At Torrey, they arrived late but found a camp beside green grassy fields and surrounded by mountains. Next day, on their return from the cliffs and red rocks of the park, there was a cluster fuck - headaches, booboos, and a grim seventy-mile dash to a vet for antibiotics for a sick Bailey. Storm clouds and lightening, dead elk on the road, speeding on narrow country roads through sagebrush country and over mountains, past lakes and through small towns.
Next day, in a green valley on the Fremont River, under the great red cliffs of Capitol Reef National Park, golden eagles glided high and Sam, for the first time in earnest, became excited by birding. It was to be her first day of making lists.
"Oh, my god those goldens, Babe!"
They sat among the cottonwoods, leaves flashing silver in the breeze and fluffy falling cotton wafting through the air like summer snow. Bullock's orioles, Western tanagers and hairy woodpeckers flew among the trees, brown headed cowbirds and American robins foraged in the grass, and an occasional chukka partridge marched across their sights. They idly watched summer and ate apple pah from a tiny village bake house. There they were, a sixty five year old academic and a fifty one year old Texas dropout; Australian egghead with European training versus fast-brained, street-smart photographer with short attention span. The one work-weary and disciplined, the other unschooled, a free spirit. But they had love, and it was gentle that soft summer day.
"I'm an adult toddler," Sam said.
"And
I am a toddling adult," Leigh replied.
They went northeast to the town of Green River, through yet more canyons red and white, and mountains yellow and grey, to camp on the Colorado River in Moab. It was a shady site with wireless Internet, good for using computers outside.
"Fuck I got a bug on my computer screen what is it?"
"Oh, just a chironomid fly." Leigh replied.
"Yeah yeah, I hate chrysanthemums on my screen."
The lovers laughed and Leigh settled down to write, but it was not easy to concentrate while Sam was there to interrupt.
"What chew got there bucko?"
"Just revising stuff and adding some anecdotes; nothing much Bub."
"OK, you put in some antidotes? You just writing for your bemusement eh?"
"Hmm."
"Hmm yes or hmm no?"
"Hmm," Leigh repeated, to annoy her. They had been through this one before.
"You talkative little chipmunk," she chided, and Leigh knew she would have liked more chitchat, but was happy to take her professor doctor for the quiet person she was.
"Well, adiose amebas," Sam called," as she went off to shower, "Seeya, wouldn't want ta beeya."
Later they lay in bed in each other's arms as a dust storm raged outside.
"Holy fuck, sons of bitches," she said. It wasn't the time for Leigh to say that as dust storms went it wasn't much, so she just held Sam as memories of the Sahara Desert ran before her eyes and her so-different life and travel swept back from the corners of consciousness. It felt good to stop holding on to the professor's hat and simply feel the bittersweet of nostalgia as she savored this new life and love.
"Talk to me Babe." Sam pleaded.
How could Leigh explain her complex emotions? She said simply, "I love you."
"I
love you Babe, you doctor doctor."
The road south from Moab became flatter with occasional statues of red, the last remnants of strata not yet weathered away. Sagebrush took the place of juniper and pinyon pine until finally, the red earth was barren. Having developed bird excitement with the golden eagles they kept their eyes ready for dark silhouettes in the sky.
"There's one," Sam would say; she was always the first to see a dark spot in the blue. They would wait until it was closer, and usually it was a common raven.
"Raven," Sam shouted.
"Raven," Leigh shouted back.
"Raven."
"Raven,"
they laughed, "Raven mad."
Back in Arizona they climbed into the White Mountains and ended up at Fool's Hollow Lake Recreation Area, with piney smells and west wind. Above the lake ospreys soared and Sam got her prize photo. The campsite was perhaps an acre of woodland, alive with birds and ground squirrels. And here they relaxed with the memories of the three-week trip.
One evening on a walk around the park, a small boy walking with his mother approached.
"Hi," said Sam, always friendly and ready to chat as Leigh stood back.
"Can I pet the dog?" Said the boy putting out his hand.
"Sure, she's friendly."
"Just like my dog; but he's called Cujo."
"Boy, if he's so friendly, why'd you call him Cujo?"
He grinned and Leigh wondered what it was about - it was later that Sam explained about the killer St Bernard dog in a Stephen King story, but Leigh had never read a Stephen King book or seen a movie made from one of his stories.
"Na," the boy said smiling and patting Bailey's head, "He's called after my favorite pro hockey player. "
"Ah, a course, Curtis Joseph, well see ya."
"Bye."
Sam explained to that Curtis Joseph was also Cujo, and Leigh felt, as she so often did, her far-reaching ignorance of Sam's world - of sports, celebrities, TV. Much of the daily news passed completely through her brain, yet Sam retained it. Leigh wondered if it was lack of interest, or absorption with other things that made her oblivious. Was it the preoccupation with sensation, curiosity about the natural world, the constant whirling of questions and memories in her head that stopped her from processing the news? Perhaps it was that she needed to read it, that what was natural to her brain was the written word.
In bed, Sam, freezin, had a heating pad below her and an electric blanket above. At burnin up times she emerged and lay on top of the bedclothes. She had her Palm for a last game of Poker and Leigh lay with a new book, Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac.
The bedclothes were suddenly thrown off.
"I'm burnin up."
Leigh came out of her reverie and took the blanket for herself.
"Freezin." And they were both under the blanket again.
Lights
out, skin on skin. The comfort of being held with love before sleep
carries one to another world that recedes again with a morning embrace.
Sam fished, while Leigh kept watch on Bailey and Yoyo and wrote with newfound peace on her laptop out under the trees. There had been aimless travel in lovely places, living in a small space, mixing love and laughter, moving closer with all their differences and contrasts.
"Sad," Sam said, who, childlike, wanted the journey to last forever.
"Why sad?"
"Because coming to an end."
But Leigh was not sad. It had been good, and would become embedded in memory, joining the stores of sweet nostalgia that enrich the years. She thought of the close partnerships she had seen through her life, and one factor stood out in the best ones - humor. An ability to laugh at each other and at one's self and not to take oneself seriously were perhaps the crucial features, freezin - burnin up; and laughter.