The sturdy carapaces of these extremely rare creatures (saltamontes del oro) are actually coated in gold dust from digging burrows in gold-bearing ore deposits to lay their eggs. It is said that if you encounter one during mating season and follow from a safe distance, the insect may lead you to a claim. The hardy saltamonteros (grasshopper hunters) of territorial New Mexico scratched out a meager living boiling the insects for their gold, until the population plummeted.
Biodegradable adobes, yellow cottonwoods, & more
There they go, the leaves, brilliant yellow and then they’re gone. Another cold front with 60 mph gusts like we had this afternoon and that’ll be the end. Seems like we hardly just got started, and now we’re at the end again. I don’t know about this mountain shit. It’s just so impossibly, terribly, beautiful and thrilling, even as it sucks your brains out and you give yourself another day.
Something big is going to happen, though. The coming winter makes no sense to me this year. I’m not ready to hunker down, I’m ready to explode. The feelings, the emotions are too much for my person. They want a bigger space.
There was this little incident of cargo shifting in the hold, but in a good way. Instead of taking licks for all the things I haven’t done, I somehow knew I’d won the prize. This takes off so much pressure. There’s nothing left to lose! Not sleepwalking any more, either. That hurts, the time thing, if I think about it, but the amazing thing is that I still did great. No matter what, I killed ’em dead. The only thing I haven’t done is make a million dollars, but the night is young. I’m glad something is.
And now you really must play the video. It’s Leo Kottke singing Tom T. Hall’s “Pamela Brown” and owning it. I could write many pages about what feels so validating here. One is released to become whole, in a way, by lessening of struggle and relaxation into joy. There’s clearly pain beneath the bounce, and that big booming twelve-string! I’ve played it a couple dozen times since I found the video two days ago. (Kottke’s coming to the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, and that made me want to look it up.) Hearing it again triggered a wild cascading boojum. I remembered how the song helped me meet a friend I haven’t seen in twenty years. I don’t even know if he’s alive. His name is David Ashworth, and this is how it went.
Something like almost forty years ago good-god-just-shoot-me-now, I was at a party in Maryland and put a Kottke LP on the turntable to play this one song—I must have heard it on the radio before, implausible as that may be, considering where I was. At any rate, someone’s brother and a class-A jerk decided it was “shitkicker crap” and yanked the tone arm off. I was plenty mad and told him so, got in his face the way I’ve rarely done with other guys. He pulled a whiney “Oh, I’m so scaaaared!” and backed away. I dropped the needle down on “Pamela Brown” and cranked the volume up.
While I was standing there enjoying my music, this very tall, bald-headed, instantly discernible über-Texan wearing an Army field jacket strode across the room and handed me a beer. A dark green Yuengling, I believe, which we called “ying-ling” at the time and maybe everybody does, cheap and plentiful from nearby Pennsyvania. He’d seen the whole thing and wanted to congratulate me. I was glad of that, because he was also kind of scary.
In what seemed like less than thirty seconds, I’d learned he was a Green Beret who’d fought in Vietnam, a potter, and owner of a hot-rod Bronco four-wheel-drive. That I was from Texas too helped make for instant bonding. There was something of a fatal Buddhist in him. He had a voice as low as rocks. I knew this was someone who could kill me with his bare hands in a second if he had to. Later I discovered he was also monster smart, enjoyed his laughs, and had a streak as black as death inside. We got on famously, of course, although next to him, I was strictly third-string when it came to women, alcohol, or danger. I had the impression he’d come from darkest redneck poor-boy hell, been struck by God and given brains, and had to pay the price.
The key thing here, boys, is authenticity, and who or what confers it. I don’t know, but I am off the hook a little bit somehow, and we are out of time.
Sagebrush, piñon, juniper, gorge, at least eight or nine extinct volcanoes
T is a new one on me. I was walking along today right here on a perfect afternoon in the terrible high desert. There wasn’t any wind. It was very quiet. Just then I heard the weirdest whoppety-whoppety sound, loud and up close. It was a medium-sized cottontail rabbit! The animal was running at breakneck speed back and forth between the clumps of sagebrush to get away from me. Its feet made an audible impact on the dirt, whoppety-whoppety-whop. I’d never seen one move that fast. Usually they just freeze, which must be when the coyotes get them. I’d certainly never heard one whopping around in the sage.
When the wind does blow, it hisses in the piñons. (A second after my shutter went “click,” a mountain bluebird flew out of the close one in the photo.) Sometimes it sounds like people talking when you can’t quite make out what they say. If a raven flies by low enough, you hear the whoop-whoop whistle of each wing flap.
Ten steps outside the front door (whew)
As such things go, this one didn’t seem too bad, except for the “s” word. We’ve been cruising along at ten to twenty degrees above normal for several weeks, anyway, so something had to give. The most important part of the forecast was, of course, that “significant snowfall is possible across the peaks above twelve thousand feet in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains,” which is where we are. Almost a mile lower than that. “All you people up there better watch out!” I shouted at the ceiling. (When would I ever get another chance?)
What that means for the rest of the world is that after the clouds clear on Saturday, I’ll get to take pictures and show you the first snow of the season. Just not here, exactly, which is fine with us. In any case, I’m prepared. You’ll note the genuine New Mexico wood pile in the photo. That’s 500-year-old piñon, I’ll have you know. A considerable portion of those chunks will light with just a match, which ought to give one pause. Heating with this stuff is kind of like running a damaged nuclear reactor. You get to say, “Hey, at least it isn’t cold!” about a dozen times before the chimney melts, and then you run away. This counts for high science in these parts, as opposed to low science, which is more along the lines of:
“No, I don’t known where the cut-off valve is on the hot water heater. Why do you ask?”
Yes, I’ve been busy lately. Here’s a little something to make it up to you. I’m probably the last person on the planet to hear about this thing, but the short video above is astonishing and brilliant and I approve. For more info on the show, click here.
Archive recreation for The Great Martian War documentary by impossible factual for History Canada. Directed by Christian Johnson, (Plazma). and Steve Maher (impossible factual). Music: “88” by Working for a Nuclear Free City.
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