You can figure out how much there is. Maybe half a foot in places, but who cares except the pros? I don’t mean that in a bad way, it’s just something I’ve noticed in myself. Since moving to northern New Mexico fourteen years ago, I’ve seen so much of the stuff that the nominal depth [...]
el Norte
She came here once and loved this house
It was several years before she died. In the Christmas package from Austin was (among other things) a little red wind-up AM-FM radio with a solar panel for recharging. I’d always wanted one, and there it was. She must have known or guessed right since she knew me. A radio for someone in the boonies [...]
“Another day at the office,” he said. Dang.
Almost eight thousand feet here, somewhere in el Norte, far from anything you’d call a road. Less than thirty miles from where we started, but it took almost an hour and a half. Four and a half million years ago, this was an active volcano. The ground is covered with elk poop, and no wonder: [...]
Keeping watch for bigger things
A couple of years before we moved to New Mexico, we were driving through el Norte on a trip. An outing north of Taos brought us to the Wild Rivers Recreation Area (now part of the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument). I was astounded by the remoteness of the place as well as the [...]
Behold the flying bird seed vacuum cleaners!
This scrub jay (left) looks like he’s contemplating plumage theft. The slightly larger Stellar’s jay pays no attention. At least that’s what I imagine is going on here! We have some very blue birds in this part of New Mexico—perhaps to blend in with the sky?—but for some, it isn’t blue enough. There are two [...]
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