Spring Comes to the High Desert

Spring has begun its return to El Morro. The canyons here on the Colorado Plateau are running cold and high with snow-melt; waterfalls thunder away in the deep woods. Ramah Lake is filling up, and snow drifts are shrinking into the shadows on the north side of Inscription Rock.

George noticed the first fly of the season on a hike around the lake. A family of flycatchers arrived on the same day and began building a nest under the deck. Bull snakes are sunning themselves and lizards have emerged, doing their push-ups on warm rocks. Ewes are lambing in Zuni and Navajo flocks, the parturition dabbing flecks of white against the dun-colored sage and chamisa.

Mud still comes and goes with snow squalls, but the sun has taken the upper hand. Grass grows in the ditches while humming bird feeders sprout from porches and overhangs.

It's a good time of year for residents of El Morro to think about festivals, May poles, green houses, and International Naked Gardening Day. It's time to doff the down jackets, put on the wide-brimmed sun hat, prep the soil, and clean out the pickling jars.

Love is in the air, and romances have sprouted along with the verbena. Couples sip coffee at the Ancient Way Cafe. Tandem kayaks are gliding across the surface of the lake.

Of course, there is still frost on the cars in the morning. We know that snow will fly again, that winter will visit the ridges and chill the wind. We can feel winter in the shadows before the sun goes down, and then after sunset under a cold moon,  but the warm-up is happening.

Spring sits on the wires and sings along with the blue birds, the grosbeaks, and copper-throated Rufous hummers. It's time to take up a spade, in the altogether, soak up some vitamin D, and endure the goose bumps. 

Billionaires Want to Eat Your Lunch

If you are not a billionaire, a member of the super-rich, an international kleptocrat, or money-laundering Russian oligarch, and you still support Trump, his handlers, and his greedy policies, your grasp on what is in your best interests could use some tightening. Billionaires don't really care about you or your family or your neighborhood. Your interests are not their interests, but they will make you think that you might be one of them, someday, and they will hold out that carrot to distract you, keep you from seeing their true intentions. They will glad-hand and hobnob with you if you flatter their conceits, kow-tow to their beliefs, stick up for them, bully their opponents. Trump and his agents of corporate greed are robbing you of your birth-rights of natural resources, health care, retirement, education, protection from poisons, and opportunity to build a life. As we speak, they roll back protections of water, air, land, and sea. They will destroy the places you fish, hunt, camp, hike, or do anything in the natural world. They will dismantle and pulverize every democratic check on their power. They will watch your every move and track you down in order to sell you all that you don't really need. They have and will trail in the dust every rose of founding father freedom. It matters to them that they gain complete control of the only thing standing in their way: government. They will tell you that gull-dang-big-gummint is the problem. They are running us off a cliff into climate disruptions that will touch every aspect of your life: money, health, peace of mind, hope; they are preparing us for a state of constant war, ignorance, and distraction from what really matters. They create a worldview so narrow that you can't imagine anything beyond the thin gruel of possibility that they deem safe. Yes, it is that bad. The billionaire world-view will stop at nothing to perpetuate itself, and as it consumes more and more it eventually comes for you and yours. It thrives on division and pits those who should be allies against each other. It is insatiable, can never get enough, lives like a cancer cell, and only your actions can change its course. It's time to join together and act as if your life depends on it, as if a hungry dragon is closing in on you. The billionaires and their goons will stop at nothing less than snatching the sandwich out of your hands while rifling through your pockets for your last dime. But hey, why worry? That video game is waiting, and the TV tells you they have your best interests in mind, so let them figure it out. Let them make all the decisions. The only thing they worry about is that you might wake up, see through the veil, stand up, talk back, and step up to the plate.  

The Page With His Name on It

It was that day, the one he looked back on it all. From the luxury of age, distance, and a broken heart, the angry, frustrated, misunderstood music he had lived by went mute. It didn't matter anymore. He saw what had been for the dream it was. Instead, he was grateful for the life he had lived. Simple as that. And the moment took on the pleasing distance of a drama he watched as a spectator. He saw himself there, riding off into the sunset he had made for himself, his desires fulfilled in way that he had failed to imagine and to appreciate -- or even see -- before. It was the page in the book that pointed to his work. The page, the entire page, held him in its embrace. He felt seen and heard and acknowledged. That was what he had been waiting for, though he did not know it at the time. Snapped to attention, weak in the knees, feeling a bit the fool for being so blind, he was free at last.

Fragments

The pieces wait to join each other in the magic of completeness. Separate, they are nice baubles, but together.... oh, together, my friend, they throw sparks of wild energy that grows and grows. Too much of one, and you get solipsism -- stuff, nouns, ideas -- that just sits there. Too much of the other, and all you have is action -- empty-headed car chases, wild leaps, extreme x-things with no reason or sense. It is in the union of being and action that the story begins, that the sentence begins to breathe. Character and action: that's the ticket, the creative tension between unlike, but hungry-to-join diversities. Do-be Do-be doo.

One Foot Over the Edge

Sometimes I wish I had said no, had turned away from the shimmering imperative to follow the call, to say yes. Those are the dark days, the ones where energy hides out under some rock, and my tired bones just want to lie down and sink into the earth. Those days come more often now that can't move as fast. Until the dragon catches up to me though, I'll keep throwing one foot over the yawning chasm of what I don't know and hope that some support extends from the unknowable to catch my weight and give me a place to stand so I can swing the next foot forward, again over emptiness that somehow becomes something, even when no one seems to care where it is that I walk. Certainly no one reads what I write. So I just keep moving, placing one foot in front of the other, trusting that my weight will be held, until it isn't.

When the Waters Recede in Tucson

            It is Sunday night in our little mesquite bosque. I grab a Key lime soda from the fridge and find a chair on the porch next to Megan. We can hear the highway up the hill behind the house, but the light of the setting sun and the breeze off the mountains – a breeze still carrying the chill of last night’s snow – honeys the light, quiets the drone of traffic.

No gauzy film, billboard, corporate-sponsored dreamscape, or media hype could capture this subtle shift of the season, this last, cool, goodbye kiss of springtime that spills over and through us as we sip drinks and make small talk.

            The last of the snow runoff is withdrawing back to the high country. Clear water still runs over the sand at the foot of the mountains, but has disappeared just today here in the valley. I followed it upstream as the mouth of our winter creek retreated, growing silent, its piece said, overtaken by the thirsty sand.

            Shadows lengthen. Trees have gone opaque with blossom and leaf in this last week. I watch my wife read, study her crossed legs, and wonder how many times I will see her again in a light like this, a breeze like this, my shoes wet with the last drops of a vanishing desert river. Once more? Twice? Not more than a few, if any.

            The shadows overtake the light, and the sounds of the highway come down to us, no longer held at bay by the breeze. She gets up. It is too dark to read, and friends are coming over. I sit and listen for the sounds of coyotes, somewhere.

Crescent Moon

It's still dark, and a crescent moon hangs over the horizon with Venus beaming next to it. Saturn is right there in line. A cold stillness sits on the snow and trees, and even the coyotes are quiet. The air is like a knife. It cuts through my jacket and sizzles against my skin. The world sleeps, but I am sharply awake. Everything is clear and crisp with edges. For just this snapshot of a moment, the stars look still, but I know they are up there spinning away, lit by fusion and matter that will run out eventually. Maybe it has already, and what I see of them is the light they sent out while they were still young with so much time and light and gravitational attraction ahead of them.