Dreamscaping

Everyone have a good Christmas? Good. Us too. It was terrific, but I took the tree down today and spent the entire day finding homes for millions of little things we didn't know we wanted and probably didn't need. I feel like I've been putting things away for weeks on end. First, I was putting them away to clear the decks for the present orgy. And then I kept putting them away so we could move through the tree-dominated living room. And now I'm putting away a brazilian new things that are as yet uncategorized. Blaa. I'm tired of stooping down and picking up foam darts.
Shall we go back to New Mexico for a bit? Yes, let's! (As if you have a choice.)

Every once in awhile, I get into some country where I think I could live. I get this restless nomadic prospecting gene from my Australopithecus ancestors, no doubt, directly via my father.

My mom could hunker down and stay anywhere as long as it had good schools and grocery stores and she didn't have to move from there. My dad fretted and dreamed his life away, talking constantly about that place in the country he was going to buy. He promised me I could have a horse and chickens when we got it. I think I was the only kid of the five who believed it might eventually happen.

I'm not sure when it hit me that Dad was never going to get that place in the country. Maybe about 1981, when it became clear to me that now and forever, I had a choice about where I ended up. And from then on, it was deep in the country. Sure, it was housesitting and tenant caretaking for a decade, but it was in the woods and fields, where I knew I belonged, where I always felt my dad belonged. Dear Old Dad lived long enough to see us married, and to see us buy this farm in 1992. My brother-in-law said that watching D.O.D (as he always signed his typewritten letters) walk through our orchard, leaning on the cane he'd made, was the happiest he'd ever seen him. "He was plotzing," David said.

Our friend Paul Tebbell recommended we check out a valley near Embudo, NM, for a neat hike. So resourceful and imaginative friend Douglas got out some platte maps and Caroline got out her GPS unit and we caravaned into the most spectacular place this side of Magdalena. It was pretty tame on the approach, lots of orchards, peopled by those magical Lewis' woodpeckers. They were stealing huge chunks of frost-bitten apple and flying off with them. Yeahhh! Here's one sitting in a low apple, the siren drawing us to dash ourselves on the rocks. I'm still haunted by the possibilities of Lewis' woodpeckers amongst luscious apples.Bill and I desperately wanted to stop and capture some images, but we didn't want to get left behind, either, so we reluctantly pushed on. Good-bye, pink and green woodpeckers. We'll revisit you in a future post. This woodpecker is flying left to right. You can just make out his greasy green wings, pink breast and shining bill.
Had we known what wonders awaited, we wouldn't have felt so torn about leaving the orchards.. It wasn't long before we were traversing a valley that tore my heart wide open. It looked like a set Clint Eastwood might have chosen for Pale Rider.
We were looking for a certain branch road to a hiking trail, and we never found it. Well, we found it, and Caroline thought we should turn on it, but we pressed on instead. I just wanted to stop right HERE and stay for oh, say a decade or so. I could paint these mountains, hills, buttes, mesas...I could just look at them.

My fantasy bubble was pricked by the pin of reality when we passed a small driveway with a Sotheby's realty sign next to it. Oh. Yeah. That. I guess it would be expensive to live in a place that looks like a Pale Rider movie set. Duh.

I should have figured other people would be enchanted by this landscape, too.

Before long we broke out into the little settlement called Ojo Sarco. It looked like a place I could live, if I didn't have this neurotic need to grow lush flowers and have orchids on every windowsill. Lush flowers and orchids hate 13% humidity. Like my naturally wavy hair, they lay down and die in 13% humidity.
But a girl can dream, and oh, I do, I do. You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one.Yeah, I'd be puttin' goat skulls on my adobe, and I'd be sellin' crystals by the side of the road. But I would add alpacas.

Another dreamscape. It's the spine of a Stegosaurus, in rock. Take me back here somehow, someday.

Pinyon Smoke

My domain's been down all day. Sorry if you haven't been able to access the blog. I've had lots of Internet gremlins working overtime to make life interesting lately. Blaaa.

Here's a picture for you. A little blog ant, tucked into her Ohio studio on a cold gray winter day. Over her head on the wall hangs a barbed-wire heart, fashioned by her husband in Magdalena, just a year ago. She's lit a piece of pinyon incense and is immediately transported back to the wild open spaces of New Mexico, carried on the wings of nostalgia for a time only a few weeks past. She's thinking about pinyon jays.

Pinyon jays are one of those species that grabbed my imagination as an eight-year-old and never let go. I just couldn't fathom a large jay that was entirely, unequivocally blue. All the jays I'd ever seen had white and black on them. Mountain bluebirds did the same thing for me. All blue, all over. I dreamt of one day seeing them. Twenty-six years would pass before I'd lay eyes on either. They were worth the wait. For you, a tired male mountain bluebird, just arrived from Montana, maybe, in the agricultural fields along Rt. 1 south of Socorro, New Mexico, resting on a sun-warmed rail.
Look at the length of the wing and tail--the small-headed, big-chested, streamlined grace of this bird, in contrast to the chunky Eastern bluebird. These are long-distance migrants, making their way from the Canadian prairies all the way to Texas for the winter. They are built for open spaces, able to hover and forage where there may be few or no perches. They're built for flight. And their heavenly cerulean is theirs alone--not found on any other bluebird.

Another blue bird: Pinyon jays are closely tied to the pine that shares their name, feeding on the meaty seeds that they extract from cones with their long needlenose plier bills. Little blue crows, they are.Like most birds that feed on an abundant but patchily-distributed resource, pinyon jays travel in flocks, looking for the next bonanza. They are very happy to exploit feeders, though, taking great gullets-full of sunflower seeds and peanuts to cache and enjoy later. They come in a dull-blue blizzard, all at once, with nasal, querulous cries, nyak nyak! and leaving just as suddenly, flooooof!
They swarm over every surface, happily ingesting seeds--not eating just yet, just squatting and gobbling, building up a store of food to cache elsewhere. You' ve probably banged on the window at a blue jay doing the same thing at your feeder. Greedy? Nope. Just planning ahead, one of the hallmarks of intelligent life. maybe a little bit like a blog ant...tee hee all you bloggin' grasshoppers
There comes a point where the bird must tip its head back to get that last seed tossed back into the expandable gular pouch. I love the background color here. New Mexico is colorific.
My friends Paul and Barb Tebbel fed the pinyon jays for a couple of weeks before I arrived to spend the night at their wonderful place outside Espanola, New Mexico. They wanted to be sure the jays would appear on cue when I woke up. Now those are good friends. I crept out their side door and flattened myself against the house to get the sun at my back. It was a crisp cold morning, and the air smelt of pinyon smoke, just as it does here in my studio, and I waited motionless for the jays to return, grabbing images as greedily as they took seeds.
Thank you, Paul and Barb, and thank you, beautiful dream-jays. Your feathers match the mountains of Arroyo Seco, I notice, but you already knew that.
The aptly-named Pinyon Road in Arroyo Seco. Who designed this state, whose colors harmonize so beautifully with her birds and animals? Whoever it was, sure wuz intelligent.

November Butterflies

In 1992, when Bill and I first explored Bosque del Apache, we met a woman named Cathie Sandell. She "got" us and knew where to send us to watch birds, take in the New Mexico scenery, and get our heads cleared out. "Go up NM 107 to Magdalena," she said. "If you have time, check out Water Canyon." We did, and it was one of the most magical days of our lives. We've run into Cathie since while speaking in New York for the Federation of New York State Bird Clubs, when Liam was an infant, and it was a pleasure to see her again at Bosque. What a gift she gave us with that one suggestion.

So it was with great pleasure that we agreed to lead two field trips to Water Canyon, which we remembered as one of the quietest places we'd ever been. The weather this trip was magnificent, warm and sunny, and Water Canyon where the sun warmed its lower reaches was birdy, birdy, birdy. We joined renowned local naturalist Mary Alice Root and 30 eager birdwatchers to explore its natural history. It's usually difficult to bird with such a huge group, unless you're on a paved road, and then it's a blast. We were brought up short by an acorn woodpecker perched on an exposed snag, pulled our car caravan over, and pretty much stayed there at the base of the canyon, watching bird TV, for the rest of the morning. It was a showcase of NM winter residents: scrub jays, mountain chickadees, western bluebirds, bushtits, acorn woodpeckers, red-naped sapsuckers, common ravens, canyon towhees, chipping and white-crowned sparrows, gray-headed juncos, Cassin's and house finches and the like. They were all coming in to drink at a watering trough in a rustic corral, so we parked ourselves and enjoyed the show. First rule of birding with a big group: When you find birds, stay with them!
This is a mountain chickadee. I'm proud of this shot, since they're a bit tough to catch at rest. Love those head stripes! They're cute and confiding little birds, and they tend to forage quite low, making them ideal subjects for amateurs. It is such fun to see the Western variations on the chickadee theme.

Because Bill and I were as busy as a couple of long-tailed cats in a roomful of rocking chairs, we spent most of our time pointing out birds and didn't get to shoot too many bird pictures. Butterflies are easier to approach, so I contented myself documenting the amazing array still flying in late November. Our local guides were incredulous to see so many butterflies at this late date, and we speculated about the realities of global warming even as we enjoyed them.
Here's a red admiral, one of my favorite feisty butterflies. I've had red admirals hit me in the chest or forehead, defending a favorite sunspot.
We often get buckeyes, a hardy migrant, in October in Ohio, but here they were in November in New Mexico! Go buckeyes! (That was for Kathi, who knows what a hopelessly lame sportsfan I really am).
Clouded sulfurs were common even on frosty mornings, and I was delighted to add a new butterfly to my life list, the dainty sulfur, Nathalis iole. This multiple-brooded cutie, our smallest sulfur, flies almost year-round in the Southwest. I had to hang on to this picture of it and key it out in my Kaufman guide when I got home. Just another reason to love digital cameras!
For sexy, though, it's hard to beat the California (Arizona) sister, Adelpha bredowii. It loves oak canyons, and acts a bit like the related red-spotted purple of the east, feeding on fermenting fruit and droppins, and basking in the sun. I was clinging to a slidy rocky slope, trying to get a better angle on its beauty, but had to be satisfied with this shot.We're home, after leaving Arroyo Seco at 6 AM Thanksgiving day. We got in at about 9 PM after wrestling with a taxi and a dead van battery (booring) to a verra happy, kennelstinky Chet Baker. He immediately gremlined under Phoebe's bed and roo-rooed at us. He's had his morning bath just now and is lying like a puddle of India ink on the sunny living room carpet, smelling of shea butter baby shampoo. The washing machine is churning away in the basement and clothes are flapping in the cold November sun. It's good to be home.

So much happened on our Water Canyon field trips that I'm going to save the rest for a second post. Stay tuned for bushtits!