Pecos Nights
The last two nights have been wild and fierce, a strange contrast to the quiet stargazing of the past couple weeks. Nights on my mountain outside Pecos have been full of shooting stars; of cool, quiet breezes; and of cups of coffee or matechino sipped while counting the satellites that pass by overhead. They've been full of the sound of crickets and the scent of pine. They've been full of peaceful solitude.
But not these past two nights. Night before last, my quiet contemplation was shattered by a yowl of anger as my cat charged the wall of glass which separated us from the outside. I could see little of the night aside from moonlight filtering through the pines, and even that was alternately revealed and obscured according to the whimsy of a cloudscattered sky.
Stepping quietly outside, I could see little more: My truck, parked out by the shed. A half-cord or so of firewood neatly stacked on the ridge up by the crumbling rock zia. Shadows, and pools of moonlight. Nothing moving but trees and grasses and flowers in the wind.
And nothing to hear, either, except the crickets and wind. The occasional barking of a distant dog. And a Paganini caprice barely audible from the small stereo inside my home.
Nothing out there. Nothing.
Except in the morning, a single print in the dust beside my door: Bobcat, probably. Or a bobcat-ghost.
And then last night there were neither bobcats nor ghosts: Both sought shelter from the fiercewild electrical storm which haunted my mountain and indeed all of Glorietta Pass. The thunder was minimal, but the lightning flickered eerily, nonstop, illuminating the low clouds which descended upon the pass and occasionally licking hungrily at the neighboring mountain peaks, throwing everything into stark silhouette.
The display continued for over an hour in ghostly near-silence before the rains began. A shimmering wall obscured the few lights visible at the far side of the pass. Then scattered drops, ice-cold, kicked up spicescented dust at my feet. I bid farewell to my neighbor's dog, and she and I both reached shelter just in time. The rains came, lightning glinting off water. A good soaking, but still strangely quiet.
But perhaps the monsoons have finally arrived in this arid land.
But not these past two nights. Night before last, my quiet contemplation was shattered by a yowl of anger as my cat charged the wall of glass which separated us from the outside. I could see little of the night aside from moonlight filtering through the pines, and even that was alternately revealed and obscured according to the whimsy of a cloudscattered sky.
Stepping quietly outside, I could see little more: My truck, parked out by the shed. A half-cord or so of firewood neatly stacked on the ridge up by the crumbling rock zia. Shadows, and pools of moonlight. Nothing moving but trees and grasses and flowers in the wind.
And nothing to hear, either, except the crickets and wind. The occasional barking of a distant dog. And a Paganini caprice barely audible from the small stereo inside my home.
Nothing out there. Nothing.
Except in the morning, a single print in the dust beside my door: Bobcat, probably. Or a bobcat-ghost.
And then last night there were neither bobcats nor ghosts: Both sought shelter from the fiercewild electrical storm which haunted my mountain and indeed all of Glorietta Pass. The thunder was minimal, but the lightning flickered eerily, nonstop, illuminating the low clouds which descended upon the pass and occasionally licking hungrily at the neighboring mountain peaks, throwing everything into stark silhouette.
The display continued for over an hour in ghostly near-silence before the rains began. A shimmering wall obscured the few lights visible at the far side of the pass. Then scattered drops, ice-cold, kicked up spicescented dust at my feet. I bid farewell to my neighbor's dog, and she and I both reached shelter just in time. The rains came, lightning glinting off water. A good soaking, but still strangely quiet.
But perhaps the monsoons have finally arrived in this arid land.