All posts by Betsy James

On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

¡Buen Provecho!

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Snake and Mice EnhancedEarly in the day we saw a bright, limber young bullsnake, the diameter of a thick pencil, its body many tiny wiggles instead of the sober curves of an adult. And late in the day I almost stepped on a two-foot Western diamondback.

Its coon-tail and coon-mask were a dustier color than the bright scales in the middle of its back. It didn’t buzz, and seemed quite unbothered by our admiration. No wonder—halfway down its fat, spread-flat body was a mouse-sized bulge.

Though it didn’t react much, it knew we were there: its tongue was busy, tasting our airborne molecules. In spite of this “tongue smelling,” a rattler hunts largely by heat detection. On a summer evening, how does it tell a warm rock from a warm mouse?

On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

Black Glass

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Malpais hikerOn the Malpais, the McCarty’s lava flow, only three thousand years old. The surface looks fresh as yesterday, like Kilauea’s: so crevassed and glassy that Jan said, “On the Malpais, you don’t bruise.” We kept a sharp lookout for rattlesnakes—there’s sure to be a black morph.

The perfect, trembling webs of orb spiders stretched across the black fissures as if to draw the shattered rock together.

On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

Where We Walk

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2014-06-09 02.38.21Desert pavement on Penistaja Mesa. Pebbles eroded 65 million years ago from long-lost ranges, tumbled in quick creeks and dropped at the feet of trees in green estuaries. Time and the rains wash away the clays from the polished stone. Here’s where we walk, marveling.

On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

Caught Knapping

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FlintknapperA flint knapper’s site. Flakes everywhere, all from the same crystalline quartzite core. The knapper had built himself a seat by propping a sandstone slab against two smaller rocks. Bill said he must have been an old guy with arthritis who had to get his chair just right.

To me the site seemed recent, say 300-500 years old: the slab had not toppled, the flakes had traveled only about thirty feet down the slope. But the quartzite was typically Archaic, which would put it back a thousand years at least. Possibly much more.

On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

Hidden Honey

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Wild BeehiveThe dry stream bed we followed left the sandstone and entered a twisted granite canyon, narrow and deep-shaded. A barn owl startled and flew, soft clop of wings. High on the canyonside was its nest hole, the entryway streaked with mutes. Striations on the roof of it were the weathered wattles of a wild beehive, the remaining honey cells like waxy lace.

That hive was abandoned. But when we dug at a damp place in the sand, water welled up and thirsty bees came clustering. Somewhere in that canyon there is a hidden hive.

 

On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Uncategorized, Walking All Day On Stone

Visions

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CabezonFrom the western ridge of the syncline a pass looks out over Cabezón, shadowy and shadow-washed. Many ancient, rudimentary stone circles scatter their boulders on high points. Each may be the site of a vision quest; we can think of no other explanation. Below lie mineral springs. One is raised on its deposits, a breast whose nipple is a pool, perfectly round, green as an old penny.

As we walked back along the ridge, some small creature far down among the split rocks screamed at us: Squee! Squee! Squee! An ear-splitting insult that never stopped until we went away.

On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

In Just Spring

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HornyToad4 DB128A tiny harlequein horned toad with reddish body, gray legs and stripy gray tail. Was it so variegated because it lived among multicolored gravels? It was barely the size of a quarter.

Later in the day we came upon truly horny horned toads, a mating pair. The female was fat and tan, the male slender and ash-colored. When we came close to look they fled, but they fled together. The male, even in fear, followed the female and would not lose her.

On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

Red

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Sheepherders monumentRed Mesa. The redness of the rock, and of the plants as well. Even the grass is red at the base. Perhaps that’s just the color it is—it might be Little Bluestem, such a contradictory name—or maybe it picks up the iron in the soil. Tracts of red sandstone are covered—covered—with knobby, black, marble-size concretions.

At the edge of the rugged canyon is a sheepherder’s monument, a two-legged stack of red sandstone reminiscent of an Inuit inuksuk. Old cairns mark the sheep trail down into the barranca.

Three big red potsherds lie where a pot was dropped, hundreds of years ago.

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On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

Realism

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Narrow ArroyoOn a promontory, a huge Archaic campsite. People had slept in that sandy hollow for millennia, for it was black with firepits, and at times it must have been a trash heap. But Archaic trash, unlike our own, was nothing: the husks of wild grasses scattered by the wind, the femur of a mountain sheep smashed for the marrow, a few human turds.

Halfway down the steep canyonside, irrevocably stuck, abandoned and stripped, was the shell of a vehicle of the species we call a “poodle jeep”: iridescent green, with graphics. Somebody thought that advertisement was real.