those experences has closed or not. I miss Alberta, I miss the feeling like everyday was sunday with a day off following. Miss the friends and the faces and summer camp without homesickness feeling. Time marches on.

Yesterday in an attempt to keep up what I started in Alberta I went hiking up on Buffalo Mountain. (http://www.dgif.state.va.us/vbwt/site.asp?trail=2&loop=MSL&site=MSL04) I went by and picked up my friend Carol in the morning and we headed up Rt.8, beautiful day, a little hazy. We had been up there before but could not remember if it was in this century or not. It took us a while to remember the way, but that was fine too, we had all day. The musical seclection was a CD by The Barrell House Mammas, a group out of Asheville, NC that I had missed at Floydfest because I was in Alberta. O-well. Their harmonies are wonderful.

Climbing the trail I told Carol about my trip, knowing she was rolling her eyes. "You sure like that movie" she said once. True enough I told her, but I liked the phenomina that grew up around it better. I tried relating to her about the hikes, the horserides, the sense that nothing I'd done before was quite to accomplishemnt this trip had been. She too, had recently had one of those moving experences, traveling to Block Island, Rhodes Island, a month ago. We both love to travel, and in time we ended up talking about our friends who never go anywhere, sit at home smoking pot and watching TV with the hope of going to the beach once a summer. That's a life?

Buffalo is a special place, a bit highter than the surrounding mountains, shaped like the animal with an abrupt drop off. It is barren and alpine like at the top, a nice breeze blowing to keep the flys away. The valleys and mountains obsured by thick summer haze, vultures careening overhead perhaps hoping we would take a tumble.

There is a book about this region called The Man Who Moved a Mountain. It is about a local guy who becomes a Presbyterian minister and builds a number of churches in the area out of stone and helps to bring the locals out of generations of ignorance and violence. The book features a photo of people gathered on that very summit, a hundred years ago now, come up there in buggies and on horseback, the women with hats and long dresses and bodices, the men in ties and lapels shed, this rather formal looking bunch on an Easter Sunday afternoon before someone takes one too many sips froma jug and starts a fight that ends in someones demise. Here now sit those folks decendants in the 5th or so generation, a guy with a Wu Tang t shirt an a girl with unnaturally burgundy hair. We ease around them to find a shady spot.

I am surprised at how easy the climb is. We sit and talk of trips made, trips planned and trips desired. McAfee's Knob on the Appalachain trail we need to attempt before cold weather gets here, after she returns from the Hudson River Valley. Never enough time.

I am so sleepy coming down the road she offers to drive so I pull over. I wake a bit later and we are parked at a fruit stand and there is talk of white peaches. The buzz in the console lets me know the phone connected long enought to pick up a message: Check your P.O. Box. I smile. It is a beautiful summer day, seems kind of like Sunday........   

[ifyoucantfixit]

 


                     " Travels With Truman "               

[Shakesthecoffecan]

Meryl, I will sing a song about, of sorts, because I would not want to offend her sensibilities as a performer and producer of great works. She deserves song, a nice, slow beautiful ballad about a strong woman who picked up a ball and ran with it.

A lot went into into organizing the Alberta trip, lots of people were involved and my thanks go out to them all, but had it not been for Meryl I certainly would have been lost. I thank you, for your hard work and your sacrifices, it gave me space to grow and be myself. I will always be beholding to you.

As I mentioned in one of my few dispatches from Alberta, Meryl bears a strong resemblence to E. Annie Proulx, her glasses certainly more mod. Her demeanor quiet, I never hear her raise her voice. She told us what needed to be done in a way that made you want to do it. She saw to it we were fed, and left on time, and were prepared for the day. She made sure we were all acounted for, and still found time to do her own thing.

As High Priestest of the Brokeback Cult, she codified and distilled dispirate pronouncements and ramdon thoughts into a production that no one witnessing it will soon forget, stirring up energy in that room where I had to sleep that echoed all night. She who understands that space betwixt what we know and try to believe, knows that theater and religion serve the same purpose, serve the same master. You made me a Shaman, and that is one of the highest honors I have ever received. Thank you.

So I will wish for you my friend, rehersals that start on time, props that are where they are supposed to be.
Brothers who welcome you into their own projects, be they in Wyoming or Montana or a little space downtown.
I wish you the glow over a cornfield at dusk in Indiana, and an old lady's apron with candy in the pockets.   
I wish for you above all a stiff warm breeze on a fullmoon night, a body of water, and song. Lots of voices singing,
All from the heart.