Friday Night 'Lights'

Mr. Wizard and I both made it home last night BEFORE dark--an amazing accomplishment on a 'school night.' Yay for us! The kitties were a tad confused, but very happy. They had stayed outside all day and just as the sun was setting, Paco managed to catch a field mouse in the maze of cane near the north end of our driveway.

It's hard for me to watch one of our cats kill a mouse. It can be a long, drawn-out affair while he plays with his trophy, allowing it to run a short distance away and then pouncing on it to catch it again. This goes on for awhile until the poor mouse is just too exhausted to play that game. Fortunately, last night Paco didn't play that long. He did manage to sneak the poor thing into the house through his pet door, and I chased him down and carried him, mouse in his mouth, back outside. He was so proud of himself.

After he'd eaten his kill and all the kitties were safely inside for the evening, I walked the perimeter of our yard to pick up scattered limbs and debris that had fallen or blown in during the week. And surprise! This is what I saw through the cane at the south end of our yard:


So I grabbed my little camera and snapped a few shots of the sunset. Only a few because the wind was picking up, bringing in a cool front that hit with a gale of winds that lasted all night. In fact, it's still blowing and it's mid-morning now as I write this.

We've had some beautiful sunsets and sunrises lately, thanks to the cloud formations, of course, and also because of the blowing dust in the air. It's awfully dry; we've had no rainfall since September, making this a more 'normal' desert year, complete with mandatory county-wide burn ban.

Because it's so dry and because Lunaloca is surrounded by a drip irrigation system that sustains our trees and plants, we've had many critters visiting of late, mostly javelina, deer and coyote. The past five nights, coyotes have serenaded us with their cacophonous yips and howls from just across the dry creek to the east. I love their enthusiastic sounds punctuating the quiet desert nights, but only when I know our kitties are safely indoors and out of their reach.

In this last shot, if you squint, you might be able to make out the crescent moon high in the sky.

If this shot had sound effects, you'd hear the wind howling and roaring, bringing chaos to Lunaloca and the Christmas Mountains.

Reality

It's been awhile since I've posted to this blog. My road is paved with good intentions, and you know where that'll get me, right? But the sad truth is that while the rest of the country suffers an economic crisis, I am suffering a crisis of time management (or mismanagement) in the desert.

Since starting The New Job last month, I've been playing catch-up on the homefront. There just aren't enough hours in the day. You do the math: 12 hours devoted to The New Job (that includes the three-hour roundtrip commute), eight hours' sleep (if I'm lucky), one hour to get myself presentable/ready in the morning for The New Job (wouldn't be nice to scare the new coworkers, now would it?), and at least an hour to fix dinner, do dishes, maybe a load of laundry, and straighten the house a bit after I get home. That leaves two hours to do whatever I please ... if this were a perfect life.

Unfortunately, when those two free hours roll around (hmmm ... I don't recall having two free hours lately, but math is an exact science, so there should be two hours out there somewhere that I'm missing most days, right?), it's dark outside. That's a real bummer because my favorite things to do here at Lunaloca are outdoor activities: hiking, exploring, birdwatching, clearing brush, hauling rocks and gravel, raking leaves ("beautifying" the place), play hide-and-seek with the kitties, and photographing. These activities have come to a screeching halt since January 5. Mostly I've become trapped in a never-ending cycle of sleep, go to work, come home, eat and sleep again. I try not to think about this too hard or I'll end up the guest of honor at my own pity party.

Sigh.

And to top it all off, I feel guilty whining about the lack of daylight time at home when there are millions of Americans who have lost their jobs in the past six months, and more losing jobs (and investments) every passing day. And here I am, with a good job, whining.

Sigh.

But, the days are getting longer and the days are getting warmer and that lifts my spirits. In just a couple of months, the sun will be way up in the sky after I get home from work each day. By then (I hope), I will have adjusted to this new routine and carved out some free time to take advantage of the additional daylight time. And there will be photos! And happier kitties!

Until then, please hang tight. I'm working on that, too.

Bluebonnets and Big Cracks

Early Sunday morning Mr. Wizard and I packed up coffee, water and zucchini bread (thank you, Annie!), and headed out to Big Bend National Park to explore and look for bluebonnets.

We drove down Old Maverick Road to Terlingua Abajo, an old farming settlement on Terlingua Creek just above the mouth of Santa Elena Canyon, hoping to spot some early bloomers there where we've found some in past years. No luck. So we headed westward on FM 170 (the River Road) from Study Butte past the ghost town and Lajitas and into Big Bend Ranch State Park.

Eureka! There were bluebonnets! Not many yet, and most of them were small and scraggly, but after I wandered off the road a ways near the hoodoos, I found a few that were close to two feet tall, but not many.

We haven't had any rainfall to speak of since September, so we were glad there were any at all. The flowers we did find were probably due to the Rio's September flood, when the roadside got a good soaking.

Long before we moved to the Big Bend, I came out here many Februarys just for the bluebonnets. I'm a sucker for 'em.

Along the River Road, there were other desert flowers blooming, too, welcome little splashes of color dotted an otherwise mostly brown and gold roadside, a reminder that we're presently under a burn ban.

And then as we were crossing Contrabando Creek just past the riverside movie set with its little buildings and facades, I shrieked, "Stop!" and Mr. W cheerfully obliged by pulling off the road. The cracks in the dried mud/sand below looked like a giant gray patchwork crazy quilt stretching down toward the Rio Grande.


I climbed down into the creekbed and the cracks in the dried mud were HUGE. And DEEP. I dropped a rock down a crack and heard it hit bottom way down there.

The cracks are impressive at this view, but even more so when I stuck my foot out for some perspective.


Okay, now you have a better idea of how scary it was to walk out on the creekbed. It felt almost like jumping from tiny island to island, or little iceberg to iceberg. It was a surreal feeling to stand in the middle of the creekbed, in the middle of a giant natural mosaic.

And while I stood there, feeling all overwhelmed and happy, I caught sight of a mountain lion making her way across the highway toward the river. Although I've seen many tracks in the three years I've lived in the Bend, I've not seen an actual mountain lion, so I was very, very excited. And even though my camera was in my hand, I never even thought about trying to snap a picture. I just stood there paralyzed by all the beauty around me and watched her (him?) disappear from sight. It was a magical moment.

Life is good.