All posts by Betsy James

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

Time. Time.

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SplitMesaDB172Rambling in a rubbly, lunar, black-and-tan landscape where nothing grows but saltbush. Water-scoured sediments, here and there a hunk of dinosaur bone, and hundreds of stones so  polished they might have been tipped from a rock tumbler. John, the geologist, says they’re gastroliths: dinosaur gizzard stones.

“Swallowed by dinosaurs as they traveled their migration routes,” he said. “Maybe hundreds of miles long. None is bigger than a grapefruit; if they were the result of normal deposition they’d be more varied in size, with no upper limit. And they’re all exotics, not from any source near here.”

“Then where are they from?”

He said, “The mountain range they came from has long since worn away.”

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

Ow!

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Prickly pear 3-27-10The first cactus: I hopped the fence onto the Malpais, and with my first step ran into a cholla. Guess I haven’t been hiking for a while.

The second cactus: side-hilling down from the sandstone ledges, I slipped on the scree and my right hand, which I put out instinctively to catch myself, landed smack in a prickly pear. Stabbed full of big spines, furred with gloccids. I had to stand where I was and pull the spines out; got most of them, but a few I’ll bear to my grave like shrapnel.

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

Now That’s Steep

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Cow's faceA friend from Oklahoma said, at the end of a daylong hike, “I have wore myself slick.”

I had too. I thought how grateful I am to inherit useful expressions like that, often from old ranchers like Jan’s infamous Uncle Clyde. “Raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock.”  “Hotter than a June bride in a feather bed.”

My favorite Uncle Clydeism, though, is “Steeper than a cow’s face.” Right. On hikes like that I have wore myself slick.

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

Strange Place, Our Home Planet

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Wasp nestOn the red dirt was what looked like a tatón, the fluffy white seed-puff of the river cottonwood…but it was strolling. I had to lie on my belly to see it was a spider. A spider! I have no clue.

A mud-dauber’s nest with holes in a row, like a harmonica.

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

Grrrr!

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Bear BonkerI spotted a rock that shouldn’t have been there: in a field of crumbled pink granite, a smooth gray stone. I pried it up. It was the butt of a buried stone axe, roughly whacked from a river cobble.

Once these mountains were full of grizzlies. Given its nasty point, was the axe a bear bonker? Should we hope not, for all concerned?

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

Here, Kitty, Kitty

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Mountain Lion FetishWhere we hiked Jan had found many mountain lion tracks. I learned that lions focus on small animals: I’m 4’11”. Small animals with high voices, actually. I dropped my usual backcountry shout by a good octave.

In Zuni the lion’s name is hokdidasha. Hokdidasha is—I think, but what do I know?—the beast priest of the north. The fetish shown is unsigned.

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

Resident Alien

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Jerusalem CricketWe found a two-inch Jerusalem cricket—also called “child of the earth” or “earth baby”—trudging stolidly at the arroyo-side.

Friend: Oh god, I think it looks like a little alien. Like an extraterrestrial fetus.

Me: I think it looks like a kid in a stripy T-shirt.

Friend: How benign. You’re perverse, but benign.

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

In Time We Fit

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Old Juniper 5.17.09As we scrambled the scree slope to the mesa top, a lovely thing. The limb of an ancient juniper, vibrating in the cliff-edge wind, had worn a deep groove in the sandstone it leaned on, and had rubbed itself down to bare wood.

The fit was perfect even to the wood grain. A protruding knot on the limb had made a perfectly matching, knot-shaped hollow in the stone.

I was reminded of a word from…is it San Felipe Pueblo? Suyu: the sound of the wind as it hits the edge of the mesa.

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