Diablo II

G gripped tensely a rock jutting up above the precipice, unseen. His right foot was turned fully parallel to the stone face, his left awkwardly raised above his midsection pushing the weight of his body up on just the very point of his toe. The final action of ascent was swift and he slumped ragged onto the top of the mount.  A towered over him with her hands pressed defiantly into her hips.

-Glad you could finally join us Mr. G, laughing haughtily. Sitting to her left flank and enjoying a sandwich lay H.

The three had taken up early, the only true adventurous spirits in the camp—at least the only adventurous souls of a certain age and a certain type. Q, their cook for the expedition, had brewed them quick cups of coffee and sent them off packing with sacks full of fresh produce and sandwiches. They were on the north side of the mound, as A continued to call it with depreciating joy. She loved it as she loved any unperturbed outdoor world, but laughed to think of these gentle hills as the height of adventure for any of her cohort. The north side flats led into leagues of foothills before revealing much of the primary mountain itself so they traversed directly south on foot. They made good time through the various undulations and by noon struck upon more verdant hills and, to A's astonishment, a sizable outcropping of rocks. G's eyes too gleamed at the thought that this mass certainly warranted appearance in its minute detail in his maps—and a sizable description to boot. It was soon to be his dismay when H and A began to ascent the shear face of the tallest of these exposures.

-We should look around and try to find another way up. Plaintively. They were already giddily searching out toe and handholds in their spider-like climbs. His desire for the better of him and soon he was panting where we first encountered him.

-Old boy talks somewhat more assiduously of the wild than it seems he is prepared to command it. H was having a laugh. He'd faced some turmoil climbing the face as well, but then again claimed no special pride in athleticism or mountaineering. Indeed he seemed better suited for a Paris salon than a Californian rock face, with his slight form and decadent hair. He carried his own tho, A glimmered at him, wondering how a man so apt for social scenes could so easily adapt to this rugged world she felt so natural in. G she understood. He dreamt big of the wilderness from the parlor chair. And suffered on the mount. She understood herself too, as the reverse. Suffering all the while in the confines of the social and then gliding easily as a bird when loosed into the open air. The mystery of this hybrid man made her wish to test him, to push his abilities to whatever limit point she could find. She was quite willing to through herself into the social fire, if he failed to have limits on her own front, her desire to win was such.

-Blast it all. I have no experience catapulting my body up rocks. You two must be damned spiders. Settled atop the rocks now he pulled out his level and spied across the expanse. We've quite a view up here, y'say?

-It does go on. Tho those western hills block out any hint of Oakland. That there might be civilization at all beyond, seems a marvel.

-If we had a glass, I'm sure we could find a herd of cattle or their fences. Hardly the wilderness, but expansive and open indeed.

The haughty two leapt like gazelles around the top of the rocks kneeling to examine various scraps and pits.

-Look here, A called. I think this is a mortar hole, a few of 'em. She was examining its edge with her fingers, a natural roughness, but smoothed circular all the way around. There were three pits of varying sizes. The natives used these to mill their acorns and remove their tannins. Bloody brilliant with things we won't even touch today.

-We're nonetheless enamored in the oak, H let in. Whole of western culture has always admired the beasts. These big old lazy bulls dotting the hills here, I can't help but love them. And what with these young upstart eucalyptus creeping over the hills. Boo to them and their lank swaying. A different model of success in the world. Lonely, sturdy old oaks glowering on the hillside, protected for years by the hapless natives, revered through fire ritual.

-He's off his nut again G. He thinks the eucalyptus are impure invaders. Next he'll be telling us that they bear with them criminals or aboriginals. That they'll dominate with their impure blood, their lack of civility. When of course he neglects that all those "fire rituals" were just another form of land maintenance. The natives preferred the oak not because of its majesty, but because it produced a food they liked. What of all the other native species they burned and felled because it endangered their fair oak? What if mister Darwin were to come in and explain that an older cousin of the eucalyptus has long ago flourished here, but was put down for its upstart behaviors, its untenable success? Mr G, H loves his metaphors, but he has a tendency to carry himself away. Let the world battle it out as it will.

Down bellow them a deep ravine of mottled oak and shrubs. They heard a stirred coming through and a rustling in the lower shrubs.

-Now we really need a glass. What beasts go there?

Emerging out of the cover now even at a distance they could make out the adventurous snouts of pigs.

-Boar! A whole pack of musky buggers.

And they were. Trampling through the underbrush without a care. Young scrub oaks be damned.
___________

While these three adventured, the rest of the camp enjoyed the slow early morning of outdoor life. Rising from their cots in canvas abodes as if forced out into the social world just after dawn. Something, the noises, the heat works upon the unconscious mind. Perhaps it is just the remnant knowledge of being in unfamiliar space that pushes us up from sleep into unencumbered morning. Somehow, all rose within half an hour of the sun's rising and felt as if it must be much later in the day.

The canvas creatures that held the party were spacious, but cold in and of themselves having no floors and no insulation, but they were affixed with small wood burning stoves. The largest tent belonged to the Mr Bs and contained a partition to safely house Miss C, as Mrs B was acting as her guardian. The necessary disruption caused by the fact that Miss A refused any such protection was quelled this morning by the fact that she had already absented herself in leu of adventure. The inner luxuries of this largest tent included two tables on either side of the partition, in the B side serving as a writing desk and in C's her dressing table, where Mrs B now sat with her preparing to meet the morning.

The two ladies were in mutual counsel about how one prepares for the morning in such a shabby array. Indeed, what look one is even to effect for the presentation of themselves as an adventurous in the out of doors. There were, as far as either women could tell, no rules of appropriateness in which to clothe themselves. They were then left to their own devices and the stark limitations of a dirt floor expanding for miles around them.

While they figured this perfectly figured composure, which certainly they did as two geniuses of appearance must, Mr B sat writing business correspondence across the canvas. A tableau of the scene with the forth wall removed would be titled 'You can't leave yourself at home' or 'en arcadia ego' depending on your classical influences. He'd promised himself as a condition of abandoning San Francisco for a prolonged journey that he would none the less return having kept his business sorted. The letters would haunt the city and his phantom activity would lay the groundwork of so many transactions that he could return home to complete. As a brilliant chess strategist, he didn't even imagine himself laying traps, but as calculating myriad contingencies within reasonable odds. It seemed as well that keeping his real eye upon X and Y was his most pressing matter. Currently they were all the real business that mattered.

Q had made up a proper breakfast for the remaining elements of the party and they sat around a long make shift wooden table—boards slatted over sawhorses. Q did his version of classed up frontier cooking focusing on whatever could be fried in a skillet. The fry bread particularly resonated with the diners. It seems that particular institution—breads cooked in the grease of departed meats—had become something of a metaphor for all Western life. It combined the at-home-ness of bread with the hearty and rugged limitations of the frontier world. One could always count on bread, but it must be augmented to survive the harsher climates, the absence of the civilized world. Indeed, it might be the promethean flame of the west. And tasty to boot. The fry could have convinced even a old world east coaster that civilization had not died out in the west, but grown instead a new kind of rambunctious deliciousness. Q was an artist, gastronomically, tho his efforts were under appreciated.

The rest of the day was spent in a form of acclimation to the outdoor life. Not that they were at any heights whatsoever, but that they were adjusting to the camp itself, feeling out the new limits of the society it offered them. It made them somewhat an island. A lone eight survivors—and their three working men—cast out into the varied world. X & Y sat over some business papers and smoked cigars. They spoke confidentially and paced the outskirts of the camp pointing. Later in the day, B joined them at their cigars and they took up a game of cards. Pinocle. A vicious sport when taken up by three businessmen. Luckily all were equally eager and none fell easily under the axe. The beauty of cut throat Pinocle beings that alliances while easily formed against any one party are always as quickly sundered by the remaining play. Rarely does an alliance last so long as to outcast any single member of the play. And fortunes favors is terribly fickle. X & Y were even perhaps at pains to avoid any appearance of conspiracy—having spent the whole day apart from the rest is serious dialogue—even allowing a moment or two of easy collaboration against B pass unused.

When the adventuring party returned it was time to dine. The sun was still high in the late summer sky, but had lost its luster in the winds of an encroaching fog. They experienced here—later still in the night—the sensation peculiar to this valley of the sun rushing down and large bank of fog rushing up. It gives the sense almost of a tidal action. The wall of fog held now just above the far side of the valley's foothills. A menacing stagnant wave. One might think of Moses holding back the sea, or Poseidon towering within the wave his ferocity temporarily head at bay as Odysseus passed beneath—depending on one's particular cast of mind.