The other day, the hill country folks of the K-Landnews piled into the clown car and headed down into the valleys, a trip always causing a little bit of claustrophobia because it is quite narrow down there.
The reason for the trip was Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn doing a gig at a small club in the valley. The towns down there are squeezed into small spaces between the rivers and the rocks, spaces so small they are barely larger than, say, your average Texas beach blanket.
Ever grateful for GPS guidance, we knew we were getting close to our destination because, a) the GPS lady with a mellow British accent told us so and b) because every parking space had a sign saying this was no venue parking, cars would be towed.
The club, well, calling it intimate is an understatement, given that it is maybe three times the size of our living room up on the high planes plus an extra restaurant kitchen.
In short, it was the perfect venue.
Soon afterwards, Bruce joined his two guitars on the small stage, a sturdy green one for the measured beats and a twelve string for the really light touch poetic songs.
And off we went with the music, to the mountains of Afghanistan, to the stolen land, to inner city America. After Wondering where the lions are, we found our way back into the small out of the way club as the lights came back on.
We hung around for a while as Bruce Cockburn signed CDs and a couple of guitars people had brought to the show.
Soon, we were heading back up into the mountains, passing long lines of trucks, many of them with the amber flashing lights signaling "extra wide load", like odd fireflies on an invisible string from afar.
Can fireflies even get angry?
The car's outside temperature display kept inching downward closer to 0 C as we climbed, making our way into the hills where you will always be a stranger, even if you were born an raised some 50 or 100 miles away.
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