The Fireworks Continue

The monsoons are treating us to some magnificent light shows. We have had thunderstorms almost every afternoon or evening. The pattern is the same – the morning comes bright and clear, cool until about 9:30. By mid day, the clouds have either built over the mountains or moved up from the south. By late afternoon, or more lately, by nightfall, the storms are active, with lightening flashing from low-hanging clouds which are, in turn, trailing rain along, obscuring spots and lines of the horizon.


Monday night, the lightening was PINK! I thought I was imagining things. The storm was far south over the desert and the lightening was mostly within the clouds or cloud-to-cloud. And it was pink. I had to come in and google pink lightening to see if my eyes were playing tricks on me. Nope, they weren’t; there really is pink lightening. I was tempted to get into the car and drive to a high point and watch, even to try for some pictures.

Today, I watched the storm cloud roll right overhead. I mean that quite literally. Over the ridge at the bottom of our street, the sky was clear blue with white clouds. Overhead, it was pouring rain and hail. I tried to take a picture of the blue sky and clouds through the downpour. The blue and the clouds were there but the rain was lost in the foreground of the image. I’ll have to do a little more studying on how to capture some of these images that are so clear to my eye and mind.

After dinner, though, we went for a walk and I did grab these two shots, just to give a hint of the different cloud formations at different altitudes. By the way, don’t miss the moon in the embrace of the clouds in the second picture.

Last week I took a day off and went to the beach! Well, more accurately, to the river’s edge. The Gila River up near Cliff, NM--about a hour away. There is a day use area on Gila Forest-land that borders the river. We spend the day with blankets, a picnic lunch, floats, binoculars, and cameras. It was wonderful to have the day to play and have the river to play in. I posted several other shots on flikr. Those shots include my friend Gail floating; doesn’t it look like fun on a hot day? And typically, we ran into a hard pelting downpour as we came home into Silver City.

The silver lining: thanks to all the rain, everything is so green. The hillsides and grasslands, the pastures and meadows, the roadsides and lawns. We’ll enjoy the green for as long as the monsoons last and a little longer too.

Organic Fireworks

We stayed up to watch the fireworks last night. Not the bombs-bursting-in-air kind. The organic, native, millionbillion-volt kind. What is it about thunder and lightning storms that is so awe-inspiring? That keeps me outside watching, watching and listening?

We knew it had to rain yesterday. The heavy, unmoving storm clouds had built up over the higher elevations, created first as cathedrals of white cumulus by the warm moist air flowing in from the south and rising against the 9,000 wall of the mountains then lowering and gaining their weight of water. The monsoon season has begun, but the rains have been indifferent. If those heavy clouds didn’t unburden themselves, it would be a cruel joke.

Around 8 pm, we were on the patio. First the low rumbles and then the light began to flash behind the clouds. After awhile, we realized that the flashes were coming from the north – the other side of the house from where we were sitting. We put Nutmeg on the leash and walked up to the top of the driveway so we could watch as the lightning became more active, flashing more regularly, perhaps every 30 or 45 seconds. We made sure that we weren’t the tallest objects standing. After a few minutes, as the flashes took on visible form, bolts jagged and brilliant, we let caution send us back down the driveway and back to the patio.

The storm cells split. Some went from north toward the west-southwest. Those cells were dry, leaving nothing but ringing ears and residual retinal images. But finally the cells moving south and east released their weight of water. And so finally it rained.

When I was growing up, my godparents used to tell me that thunder was really the gods (or giants, I’m not sure) bowling. And lightening – well, that god just got a strike! Last night, there must have been two full leagues competing and the strikes just kept coming. Here in the southwest, strikes mean something else – how many lightening strikes in the forest – how many new forest fires to spot and track and fight. In preparation for the gods’ bowling league season, the US Forest Service has moved in its fire teams: Hot Shots can be seen shopping at WalMart; the Smoke Jumpers rode in the July 4 parade along with the horse teams; the big-bellied aircraft that deliver the HotShots and Jumpers to the smokes and carry the flame retardants are parked, ready, on the tarmac at the Grant Co Airport.

Finally, about 10:30 the cells moved away. Lightening could still be seen far to the east. Low rumbles of thunder still set Nutmeg off, though not as frantically. We went in to bed, closing the windows and the shutters against the storm-cooled air. And the world settled down for a good night’s rain. We woke up this morning to find it is raining still. But it’s a farmers’ rain; a female rain. It is welcome to stay for a couple of days.

Critterlines

The month’s headlines from fur to feathers

Back in the neighborhood --Driving up Cottonwood to our house one evening close to dusk. We were startled and then thrilled to have a good-sized adult gray fox trot across the road in front of us. Gray foxes were common in this area – even this neighborhood – until a few years ago when they succumbed to an epidemic of rabies. We knew they were making a comeback because our neighbors had spotted them, because we had seen their scat and because Nutmeg the Nose alerted on their scents regularly. What a beautiful animal. What a welcome return.

It takes an expert who’s willing to stand still long enough! I had difficulty deciding what kind of snake I almost stepped on up on Cherry Creek Rd on the edge of the Gila Forest. I mean, who can identify something while simultaneously jumping 3 feet in the air and making loud screamy noises. By the time I hit the ground, started breathing and allowed my curiosity to take over, I’d scared the poor snake half-way up the hillside and onto the rocks. So my friend Gail and I studied it from a distance and then went to the internet. Gail’s herpe friend took her description and narrowed it down to a milk snake or a sonoran king, most probably the latter. He gave us high marks – seems I almost stepped on a rarity. Here are the usual suspects. Could you tell the difference? There’s a rhyme to help remember the safe versus the scary: "Red to yellow, kill a fellow; red to black, venom lack,"

Raising a family –A pair of ravens returned to their nest in our neighbors’ cottonwood tree. They successfully hatched and fledged 5 chicks. Key to their success was the deer carcass in the arroyo just down from their nest tree. Drawn by the deer remains, the sky was frequently full of turkey vultures desiring to do what vultures do. While one raven parent snatched gobbets of deer meat to take to the ever-hungry chicks, the other parent fended off the vultures. The raven a soaring, diving, turn-on-a-feather F22 to the vultures’ heavier less-maneuverable C-130. Eventually the vultures would leave – at least for the day. With the rising thermals the next morning, they were back to try again. Finally the raven chicks fledged. Our neighbors watched flight lessons and reported the chicks were unstable and uncoordinated, more like the Wright Bros than the Air Force. They have learned fast, and grown faster. There is now a ‘conspiracy of ravens’ in the neighborhood sitting the power poles and riding the currents while discussing the turn of human events below.

My deer, but you’re getting big Sitting on the patio reading, having the feeling of being watched, and looking up. She was standing right on the edge of the patio, not 5 feet away. Ears up and forward, nose twitching and sides moving. Wait – sides moving? To be perfectly honest, the foregoing is a bit of a composite picture. I was sitting on the patio and she was standing 5 feet away looking at me and she was very round of belly. But the time I saw her sides moving was a few days before when she was grazing outside the kitchen window. She is very preggers and will deliver very soon – twins, if she follows the typical pattern. For a flash, I empathized with her slow, awkward gait, remembering how it feels to walk for two!

Did the tooth fairy miss one? We were walking on our property when Nick bent over to pick up a long, white and weathered object from the dirt. Measuring about 4 inches, sheared at an angle at the large end and tapering to a point. Tooth? Bone? I always opt for the exotic first and settle for the commonplace second. Exotic: a javelina’s tusk. Not thick enough nor blunt enough. A cat’s incisor? Not unless the sabertooth has made a comeback. The commonplace: by comparing our find to a mature male deer antler scavenged from another trail, it turns out that this was left by a “spiker.” A spiker is a young buck that is old enough to grow an antler, but too young for the antler to make much of itself. You might kindly call this a “one-pointer.”

Puppy dog tails Nutmeg the Nose got snake trained. Not all dogs are snake averse. Some, like Nutmeg, lead with their nose not their caution. In MD she discovered a little racer in our backyard and kept poking her nose into its range even after it struck her 3 times. I finally had to rescue the snake! That isn’t good with a rattler. Spring training here includes Hector the milked, de-fanged rattler brought by the dog trainer to the local park. Turn the snake loose, put a shock collar on the dog and take the dog for a walk – right into snake range. See what the dog does. Let the dog get a whiff, get a look, hear the rattle and maybe even get a strike and then BAM! ZING! Yipes!! It turns out Nutmeg can tell the difference between the smell and sound of a little racer and a black-tail rattler named Hector. She paused. She sniffed. She shied away. But the trainer picked Hector up with a 12 foot hook stick, lifted him into range and at the same time shocked her good. I’m sorry – I know it sounds cruel. But 1: Nutmeg was on a shock collar on her invisible fence in MD so she knew what that shock meant when she felt it, and 2: a momentary shock is preferable to a rattlesnake bite anytime. Retest: give her a break and a bone, take off the collar and “go for a walk” again into snake range. This time, Nutmeg smelled, heard and ran the other way. Now when we’re out hiking, all we have to do is watch her; when she turns and runs, we turn and run.

So those are the headlines. June was a hot month and a dry one. Writer-dry, not a word moving on the page. Now it’s July, the heat’s broken, monsoon season is here and the air has freshened. Enough to dislodge a few random thoughts and observations. We’ll see what this month brings to story-land. Sonnie