third day

let's say you forget to go on your new year's day hike up into the fine, snowy mountains. don't worry. you can choose a day, for instance the third of january, and go then. it's okay. you choose a short hike along water.

you know later there will be arkville festival. it will be cold. you trek down the block or so to the corner and walk up toward the bonfire. ten or twelve people you don't know stand around it in the 25 degree weather. you slosh through the snow over to casey joe's. there is the promise of live music, guys older than you stand around with a guitar, a bass. drums. people are milling around in bulky coats and the air is warm. you get a hot chocolate that would be free by the bonfire. you hear from the guy who runs the place that the firehouse is almost out of chicken. they had a hundred more dinners than last year he says and you remember you could only get a half chicken with no sides last year so you hurry out. lynyrd skynyrd is blasting out of speakers attached to the bike shop across from the firehouse. you get your chicken and six raffle tickets and bring your chicken back home to the howls of jim morrison.

the fireworks won't start until seven so you walk back down again and stand around a bit. joe walsh has replaced skynyrd and the doors and you are singing along even though you don't intend to. you decide to walk through town. when you get to the bridge the sky is spitting snow and you hold your camera over dry brook to see what a flash will get you from so far up. you go on to the corner and stand for a bit across from an old abandoned house you've wanted a photo of for quite some time. you pass it nearly every time you leave your own house and the camera is always with you but it is now, in the night, in the snow, waiting for fireworks that you decide to get it. you convince the sweetie to take the photo because you know it will be better than yours and it is. he snaps a few pictures of a house you've convinced yourself was central to the pakatakan artists' colony that settled here and you fully expect to see lost painters in the windows. thomas cole having tea.

you turn back and hear the first explosion. it goes down inside your bones and you can feel them spark. the sky is dark and there are little flecks of snow hovering around the orangy streetlights and then up and above the railroad tracks fire blooms all over. you stand right there on the sidewalk under the railroad crossing sign. you can see down the tracks a bit there are rail traveling vehicles but they are too snowy to recognize. the exploding keeps happening. you breathe it in. there is no other sound. happy third day of the new year! says the sweetie.