This morning LC was outside sanding a table while I was outside cleaning two pieces of wooden furniture that badly needed cleaning.
A car drove by us and headed around the block before driving up to the house again and finally stopping.
A young man climbed out, spoke with LC and the next thing I knew he and the young man were headed out to Big Butte while I stayed back to keep a young woman and baby company.
They had all headed to the top of the Butte last weekend with a friend, gotten a flat tire on the way up, and gingerly nursed the vehicle back down the Butte before parking it until they could get back with another tire.
The young family were driving a car this time, and were looking for an easier road to get to the butte than the rocky road that they had driven last weekend.
Seeing a young family, a young baby, a young mother, a car, LC offered his help and the next six hours were spent driving to the butte, taking a wheel off the truck, visiting with an elderly man who leases a wide swath of BLM land and enjoys his privacy but also enjoyed the unexpected visit from two men who were changing out a tire, multiple bottles of water and light snacks, good conversation between young man and older man, good conversation between young woman and older woman, a trip to Arco to get a tire changed over from one wheel to another, and one more trip out to the butte.
A long and unexpected day helping strangers....................
I snapped these sunrise pictures yesterday morning.
Very tired and a little run down I had headed for bed early the night before, and while LC and Jamie slept quietly the next morning I put my shoes on, grabbed my coffee and camera, and walked across the road from the house (still in pajamas) to take these pictures.
Big Butte is located behind the house and the Twin Buttes are visible from the front of the house.
There is a very large, empty lot directly across from us, and in pajamas and shoes I wandered tentatively onto the empty lot (watching and listening for rattlesnakes) and stood looking east at the buttes and the sunrise.
For a woman who has lived in five countries I still find it difficult to reconcile my life with where I currently live.
I never, ever imagined living in such a place as this.
But the mountains and buttes are close, there are doves all over Atomic City and I like their calls, there are deer that wander through this tiny city (Tiny City, Tiny Town, Tiny Tune, Loony Tune) and that graze in our yard.
We have seen antelope not far from here, but have seen neither the coyotes nor the wolf that also are supposed to reside in this area.
As I stood in an empty lot in my pajamas, sipping coffee out of a travel mug decorated with a bear and the words Juneau Alaska, and looking out over the sunrise, I realized that I liked the quiet very much.....................
We walked again yesterday afternoon, LC, Jamie and I.
My pup is finally starting to act like herself again.
After our first visit to the vet on Saturday, we walked out of the office armed with a fistful of drug bottles and a promise from the vet that Jamie would soon feel better.
That evening she easily took her medications, but by the next morning she refused to ingest anything.
She stubbornly could not (and would not) be bribed with the people food we had drugs wrapped in.
She would not eat. She would not drink.
By the end of the day and desperate to get drugs into her we tried again to bribe Jamie with drugs wrapped in favorite people food and then crushed drugs hidden in both food and broth.
With the exception of one bite of food, she refused to eat or drink anything.
After some discussion of options, LC and I reluctantly forced the issue.
Our dog clamped her jaws together, stubbornly refusing to accept anything we had to offer.
Fighting her every step of the way we finally managed to get two of three drugs into her mouth.
Thankfully we also managed to escape her teeth when she defensively clamped down hard.
Holding her mouth closed we waited and cajoled a sick dog to swallow.
She spit them out.
Doing the same routine again we finally got her to swallow the drugs. An hour later she threw them all up.
Force feeding her drugs the next morning she bit LC.
It was only a matter of time because we had both had close calls the night before.
Our increasingly sick dog threw up all over the carpet. We cleaned up the mess and she threw up again. We cleaned up the mess and she threw up three more times.
By early afternoon we were all three back at the vet for the second time in three days.
Jamie had never been sick before, had never taken antibiotics before, and by this time both LC and I were convinced that the drugs were upsetting her stomach.
Lots of blood tests. No chronic issues. Slightly elevated liver and kidney counts. Our sweet girl was dehydrated and had lost a pound since the last visit only a couple of days prior.
IV to rehydrate our pup, a couple of shots to settle her stomach and provide vitamins and we worriedly walked out of the vet again.
As of today Jamie is still not eating a whole lot, but her appetite is improving.
She is hydrating very well.
Her tail is up again, her eyes are beginning to sparkle again, and the personality that our sweet girl has had her entire life has returned.
This time I really DO think that she will be OK...................
Although the day had been very hot, yesterday was also marked by unexpected haze.
By mid afternoon we realized that what we thought had been heat-related haze was actually smoke.
All last summer in Cody we had a sky that looked like the sky we had in Atomic City yesterday afternoon.
There are wild fires in Idaho, in Utah, other western states.
The purple sky told us that one was increasing in size. Somewhere. Not sure where.....................
Jamie was still not up to covering too much distance, so she and LC turned left at an intersection and headed for home while I continued walking straight, wanting to take a couple more pictures..........................
I don't know if there are other towns in Idaho that provide addresses in the same way, but in Atomic City there are not street names - there are only coordinates.......................
When we first saw this structure we both thought that this was perhaps an old stadium.
It is definitely not a stadium and right now it is simply an open shelter for an assortment of ends and odds, ranging from old hay bales to random pieces of metal to old vehicle parts..............
These types of silos are located all over the region.
There is something very artistic about their appearance to me - their uniformity, their geometry, their washed out color against a deep blue sky.
I like them very much................
One more abandoned building................
Directly across the road from the abandoned lube-place is an RV park.
Is it an active, up-and-running RV park? I have no idea. Nobody has parked their camper in any of the eight or so spots that are available at the park since we arrived in Idaho.
This little town is a bit of a mystery in reality. So many abandoned buildings. A handful of signs - indications of potential business and I don't really know for sure whether they are operating or not (although I suspect not)..............
Turning right onto a quiet, dirt side road (they're ALL quiet, dirt side roads) I saw the boom box.
I had heard about it, seen a picture of it during one of my many Google image searches, but finally and unexpectedly found it yesterday evening.
So.
Who makes a giant boom box out of an old box truck?.................
Looking back the way I had come...............
The dated exterior of our house back-dropped by the purple and grey sky of a not-too-distant wildfire...................
Laying on the ground.
I like this sign...............
Not far from the house is yet one more empty, used-to-be building.
Huge piles of tumbleweeds were piled in each corner of the front yard..............
One last early morning sunrise picture..................
The simple truth is that you can understand a town. You can know and love and
hate it. You can blame it, resent it, and nothing changes. In the end, you're
just another part of it..........Brenna Yovanoff
No comments:
Post a Comment