Wind, Fire and Surviving the Wilderness

The Windy City ain’t got nothin’ on us this month. I understand that Spring is marked by the winds here. While the early part of March was ‘lamb-like,’ this last of March is definitely blow-y. You know it’s blowing a small gale when the dog’s leash bows out before the gust.
Aside from the fact that I really don’t like the wind, especially coming out of the West as these winds are, the gusts bring with them a high fire danger.

Last week, there were two fires in the immediate area, both on the grass range lands that lie south-easterly of town. Fortunately, neither did significant damage, burning a couple of acres and being extinguished in less than a couple of hours. Both were started in part by high winds, either by taking down power lines or catching some other type of spark and lighting it up. A couple of interesting lines in the newspaper about the more recent of the two. First, the first fire company on the scene had to use its water conservatively until another fire company got there with their water tanker. That made me wonder – how else do you fight a grass fire except by dousing it with lots of water and what do you do if you don’t have enough water with which to douse? Oh, I know there’s fire retardant, but not for small grass-land fires like this.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t losses sustained, in this case a shed, a garage and a chicken house. Which brings me to the second story line of note, and I quote, "The chickens are believed to have escaped the fire."

The chickens escaped? How do they know the birds blew the fire? Was there a fowl fire-alarm where all the chickens went and stood around outside the chicken coop while the alarm sounded, just like you see outside of office buildings in the city? And while the chickens were hanging out, some went down the street to Cornbucks for a hominy-latte and others used the excuse to sneak out of the pen for the day? At least that could imply that chickens are smarter than turkeys. Domestic turkeys are known to stand in the rain, turn their beaks up to the sky, thereby drowning themselves. But chickens, without the help of fire marshals in orange vests, can organize themselves to escape a burning chicken house. And to think, the only hazard the chickens that lived next to us on Comus Rd had to face was to occasionally avoid the fox at night, and more often, defend themselves against the dog that was confined to the pen supposedly to protect them from the fox.

A slightly more serious side to the subject of fire, a couple of weeks ago we noticed, when walking Nutmeg around the long block, that there was a burned circle in the grass at the end of an arroyo that led directly up to the back of our house. We don’t know the history of this small black circle nor even how long it’s been there, but it gave us pause. Fire moves fast across these grasslands and up the dry arroyos. I’ve read the stories of the major fires and their destruction, power and threat. There’s a scary intimacy with fire when it can move quickly from a tiny spark to a fireline moving several miles an hour – and it’s in your neighborhood.

The topic of one of the classes Nick and I took at the Western Institute for Lifelong Learning was enjoying hiking in the wilderness. It actually turned out to be more about survival skills than just playing Thoreau, which was fine, since we don’t know this territory and, as I’ve mused before, hiking here has far different risks and challenges than walking the C&O Canal Towpath. We learned some very interesting things about putting together survival kits. We were encouraged to take a small survival kit in a fanny pack just to go on a day hike. I asked whether they would carry anything on a two-hour walk with the dog, and they assured me that even a two-hour walk with the dog can turn into a 48 hour ordeal. For example: a couple and their dog went up a short canyon with a clear trail that lay immediately off a main highway. The trap: they had to cross a stream in a couple of places on their walk up the canyon. The crisis: they didn’t know how to read the clouds and they got caught by a cloud-burst that drenched them and swelled the stream so that they couldn’t cross it. So they spent a night soaked and cold, with no supplies or resources except their dog – it probably wasn’t a Chihuahua because an 11 oz dog wouldn’t do much to help keep them warm. Anyway, the class was impressed to plan for the key concerns: 1— water; 2—body temperature; 3—fire, 4—first aid, 5—signal for help. So even a day kit should include water plus water purifiers (for the forest; wouldn’t do much good in the desert), 3 ways to keep warm, 3 ways to start a fire and 3 ways to signal for help. Many of the individuals in the class are already veterans of the wilderness experience: one plus the instructor are on the local Search and Rescue, several have taken some impressive hikes, and all have gotten lost!
This led to sharing tales and swapping tips. My favorite fire starter tip – take the cardboard core from a roll of toilet paper, stuff it with dryer lint and soak the lint with paraffin, and tuck it into a baggie – lights fast, lights hot, and stays lit for enough time to catch damp kindling.

Nick has been back in Maryland for a week and a half now, and was supposed to come home on Thursday this week. Now he’s had to extend his stay into next week. He’s taking care of some renovations and repair to my mother’s house so that it can be rented. We finally gave up on finding a builder willing to pay a reasonable price for the land, pushed by having a pipe burst in the house early in February and run water for a week, we figure. I miss him, and tend to go into a shell after a few days. But this weekend, I’m going out on the town!!! If you talk to Nick, though, tell him it’s perfectly harmless. Steph, Skee, Cheryl and I are going to see Fiddler on the Roof at the Fine Arts Theatre. It’s a production of the university’s fine arts department and tickets are priced at the way-way-alongway-off-Broadway cost of $10.

The weather is the news this week!

The Weather Report

Nick has always plugged into AccuWeather online because the site shows weather by the hour. Back East, that always seemed a waste of electrons to me because if it was cloudy and rainy at 9 am, it was likely to be cloudy and rainy (or some reasonable facsimile) at 4 pm. Sure, there was some variability, but not generally more than a drop or a cloud or two one way or another. And, of course, we moved to sunny southern New Mexico, where it’s sunny an average of 80% of the year. So why would we need to log onto AccuWeather? Well…

• It takes the host on the local NPR affiliate about 3 minutes to go over the weather forecast for the day for the listening radius. She has 5 weather zones to cover and those zones, especially in the winter and early spring, can equate to 4 separate weather forecasts. She starts with Las Cruces, where the station sits, and moves to mid-desert with Alamagordo, to high altitude-mountains with Cloudcroft and Ruidoso, on to Silver City, with its own pattern, and back down to the low desert at Deming and Lordsburg. She may predict every weather pattern from clouds in Deming, to rain in Silver City to light snow at the mid-levels to several inches of good snow in Ruidoso, which, by the way, is the local ski destination. The temperature prediction may vary 15 degrees from low to high altitude.
• In the space of Thursday through Friday evening last week, we had every kind of wet weather that’s possible, including: rain, sleet, hail, snow, snow-mixed-with-rain, rain-mixed-with-sleet, often back-lighted by lightening bolts. About every hour, the sky would clear, the ground would start to dry and I’d think, “gotta get the dog out for her walk…”
  and then it would start again. I sat at my computer and watched huge white mountains of clouds coming down from the north, alternating with gray layers of clouds dragging skirts of rain so high up the rain didn’t reach the ground. Depending upon who you talked to on Friday, or more specifically, what part of town they were in at any given point of the day, you got a different weather summary. “It hailed golf-balls here.” Or, “it snowed here for several minutes then turned to rain.” And then on Saturday, we woke up to find ourselves fogged in. Not a novelty for us Easterners, but for those who’ve been here awhile, they told us they’d NEVER seen fog in Silver.
  I guess the instability of the weather was making up for the 2-week-long run of 70+ degree-days we had a couple of weeks ago. Today (Monday) it’s bright, sunny and mild again – much more fitting for the spring-blooming trees we’ve been enjoying.

The Fauna Report

The ravens are nesting in a tall cottonwood at the bottom of the hill.

They built the nest there in years past but according to the neighbors on whose property the cottonwood nursery sits, great horned owls kicked the ravens out and took over the nest for their own brood. The neighbors had hoped that the owls would return this year. At the moment, though, the ravens have re-claimed their old nursery and are busily courting. I will make a case for corvids, including crows and ravens.

• They are smart; probably the smartest of the bird species.
• They are engaging; the nesting pair are dancing an air ballet and calling in many voices.
• They are entertaining: ravens play! They play on purpose and with playful intent.

I saw, again today, a male western scrub jay feeding his "intended." I hope she chooses him. If he takes care of her when she’s on the nest the way he’s bringing treats now, she’ll do well.

And an American kestrel has been sitting around on the telephone wires and the pole outside my window. Probably the same one I’d seen zooming around the area in weeks past, but with the weather (see weather report above) I guess it’s sitting still and drying off. What a beautiful ‘face.’

A week ago – I don’t think I mentioned this before – I was sitting at the computer (Jerry, I REALLY do get work done – I’m not ALWAYS looking out the window) and had another "ohmygodwhatwasthat?" experience. A roadrunner hopped up on the flat outside my window, raced across my field of vision and disappeared around the house. Now WHERE did HE
(she?) come from? This is not a habitat that would especially attract roadrunners. I’ve seen quail in the depressions along the road in the neighborhood, but roadrunners are a flat-land-desert kind of bird. Or so I thought, before one visited my neck of the woods.

And lastly on the topic of what passes my window, this afternoon (Jerry, this was AFTER work hours, I swear!) a group of deer, probably 8, came right up to the side of the house. I guess that big cat has moved on, because the deer are moving around again in the neighborhood. I got the rear view of a youngster nibbling grass outside my window, but Nick, working at his computer in the next room, looked up and saw a doe looking in at him, literally with her nose pressed on the glass. Nutmeg took a few minutes to realize they were out there, but suddenly she got a whiff or an ear-full and went off. Now, you might think this is mean, but knowing she’d never get them, I opened the door and let her out.

She dashed to the edge of the yard only to see them sproinging off down the arroyo (except for the two babies that were curious enough to stop at the bottom of the hill and look back). Almost as quickly, she froze, trying to lift 3 paws in the air at once. In that brief dash, she got prickly burrs in 3 paws. Some fierce dog – can’t go 3 feet off the patio without getting lamed in 3 feet.

On the culture scene
We’ve been attending WILL classes (Western Institute of Lifelong Learning) and have made some new acquaintances in some classes. Including a couple named Tom and Consuelo. Tom was the instructor for a class on Tony Hillerman novels that Nick took. Both of them were in the class on Mexican movies of the 40s and 50s that we both took. We didn’t like the movies, but did enjoy talking with them. When they learned we were looking for land, they put us in touch with friends of theirs who’ve built in the same area as the land on which we made an offer.

Long story short, we met Mike and Carol and subsequently put together a dinner gathering made up of the two couples and us this last Saturday night. Mike is a retired bricklayer from Phoenix who has built several houses and is a wealth of information and knowledge. Carol is a former interior designer who was kind enough NOT to say, "Oh look, Caesar’s Palace" upon walking into the entry area of our house (others have done this and then looked as though they wanted to swallow their words).

Tom retired from Dept of Justice in DC, where he was an editor – he took early retirement because he was fed up with AG Gonzalez; his wife, Consuelo, worked for IRS. But putting DC lives behind us --

Tom got to talking about the history of Silver City. He volunteers at the Silver City Museum and is a consummate history buff and reader. Not to mention, a very good story teller. He got to telling a story, sparked by Nick’s description of a Town of Silver City housing grant to Habitat for Humanity to be located on Brewer’s Hill. It seems the Hill is named for Mrs. Brewer, who was a person of color – that area of town was the "black" area of town in a segregated past; she was known as a curanderos, a Mexican word for a healer. She specialized in abortions, but was a very conservative Christian in some regards. On the main drag and just at the bottom of the Hill on which Ms. Brewer’s place was, now called Hudson St (also Rt 90) was Miss Millie’s, which happened to be the local bordello. I don’t know about Ms. Brewer, but we’ve heard from a Silver City original resident that Miss Millie’s was still in business as late as high school, which for the source of the story would have been the 50’s or thereabouts. (I don’t know about you, but this is part is starting to sound familiar to me; I must have already related this part in some story or another.)

Anyway, according to Tom, Ms. Brewer and Miss Millie reached an agreement to co-exist. And did so successfully, to the degree that the Hill is known as Brewer’s Hill and Miss Millie’s "residence" is now the assisted living home.

Consuelo contributed home-made tortillas to dinner, both flour and corn. Oh! Oh, my! And she said that if she’d had time, she would have made "sweet" tamales, which I gather is a desert tamale. You’ve got to understand…tamales are so much work to make that usually Hispanic families only make them at the holidays. I am thinking that she put more work into those tortillas than I put into the whole dinner. And by the way, dinner was thoroughly cooked, in case you remember an earlier story of an overly rare roast beef.

To close, I’ve found there’s another use for agaves in addition to scratching unwary stumblers. I found, in the hippie store in town, Blue Agave Sweetener, which tastes like very light, delicate honey, but is supposed to be better for us diabetics. I’ll let you know. ss

Addendum to cats, casts and cactus

Sometimes I show Nicky my stories before I hit “send” and sometimes I hand him a printed copy after the fact. This last was after the fact. And after he read it, he exclaimed that no one would ever want to come and visit on that basis of the themes of that story. Mountain lions in the neighborhood, broken bones, Cast Days and thorny agave boo-boos. I feel like I should add a resounding, “…Oh My” to the litany – familiar to any fan of the Tin Man, the Straw Man, and Dorothy on their way to see the Wiz.

So I’ll add two fun facts about Silver City and a funny.

How is Silver City like Washington DC?

• It has just about every spring-blooming ornamental tree that you see in DC, all of which have come into glorious bloom. I mentioned this before, but didn’t realize just how many familiar varieties of blooming trees there are here. Nick and I are busily pointing out the best to each other, just as we often did driving around home.
• It has a street named for every state in the Union, just like DC. Although many of Silver’s streets are much shorter and far less grand. One state-named street we found yesterday only had 3 houses and 4 pickups.

And here’s why no one needs a 2700 square foot house. Especially coming from a house of a size that you always knew where the other one was. A couple of nights ago, about bedtime, I was finishing up reading the newspaper in the kitchen, while Nicky had already gone into the bedroom, Nutmeg following along. I took the paper and some other recyclables into the garage, turning on the light from the house-side of the door, and letting the door close behind me. I dropped the recyclables into their proper boxes, and turned back to the door to go into the house, only to find – you might have seen where this was going – the door was locked! I knocked – Nutmeg barked a time or two. I knocked harder and Nutmeg barked a little more. But no Ses-a-me opened the door. I knocked, graduated to pounding, then on to kicking the door! Nutmeg did her best to help by coming to the other side of the door and barking furiously. Finally, I heard this faint voice with a huge question mark ”…Sonnie???” Nicky didn’t know I had stepped into the garage and he went around checking doors before going in to bed for good. What impeccable timing that he came to lock the door just as it had closed completely, and turned the lock in the 30 seconds I was inside before I turned back to the door knob. He thought my knocking was coming from the kitchen. God knows why he thought Nutmeg was barking so, but that’s what finally got his attention. Not before I started thinking about how uncomfortable I’d be spending the night in the garage.

So is this better? Not so worrisome? Maybe you’ll come now, if all you have to do is worry about getting locked in the garage. At least there, you’ll be safe from mountain lions. Meow….