Placitas. From the high trail, the Sunday church bell’s ringing fills the valley below.
A scream: two hawks and a raven, harrying all over the sky. The hawk’s keening cry falls like its falling body, streamlined stone.
A slight rockfall in a narrow canyon.
A coyote turd with three dozen apricot pits.
Rain-soaked sandstone is unstable. Hiking upcanyon, we found a boulder the size of a Winnebago that had peeled off the mesa and bashed a fifteen-foot-wide swath down the scree slope.
It had taken out the piñones, hit the canyon bottom, run up the opposite side, rolled back down, bounced a couple of times and settled back to dam the creek into a fine little trout pool.
The bashed pine needles were still green, but the pool already had a half dozen six-inch fish in it.
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WORLD-BUILDING and WILDERNESS: 