Last Juncos
April 24, 2011
There are still a few Dark-eyed juncos in their little executioners’ hoods. When I make the birders’ “pishing” noise they get curious and come to about fifteen feet away, making a sound like agate pebbles tapped together.
Last year’s old apples smell like cider vinegar.
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Lightning, Wood and Iron
April 15, 2011
In the cobble hills above the Rio Puerco. Rain, snow, thunder. I was afraid of lightning, but Jan sheltered calmly under a juniper that bore the black scars of a previous strike. The wind smelled of wet stone.
In the sand lay an iron axehead, its handle long ago lost to weather. From the eighteen-eighties, maybe. The edge had a graceful worn curve, and the splayed butt showed it had been used as a wedge to split firewood.
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Time and Fire
April 8, 2011
In the trackless mudstone of Piedra Lumbre, five or six hogan rings: stone foundations with east-facing doors, still holding what was left of the cribbed juniper rafters of traditional Navajo houses. Judging by the decay of the juniper, well over a hundred years old. Beyond them, two circles of ash filled with fragments of trash, probably fires that burned the deceased’s possessions. The squashed casing of a cheap nickel pocket watch.
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Cougar Passes
April 1, 2011
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On a canyonside in the Zuni Mountains we hiked to a little cave, a rock shelter that had been sadly pot-hunted. In it, among the ashy dust, the soot-blackened potsherds and tiny, prehistoric corncobs, was the paw-print of a mountain lion.
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