Friends,
I’m still traveling in Montana, so here are three originals that remind me of home. “June Dream” first appeared in Third Coast.
While I have you here, might I ask a small favor? If you haven’t read my memoir, Down from the Mountaintop: From Belief to Belonging, please consider ordering a copy. And if you have, I’d be honored if you’d write a short review on Amazon. That would help others find me.
Many thanks in advance,
Josh
June Dream
Low forties—overcast and wet.
Rain drums on the shingles of an old guard station
as day breaks without dawn — a muted trumpet of sky —
and the crew’s hard leather heels thump the frets
of the trail. At the end of the day, I stoke the cast-iron
stove, propping my boots along the edge to dry,
rubbing what mink oil and wax I can into the seams
and the toes. We spread our mummy bags
on old canvas cots, and I close the chimney vent
as the gas lantern sputters out. In the dark, I am left
with the smell of wood smoke, the hint of mold
in our clothes, and gooseflesh from my neck
to my toes.
Tonight I dream of a caravan
of green pickups winding home just before dawn,
the longest shift of my first year on a crew. We were
done burning logging units for the tree planters,
pre-wetting the edges with two-inch hose, then lighting strips
across the hill with drip torches, a job for late spring,
when rain and snow temper the burn. I was driving
a club cab, third truck from the rear, my eyes singed
with fatigue. Three young men slept in the back seat,
draped over each other like jeans in a heap, and my boss
slumped against the door in the front, his face buried
in a fleece. Hannah, the other rookie on the crew,
sat next to me, the red lights on the dash mirrored in her eyes.
I could smell her lotion in the wood smoke,
and my gaze was locked on the taillights of the truck ahead
as my palm crept down the shift to her knee. As we turned,
a snore from the back made me slip my hand high up
on the wheel, cinching my grip.
In my dream,
she nestles against my shoulder as we take on the shape
of two ridgelines, the silhouettes of our heads like twin peaks
beneath a knuckled moon.