JHFARR.COM

See that big dust devil crossing the valley in front of Lobo Peak? I saw a couple three times bigger than that the other day, more like giant tan tornadoes. (D.H. Lawrence lived for a time in a tiny cabin on a ranch partway up that same mountain, by the way. If you know where to look, you can almost see it.) The wind always blows, but with the drought there’s got to be more dust this year. The Rio Grande is completely dry in southern New Mexico, too. No one is forecasting an end to this anytime soon. In fact, the long-term models point to utter freaking hell for apple trees, alfalfa, and the water in your tub:

Indeed, assuming business as usual [no reduction in carbon emissions], each of the next 80 years in the American West is expected to see less rainfall than the average of the five years of the drought that hit the region from 2000 to 2004.

The aforementioned drought was also “the most severe event of its kind in the western United States in the past 800 years.” I’d be lying if I said that didn’t bother me. The thing is, though, there were still periods of “normal” rainfall between 2000 and 2004, so you could fool yourself a little. And even if the models are correct, there are bound to be enough wet years in there to give the realtors cover, dammit. I mean, if it were common knowledge we were doomed, lots more of us could buy a house if we were nuts.

Anyway, I’m always wrong about the end of things. When we left Maryland, I thought the Bay would be a stinking cesspool in 10 years. The last time I looked, it was still there with a fancy price tag on it. Birds still flew and fish still jumped. You can strategize your life away and miss the best thing that you ever could have done.

When we bought our first house in Maryland, the agent—a dear old friend of ours—told us to make sure it felt like a place where we could spend the rest of our lives. Just like she did, I’m sure, living her entire life within short drive of her father’s farm. I don’t remember my response, but probably I lied. After all, I’m a broken Air Force brat who went to high school in three states, not the best material for bury-me-in-the-same-cemetery-with-all-the-other-dudes-named-so-and-so. My wife is brilliant and she picked me anyway. Go figure. Actually, I have. This means we can live most anywhere, and right now oh are we ever here.

Load the rifles. Tell the stories. Treat her like a queen.

»Buy This Photo!«

There’s just no stopping those cloud shadows. The other day at Taos Valley Overlook, I watched them march across the valley and plunge 800 feet into the Rio Grande Gorge. You’d think they were goners, but no. After a minute or two, they’d scramble up the other side and keep on moving. Hell, if I were a shadow, I’d still be down there, writing about how stupid it is I haven’t climbed out yet.

»Buy This Photo!«

So ferocious-looking, yet so harmless. I love “horny toads” (horned toads to you). Easy to catch out in the open because they freeze when you approach. Primary food? Big red ants. I found this fellow at Taos Valley Overlook on BLM land. He tolerated me way longer than I ever would have.

When I was a boy, I had a mania for catching lizards and snakes. It was like the greatest thing in the world to catch an actual lizard. I even found a few in Germany at Boy Scout camp. There never was any way to feed them, not that I knew of at the time, and I always let them go. Keeping them wasn’t nearly as important and finding and catching them, anyway. Holding them in my hand, looking at their little white bellies and tiny claws, bewildered at how such beauty and precision could ever come to be.

Later on snakes were more important. For some reason, I had to catch them, too, especially great big blacksnakes back in Maryland. Those were tricky because they’d try to bite or poop all over your arm—there’s nothing quite like snake shit—but once I had one all calmed down and quiet, I felt like I’d achieved this crazy union with my nameless prehistoric ancestors. As if holding a five-foot blacksnake in my hands made me a man. As if the snake allowing me to hold it was the truest thing. The highest order. That which made me whole.

I’d never try to pin down and catch a horned toad or lizard now. (Don’t want to scare or hurt them.) But I do speak softly and of course they know I’m there.

»Buy This Photo!«

America made me take this picture. The America that was. It wanted to say something, possibly “Help!” or “Look, I’m still here!” This scene really grabbed me. I can’t say why, but I’m usually stirred by darkness under the surface. Odebolt (“OH-dee-bolt”) appears to be doing all right, though. Industrial agriculture and will power keep these towns alive.

There was a noisy gang of retired farmers having coffee in the mini-mart while they watched the trucks go rumbling by: feed trucks, cattle trucks, grain haulers, gravel trucks, one after the other. So much heavy equipment. Some of the old guys were heavy-weights too, with biceps the size of my thighs, heavy and tough from lifting bales or juggling hogs. If there’d been any trouble, no one would have had to call a cop.

All those truck drivers and coffee drinkers need places to sleep, of course. So do the people behind the counter, the teachers, the insurance salesmen, and the kid who installs your DSL modem. Since that has always been the case, march a couple blocks from the above and behold the lovely boulevard:

It just amazes me that people live their lives in quiet certainty like this. (Forever curbs, eternal grass…) The noisiest thing you’ll ever hear, at least if you avoid the mini-mart, is two lawn mowers going at once, or maybe a tornado siren. As if I would really know! But it sure was peaceful when we pulled in after spending the night in Ida Grove.

A little too peaceful, maybe. Like chloroform from old brown dusty bottles in the dead doc’s attic, or buried by your daddy in the backyard under green, green grass.

»Buy This Photo!«