On the greeting of strangers in the desert, a parable.

A funny thing happened a few days ago. M and I had been working on his dome that morning, and he, W and I were sharing lunch under the barn's porch. W looked over at the next ridge and saw a dark minivan slowly coming down the road that runs along its spine - the same road that leads to M's property. It was moving in fits and starts, like the driver was looking for something.

M got some binoculars and started glassing them just as two people got out. They were wandering around on the parcel on the other side of the road, belonging to the brother of a friend of ours. He said to me something like, "We should go see if we can help those folks."

M and I were dressed the way we usually are during a normal day. He looked like the respectable young man he is: clean and well-groomed, T-shirt and jeans, skateboard-taped wonder-nine on his hip. I looked like something that had just spent ten years in a cave: Scraggly beard, camo pants, torn t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, belt knife and shredded boony hat. I wasn't wearing my .45, which meant I had my WUC (World's Ugliest Carbine) close to hand. We went down to the wash, climbed the slope on the other side, and vectored in on where these folks were following the cliff on the far side of the ridge.

For a wonder most of the dogs elected to stay home, which as it turns out was just as well. But Little Bear tagged along at a distance. As we approached the strangers, M suggested that he greet them and I hang back with my long gun, so that's what we did. In hindsight I think maybe he meant I shouldn't approach them at all: I'm not the friendliest guy with strangers.

As soon as M cleared the brush and greeted them, I could see that this wasn't exactly going to be a Red Dawn re-enactment. It turns out that what we had here was a profoundly misplaced couple from New York who had for some reason bought a parcel of desert land about four years ago and now couldn't quite find it. In fact the guy had never been here at all and pretty clearly wished he had left it that way. They didn't look any too happy to meet M, though he was as friendly as could be. I couldn't hide back in the junipers all day, so I figured, "Wait'll they get a load of me" and stepped out, slinging the carbine. Yeah, that did the trick.

They had two "dogs" with them, a constantly-yapping ankle-biter that never left Momma's arms and a funny-looking little thing sort of like a designer pit bull on a leash. Seriously, I've no idea what breed it was but it looked like what you'd get if Andy Warhol designed a pit bull terrier. Little Bear, seeing there was no danger, came out from behind me. He immediately took a dislike to the unfriendly little thing on the leash and got in his face. Now there were three barking dogs, pretty much drowning out whatever it was M and the lady were saying to one another. The guy with the leash never said a word, just kept backing away and trying to save his darling whatever-it-was from the ravening black beast (My floppy puppy). I'm thinking, sheesh, if Fritz were here and free of his clown collar, I'm not sure there'd be survivors.

M and I could see our job here was done, so we said our goodbyes as friendly as possible and headed back into the bush. When we got back, M said to W: "Know anybody who wants to buy some property? I think there's a parcel about to come up for sale!"