Faith

Yesterday I spent an hour or so creating a spiral meditation path on a vacant lot across the road. Though it is late spring, there are no wildflowers or native grasses. The native junipers have been trimmed up so that they can no longer shelter their roots from the sun and wind, and the rocky ground is dusty after months without rain.

From a high point I look across the Rio Grande Valley, sixty miles west to Mount Taylor and back five miles east to the Sandias, thinking that surely there is no place around here where someone has not walked, hunted, cut firewood, or grazed sheep… all impacting the land over the past ten thousand years. But right here, for the past three decades, this spot has endured its most intense human occupation.

Our neighbors spent thirty-seven years in this place. With their own hands they built a house, kennels, and several out-buildings, poured a foundation for an unfinished addition, buried half-burned trash, old car parts, broken sports equipment, beloved pets, and other stuff as yet undiscovered. When it was time for them to move on, we bought their land.

Since the house was unlivable, we began the cleanup by stripping the wiring and recycling or giving away anything usable before demolition. Parts of the kennel went to a local animal shelter, a shed to a neighbor, metal roofing to a Pueblo farm family. Weathered wood board and batten went to a local builder to become a ceiling in a new adobe home.

The entire two acres was littered with nails, barbed wire, shards of glass, broken toys, and the miscellany of modern life. We did a lot of digging, filled a dumpster, and hauled home anything we thought might be of some value to us.

Now, three years later, it is time to acknowledge the past and look toward the future.

Starting at the center I rake a widdershin path out in a dynamic spiral, gathering bits of wire, screws, glass, plastic, and native rocks. An intact concrete patio block emerges to become the center post. Every piece of trash caught by the tines of the rake is tossed to the center, testament to the way in which our transitory existence can have lasting impact on this earth.

Finally the spiral has grown to fill its space, so that now, entering from the left, one may proceed clockwise to the center.

As I head back home, I spot some pale purple and gold iris blooming in an old flower bed. Not being desert natives, they won’t long survive unless someone waters them. But for this moment they are beautiful. And now I know that something wonderful can exist here again.

Crooked fish and Straight Thinking

“I have some guppies that have deformed spines… why don’t you try to figure out if that could be hereditary? I’ll give them to you if you want.”

Soon I was sharing my bedroom with a dozen or so one-gallon pickle jars full of generations of guppies, keeping meticulous records of their procreation and health. (I still have nightmares about scrubbing algae from the jars and counting tiny fish.)

Taking my friend’s suggestion turned out to be a defining moment in my life. Two years later I was walking up to the podium at the Western Virginia Regional Science Fair. Turned out the first place award in biology came with an all-expense-paid trip to the International Science Fair in Albuquerque NM. (I thought, “Where?”)

That was in May 1963. I fell in love with New Mexico—from the new Western Skies motel on east Central one could look up to the east mesa at sunset, where tall grass reflected the golden skies to the west. We rented horses and rode down the arroyo below Four Hills. We toured Old Town, and munched sopaipillas dripping with honey. There was a tour to Los Alamos, where we lunched at Philomena’s (the old guard station), and a day trip to Acoma Pueblo, the Sky City.

But mostly it was the light, the ultramarine fading to azure green at twilight peppered with stars, that caused me to affirm to my teacher, “I’m coming back here to live.” “Yes dear,” she humored me.

That was nearly fifty years ago. What if I hadn’t taken my friend up on his offer? For sure, I wouldn’t be sitting out here in the desert, listening to coyotes celebrate as the full moon rises over the Sandias.

Bondo: A Good Old Dog

This epitaph is meticulously chiseled in blackened letters into a gray granite headstone within an old picket fence, leaning askew with peeling white paint. The grave is covered with an old blanket, disintegrating now. It is capped with carefully chosen black lava rock from the banks of lower Dorsey Creek in Poncha Pass.

Bondo was probably a good-sized dog from the size of the grave, and he was obviously worth the effort put into this interment. Maybe he ran these sagebrush hills through aspen and fir, following cattle with his owner.

I'd like to know more about him.

Wild and isolated Poncha Pass overlooks the expansive San Luis Valley to the south and is traversed today by US 285. Dorsey Creek is a Forest Service access road just south of the pass.

Epiphany invited

This twelfth day of Christmas, Kings Day, Epiphany is bright and clear in the high desert. Although snow still lingers on the shaded ground, the greenhouse is eighty degrees, with Christmas cactus in full bloom and Meyer lemons ripe for harvest.

This morning a flock of mountain bluebirds feasted on juniper berries on nearby Forest Service land. How apt the phrase, "bluebird of happiness"... what possible survival benefit could such magnificent azure afford? More senseless beauty.

Now a white winged dove peers down at me from a locust, still fluffed against the cold. Our feeder has hosted the winter regulars: juncos, towhees, one lovely brown thrasher, and many others. A quick check in the summerhouse fails to provide a sighting of the Western screech owl who has been in residence since August. He was here at least until mid December... perhaps he has scored a warmer roost these days.

So I poke around, searching for some insight, some spark, some enlightenment. Bring it on — I'm ready!

Honeybees, Rosemary and Art

Here in the high desert, rosemary grows well in our dry alkaline soil. Sunny warm days have kept this tough little herb in full bloom, and hundreds of honeybees are taking full advantage today.

I wonder if their honey will have a hint of turpentine?
Will it be dark or light?

A conversation with a beekeeper last weekend reminded me how amazing these creatures are. As a batik artist, I have used many pounds of beeswax over the past thirty years. It is interesting to contemplate whether or not someone is harvesting the honey from bees in my garden, and whether I might be buying beeswax created from my own rosemary.

Cranes, golden cottonwoods and fairies

The sharp cobalt sky is filled with the churble of sandhill cranes, heading down to the Bosque del Apache as the high country peaks are showing white.

Our best season lazes on: frost clips the late blossoms, while afternoons warm south walls. The house is downright toasty, thanks to the sun. Furnace still not needed.

A western screech owl has been roosting in the summer house for several weeks, and the resulting owl pellets have been of interest to me and my five-year old grandson. Mouse bones are so tiny.

We recently spent a magical afternoon as he built a house for the fairies, tearing tiny placemats and a tablecloth from rags and carefully hanging mistletoe from the roof.

He assures me fairies like mistletoe.

Tiny stone seats were placed with care around a rock table. Periwinkle petals provided exquisite decor, and a good sheet metal roof supported a rag flag, on which he had drawn a flower and bumblebee.

We're certain the fairies approved.

Spotted Towhees and Robins

This morning the season officially changed with the arrival of several spotted towhees at the feeder. One of the most colorful winter residents, these little orange, black and white sparrows are never so plentiful as to be a problem (as the robins can be) so they are always welcome.

During a dry winter, flocks of robins crowd our small pond and befoul it, endangering the goldfish. One February we arrived home after leaving our house with a sitter for ten days. The pond water was purple, and two dozen dead fish floated like fall aspen leaves. The robins were so thick that it was hard to think of them as symbols of spring cheer!

As a kid I raised a robin fledgling that had been caught by our cat. I will always recognize the call. Named Cheep-cheep by my little brother, she grew quickly and learned to fly, but always had one wing feather that went at an odd angle due to the cat's claws. She would swoop down and land on my head, then poop. When she was grown we took her with us on a week-long vacation to a nearby state park. Every day we would let her out, then let her into the cabin at night if she would come to us. By the time we left she had taken up with some other robins.

That was in the misty Blue Ridge mountains; this is the Southwest high desert. A very different life for a robin, where life depends on finding water. And since I choose to provide it, guess I can't blame them for showing up in excess.

Kinda like our own species: always able to recognize a good thing, then overusing it to the point of destruction.