Back in those days BLM land was a free for all. First come, first serve, no reservations, no marked sites. It was stretched all across a few hundred yards of the Yellowstone River. Rafters and fisherman would put in at the boat ramp and campers would just park wherever. There was a field of rocks so bumpy that even the Sportsmobile had a hard time there.
Normal night. I had a fire, was watching the sun slowly set. You could hear the river gurgling, the sound of people in their camps. I had a glass of bourbon and my guitar out.
It started as it always did – a man, Joey, walked over to check out the van and I ended up making him a drink. He was in his 30s, with a shaggy beard. He had been deployed in the Army overseas. Seen combat. There is a special joy in letting your beard grow after you leave the service. We toasted to it. He was friendly but his eyes also moved quickly. I could tell that he had seen things.
His girlfriend wandered over to find him. Paige. She was his counterpoint. Barefoot, smiling, open, in a hippie dress, smelling of patchouli. Probably in her early 20s. Everything about her was right out front. She liked to talk. The pretty young girl and her older protector – it’s an age old pattern that repeats itself over and over.
Paige was a witch. She told me so. She studied herbs, and energy, and healing, and other stuff that she was coy about. They were living out of a red van. On their way to Oregon where she would apprentice with another witch on a commune type place, and where Joey would farm and fix things.
I asked Joey if he was a warlock. “F—k no”, he said. “But I know there are things I can’t explain, and I love her, so I keep the van running and she keeps my nightmares away.” I don’t know about magic, but that seems close enough to me.
We say there playing guitar and drinking and talking. The golden hour ended, and it got to twilight, and then real dark. The wind got cold. There was more drinking to do but the day was gone.
And then I began to notice something.
This weird light began to fill the air. Like daylight was gradually returning, but not golden daylight. It got stronger and stronger with no explanation. I wondered if it was an eclipse, or the bourbon, or something else that they put in my bourbon. Pretty soon it was the most illuminated I have ever experienced at night. But you couldn’t see the moon.
It had been hiding behind the mountain and gathering steam. But it was as strong and full as any mood I’d ever seen. When it began to peek out from behind the peak I could not believe how utterly huge it was. Like it filled up all of that big sky. And we were in BIG SKY country.
When it was fully up you would not believe how it changed the landscape. I asked Paige how any self respecting witch could not see this coming and she had no answer. “Nature is a mystery”, she said. Any one of us could have solved the mystery with an almanac, but it could not have possibly done the prediction justice.
We sat and drank bourbon for a very long time that night. Eventually the moon went behind the other mountains. I learned all sorts of things about Paige and Joey that I couldn’t remember the next day because of the booze. Or maybe it was a spell. I think at some point I drank something that they gave me, I don’t know what.
