Winter is said to be ‘the depth' and Summer is the ‘height', but there is also a depth to Summer. It is the time of the Great Heat, of the desiccating winds. It is the time when all life is in storage underground until the cool of the evening. The song says, "Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun". Cactus raised fear crazed youths heaven bent for the Light to illumine their future and know the rest of their existence in a flash are there to meet the madness of the King and kick the foaming canines out of town. They are forever out there. The desert takes much, sometimes all, and gives back madness to the angels. Regis was not wearing a hat and that was REALLY crazy.
        Regis sat on a boulder at a crossroads called Taos Junction on the flat plain running from the mountains to the Rio Grande gorge. He searched the mountain above the Pueblo but saw nothing terribly unusual. It was not quite right though. Something...tipped. He bloody well knew the sky up there was not a brilliant violet, and the sage was green not blue. The heat rolled off the volcanic rocks like an upside down waterfall. In some places it seemed it was so heavy that it rolled across the plain to the edge of the gorge and flowed over the side. He heard no splash or the hissing sound of something molten hitting the cold river below. The wind sounded an awful like distant singing. There was a beat to the Earth that would not give up. It insisted on its own way. Regis was stoned out of his gourd.
        He looked up and saw in the distance a figure trying to solidify out of the sheets of rising heat. It raised a wavery hand and saluted him. Regis squinted to focus. The figure began to be recognizable as human. It had a blanket wrapped around its middle. Braids festooned with feathers and fur drapped across its shoulders. It obviously was a man because no woman wore the blanket just like that. It came close enough to see its features. Little Joe raised an arm again and waved.
        "What you doin' here?" The little medicineman rolled a Bull Durham, grinning.
        "I don't know, Joe. First I was in the lodge and then I am here." Regis looked around without fear or panic. These were common events on The Road. "Looks like Nevada, around Pyramid Lake."
        Joe chuckled. "Mebbe. Mebbe not." He blew smoke to the sky.
        "Yeah. Ok. What's goin' on? The Rio grande is in New Mexico?"
        "White people always lookin' around, always wanting to know where they are. You are where you are. What difference does it make?"
        "It would be nice to know what's going on, you know?"
        "You asked for help. You gettin' it." Joe peered into Regis' eyes. "What you want help with?"
        "I'm scared, Joe. Scared I will be absorbed into the city. It's not real user friendly, you know what I mean. You lived in L.A. when you were in the movies, right?"
        Joe nodded and chuckled again. "Smelled real bad."
        "What am I going to do? Farley has always been there for me and maybe that isn't such a good thing. I mean, I never had to live up to it myself. Ya know? And what if my music isn't any good?"
        "Gotta sing your own song."
        "I know and I am. But what if they aren't....wait a minute. That isn't what you mean is it?"
        Little Joe had had one running question in the years when he was guide to a hundred white children. ‘Why can't you hear me?' he would ask. Why could they not understand that what he was saying was not what he was saying. Nothing too subtle, just plain spirit to spirit conversation. These white boys and girls were never taught to do that. If anything they were taught that it is superstition and a waste of time. Never happens. When the Taos peyote people took over their education the iron walls of guilt and doubt were too high and too wide. So the elders decided to dig under them. Hard work for most but the strongest. Little Joe was in that class, especially so now that he had passed over. So was Grandma Bertha.
        Joe looked sadly at the ground. "You might see some things that will change you. You know. Just ask the reflection in the water. It may put you way over there." He waved broadly at the horizon. "But you maybe help later." The little man tottered off smoking his hand-rolled and humming a tipi song.
        Regis sat staring at the receding figure until is dissolved in the waves of heat and was gone. He again became aware of the pressure on his shoulders. It was stronger now, insistent. He heard water flowing and looked around for the source. Behind him was the Rio and along its banks were willows and cottonwoods, oak, flowers and tall tough grass. He was not in the desert any more.
        "What's this all about," he muttered.
        "It's about you seeing who you are." Regis whirled on his stone perch, his heart skipping and pinging like bumper cars. There was the entire Circle Road, all the worshipers in the tipi plus some others. His grandmother, dead for eight years, sat nodding her head and making some powerful prayer magic for his wellbeing. His two great uncles, car salesmen when cars were brand new, grinned at him from the middle of the Road and three sexy little girls with wings nestled together and were very grave during the singing. And him.
        "Get into the water." It was the best Fireman in the country that Lion In The Grass had brought from Oklahoma. He was short of stature but muscular from long hours at a forge where he produced some passable metal art, belt buckles, the occasional front piece for a VW bug. He had had an accident onboard a ship of some kind. He fell from the mast and one eye just popped out, like shelling peas. His name was Tahiti. His early days on the scene found him in Cuernavaca in the entourage of a celebrated modern occultist who quickly unscrewed Tahiti's head and dropped in enough LSD to give hallucinations to a stone. The he taught him the dark arts. Poor Tahiti had to fight away from the man and run North where he found the Road people. His conversion was profound. He worked with fire alday long and this peyote thing came easily. He was in great demand, yet he remained reasonably humble.
        "Jesus! You scared the shit out of me!" cried Regis.
        "Lets get some ground rules going here. First, I am not Jesus and to my knowledge no one else here is either. Second, it is my FUNCTION TO FRIGHTEN YOUR FECES OUT STEAMING ON THE MORNING GRASS!" Tahiti was an inch away from the nose of the young man so the yelling was more telling. "Now sit up and pay attention. Go get in the water!" He nudged Regis gently forward.
        "Hey Tahiti. Am I stoned?"
        "Hey Regis, yea and verily, you are stoned."
        "Oh. Very cool! I can relax."
        "Get in the blessed water, damn it!"
        Regis slowly shook himself loose from his pants and underwear. For some reason he was without a shirt. "Mmm. Musta left it back there." He let himself into the water by increments. It was damn cold, just coming out of the Colorado mountains.
        "Shit! This is freezing! Hey wait...how come I am feeling these physical things if this is all a peyote trip?"
        "Reality isn't all it's cracked up to be," Tahiti sneered. "In fact, it isn't what you think it is at all. Now just kneel down in the river and wait." Shaking his head Tahiti walked back to the group who were sitting on logs and stumps of ancient trees.
        Regis knelt feeling very foolish. He looked around wanting anything to happen, something to take away the stain of his being uncool enough to miss the signs. He was breathing deeply. His head sank to his breast.
        "If I was flowing any faster you would be drift-material." Regis jumped.
        "What...?"
        "Oh yeah? Well all I have to do is let loose my grip and he's a grease spot."
        "Silly being! Water will always wear away your resolve, let alone your form." The Mountain and the River were having an argument.
        "And if we suck up enough water there will be precious little left to wear away Brother Stone." The Trees got in on the act.
        "Hahaha..yes and I will suck up what's left and throw it into the next county." Sister Wind was quite frivilous. "Well, I can't wait around. See you next path if you are still here. Which I doubt! I am the mistress of you all so there isn't a lot to talk about." She flew away on the breezes of Her words.
        "Brother Rock,' said the Trees. " we could combine our talents and make a shelter for this little one. Sister Wind would then have to around. And Sister Water could flow unimpeded through the caverns She Herself can carve in your body."
        Regis sat with open mouth.
        "Far out! Talking rocks! Atre you guys really doing all this?"
        "Did we hear a squeak?" asked the Trees.
        Sister Water made a small rapid that pushed Regis forward. "Yes, he grows impatient."
        "What does he know of patience? I am the very symbol of it!" bragged Brother Rock.
        "This is very groovey an' everything but I am getting cold. So, if you don't mind, I'll just get out and find a fire. See ya guys. Wow! Rocks talking to Trees and Water. Wow!"
        "Did anyone tell you to get out of the River?" Tahiti stood with fists on hips. "This is very irregular."
        "Yeah, well, man, I don't know who you are except Lion In The Grass says you are the best Fireman on the Road. So, like, maybe you could do that...make a fire I mean? Cause, hey, I am very chilled. ‘Sok?"
        The one-eyed man harrumphed and turned to the Fire. "You're the only one who didn't have anything to say. I never knew you to be so shy."
        "That is because, o cyclops of the prairie, the Fire I am is of the heart, not the body. You know that. Why are you taunting me? Just shutup and feed me."
        When Tahiti laughed it was a sharp staccato coming up from his gut. His frame supported very little fat so there was not much movement, but when he laughed everyone around was unconstrained to laugh with him. Including Fire. There was a starburst of flame as he carefully placed several more small logs on the coals.
        "That's better. Thankyou man." Regis huddled as close to heat as he could without becoming one with it.
        Tahiti bent down and looked into his eyes. "You know where you are yet?"
        "Does it matter?"
        "Sort of, yes. But better, do you know WHO you are yet?"
        "I think I am who I am because my momma said so. What difference does it make? I'm gonna be an artist...no, I AM an artist and goin' to the big city to study. So, what does that make me, huh? What is more important than Who. Am I right?"
        Fire blazed in surprise. "He has it! By Jove I believe he does!"
        Water called from her green-blue bed. "Yes, it seems he does."
        "He's still nothin' but a future grease spot to me."
        Sister Wind and the Trees ignored them all.
        "One question," said Lion In The Grass, "who do you worship?"
        Regis furrowed his brow. A long moment irretrievably passed.
        "I don't know."
        "THAT'S RIGHT!" roared Vincent and clapped his hands.
        Regis was once more sitting on the rock in the desert where the river flowed that should not flow there. Little Joe stood a few feet away watching an eagle circling slowly on the updrafts. He turned and said in a clear voice, "You got to eat right. Remember that. Eat right."