6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

Kind of dreary looking but peaceful in person 

Cloud patterns are my new interest 

There are robins in this photo but I can't see them now 

Weighs close to 100 lbs and I can barely lift it, but,  

I love the contours on this rock. 

The red-winged blackbirds and some robins are building nests so we can't take out the reeds now. 

I like the yellow glow 

Thanks Ron. Great game, minimal damage 

Missed it by --- that much. 

Monday Morning

It has been raining for the past several days and I haven't walked since Thursday so this morning was muddy and tiring, but also interesting. Plants are sprouting all over the pasture and these are almost exotic groups. We rarely (actually never that I can remember but maybe I wasn't watching) have enough winter moisture for these types to start up, but they are everywhere between the clumps of short and mid-range grasses. I don't recognize most of them and the shades of green are unusual for here.

I also changed the small water-way last week. I had to extend the area away from the shop to stop the flooding in there. Bill's hobby planes are starting to mold.

Freezing, no wind,  

And a pleasant 

Sunrise

The pond looks soggy today 

Tuesday Evening

It was raining and dark when I left here this morning and that had transitioned into heavy snow and low visibility by the time I got to work, 45 miles South. My computer was in front of a window, so I noticed that it snowed throughout the morning and by early afternoon I decided to finish up and leave early just because. I hate driving in the snow, but only because I don't do it very well. A few years ago I moved to Northern New Mexico and was thinking that I might want to live there permanently. I found a job and a house in the hills, and it was great until winter. Even a tremendous spring couldn't erase the nightmare that it was. Driving to work was like being on the verge of death for 45 minutes (or five hours, however long it took me that day), with a line of honking, gesturing people behind me. At any other time I wouldn't have tolerated their rudeness but I barely noticed them because I had so many other concerns. It wasn't so much exactly where my lane was, as at exactly what point did the little road abruptly drop into the canyon below. And I didn't have many other options. I hadn't figured out how to use the brakes to stop on an ice covered incline yet, and there were no guardrails, so I was going straight into the water at the bottom of the cliff. In fact, after the first embankment I plunged over, I immediately knew to be very careful and very slow. That winter in the mountains changed me completely. I actively avoid snow and ice covered roads, anywhere, anytime.

Sunday Morning

Kilo and I got up early to walk in the drizzle and fog and now she is invigorated and ready to play. I am still cold, wet and shivering, and not.

I'm no longer as grateful for the abundant moisture as I probably should be. I've quit emptying or even checking my rain gauge, because lately I get the feeling that rain is creating a monster in my back yard. I've spent many years building a very uncomplicated and very leisurely, "do whatever I want and only whenever I want to do it" life for myself, and when we started this project I could actually visualize "beautiful Spring mornings enjoying great coffee in a neat area by a waterfall".
HA -
It's nothing but weedeaters, lawn mowers, clippers, rakes, shovels and wheel barrows from the first of March until the end of November. And I do the work from behind foul tasting quick cups of coffee from the convenience store because I can't take the time to make it myself.

I get it now. The noose of responsibility is tightening. Until Kilo came to live with me full time I had never accepted responsibility for another living thing, not even a house plant. That was a difficult decision at first because she was a guard dog and is pretty much attuned to one person, but since I've known and loved her for years, and I'm not around very many people anyway, I let her move in. At the time I worked in a restricted office in a secured building so I just took her to work from the first day. I still take her anywhere I go and the end result is a great friend and companion for only minimal inconvenience. The pond is another story. I walked into a trap while day-dreaming about the next new thing that I might enjoy, and although we did build the nice place to sit by a waterfall, by activating this ecosystem we also took on the responsibility for a whole variety of living things (fish, frogs, birds, and a few ornamental plants). They now depend on us on an almost daily basis, and just as with Kilo, I could never take that lightly. It would be sinful to neglect them in any way.
I'm doomed.

Soggy Morning 

View to the East 

View to the North 

View to the West 

My Rock Collection

About 28 miles West of here is one of the most remarkable places on earth, and one of the main reasons that I've chosen to live here. For me it has always been a doorway to another dimension, but in reality it is an escarpment that runs for hundreds of miles north and south, is the western edge of the Llano Estacado, and is referred to along most of its length I would guess, as the Caprock. It doesn't have very dense vegetation or much water, but the cliff face has hundreds of small caves that my friends and I have explored and camped in since we were children. At the bottom of the escarpment and on to the West are numerous sand dunes (the white ones are hallucinogenic in themselves on a full-moon night), and, just to keep everyone alert, what occurs there is known as an ecotonal situation, which is where two biomes intersect and is an area of intense predation. There are more of more kinds of plants and animals, including lots of venomous snakes. Just the intense primitive beauty of these elements are magnetic, but probably what has drawn me there the most is that it has been a highway for many thousands of years. You can find everything from a hubcap off of one of this year's cars to pieces of pottery so ancient, and so far from where they were made that the implications are mind-numbing. From the amounts and varieties of pre-historic occupation sites and artifacts, the place was more than just a highway, it was a freeway. Shards from every pottery type ever described and named, practically litter the place. Since childhood I've known people who hunted the region for arrowheads throughout their lives, and many had impressive collections. So did I, then several years ago I was showing a method of introducing high school students to Anthropology and used my personal arrowhead collection in the demonstration. At the end of the presentation one of the audience asked to speak to me privately and I instantly recognized him as the graduate assistant from my Physics classes in college. He is an Indian from one of the Northern Pueblos and I remembered him as an excellent instructor and a nice, but reserved, person. When we were alone he very seriously asked if I would consider parting with one of the arrowheads that I had shown. My first reaction was confusion and it must have been obvious because he said that he needed one for a medicine bag that he wanted to give to his son. I remember thinking "but you're an Indian, isn't your house full of arrowheads", and I guess that showed too because he said that when the Museum collectors had invaded the pueblos and created their collections, they started a flood of collecting, and there weren't many arrowheads left for people who used them in the traditional ways. He then said that his people felt they should be used almost like medicine (and explained how), but instead we were holding them captive and putting them on display. He said that he just needed one, preferably one that emanated kill point characteristics and that he might feel that if he could examine them. For some reason, at that point I was believing everything he was saying, and feeling terrible about having captured something that he understood, needed, and should have easy access to but couldn't even find. I gave the entire collection to him. Although I do feel that some stone tools (a perfect Clovis or Folsom point) are unsurpassed works of art and that it's remarkable to experience them - I didn't like how the "capture and hold captive" thing that I was doing made me feel. My friends who later wondered where the collection went, mainly felt that I was taken, but I never have. I've never believed in anything except that anything is possible, and on the strength of his convictions I felt that it is possible that some grains of corn and an ancient tool in a small leather pouch could protect certain people through the centuries. I actually only halted what I suddenly perceived to be my unwitting interference in a process unrelated to me. The whole point for the story is that I recently experienced similar feelings, but because I made the opposite decision. I loved the rocks seen in the photo and I remember the day I started collecting them 35 years ago. I can bring up an instant memory of the discovery of nearly any of them and I've always kept them near. I moved most of them with me to different houses in different places (hard work), I kept them clean and positioned to show their best features, and I would have fed them if they had needed it, but the most important thing was, no matter where we were I let them be free. Then I chose expedited personal concerns (the fill pipe to the pond was ugly and I don't have enough years left to have waited for Bill to locate the materials to build the waterfall) and now they are cemented into a mound for water to splash over and moss to grow on. I almost feel bad for them.

I might have too many varieties of rocks in the waterfall 

A couple of days in the upper 70's started this