April Wind

Housecleaning

A new tribe of ants

carves tunnels in the sand --

time to clear the dust. 

When Nothing is There

These lines from a poem in Mary Oliver's recent collection reminded me why I love this place so much:

I go out
to the pale dunes, to look over
the empty spaces
of the wilderness. 

For something is there,
something is there when nothing is there but itself,
that is not there when anything else is. 

*   *   * 

from "Extending the Airport Runway"
in A Thousand Mornings
Mary Oliver, Penguin Press 2012 

From the perspective of a culture that revolves around cycles of building and manufacturing alternating with cycles of consuming and discarding, it does seem that there's nothing out here. It's not even a very good place for recreation. One of our "neighbors" set up a tent on their property the summer before last, apparently hoping to enjoy a little fishing and camping. They left the tent in place when they went home, and it quickly blew down, exposing the belongings they'd left to the sun, the wind and the scavengers who haunt Blanca Flats. When they returned a month or two later, they set up a pre-fab shed. The shed lasted for awhile before it finally gave in to the wind and fell apart.

Jake and Shelby have always loved to sniff around the remains of that place. There were apparently a couple of canine guests on the property at one time, and our dogs are either attracted to the scents they left behind or to the burned traces of a barbecue. When I walk with them down that road, I always have trouble dragging them away. A few days ago, just to see what the dogs found so enthralling, I went to explore the site.

There's nothing there now but a big hole in the ground, where the people have set up an impromptu landfill. A faded black sofa inhabits the landfill, along with the discarded toilet that seems to be an obligatory part of the landscape around here (there's one of those on our property, too, left by the previous owner). So this parcel of property has devolved from a campsite to a storage space to a dump.

Why do some people think that in landscapes like this, where nothing is there to appeal to the building/consuming mind, the only acceptable alternative is to use the land for waste disposal? It's more than just a practical decision, I think; it's an act of contempt, a gesture of resentment against a land that didn't welcome them on their own terms.

Making a Path

Snow masks the sheep trail

where fat finches browse for seed;

we make our own path. 

Buried Thorns

Hidden ring of thorns,

the snow-covered prickly pear

lies in wait for us. 

Lost Villages

The basalt hills rise

like abandoned villages

from clouds of snow fog. 

Distance plays tricks on the eye here. I can never photograph the San Luis Hills the way I see them -- so close that every shadow and hollow is visible from my window. In the aftermath of snow, they stand like empty buildings in banks of white fog, like the mirage of a failed human settlement. 

I'm always a little dismayed by the way my mind projects the images and sounds of civilization onto this barren landscape. The wind sounds like the voice of a radio announcer; the hills look like broken huts; the full moon is a streetlamp behind my shoulder. If I moved back to Denver, would I hear the North wind in the drone of traffic and see basalt hills in the skyline?

Looking back at the photos I've taken of the view facing South, I'm reminded that there's a stark monotony in this landscape. You have to look carefully to see the variations that unfold through the hours and the seasons. As hard as I try, I don't capture the way life proliferates here, even in the winter. The fat cottontail rabbits bouncing across the dirt roads . . . the noisy finches squabbling over seeds . . . the enormous black raven who's taken up residence near the house.

Instead, my imagination dishes up empty villages. And the cries of ghosts. 

Skeletons

Tangled skeletons

of tumbleweed and sagebrush --

winter survivors.