Not a John Stewart song, but a real girl.
Bright garnet-yellow eyes, smooth café skin, and a throaty giggle that first seduced then paralyzed.
I met Shannon in the high Sierra Mountains in northern California where she camped with her family of seven: Her father Grecko, mother Sashay, and her quadruplet sisters, not one of whose names I can recall.
They travelled in a well-worn, ½ ton Dodge pickup with an oversized homemade camper, which displayed decals from their constant migration across our country.
I was camped out in a secluded cove by a mountain stream and I had eaten two hits of purple microdot LSD when I saw her walking upstream, looking every bit like a princess with her long legs and flowered hair.
I can’t remember my first words to her, but whatever they were, she laughed and sat down next to me.
I handed her a beer from the stream.
Ice cold.
We smoked some Thai stick and I gave Shannon two hits of acid so she could join me and those are two days that I will never forget.
She was from Poland.
Aleksandra Orlowski was her given name, but she changed it after listening to John Stewart’s song July, You’re a Woman.
Big points when I pulled my old Martin acoustic out and played the song for her.
I have been around with a gypsy girl named Shannon
Daughter of the Devil
It is strange that I should mention this to you
I haven’t thought of her in years.
Shannon had never enrolled in any school ever.
Never.
She spoke so elegantly, but not without great thought, and her refined manner stood in direct contrast to her peripatetic existence.
I left her as dawn broke over the valley.
Without a single word, I held her closely to feel the heat in the soft sway of her neck as her sweet warm breath sent chills up my spine.
I closed my eyes, and just for a second, dreamed something impossible…
Heading to Denver next stop and the Hot Springs in the Rockies.
Chopper was asleep on his beanbag in the back of the camper, occasionally shaken awake when he did a quick check on his Porterhouse steak bone he had gleaned like fine bone china.
Not a speck of protein left on the bleached white meat skeleton.
Now today, hot springs are big business outside of Denver and up into Breckenridge, but back then there were no flashy signs or resorts yet. More like hand-painted wooden signs pointing to privately-owned natural hot springs where I paid five bucks for ALL DAY.
Seriously.
They were open from noon to ten o’clock and I could and DID stay for all ten hours on the occasions I ingested mushrooms.
I stayed until the big snows started hitting, and then Chopper and I headed south like migrating birds.
If they had casinos like they do now, I am sure we would have found a way to make it work.
Stay well.
