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Here’s where I was this evening. This quick little movie will give you a taste, at least. I actually blended the grand entry itself with something I thought the announcer said was the “national anthem”—the long clip focused on the one singer—though you won’t hear any Francis Scott Key in there. (Is there a Tiwa anthem?) The drum group heard throughout and barely seen here is “1680” from Taos Pueblo. Be sure to watch all the way to the end and keep your eye on the guy with the blue bandana!

This video is 720p (HD) and you should play it that way. I shot it with my Pentax DSLR. Except for no auto-focus in movie mode and my waving the camera all over Creation, the results aren’t half bad. I do like being able to shoot video through the telephoto lens, too.

So I’m walking up this arroyo, maybe 12 feet deep, killing time while I wait in vain for those itty-bitty cactus flowers to open, glancing down at my feet for anything cool that might have washed down from the hills—once upon a time—looking up and down the sides where the water cut through, scanning for pot shards, arrowheads, rusty pistols, magic rocks, bones, and there this thing was, poking out of the dirt. You can see how much of it was buried in the wall of the arroyo by the stain. The left cheekbone or whatever it is fell off as soon as I touched it and I didn’t retrieve it. A biodegradable relic for sure.

Now, it may not be “prehistoric.” Hell, it may not even be a rat. But it had to be five feet below the surface, and that’s pretty damn historical. I checked out rat skulls in a Google image search and have to say this fits. It’s about 40 mm long and has the same back teeth. I dug a little more into the side of the arroyo, but I couldn’t find any more bones.

Shine on, Brother Rat!

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Go ahead, just give me the prize. This guy (?) is maybe three inches long, not a grownup at all. But wow. Do you have any idea what a hoot it is to see these things when I’m walking through the sagebrush? Another lucky telephoto macro shot. That means I’m using the telephoto lens to take close-ups of something at my feet. Probably not even doing it right, so what. Look at that sucker!

I may be running out of animals, though. Pretty soon I’ll have to go hiking in town and get some funny tourist shots. Then again, I haven’t posted the skink photo or the one with the shed snakeskin. Or the prehistoric rat skull!

“What kind of a writer are you, all you do is go walk in the desert and take photos of the same shit every day!”

It’s a phase, okay? Plus I’m walking 60 miles a month. I’ve lost weight. I have, like, muscles. My wife says my legs are “shapely.” And I think about stuff. For all you know, I’m working on a book and this is how I psyche myself up. Let’s try that one. And when I get a better vehicle, I’ll go hiking farther than six miles away and show you a goddamn bear.

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Thunder and lightning cut short my four-mile hike yesterday. But on the way to where a loud crack of doom sounded directly overhead—and where I was became the turnaround—I stopped to admire some astounding tiny cactus flowers. You don’t see them here, because when I went back this morning to find them again, the blossoms were either closed or finished. Note my Zuni inlay ring for size!

I shot this at 11:15 this morning. You would think that was late (warm) enough for them to open, but maybe not. This is truly maddening, because the many-pointed magenta stars were just amazing. Flowers like these appear only under very specific conditions of temperature and humidity. I may never see them again. Today I also looked and looked, but nowhere could I find any other examples of this same miniscule cactus.

All the way out there, I was brooding again the way I do. The stimulus this time was the lady tourist I met on the trail fixing a flat tire on her mountain bike. Just like with the 70-something German woman I talked to the other day in the parking lot, it struck me that these people are only here in the summer, that they have homes to go to when they’re done. We have our little rented adobe (with a new toilet, yay!), but it just isn’t enough. It’s so easy to slip into “victim” mode in Taos, with its wretched rentals and pricey vacation home market. (Brood, brood…) Years ago my wife said that Taos was “a place to visit, not to live.” Of course, we were already here. Heh.

One needs to be on guard against negative expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies, however. As it is, I’ve slain so many dragons, I’ve lost count. We’re tough and healthy and have at least a few roots in the community. We’re looking for a house. Something might come up. The work is the main thing—if only things had always been this way! I feel good, though. Wary, but good.

Tomorrow I’ll take one more crack at capturing those flowers. Such a hard life, taking off any time I want to go walking in the wilderness. Breathing all that pure air. No one telling me what to do.

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