Abundance in a dry land

Flowers bloom in a crevasse, La Ramada, Baja California Sur

February in Mexico

19 February 2011

San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico

It happens here that the seasons get confused in your head.

I imagine it is summer, but it is not.

At home the snow piles in banks as high as my shoulders.

But here, the red mountains glitter in a green sea,

and the pelicans drop cleanly into the water. 

25 February 2011
San Juanico, Baja California Sur, Mexico

Still, it is cold here.

Nights drop below 10 degrees C and we huddle in the cockpit beneath blankets, marveling at the stars.  It will snow today on the California coast, and tomorrow on Tucson; on Sunday, here in the Baja, we will reap a harvest of wind and more cool air.  Then, next week perhaps, warm.  Strange to walk in the desert unparched, feet, head and arms cool.  

 

The air smells of sage and bitter oranges, the buzzards circle overhead, cacti twist and spread, but the earth is cracked and broken, the ocotillo clatter into the sky, leafless, the whole plant forcing just a single scarlet bloom.  This, or death.

Cholla lose their bark, shells sink in the dirt, the grasses are bleached yellow and grey.  

Even the water is cloudy, the birds scarce; for the moment a hard season here.

But the mountains remain, their peaks and cutaway faces shifting colour in the light: grey, yellow, rose, ochre, green, sanguine, blue, violet, black.

 

Images

Bougainvillea blooms, pigeons on a wire--San Carlos, Sonora

Moon sets above reddening mountain, early morning, Bahia San Carlos, Sonora

Quoddy's Run in Bahia San Juanico, Baja California Sur

Scrub growing on the lowlands, La Ramada, BCS

Desert track into the mountains near Bahia San Juanico

Ocotillo branch scrapes the sky near Bahia San Juanico

Buzzard in flight

Dried grasses, La Ramada

Scarred Cactus 

Cactus covered peak near oasis, Bahia San Juanico

Rocks bordering northern anchorage at sunset, Bahia San Juanico

When Peace Tastes Like Hunger: A Raptor Fable

We're eating lunch when suddenly, in front of the house we notice a commotion. An eagle is hovering at the edge of the sea ice, diving, skimming the water, banking sharply, hovering again, its enormous wings beating the air.  It scoops the water with its beak, climbs sharply, drops suddenly, intent on its prey and oblivious to us, closer to the house than any eagle we've ever seen.

We see something thrashing in the water, what looks like a fish jumping, though the water just off of the point is so shallow no large fish could swim there.  Then we realize the prey is a seabird, a dovkie or black guillemot in its winter plumage--we've seen at least one of these around.  It snatches a breath of air, and dives under the water again; the eagle dares not follow it, but drops and swoops above the small bird, like a fighter jet. Dogging.  Terrorizing.

It looks as if this battle can end in just one way--the little bird thrashes a bit more each time it comes up for air. Then two crows converge on the eagle--like us, they've been drawn by his strange movements, his repeated rise and fall over the water. The eagle turns for a second or two, distracted by the crows as they fly past him, and the little bird whips itself into the air and flees, flanked by the crows.  They fly over our yard and the eagle will not follow, but banks and rises, circling to the east and out to the islands.

Hunting is hard in the season of ice.  Peace tastes like hunger.

Sobering to think this is also true for us, two-legged raptors plundering the earth. It's an uncomfortable thought as I watch events unfold in Egypt: demonstrators on one side, and an illegitimate regime backed by nearly two billion dollars a year of American military aid on the other.  Is that what the powerful believe too: peace tastes like hunger?  I watch for a miracle, for the arrival of canny crows.  They create their own problems, but we'll worry about that later.

The Beauty of the Ice

The beauty of the ice has everything to do with where water gathers,

and how it cracks.

Gammon's Pond and West Quoddy Bay, Nova Scotia

A Brief Picture of Delight

How fitting that the history of the word delight runs back to the Latin word delicio, meaning, "allure," enticement, sweet attraction.  "Delicious," too, emerges from this antique root, where pleasure lies side by side with charm, luxury and attraction.

We are utterly seduced by the arrival of snow--and any sort of delight--and wish both were less fleeting. Still, were they not, would we luxuriate in them so?

Here, as in many things, I take the dog as my model. She knows more than I do.

Look Forward, Look Back

(A Short Pronouncement that Turns to Dialogue. And Citation.)

Look forward, look back: isn't that what we we do on this day?  But why just this day, or yesterday, or during the intervening week between Christmas and New Year's, when news is on short rations and so simply recycles? Always so many questions we might ask, but don't:

Who knocks as the clock clangs, as the snow piles up, flake by flake?
Will I be the one who must answer?

Our beauty so fleeting it runs out like ice on a hot day.

How far do I have to run to avoid coming back?

--As if you could, you know.

"Death is all things we see awake; all we see asleep is sleep."

--I know that, that's Heraclitus.  Just so you don't have the last word, here is another of his aphorisms:
"If all things turned to smoke, the nostrils would sort them out."

Or this: "The fairest order in the world is a heap of random sweepings."

--I knew you'd do that, get the last word.

But it wasn't me; it was Heraclitus. 

And now it's you.

No, it's you.  

Notes:
Heraclitis, Fragments LXXXIX, CXII and CXXV from Charles H. Kahn.  The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979. 

Photo: Old Montreal through the side mirror

Who Doesn't Love the Night?

What...person...doesn't love...the light...the waking day?
              Novalis, Hymns to the Night

1 December 2010  5:19 am

It's the first of December and so I am up before dawn making lists. The moon has just risen, late; it hangs in the southeast above the sea, a narrow crescent surrounded by stars.  A planet--but which one?--glitters brightly above the horizon like a spaceship or satellite.  The water is silver, a reflecting pool of light, the sky dark, the islands darker still, black mounds hunched against the water.  Wind whistles and pushes at the north wall of the house, making the wooden beams creak.


The wood stove crackles. Zero degrees outside, just freezing.  Damp.  I huddle in my housecoat and slippers--have to make this quick, these lists, then toss more wood on the fire so I can slip back into bed, beneath the eiderdown and the purring cat.


It's been weeks since I've written anything but emails--and notes and suggestions in the margins of student papers.  I realize I'm enjoying the sensation of the pen traversing the page, the satisfaction when the words gather and shift, then click into place, sentence by sentence. 

I wonder why I can't do this more often.  Chores, it seems, get in the way--laundry, cooking, correcting.  

But this too: pleasure in walking or drowsing in the light or before the fire, those moments of animal comfort we steal from the run of things to do, in order to keep ourselves flaring and flaming despite the coming season of ice and winter nights.

   Must the morning always return?
                 Novalis, Hymns to the Night

8 December 2010

5:30 am and it's pitch black but for a streak in the sky to the southeast, a break in the clouds.
Rain pours from the gutter and drums over the roof.
The dog sleeps on the couch, wakes, sighs.
The fires have all gone out, so I light them again, make a cup of tea, begin my enumeration.
Chores for the coming day.

Someday, perhaps, I'll simply rise at this hour and begin the day.  But now, given the hours we keep, it is simply the middle of the night, the time when I wake long enough to sort out a dozen miniature dilemmas, small dramas, manic schemes--anything to keep them from sieving sleep some other night.

No one knocks on the door at this hour--no one from the outside that is--which is why I can finally hear my inner rattle, the scrabble against the walls, the turn just before the moments before the coming of the light.