Whoa, look out! It’s spring in the terrible high desert. In the impressive drought we’re enduring, the water might not flow beyond a month instead of until November (?) like it usually does. When the ditch first starts running, you feel this crazy electricity in the air. We hang our clothes to dry just a [...]
water
Stood there half an hour, hardly comprehending
Gaze on this, ye dry ones, and despair! There’s plenty of water on the planet, just not in the Rio Grande or falling from the skies upon the land I love. What you see here is the Atlantic Ocean just off Reid State Park near Georgetown, Maine. I had to get away from crushing family [...]
Love the “duck’s head”
Behold these fine New Mexico stones. Pieces of some of the oldest rock on earth, down there at the bottom of the canyon, worn smooth by water flowing over them for eons. So what, huh. Go break a granite boulder or a slab of basalt from a rift, stack it in your driveway, and try [...]
Rio Grande at Pilar, NM with geese and ducks, looking downstream
One of my favorite early Lou Reed songs, written in 1964. I’ve always identified with this verse, for some reason. More and more, it seems, not less. I wish that I was born a thousand years ago I wish that I’d sail the darkened seas On a great big clipper ship Going from this land [...]
Water is the most reassuring thing in the world in these parts
After nearly two straight weeks of below-zero lows—minus 17 °F the other night—I thought I needed to post a photo of actual liquid water. This is the Rio Grande at Pilar, NM on Dec. 23, 2012. (Downstream is to the left.) You hardly ever see bridges like this any more, either. The roadbed is built [...]
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