In what key does water babble?
"Last night I slept in sheets the color of fire / tonight I lie alone again and curse my own desires / sentenced first to burn and then to freeze / and watch by the window / where the boys grew in the trees" -Carly Simon, "Boys in the Trees"
Hiking Tesuque Creek-hot desert summer afternoons, appreciating the way my body's sweat acts like a swamp cooler, the sound of the creek gurgling and babbling-what key would that be? I think it odd when people go out into nature and say they want to hear the silence-to hear wind-speak, maybe, tree tongue and water talk, but not silence. It is not silent, if you really listen.
The stream is higher than I've ever seen it. A cool shock as I dip my hand in, soak my hat, gasp as the water drips and slides down my back. Remembering a hike with Robin when we launched into a friendly water-war with our water bottles, and then skipped back down the trail toward home.
A black and yellow butterfly crashes into my chest and clings desperately to my tank top for several seconds before deciding a tree branch might be safer landing place.
I seem marked for animal signs lately. Butterflies hover in my face regularly. At Chaco Canyon, a collared lizard, young, blue-green, scrambled to the edge of a boulder and sat. He cocked his head and watched as if genuinely curious about the two two-legged creatures crouching in the shade of his home. He didn't move even as I put the camera less than a foot away from him. Rather, he did push-ups, chilled out for a while, then finally decided a girlfriend lagartija might be waiting him elsewhere.
Back in Tesuque, I've reached a point where the water has overflowed its regular route and has sprawled over the forest and trails. In trying to find a way that won't result in muddy sneakers, I startle a young king snake, barely a foot long.
There was also the incident with the Great Toad, but that's a tale for another time.
That Carly Simon song has been in my head all day, I think brought on by the heat of the afternoon and my inability to sleep well, and various other thoughts of things past and things to come. Coño, there is so much going on right now, I half curse the habit of the human body and its need for sleep. We're smack dab in the middle of the Indian Market issue deadline, which is actually going quite smoothly despite some minor setbacks. But what in the world happens to the evenings? I got home, ran to the co-op with Shannon to bring home a dinner we wouldn't have to cook (not so much out of laziness as the refusal to heat up the house by using oven or stove-dolmas and artichoke salad, finished off with ice cream), and it was 9 p.m. before we new it.
Even now, it's midnight-I want to keep writing, but it's time for a quick session on the keyboard, and then bed.
Hiking Tesuque Creek-hot desert summer afternoons, appreciating the way my body's sweat acts like a swamp cooler, the sound of the creek gurgling and babbling-what key would that be? I think it odd when people go out into nature and say they want to hear the silence-to hear wind-speak, maybe, tree tongue and water talk, but not silence. It is not silent, if you really listen.
The stream is higher than I've ever seen it. A cool shock as I dip my hand in, soak my hat, gasp as the water drips and slides down my back. Remembering a hike with Robin when we launched into a friendly water-war with our water bottles, and then skipped back down the trail toward home.
A black and yellow butterfly crashes into my chest and clings desperately to my tank top for several seconds before deciding a tree branch might be safer landing place.
I seem marked for animal signs lately. Butterflies hover in my face regularly. At Chaco Canyon, a collared lizard, young, blue-green, scrambled to the edge of a boulder and sat. He cocked his head and watched as if genuinely curious about the two two-legged creatures crouching in the shade of his home. He didn't move even as I put the camera less than a foot away from him. Rather, he did push-ups, chilled out for a while, then finally decided a girlfriend lagartija might be waiting him elsewhere.
Back in Tesuque, I've reached a point where the water has overflowed its regular route and has sprawled over the forest and trails. In trying to find a way that won't result in muddy sneakers, I startle a young king snake, barely a foot long.
There was also the incident with the Great Toad, but that's a tale for another time.
That Carly Simon song has been in my head all day, I think brought on by the heat of the afternoon and my inability to sleep well, and various other thoughts of things past and things to come. Coño, there is so much going on right now, I half curse the habit of the human body and its need for sleep. We're smack dab in the middle of the Indian Market issue deadline, which is actually going quite smoothly despite some minor setbacks. But what in the world happens to the evenings? I got home, ran to the co-op with Shannon to bring home a dinner we wouldn't have to cook (not so much out of laziness as the refusal to heat up the house by using oven or stove-dolmas and artichoke salad, finished off with ice cream), and it was 9 p.m. before we new it.
Even now, it's midnight-I want to keep writing, but it's time for a quick session on the keyboard, and then bed.