This is about a walk. It is an aimless verbal wander about a semi-aimless hike along the Red River. I’m remembering it and I’m going through the trees again now. It is present and past. I am 53 now. I think. He is 55. For a moment in the year we are two years apart, in the way of bad mathematics. In another month, we’ll only be a year apart. Do you understand? People with siblings understand that math. We are 18 months apart, my brother and I. He lives on the other side of the river, north. Oklahoma to my Texas. We meet at the river sometimes.

In the time of our youth we’d have been drinking beer for this. I’d probably have started a beautiful ranch day like this with a breakfast beer. It sounds awful in retrospect but I remember them fondly and when you’ve got a day of no responsibility, and you are disappeared from the world, why not? Looking back, some of our most fun walks in the woods involved beer, or something or another. Yes guns. No cameras. No phones back then to tote about. Less sense to tote about then too. But it was a hell of a lot of fun. That was a different part of our life river. It almost seems imaginary on most days.