Sukkot: Fragile Dwelling Place

 

“The land of Israel is not rich in water
resources. . . For this reason, a special
prayer for rain was inserted into the
[Sukkot] service. Since the rainy season
starts approximately at Sukkot, it was
the appropriate time to pray for rain.
Jews are realists. One prays for rain
during the rainy season, not during
the dry summers. One walks across
water by stepping on rocks . . .”

-- Rabbi Irving Greenberg, The Jewish Way

 

I saw the full moon of Sukkot, Season of Our Joy, rising over the mesa in the east, into the white and misty clouds of hail that had just fallen over Freedom Ridge Ranch and was now falling out toward the Red Hill and Cimarron Mesa.  On the ground by the roses, on the porch, and over on the cabin and barn roofs, drifts of pellet-sized hail lay, melting slowly into the waters running off of the hills and mesas, downcutting into rills, rapids and even falls, as they sang their way down to Red Hill Draw.

 

There will be no Sukkah at Freedom Ridge Ranch tonight. Rain was still falling intermittently as Tippy and I picked our way across to check the chickens, jumping across a stream and its smaller tributary, both coming down from the dirt tank west of the barn. The other dogs were not the least bit interested in leaving the shelter of the living room. They were shell shocked from lightning, thunder, downpour and then hail. A sudden appearance of the setting sun lit up a rainbow over Freedom Ridge, and then curtains of rains covered it again, until the clouds passed to the east and the moon rose into them.

 

In the pattern of the Holy Days this year, building a Sukkah was called due to rain. The damage to the landscape, the flooding, the car bottoming out in standing water in Red Hill Draw by the shipping pens, all these things together made the typical Sukkot not only difficult, but unimaginable. Sukkot celebrates not only the Ingathering Harvest, the last of the Israeli year, but it also commemorates the years of wandering in the desert. It is a reminder of the fragility and impermanence of life.  

For so many people in New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, this impermanence is very real, as they realize what the floodwaters took, and clean up what is left, much of the stuff of their lives washed away like the stuff of our hillsides, roads and driveways. Normal life will not come for weeks or even months for friends of ours who live in Coal Creek Canyon. There house is high and soggy, but they will not see a return of drinking water and natural gas for a long while. They know the fragility of their dwelling place on real terms this Sukkot.

For us, the damage is in a bottomed out car, washed out roads and rilling and gullying in our harsh but fragile landscape. We’ve come through lightly, really. But on another level, we are also confronting impermanence without the need to build a Sukkah this year. Although this is now our permanent dwelling here at Freedom Ridge Ranch, we are in the midst of completing repairs requested by the buyers of the house up in Sedillo, the beautiful house we both thought would be our last. And we are buying a casita, a small and comparatively inexpensive house on a hill north of the Sedillo house a good ten miles by road.

The casita will be a place for the Cowboy to live while he finishes his degree and certifications in welding and metal technology. It will be a place for me to stay this fall and next spring, as I focus intensively on finishing my coursework so I can take my comprehensive exams. It will be a place for the Engineering Geek to land when he comes up to Albuquerque and Sandia Labs on business, for he has contracts that require his intermittent presence. It will not be home. But we will be back and forth between home and not-home a lot, all of us. And while this is the case, we hope to be completing the additions and renovations that will make the ranch house uniquely ours.

Our dwelling place will be most fragile and impermanent this year. Like our ancestors, who had to wander in the wilderness until they understood what freedom really requires. 

“As Jews moved into exile, they understood
what the Sukkah had always taught them: G-d
is not fixed; G-d is everywhere. After the
Exodus, Israel went into the desert to meet
its lord. Later, the favor was returned by
G-d, who went with them into exile, into
the travail of history. Jews learned that the
Shekhinah (Indwelling Presence) was with them
in times of exile and wandering.”

    --Rabbi Irving Greenberg, The Jewish Way

I miss the Sukkah already. The fragrant fall odors of Etrog and s’chach; the moonlit nights in the Sukkah, and the warm Shabbat afternoons. All the delights for the senses, the celebration of the harvest. But this year, with all of our life so impermanent, with our family scattered hither and yon, the reminder of the fragility of life, the shaky nature of shelter in the autumn wind is being delivered another way. Like so many of our friends and neighbors, undone by the Great Southwest Flood of 2013, we don’t need the Sukkah to remind us of these things. Our life is fragile enough. As Rabbi Greenberg reminds us:

“Until the world is redeemed from slavery,
Jews are on an Exodus journey; perforce
they are in, but not really of,the society
and culture they inhabit. Jews can con-
tribute without really accepting the
system. The tremendous effort to parti-
cipate led to Jewish integration into the 
host culture. Then the Sukkah reminded
them to push on. There were miles to go,
on the Exodus way . . .”

-- The Jewish Way

Mother Nature has completed the traditional Water-Pouring, Tevillah, that used to take place on the first night of Sukkot during the days of the Second Temple. She even through in some ice to go with the fiery lighting. And now life itself, and the way it works, is bringing us to a new understanding of impermanence.

Life is a fragile thing, and we shake like a Sukkah in the autumn winds. Yet like the Sukkah, we generally manage to remain standing. Through fire. And water. And ice.
There is a toughness to us as well. It gets us through hard times and makes us too stiff-necked to bow down to what our hands have made.

That is the point of the Exodus journey. Freedom isn’t free. It takes time and an understanding that idolatry is not compatible with our liberty. The adventure has been worth the cost, as we are reminded again each Sukkot what is important and what is not.

Our spirits have a fragile dwelling place, a body that bends and sometimes breaks. But we also have Shekhinah, reminding us that beyond all the fragility, something of us is strong and mighty.

Chag Sameach. Happy harvest!

 

Technorati Tags: Flood,Rain,Sukkot,Times and Seasons

And After the Fire . . .

וְאַחַ֤ר הָרַ֙עַשׁ֙ אֵ֔שׁ לֹ֥א בָאֵ֖שׁ יְהוָ֑ה וְאַחַ֣ר הָאֵ֔שׁ קֹ֖ול דְּמָמָ֥ה דַקָּֽה׃
And after the earthquake, a fire--the Eternal
was not in the fire. And after the fire--kol
ramamah dakah--a soft murmuring voice.
-- I Kings 19:12

The past month has been a very fast ride. During the first week of June, the Wallow fire in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest took off, leaping quickly to the northeast, sending its smoke and ash up to our ranch on winds so strong that the fire was spotting up to three miles ahead of the line. That week was surreal here, as we went about with windows closed, peering through windows at a world gone smoky and eerily, translucently orange and red. Even up in Albuquerque and Tijeras, the smoke was seen and smelled, the funeral pyre of thousands upon thousands of trees covering six states.

We lost a lot of time down here on what has now been formally named Freedom Ridge Ranch, the chickens are late arriving, the garden only got half-in, and will have to be stocked with plants started at nurseries in Show Low and Albuquerque. We spent a day moving the horses down to the Middle Rio Grande Valley and another moving them back. But we did get the house in Tijeras on the market (listing here in case you know somebody . . .) and we are pretty close to being done moving in down here at the ranch. Work here is now proceeding apace, and though catching up to what we envisioned for this summer is highly unlikely, we find ourselves grateful for what could have happened but didn't as we greet a timely monsoon season with fresh appreciation.

Over the past week we have had the opportunity to drive roads that were closed a week or two ago, through the Apache-Sitgreaves and in the Rim Country, on Monday, down to Luna and today over to Pinetop-Lakeside. Each time, as we drove across the state line, we saw the shadow on Escudillo Mountain, the burned areas coming down near to Eager itself. We saw the blackened places along US 180 and SR 260, where backfires had been set. But we also saw the damp ground where the monsoon rains had brought out the green of new growth. And near the Fort Apache ski area, we saw the ferns under the jack pines, impossibly green where a month ago there was only brown. Deer crossed the highway, taking their own sweet time, and wild horses were grazing again near the lakes and rivers between the Greer turnoff and McNary.


The fire was terribly hard on some of our friends and neighbors, some losing their homes and everything but what they could take out, but many lost only their refrigerators full of food when the electricity went out while they were evacuated. We discovered this when we went into Lowe's at Show Low today to find a fitting for the ice maker/water line we were installing for our refrigerator. Lowe's was out of refrigerator water line fittings. They were low on refrigerators. They had been selling them off the floor to people who needed them. People from Nutrioso, from Alpine, from Greer and Sunrise. The insurance companies were paying Lowe's to lock and haul off the old refrigerators with spoiled food within, and install new ones. And Lowe's was throwing in the new fittings because although the old ones may have been good, when they install they are liable for any new leaks. The kindness of neighbors and the kindness of strangers, and even of large corporations, is a balm to the spirits of those who are now rebuilding homes and lives. We saw each other through, with a little help from friends and strangers.

The fire was terribly hard on some, and very difficult for most here, but the primary response is gratitude. Where ever we have seen burned ridges and valleys, we have also seen the signs. In Nutrioso, in Alpine, in South Fork, in Luna, in Greer: THANK YOU! God Bless Our Firefighters! Thank You, Our Heroes! GREER, ARIZONA: Still Here, Still Green. In case Obama is wondering, this is the fiercely independent, decidedly can-do spirit of Flyover Country, the real America. We do cling to our God and our guns. Proudly. Gratefully. We lift our small voices to the sky.


And now the monsoon rains have come, on schedule, and they are falling every afternoon over the White Mountains, from the Rim to Escudillo, just as they do most years across the southwest beginning on the 4th of July. Waters are moving over the burned scars, and in the unburned forest still here, still green. The waters trickle, drop upon drop, they beat a steady rhythm on the metal roof at Freedom Ridge Ranch. The winds blow cool air and soft clouds where once it was all fire and smoke and ashes. And we have seen rainbows, double and triple, arching across the mesas and canyons. Promises that life returns with the water.


And after the fire . . . kol rammamah dakah. A soft murmuring voice.

Picture Credits: Top--National Forest Service InciWeb. Middle--Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest Web Page. Bottom: Rain over Escudillo, taken August 2010, Ragamuffin Studies.

Arizona's Wallow Fire: The Ragamuffin Ranch Experience

On Sunday, May 29, with all of us present at Ragamuffin Ranch, we ate a nice breakfast, and then moved washers, dryers and refrigerators into the house, and out of the house to the cabin and the barn, in order to get each where we wanted it, since we had inherited the former owners appliances and moved down our own. After that was done, the Engineering Geek left to return the rented utility trailer to U-haul in Albuquerque, and the Cowboy-In-Training and I went to Springerville, Arizona--about 30 miles away--to do some necessary shopping.

It was a clear, cool and very windy day, with a few puffy clouds over the White Mountains. As we walked across the Safeway Parking lot, dodging wind-blown shopping carts bent on catching the cows in the pasture next door, I watched a hard-bitten character in a black cowboy hat flip a smoking cigarette onto the pavement. He started to walk away, but he must have felt my glare, for he came back and ground out the ember, and tipped his hat. "He could have started a fire!" the CIT hissed when he had passed by, and I replied: "And with this wind, he could have burned down the whole town."

We did our shopping, ate our lunch, and began the drive back across the state line into New Mexico. As the CIT drove, I was watching as a white cloud built to the southwest, over the heart of the Rim Country, and then it seemed that the wind began blowing dust from the clouds toward us. By the time I opened the gate at Ragamuffin Ranch, standing aside to let the CIT drive through, I saw a definite haze clinging to the bottom of our washes and along the ridgelines. "Smoke," I said, having closed the gate and jumped into shotgun position for the drive to Ragamuffin Ranch headquarters.

When we had got the groceries inside, the CIT went to feed the horses, and I turned on my computer. Arizona Fires website had no information yet, but New Mexico Fires had a tweet along the right banner of the page. Following the tweet, I was taken to InciWeb for the Southwest Region, and found out that a small fire had been discovered in the Bear Wallow wilderness of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest 18 miles southwest of Alpine, Arizona, which was already a reassuring 50 miles away from us. "No problem," I told the CIT before we sat down to dinner. "It's small, yet, and far away. They'll get it under control before we have to worry about it."

On Wednesday, when I left for Ragamuffin House in Tijeras, the fire was not under control, and we had seen smoke Tuesday evening, but it was still reasonably small and far away. But while I was driving, the Red Flag winds blew that fire up, and overnight that night it grew from 6,000 acres to 40,000 acres. And on Thursday evening, the smoke from the fire blanketed Albuquerque, and was so thick that people wondered if the Bosque was burning again. It was, the radio guy reassured us on the news, the Wallow fire.

I drove back to Ragamuffin Ranch on Sunday, as we watched the fire grow and grow. While I was driving back, they evacuated Alpine and Nutrioso, and dry lighting started fires in Catron County. Fire spotters were stationed along US 60, and one was on the hillside from which I took this picture, looking west through clouds of smoke and thunder toward the fire burning in Arizona. The very small shower I drove through on the Continental Divide fell with ash, making a strange gray mud on the windshield.


The fire grew by the hour and by the day. The the smoke cloud sat above the ridges on the Ragamuffin Ranch road, and it stretched from this western horizon all the way to east, a thick border of smoke dividing the sky, and headed toward the Rio Grande valley. On Monday I discovered all the best websites to get up to date news, as the fire grew into the hundreds of thousands of acres, and towns near Escudilla Mountain on the New Mexico border were evacuated.



The animals got weary of the smoke very quickly, and even the horses, who spend snowy days out under the sky, were reluctant to come out of their stalls. Here, Rafie stands peering out with a look that says it all.

By Monday evening, there were two Type 1 Incident Command Teams in charge of nearly 1000 firefighters, and no containment. We had spent the day in a fog of smoke here at the ranch that got thicker and thicker, so that working outdoors was impossible and the gloom made us turn on the lights at 3 in the afternoon. At the community meeting that night, the residents of Eager and Springerville were told to prepare for possible evacuation, and the residents of Greer were evacuated.




Tuesday, and there was optimism that the firefighters would hold the perimeter between Nelson Reservoir and Greer, and no further evacuations would be necessary. The CIT and I went to Quemado to get a few things at the little Country Store, and buy a cab for the '93 Dodge Ram that he is restoring to its former glory. While I sat over a cup of coffee at the Largo Cafe, talking to a trucker from Tennessee who was stranded for need of a new engine computer, we watched the smoke roll in once again. Then, as I was mopping up the last of my blueberry pie and ice cream, a couple came in and sat down to order. The woman was crying. I gave her a kleenex and she said, "Well, after all, I've never been kicked out town before." They were from Eager, and the southern part of that little Mountain town where I shop at the Merc and at Basha's was being evacuated. We stopped for the outhouse at the log yard on the way in, and ash covered the seat and the paper. The setting sun through the smoke gave the ranch an eerie, Mars-like ambiance.

Still, Tuesday night the meeting--which was streamed--was brave in the face of difficulty. We were told that they were working on holding the line at Eager, but that since Wednesday was predicted to be another Red Flag windy day, other residents of Springerville-Eager ought to be prepared.


Wednesday morning, as the sun rose through the ever-present smoke, we learned that the lines from Eager to Greer had held, but at the morning press briefing, the IC Commander said that another Red Flag windy day meant that it would be a hard day. It was, as the smoke thickened and the Mars landscape returned, we hoped for the best and began preparing for the worst. We had a phone meeting with the EG and with our partner, and the EG began driving down with the horse trailer so that we could move the horses. Thus we spent our 9th anniversary preparing to evacuate if it comes to that.By evening, the fire was now less than 25 miles away.

So Wednesday evening, when the CIT and I finished watching a movie, and just as the EG pulled up with the trailer, we turned on the computer and learned that all of Springerville and Eager were being evacuated. The Community Meeting was cancelled, and we began to plan, as we ate our dairy and fish meal for Shavuot, to evacuate the horses.

They left this morning, after we learned that the fire went through Greer and structures were lost, and that the New Mexico National Guard is at Luna, near the Arizona border and that the Quemado Volunteer Fire Department are in Coyote Canyon, waiting to engage the fire as it nears the state line.


And so I wait, while the EG and CIT drive the horses to the Rio Grande Valley, and I wonder. So far the lines at Eager and Escudilla Mountain, at Luna and at Coyote Creek are holding. Will they hold today? Tonight? Will Luna, under a pre-evacuation notice by the Catron County Sheriff since Monday, will Luna be spared? Will the fire enter New Mexico at Coyote Creek and Bonita? Will it trigger an evacuation for us in a few days? And the big question: Where will it end?

The smoke seems thinner now. Is that a harbinger of good news?

Nearly Wordless Wednesday: From the Very Edge of the Storm

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY REVIVED!

It has been so long since I posted a "Nearly Wordless Wednesday" post on a regular basis that I would have to research my archives to figure out when I was last in the habit. I have been neglecting the fun side and the daily life part of my blog in the past while, but now with a new year and so many changes, it is as good a time as any to revive these homely and fun practices. No better time, really, than when one is at the western edge of an historic blizzard!

Winter Storm Warnings appeared on Sunday here, and were not in effect for Apache County, AZ just 12 miles to the west. The storm formed here, where all the weather maps showed the front forming and the Jet stream was just east of us. The first precipitation started Monday afternoon, in the form of sleet that turned to snow.







It snowed in bands interspersed with sunshine all day Tuesday. Here at the edge, we were getting blowback from the rotation of the storm cell. On Tuesday evening, the dogs and I enjoyed a spirited ball game, the Canine Super Bowl, in weather that was reminiscent of Soldier Field.

It snowed all night Tuesday to Wednesday morning, and the Cross Quarter dawned gray and cloudy, but soon turned to sunshine as the cold front finally rotated back to us. A snow day for the CIT meant that we fed the cattle in the light. Domestic cattle do not scrape off the snow to get at the grass. They must be fed when the snow is on!

The snow in this picture is deeper than it looks--about six inches fell on Ragamuffin ranch.



This snowy hillside is the view from my new office window in the house at Ragamuffin Ranch. It was taken this afternoon, when the storm had passed and the cold had come on.

Although it is quite cold outside, the sun coming through the picture window feels warm on my face.





A combination of fog created by the sublimation of the snow by the intense sunlight and windblown surface snow obscure the side vents of the Red Hill caldera to the northeast, making a kind of foggy ground blizzard in the plains north of our valley. Beautiful. And deadly cold.

I don't know if old Punxatawney Phil saw his shadow or not, but I do hope that we get an early spring this year! Last year it was quite late, and I am still shell shocked from the two-storms per week regimine that we endured last year. I like snow. And we need it. But the bitter cold, I can do without.

Good Weather for a Road Trip

Since January 1, 2011, the Engineering Geek and I have spent exactly three nights under the same roof. All of those nights were within the first two weeks of January. On New Year's Day, the CIT and I drove down through frigid sunshine on icy roads because he was due to start school on the 3rd. At that time, Cowboy J. and his wife Nurse A. were still living in the ranch house, and the CIT and I took up housekeeping in the Cabin. However, they have since moved to new digs, and we have one horse, three pregnant cows, two heifers, and one bull to care for, as well as the dogs. So as one of us stays at Ragamuffin House to prepare our move, the other is down here, looking after the CIT and Ragamuffin Ranch.

One of the few consolations for our hurried lunches at halfway points between the two places is that the weather had been good for roadtrips over the past month. Last Monday was one of the best days. The roads were completely dry, the sun was out and the temperature was in the 40's in the highlands and in the 50's in the Rio Grande Valley. And I was driving US 60 to Socorro and then up I-25 to Belen, where I was planning to meet the EG for lunch, so that we did not have to pass exactly like ships in the night. I took some good pictures of the geological features that day, for the sun was out and despite a stiff wind in the valley, the air was relatively clear. Here, then, are some pictures of the grandeur of New Mexico.

Peaks of the Sawtooth Mountains near Pie Town, NM, rise above the surface in these southern reaches of the Colorado Plateau. The Sawtooths are part of the Mogollon-Datil Volcanic Field, and are the sedimentary deposition of pyroclastics weathered from the volcanic action between 24 and 40 million years ago. The sedimentary layers also include breccias composed of large pieces of the country rock at the time, limestones and sandstones that were incorporated by the streams that deposited the weathered volcanics.

Looking southwest across the plains of San Augustin towards the San Mateo Mountains west of Magdalena. During the last ice age, a glacial lake resided within the downfaulted block between two upfaulted mountain ranges. The lake within this graben finally disappeared about 8,000 years ago. I was standing on an old beach bar of the lake that once was. The San Mateos are volcanic in nature, and the rock is composed of ash flow tuff and rhyolite flows that erupted during the Oligocene, about 28 million years ago. I find it easy to imagine the waters of a lake on the flat plain below the mountains.



The western front of the northern Magdalena Mountains, here seen from just west of Magdalena, NM. The mountains core consists of Precambrian igneous and sedimentary rocks that were upfaulted relative to the Precambrian sediments I was standing above while taking the picture. These mountains were later intruded and extruded by basalts and volcanics of the same age as the Rocky Mountains to the north, during the Laramide Revolution about 65 million years ago. These events account for the minerals , including silver and iron ore mined at Magdalena and Kelly during the early years of the 20th century. Highway 60 here joins a fault that defines the edge of the mountain range.


Looking slightly north of east across the Rio Grande Rift west of Magdalena. Behind me is the Magdalena fault that is resposible for the high valley upon which I stand. Across the rift are the upfaulted Los Pinos Mountains that define the eastern edge of the rift. The rift defines an area where the continent is being stretched apart, and the fault blocks on either side bound a graben. These faults are still active and the mountains are still rising relative to the valley floor. The Rio Grande Rift began pulling apart nearly 30 million years ago, and the maximum distance between Pennsylvanian Limestone at the top of the fault-block mountains and that same formation below the valley sediments is as much as 30,000 feet. The rifting is responsible for the activity of the Mogollon-Datil Volcanic Field to the west.



Here I am standing on the stabilized dunes of the Rio Salado north of Lemitar, within the Rio Grande Rift itself. The mountains in the background are rift fault block above the dunes to the southwest. They are composed of tertiary sedimentary rocks rising from the quaternary Santa Fe Formation. In the foreground, is a moving dune field just across the Rio Salado.





Here, I am standing on a terrace of the Santa Fe Group west of the Rio Grande at Belen looking across the rift to the Manzano Mountains that here define the Eastern boundary of the Rift. The steep side of the fault block, these mountains rise steeply, and form a rainshadow over the valley. The "green side" is the other side, that falls to the hinge of the fault block at a much gentler angle, and catches the rainfall.

The EG and I met and ate at a little railway car diner there on the edge of the terrace, that is open 24 hours a day. I recommend the Green Chile Burger.My trip took me on up the Rio Grande Rift to Albuquerque and then through the pass made by the Tijeras Fault to Ragamuffin House.

I thought I would be making another road trip from the Ragamuffin Ranch to Ragamuffin House this week, but the January thaw seems to have ended with the month, and today snow showers have become a steady snowfall here in the Western Mountains. It looks like I am here for the week, as the Continental Divide is expected to be difficult traveling. So I will look back with pleasure at the good weather and the road trip while I contemplate taking the 4WD ranch truck to the bus stop this afternoon to pick up the CIT.

We do need the snow. But the bitter cold that will follow, I could do without.

Update: Why Blogging Has Been Sporadic

In getting ready to finally write a blog post that has been planned for over a week, I am thinking that my readers deserve a little insight into the reasons for sporadic blogging.

It is not that I don't want to blog, and it is not that I have nothing to say. Many great ideas have come and gone with no blog post because I had other things I did not want to do as much, but that nevertheless needed to be done.



This is the way the world works when your Engineering Geek retires and you begin to do more than plan a move to a new part of the state. When doing takes the place of planning, that alone takes a monumental investment of time and energy. But when insurance companies first extend coverage and then rescind it, because--quite frankly--they don't know what they are doing; when it takes a10 minute hold time--and thus 10 wasted minutes of cell phone time--to establish long distance service on the ranch landline--; when time gets eaten by all of those little annoyances that used to be non-existent back in the days of real customer service--something has to give. And what has given (and given!) is the time alloted to writing the blog.



Yesterday, computer technical problems required an otherwise unnecessary trip to Gallup, the closest New Mexico Radio Shack to the ranch. Today, I was scheduled to write my blog.

And then--a major snowstorm watch was issued for most of the state. So a trip into the grocery store in Springerville became a must, to stock up on fresh fruits and vegetables that would have run out in the next few days, and to get a few other items to make a snowstorm more bearable. Such as makings for hot chocolate . . .

And upon my return, the CIT and I dedicated a few hours to cutting wood. With the help of logging chains and good old Henry, the F-150, we pulled out four logs from the discard pile--too messed up to use in a house--and then the CIT took out the chainsaw and cut them into fireplace size pieces. We now have enough wood for the snow and cold temperatures that are on their way to us.



Now I am ready. I do hope we get a good snow so that I can finally write the planned blog!



In a few weeks I will be able to begin blogging more regularly again. Until then, know that I am thinking of all my blogging friends, and I am spending some time reading other blogs. It is easier to read than write after a long day of packing and hauling boxes of books. In the meantime, my planned blog for last week will go up tomorrow.



Let it snow!

T'was the Weekend Before Beltaine . . .

. . . Beltaine, the May cross-quarter day and the traditional beginning of summer in the old calendar. And here's what we awoke to . . .







Wet, windy snowfall on Friday morning . . .











Sunday morning, May 2, for crying out loud!
And the Cross-quarter is on Wednesday, May 5.

Maybe this year we will change the name of Sedillo Hill to "Never Summer Hill.











Snow on the rocks and the Agave.
I've seen it flurry here in May, and even June.
But stick?

It must be the Icelandic Volcano.

And maybe this is why although traditional summer begins in early May, meteorlogical summer does not begin until June 1.

That darn volcano--it put more stuff into the atmosphere in a few days than all the hippy-dippy yuppies and their Priuses and string grocery bags took out over the past 5.

Sigh. Anybody got any ideas for Volcano cap and tax?

The Spring Break That Wasn't Spring

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

I missed Nearly Wordless Wednesday last week because I am getting tired of posting snow pictures. And I thought that surely this week, with it being the Rasta Jew's Spring Break, surely it would act like spring. Especially since the Astronomical First Day of Spring occured on the second Saturday of said Spring Break.

Sigh. Not this year. So this NWW features snow pictures once again.

Monday of the Spring Break that wasn't spring.

Umbrae loves the snow.

At least someone was happy!

And once again, Sandia Peak in snow.




















The Engineering Geek walks three dogs--in the snow.










First day of Spring. Anticipating a Road Trip, I had stayed the night in town, so that a friend and I could get out and go south to the sunshine. It was a good thing I did. Here is Henry the Big Red Truck parked at the hotel where I stayed . I-40 through the canyon was closed. I would have never gotten out!













After traversing snow-packed freeways--New Mexico has never learned to plow them when it starts snowing--we finally found sunshine between Socorro and Truth or Consequences.

But here, looking east from Emory Pass, more . . . need I say it? . . .snow.

Spring Doesn't Quite Begin in March . . .

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

. . . Or at least, March does not begin with spring. The Purim Full moon happened Sunday night to Monday morning, and with it came another round of snow. This time, light and fluffy.

The full moonset from the bedroom patio, while it was still fair dark . . .

















Later, I am barely in time to take a picture of the Adar Moon as it begins to slip behind the snow covered Pinyon and Juniper on Los Pecos Loop during the early morning dog walk.

Although it had snowed, the clouds hiding most of South Mountain in the pre-dawn twilight look like the rain-filled clouds of spring and summer. The snow covering the road is soft and slippery. It is barely below freezing and destined to be gone soon.










A February fog fills the Mountain Valley, even though March has just (barely) begun. The evidence of the changing season is subtly there for us, as we walk the meadow in the early morn.

Clouds lit by the sun that is still below the horizon have the look of spring rains rather than the late winter snow they had brought us.

It has been a long, snowy winter. The snow that came to cover the ground on December 7th melted back, but did not depart and we have had many a storm since then.

We have now had at least partial snow-cover for three months.

But on the new calendar, spring does begin in March. And today it is 50 degrees and the sky is blue, even though there is still a good 4-5 inches on the ground under the trees and in the north lee of the hills. The solar angle is perceptibly higher. Winter's grip must loosen at last, and the warmth will come again.

Another Road Trip: Socorro and Catron County

NEARLY WORDLESS SPECIAL

Before the big snowstorm hit last night, Flat Ryan and I went with the Professional Revolutionary and another friend, to Socorro and Catron Counties in west-central New Mexico to hike around some different properties the friend was looking at. It was a great opportunity for a roadtrip before the snow began.

The Ladron fault block, topped with snow, can be seen behind the the stabilized dune field at the confluence of the Rio Puerco and the Rio Grande.






A wilderness area in the Barrel Hills in northern Socorro County, outside of Magadalena, NM.
There was much evidence of volcanism in the rocks, including a brecciated welded tuff in the small arroyo in the center of the picture. We hiked the arroyo, a warm microclime on a windy day.


A spring, a small source of water, at the base of the bank of the arroyo. The water accounts for the presence of willow growing in abundance in an otherwise desert plant ecosystem. The welded tuff forms the bank, and brecciated volcanics form the darker rock at the top.









We stopped at the rest stop on US 60 so that Flat Ryan could get his picture taken in front of the Very Large Array. He's blurred because of the strong wind and the distant camera focus. Behind him is the old San Augustin glacial lakebed, with the VLA buildings and two radio antenna's in the mid foreground. The lakebed appears to run all the way to the San Mateo Mountains.

Clouds build over the ridges of the San Mateo Mts. above Highway 12 at Datil, NM. They are harbingers of the oncoming snowstorm that hit the state today.

After getting stuck in the mud at a property southwest of Datil, we drove back across to Socorro and dinner, then home.

A good day. Wonderful company and interesting geology.

I think I want to live in Catron County.

Hit and Run Snowstorm

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY BONUS

We knew a storm was coming.

It was supposed to be mostly rain,

with snow tonight at the higher elevations.

We were expecting 3 to 5 inches.

It started snowing this morning at 8 AM.

And we got a foot.

More to come tonight.

One foot today means approximately

two feet on the back patio.

With wind blowing snow off the roof,

we now have three foot drifts

in the lee of the house.

This storm packed quite a punch.
Hours of blizzard conditions closed
the 40 between Albuquerque and
Moriarty.

The Engineering Geek left work before
the highway closed--and he got through
until the bottom of our hill. The car is there
and he is here--thanks to a neighbor.
The Boychick is with a friend who lives
close to school. Maybe he will come home tonight!

Umbrae loves the snow.

He ran, played, and dug deep

to get at sticks and grass.

Coming inside was not on his agenda.

But staying outside was not on mine!

The snowplow came around just at 5 PM.
Now there are 2-3 foot piles of snow,
all along our road.

Lily didn't mind climbing it,
but Shayna stayed on the
plowed area.

Now this is quite enough. We will probably have snow cover until mid-March this year!

The Fourth Storm: Snow Upon Snow

NEARLY WORDLESS SPECIAL

Yes, I skipped Nearly Wordless Wednesday, because I was waiting for today, and the Fourth Pacific Storm to post what I knew would some new snow pictures. So without further ado . . .

After the third storm, we had some clear weather, but cold. Gold and Blue joined the gray and white colors outside Ragamuffin House . . .

Snow lingered on the trees,

and like deep frosting on the

stump--the roads were cleared

courtesy of graders and tractors,

----not by melting!

Yesterday afternoon, meteorologists on all media

said that the fourth storm had intensified--

that it would be slower, with more precipitation,

and colder than earlier predictions indicated.

This morning--here it is.

Schools in the East Mountains closed.

The Engineering Geek stayed home from work.

They say it will get worse this afternoon and evening.

Falling steadily this morning,

snow upon snow,

making for a slow, slippery,

unpredictable morning walk.

So far about four inches on top
of the remaining five inches or so
on the ground from last Friday's
snowfall.

Looking forward to Candlemas,
Groundhog's Cross Quarter.
I hope Mr. Punxutawney Phil sees
his shadow and is scared back into
his den!


Will spring ever arrive? And whatever happened to Global Warming?

Lazy Blogging and the Third Storm

I admit that I have been a lazy blogger the past few weeks.

I have an excuse. I have had a cold that turned to pleurisy--an inflammation of the layers around the lungs. Pleurisy is often a complication that comes with RA.

Dry Pleurisy is not in and of itself dangerous, but it causes breathing to become painful, and coughing even more so--which causes me to be breathless and grumpy. And not terribly interested in blogable events.

Rest is the Rx that is most difficult for me, far more difficult than getting an antibiotic from the pharmacy. I am a wife and a mom. I own my own corporation. I am mother of the R3volution and the legislature is in session! I don't have time to be sick.

But enforced rest is exactly what the doctor ordered. Especially because I also slipped on black ice while I was walking the dogs this week.

It must have looked comical--A bold, careless step on what looked like pavement in the pre-dawn. Then the arms waving wildly, the trying to regain balance. Then my feet sliding forward and the small of the back, the upper back and shoulders, and the back of the head hitting ice. Somehow, the right middle finger and the left wrist got involved.

It happened very fast--down before I could do anything. Then two adult dog faces looking down at me with puzzled expressions. And a biggish black lab puppy on my chest, licking my chin frantically. "Get up, get up!" they seemed to say. "Lying in the snow is okay, but not on your back!"

I did get up, leashes tangled in my hands. I walked home. Slowly and carefully.

That was Wednesday.

Of course it was the next morning that I really regretted that one careless step.

But I had to go out to the store. the Third Pacific storm--the one with the most snow--was on its way. But it was up late Thursday night, too, to finish and edit a statement with the New Mexico delegation of CC2009 via Skype.

So now, enforced rest. Stay in, they tell me.

And the foot of snow that has fallen in the past 36 hours makes that easy to do.

I'm not risking more black ice!

Yesterday I spent my morning in bed, sending out a statement to each of the CC2009 state delegations, one at a time, while snow fell outside the window. I sent the Engineering Geek to walk the dogs. I did get up to bake some Challah in the afternoon--there was no way I was going to fight the truck down the hill and into town. And it was very good, thanks to my high altitude recipe and the stand mixer the Engineering Geek got me for my birthday. The Challah was still warm for our Shabbat dinner last night.

Today, more rest. Almost all day. I did cheat a little and went with the Engineering Geek to walk the dogs in the incredibly deep winter wonderland. Snow was still falling.

Today the snow came in bands. Ocassionally the clouds would teasingly part and the sun would shine momentarily. Then the room would darken as the snow outside began to fall again.

Tomorrow on the agenda-- storm over. And still more rest. My home confinement sentence will be complete sometime at the beginning of next week. In the meantime, praise the lord and pass the anti-inflammatories.