Shade tarps hung over the Feria. El Bolson maxed out with kids from Buenos Aires. High school age, 16, 17, sometimes younger. Backpacks leaning on restaurant walls, table legs. Something about being able to drink and travel during adolescence as a part of your culture and not as somehow fucking up or ‘taking time off’ or ‘finding oneself.’ The absence of camps. Life lived out on the streets. Long lines at the ATMs pushing towards the shade. A thick-assed policewoman walking quickly in combat boots. The cooler at Los Girasoles empty except for Isenbeck. Waitresses and bartenders at Jauja, Hummus, Roberto at the verduleria, everyone moving in slowmo. Back at the barrio, all the younger men with our shirts off. Cutting grass and fixing cars in the morning. The brightness of tin roofs. Nobody out between 12 and 4. The skin from the Colques’ New Years cordero still flayed up in the shed. A cat flattened out in the shade of their truck, kittens nursing. Waiting till late to go on runs. Grasshoppers in the retamas, bees on the Hypericum. Where the trail meets San Martin, a couple of Gauchos asking if I’d seen a horse. Dense dust rising from car tires. Hosing down garden and self post-run. Kale, strawberries, tomatoes, lettuce visibly taller. Evening drives to the river. On the way through town, a woman with breasts loose in a sun dress shoveling dog-strewn garbage. Water in the Azul warm enough that you don’t gasp anymore. Low flow, the snowpack nearly melted out. Learning to recognize the rocks that have fossils. At sunset, the wetlands full of dragonflies. A daughter three, a newborn son. Something switching to minor-key when folding up the blanket and walking to the car. Back at home, opening all windows and doors. Dinner, 10:30 pm at the earliest. Hours later, the house finally cool, everyone asleep. Curtains pushing in from the west. Sound of the river across the runway. Dogs barking again, then a clopping sound. A horse running towards the fields.