Living at the Bottom of the Ocean

The past couple of days have been filled with dust storms. Here in the high desert, at 4,200 feet, these dust storms do not look like the Saharan sand storms you may have been imagining. For the dust is far finer than sand. In the high Spring winds, our dust just greys out the sky, lowers visibility, and gathers everywhere on your belongings even in the most hermetically sealed household.

Of course it does. After all, we are living here at the bottom of the ocean. Yes, even here at 4,200 feet, we are on the ocean bottom. Or what was the ocean bottom, not so long ago in geologic time. That's why our rocks fall apart so easily - they're only compacted sand and mud after all. And why our mountains change shape as the softer coverings erode away and only the hardest rock peaks remain.

If you look at a map of New Mexico, we sure look a long long way from water. But what is now the Gulf of Mexico reached way up into the landscape here. As the Rockies rumbled and crashed upwards and the land lifted, the water receded. And that ocean bottom is now our landscape.

And so fossil rich it is hard not to become a fanatic about this strange ancient beauty. Geologists fight each other for the chance to come to teach and research at one of our Universities - as one said to me just today - it's the dream location.

And it's not bad for normal humans either. I find it hard to get too verklempt about present day concerns with all this history around. Kinda lengthens my perspective willy-nilly, doncha know.

Rain in the Desert ... is Different

Well, it's night-time here, but it's raining in our desert. A good old thunderstorm, long, hard, crashing nearby and far.

Now rain in the desert is different.

First, you can see it more than you do in cities and hilly grounds. See it coming out of this cloud, over there in the middle of the distance?

Not only that, you can often, during the day, see the rain leaving the clouds overhead, and see how that rain does not actually reach the ground. Yes, it often rains in the sky, but it's all evaporated before it makes the ground. We've even had showers where only the top half of the car's windscreen got any water. Kinda freaks out newcomers from the coasts. They never knew a) you could see rain from the clouds like that and b) it rains without raining.

Another difference is that, not having a lot of rain, we mostly don't have gutters on our houses, but "canales" (see picture on right). They just shoot the rain right off the roof.

We also do not have many, in most places we do not have any, street drains. You know, underground drains that carry water away ... with grates by the curbstones every block or so. No, our streets often are our drains. At the end of our street, at the bottom of the hill, are two huge openings right off the street down into the valley below. Splash onto the land down there.

But the most fun of all in desert rain is how the children, teens, and young adults all run out of their houses and stand on the street corners. Why? Well, if you do, as I did when new here, avoid going too close to them because the street is full of water and you do not want to splash them, for this care-taking, they'll yell scorn and even give you certain hand signs.

They want you to splash them, the bigger the better. It's a desert game. Whoopee! It's raining!!

Spring is different here

Oh you who long for the daffodils to bloom, and the lilacs to begin to show themselves - harken to Spring in the desert.

Our daffodils are a mid February event, our trees are already leaving behind the last traces of that wonderful chartreuse early leafing and are entering the full green of summer.

And, the Spring winds have come.

Signs along the highways read "Dust Storms Possible, Next 10 Miles". Most of the year that only makes the tourists take their foot off the accelerator for a minute - we locals know it's unlikely to occur.

But Springtime, well, Springtime in the desert is different. Then the winds whip up, 30 or 50 miles an hour, the air is filled with fine dust, and we can hardly see the mountains which normally fill our distant skies.

Above are the Organ Mountains, from our front window (my quilting room), as they usually appear. Today, and for the rest of this week, they will be instead the vaguest purple shadow behind the white dust-filled sky.

But the sweetness of all the desert life (desert plants must want company - they always seem to have the most delicate of perfumes about them) will remain in the air. Happy Spring!