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“Ohhh my heart is a monster of love
swallow you up like a dove, in the eye of a hurricane
ohhh making my heart sing, over and over again”
                (silly old song I wrote years ago – JHF)

My wife drove off to her studio a while ago. These colors remind me of what she was wearing, though they’re not the same at all. (There were even golden slippers on her feet.) That’s cholla, by the way. The reason cowboys wear chaps. Sometimes they call it “jumping cactus” because that’s how it seems to find you.

One time down in San Miguel de Allende, way back in history before time began, Lady the Wonder Dog got into some. She was a white German shepherd mix. I had her off the leash, and I think she saw a rabbit. The animal must have run under one of these, because when I got her back, she had chunks of it stuck all over her face and in her mouth. I’ll bet that rabbit laughed itself to death. Lady wasn’t laughing, though. I had to pull off all the pieces. There were thorns on her lips and tongue. To her everlasting credit, she held perfectly still while I pulled them out. How did I do that, I wonder? Tweezers? Pliers? Would I have had those with me on a trip to Mexico? I simply can’t remember.

Yesterday we drove to Orilla Verde for a picnic by the Rio Grande, but every spot was taken. What did I expect, the first Friday evening of official summer? Everywhere we went, people were erecting tents or fishing or just sitting in camp chairs with their feet in the water. (It was 92 degrees.) We pulled off the road near the Taos Junction Bridge and broke out the booze and chips regardless. “This is what’s happening,” she said. “We’ll have a drink and then go home and have a picnic at our own table in the back yard.”

I love it when that happens and I’m not supposed to think. She could do that lots more often than she realizes—I wonder if I should tell her or just shut up? I took this picture on the way back when both of us were hungry. “This will just take a second,” I said, reaching around in back for my camera.

“JOHN! Are we in a hurry?!?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “And thank you…”

All you kiddies think about is sex. That’s important, absolutely! So is lots of other stuff you won’t notice for a long, long time and maybe never.

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When I was a kid, places like this held amazing powers of attraction for me. They still do. The camera doesn’t do it justice, though. This arroyo is almost 20 feet deep, and I had to be careful about not falling in when I took the shot. Consider that the sagebrush is about two to three feet high, and you’ll get a better sense of scale. The bottom isn’t really visible in this photo. If I were walking through, you wouldn’t see my head.

I could have been a geologist. Just look at the layers exposed by erosion: where did all those rocks come from? A violent volcanic blast? Debris from roaring ancient rivers? Some of the stones are “river rocks,” rounded as if from tumbling in the current. Many are quite huge. Seeing the bank exposed like this always gets me excited. What else is down there? Fossils, artifacts? Animal burrows?—yes to that. I have one spotted with what looks like a couple of bones in front. So at some point I’ll be walking down there and we’ll see. It scares me a little to think of that, as there isn’t an escape route.

This spot is close to where I fell down twice mysteriously. A little farther up the hill from here, I left an offering of Navajo smoking mix (tobacco, herbs, etc.) and asked to be clued in. Nothing happened, but I am told the protocol involves more subtlety. As in not asking, for example. Not even trying to listen.

There are so many places full of mystery and power in this part of the world. I know a place in Colorado, high atop a cliff, where I can drop a rock into a hole and never hear it hit the bottom.* What do you suppose is down there? What kinds of skeletons, shaman relics, jewels from other worlds? We just can’t know.

But sure as hell there’s something.

* It’s been years, I’d want to check again. In any case, it sure is scary!

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With just a little smoke! That’s coming in from the west (left) and barely visible in this shot, but later it would completely obscure the view. I don’t even know which forest was burning. Take your pick in the Southwest this summer.

The truth is that fire is natural to these places. Lightning sets it off like crazy when the woods are dry. Eventually the forest grows back, sometimes with different species of trees and animals. It may take many years, but the Earth is very patient. Every microbe, insect, lizard, bird, ungulate, carnivore and plant has a role to play in the living web of life, amen. That all makes perfect sense. So why are forest fires such a big deal? Because we are in the woods.

You never hear a deer complain. They just run the hell away or die. We’re the rocks in the stream. The ones with no respect. Why do you suppose that is? What the hell are we doing here? Who or what are we? Take your time, this stuff takes millennia.

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Jesus, I fell down again on a hiking trail! Not too far from where I took that photo, actually. This is getting old, or is it? There was definitely some strangeness involved this time. Read on and see what you think.

Yesterday evening I was out at Taos Valley Overlook as usual, on the way back from my turn-around cairn at the two-mile mark. Another four-mile walk, in other words. Moving uphill this time, I put my right foot down on the edge of a rock that must have been displaced by passing horses—just sitting there beside the hole where it had been—and my toe caught in the dirt. My body teetered to the right, off-balance and beyond the tipping point. In an instant, I was sprawling forward and going down. This time I landed off the trail on the uphill side (not nearly as hard as the previous fall), with my right shoulder taking most of the blow. Once again I was lucky as hell not to land on top of a cactus or against a rock—and there are a lot of rocks! The ground was soft, in fact, like falling on a pile of laundry bags, but I scratched the back of my thigh pretty badly on a sagebrush branch going down. At least I had bandages with me, and I never hike without them now.

But here’s where this gets weird: the place I fell was less than 20 feet from where I’d fallen last time! So when I stood up (slowly), you can imagine I was rather wary and confused. Does something have it in for me in this particular spot? It’s like an entity was toying with me there or trying to get my attention. If so, it’s working!

The next time I pass that spot on the trail, probably tomorrow, I’m going to stop and look around. There’s a hilltop and a modest arroyo in the vicinity to explore. My intuition tells me to go investigate the ridge, and that’s where I’ll go first. All kinds of things could be hiding in the arroyo, though. But what? And why??

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