Here’s about 90 seconds of video from Taos Valley Overlook for you. I was out there today, walked 3.5 miles with my ancient little Kodak Zi6 video thingie, and found all kinds of things to look at. When I put this together in iMovie, I had to turn the volume way down because of the wind noise in all the clips—it’s just as well you can’t make out my spontaneous narration in a couple places—but the movie still gives you a good idea of what it’s like to be alone out there. The first scene is actually from September 28, 2012, but the rest I shot today. It was 60 °F and felt warmer. About time!
In the process of dusting off the Zi6 and turning it on, I discovered some clips from Arizona and elsewhere that I’ve never published before. You can expect some of those to show up next.
I washed this just before the shot. That’s water drooling off a fang.
In ’95 I was making cast bronze cat skull sculptures like the one above (“Catbeast”). It’s about a foot long and five inches high, welded together from six or seven smaller pieces, all of them cast from wax positives hand-formed to look like bones. The skull was different, though. I’d made a flexible rubber mold from a real cat skull to make wax cat skulls that I could cast in bronze. At this actual moment there are at least half a dozen solid bronze cat skulls in this house, in fact. When you make them out of bronze, they tend to stick around.
How could I? You can hardly force your way outside, because it’s spring. That means a steady 25 mph wind at noon with gusts to 45. It’s also 34 °F and “feels like 23.” And 10 °F tonight! No kidding. I just looked outside at the woodpile and saw that my tarp was setting sail for Texas, so I went outside to weight it down and got a big mouthful of sand.
As for harbingers of spring, we have robins here year-round, so they won’t do, but it turns out that the turkey vulture will. I’ve been advised to look for them as they migrate north from Mexico, where they feast on headless tourists. Sometimes they get tangled in the fanny packs and die. Not many people know this, but it’s another reason not to wear one.
Shot on a Christmas visit with my parents in Houston in ’71
In the fall of ’71, it was just me and the woods. One hundred and seventy acres of them, spread across the western slope of a long forested mountain riven with streams and waterfalls. “Yellowhammer Farm,” we called it, back when there was a we.
Several of us had gone in together to buy 170 acres at $50/acre. The locals thought we’d been had—the going rate for land in Madison County, Arkansas was more like $30/acre—but we didn’t care. That was in early spring. By October, everyone but me had gone, and in truth only two of us had stayed for very long at all. I’d had help building the roof of what later became my cabin. All the rest, I built myself, using free slab-wood from a sawmill, roofing paper, a few 2x4s, windows and a door I bought at auctions, and plenty of clear plastic. One end of it was an old stone fireplace with the chimney knocked off, the ruins of a burned-out cabin from God knows when. The rocks, including one huge mantel stone, were laid in place without any mortar. I built up the hearth with stones and concrete, so I’d have a place to sit in front of the fire with a bucket of hot water and bathe myself. The chimney, or lack of one, was a problem I never did fix, and so I mostly froze to death.
There is so much good associated with that time. How I lived, how healthy I was, and what my days were like. In many ways, it was the best time of my life. The core of who I am. I even had a tiny “desk,” really just a piece of plywood, nailed onto the wall beside the fireplace. I used to sit there with candles or a kerosene lantern typing long into the night, writing letters to the outside world.
But toward the end of my time there, as I was preparing for a December trip to Austin that would turn into three and a half years, a strange thing happened: I became aware that if I wanted to, I could simply stay there for the rest of my life… In this case it meant merging my consciousness with the rocks and trees, never going back to civilization, living out my days as an American sadhu in the Ozark hills. It was powerful strong magic and nearly pulled me in. (I sure as hell would have turned out differently, but probably all right.) As it was, I brought everybody bird nests from the woods for Christmas presents. Yup. Each one was from a different species, still fastened to a branch like I had found it. I was into it, I tell you.
Sagebrush, junipers, and piñon rolling into the abyss
Another three-and-a-half mile fast hike brought me past this spot. Nifty, eh?
I almost get a sense of the curvature of the Earth from here. That’s the Rio Grande gorge in the background, over 800 feet to the bottom. It’s also where the tectonic plates are pulling apart, as I am fond of pointing out, with the chunk on the far side of the rift heading north.* I don’t know where we’re going on this side, probably nowhere or a little backwards, if tradition holds. When the other piece gets to Colorado, or where Colorado was, maybe it can send for us.
The wind blew so hard on the way back, it knocked me around and made me stumble on the trail. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me. Maybe I was just so far inside my head, my feet got lost. I’d settled into fresh contemplation of a new thing in my mind. It felt so good, I didn’t want to leave.
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