Earth Wind and Fire

The ground is so dry and everything is stressed.  When I walk across the grass -- what we call grass, no such thing as a “lawn” – the clumps of vegetation crunch underfoot, sounding like iced snow crushed by a heavy boot.  The oaks that drop their leaves in the spring when their new leaves are pushing out, have dropped but mostly aren’t pushing.  We walked in Arenas Valley Sunday, through the tall grasses.  The stems are brittle bones that snap at a touch.  Spring isn’t entirely brown; there are scattered tiny wildflower blossoms and green pepper where someone took pains to cut the grass during the winter.  It’s easy to tell under these conditions where there is any slight moisture under the surface.  It’s in those places that the new oak leaves are making a tentative presence and the grass hazes green.  Piῆon, juniper, pines and firs are green to the eye, but look closely and see just how desperate they are for water.  During an El Niῆo year, like the winter of 2009-10, there can be 100+ inches of snowpack at 10,000 feet.  This winter, the La Niῆa winter of 2010-11, there was 18 inches.  We’re dry.  Deadly dry.

The winds have been blowing steadily as they do here in the spring.  Gusts up to 55 and 70 mph.  Not quite enough to howl around the door, but certainly adequate to rock the truck sitting at a traffic light.  I asked the young barista at the drive-through coffee shack whether she was worried about it blowing over.  She looked out the window and upwards, thinking I must be talking about the shack’s sign.  I was talking about the whole shack.  She said she couldn’t feel it moving from inside and we both wondered, while we looked at my truck bucking like it was in a rodeo, what kept the little house stable.  In winds like this, I don’t go through the bank’s ATM.  Grabbing and holding onto those greenbacks spitting out of the cash slot is a challenge not made for slippy or slow fingers.  I watched half a dozen ravens reverse-surfing on the wind yesterday.  At first there were 2 or 3 and then others blew in to join the sport.  All six beaks pointed into the wind, 12 wings outstretched still and cupped.  Imagine riding a surfboard on the wave’s crest, facing out to sea and neither losing nor gaining position, just hanging in place and grinning. There were those six great birds riding the wind – the Bernoulli principle at its most playful example! 

Here’s another visual.  The red-chile ristra is a tradition here, symbolizing wealth and comfort.  This ristra hangs on out back on the end of the porch overhang and is about 2½ or 3 feet long.  But if you look closely, starting half-way down and to the tip, there are no chile pods.  There are only jagged bits of husk and seed clusters.  The wind has been pounding and grinding the chile against the post.  I scavenged a number of chile tips from the ground around the porch – those tips that were clean, seed-free and unbleached.  I run them through the coffee bean machine.  Don’t worry.  I clean the machine quite well before the next pot of coffee.

The wind is not always a friend.  It lifts the earth into the air, sifting it into the house to cover a just-dusted table in hours and gritting the teeth.  It’s not unusual to see someone walking down the street masked for surgery.  Actually, they’re masked to keep the swirls of fine soil out of their nose and lungs.  Walking the dog the other day, I was struck by the air pollution I could see layered to the horizon.  How hazy the neighborhood mountains looked, the Burro Mountains barely discernable and the mountains down in the borderlands hidden in a brown fog.  I thought we don’t have pollution here—we have some of the cleanest air in the country.  But when the earth is airborne we have an organic pollution unique to desert lands.  Yesterday, Route 180 from Deming in the low desert to Silver City was closed for two hours because of dust storms.

It takes 3, as I recall, to create the Perfect Storm.  Three powers in confluence.  Our third is fire.  This is fire season from now until monsoons start, and a blessing would be for monsoons to start early.  The community suffered the Quail Ridge fire in March.  Homes and outbuildings lost; fortunately no lives.  I think 1800 acres burned—something like that.  Started by a catalytic converter breaking apart and lying hot in the grass.  Since then, in a 10 day span of vulnerable days, we’ve had six more fires.  Several of those were houses, of which one started inside the house.  Again and fortunately, no lives lost but stories abound. The propane tank at one house exploded (story apparently unfounded).  Ammunition set off by the heat in another, pinging around and zinging out the windows, making firefighters nervous about getting close enough to douse the flames.

Speculation that some of these fires were set.  Arsonists, possibly gang members.  Set a fire, watch people evacuate and then rob the houses.  These are the rumors running through the community.  When the danger increases, raising fears, the rumors follow looking for something to blame, other than the most obvious fact: we choose to live in the fire-prone Wildlands-Urban Interface.  The fire folks from the county, the town, the volunteer departments, the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service are cooperatively holding community meetings.  Have we heard of defensible space?  Survivable construction? FireWise communities?  Plan now.  Cut the grass, trim trees, clean up debris, move firewood away from the house.  Look at everything in context of its flash point.  It has caused us to take another look at some of our construction materials and make some changes to be more fire-resistive.  Good thing we can do that now before something gets permanently installed or at a minimum, material purchased.

If there’s a smile in fire season so far, it’s the one-acre fire that was set in the general neighborhood where we’re building.  Seems a hawk took a rabbit.  Rabbit probably still wiggling.  Rabbit fell out of hawk’s grasp and onto a transformer, shorting the transformer, fricasseeing the critter and sparking the dry grass.  The small fire was put out right away. This just demonstrates why the town and the county have put restrictions on bar-b-quing with charcoal or other open flame. Nothing was noted about whether the hawk reclaimed his now-fast-food-fried hare but I have to admit I’m briefly jealous of his grilled dinner, since I’ll be giving that up until the restrictions are lifted, hopefully this summer on the heels of a seasonable rainy season.

Small notes:

v  It’s starting to look recognizable as a house now.  There are block walls coming up for the lower level stem/retaining walls.  A septic tank was installed yesterday and the septic field will follow.  The lower level slab should be poured next week.  A real floor!  Then, they’ll start on the footings and foundation for the main level.

v  We’ve had a houseguest for the last several weeks.  Flat Stanley has come to stay until mid-May, sent from our former neighbor, Addie.  Flat Stanley may seem an odd name, but not for a flat character from a children’s book that now is the foil for school projects.  Addie sent Flat Stanley 1 to see us, and Flat Stanleys 2 and 3 to her cousin in Peru (Ecuador?) and to another friend.  Other Flat Stanleys have been dispatched from her classmates to Jerusalem and Europe.  Flat Stanleys report back to school about their adventures and what they’ve learned on their respective trips.  Our Flat Stanley went to see Annie on stage and met most of the actors after the play and so wrote home and sent pictures.  He just sent a second story about animal tracks and poop – imagine how the 3^rd grade boys will love that one.  He will be sending stories about Silver City before – petroglyphs, Billy the Kid and Geronimo, and today – firefighters and police, and especially a story about building our “green” house. 

v  Juxtaposition – sitting at a traffic light one day this week.  Cross traffic included a big pickup pulling a trailer with sides but no top, carrying a large horse.  Think dog riding in the back of a pickup.  They went one way across the intersection.  Going the other way at the same moment were 9 or 10 bicyclists, racers in town for the Tour of the Gila, which started today.

Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.

In the spirit of yesterday’s meteorological metaphor, I was reminded of this old nautical saying this morning when I got up at sunrise to let Nutmeg out. There were heavy clouds moving northward from the borderlands up over the mountains and the Gila forest. To the south, as the clouds skidded along, the sky was clearing and the sun was beginning to rise. The early rays set the bottoms of the clouds on fire. Beautiful in one respect, but again…red sky at morning… The clouds piled up, crimson reflections gone, on the ridges of the mountains and there they sit still. If I look carefully, I can see some little cells of rain. Deeper into the forest and at higher elevations, there is the threat of lightning which in turn creates the threat of wildfire. We’re already under a severe wind and fire warning because of the lack of moisture and 30+ mph winds.


Coffee in hand, I came in (not yet 7 am but well past the midnight deadline) to check the Washington Post online. What’s the status of the hurricane called Furlough? Where is he now? Well, somehow, Furlough veered offshore at the last minute and the government is sort of funded for the nonce. I can’t tell from what I’ve read whether we’re funded for a week or for the rest of the fiscal year. But we are not shuttering the government’s windows for now.

Thinking of the sunrise and the storm clouds still up there waiting, here’s the rest of the metaphor. Hurricane Furlough has only retreated – he has not gone away. He may come back in a slightly different form but he’ll be back, either in mid-May when the debt ceiling has to be raised or the country will run afoul of a very different cloud of troubles. Or when Congress starts debating budgets for FY 2012 including one of the Republican proposals.

Do you remember the movie, The Perfect Storm? At the end when the ship is sideways at the cusp of the monumental wave and George Clooney is staring down at the almost-bottomless abyss?

I usually have a more polly-annish outlook on life and it’s served me well for all these years. But just for this moment, until I see which way the storm’s gonna blow…red sky at morning…

Like Waiting for a Hurricane

Several times over the last 20 or so years in the DC area, we found ourselves under hurricane threat. The weather reports would show images of circular storm cells lurking up the coast and maps of likely pathways. As the storm cells were tracked, the maps were updated with likely targets and the likelihood of strikes. The news reporters broke into regular programming with dire predictions of the coming apocalypse. On a few occasions, the sky turned yellow, the winds began to blow and the river rose. On a couple of occasions, we were sent home from work early to avoid commuting problems. And rarely the hurricane actually hit. But it was the tension of waiting and watching and wondering that I’m remembering most right now.


I’m waiting and watching and wondering at this moment for a hurricane called Furlough! This hurricane has been caused by turbulence in the political atmosphere which in turn has churned up a storm cell of government budget uncertainty. The perfect storm of dissention, disrespect and dysfunction. The storm cell is centered under a tall elegant white dome on a square island in a land peopled by politicians seemingly disconnected from the rest of America.

After months of unruly seas, leaving the nation, the government and 800,000 federal workers stranded on a whirlpool from which there seems to be no escape, it comes down to hours. Will they work out a deal? Will they not? Will the government in fact shut down? Will the hurricane strike shore or will it veer away at the last minute and churn on out to sea leaving a thunderstorm of discontent and anger in its wake?

In a larger context, I find myself becoming increasingly politicized here in Silver City.

I never paid too much attention before. I didn’t vote in an election until Bill Clinton – at least I think I made it to the polls in time to vote for him the first term. Certainly did the next. I was fortunate to live in a safely middle-class community in a virtually recession-proof city. I felt empathy with people who struggled, but didn’t know too many personally. Always was a bit liberal-leaning. Increasingly so during the W years.

But here, I find myself becoming more outspoken, more frustrated, more angry at the tenor and thrust of politics and political agenda. Not entirely one-sided, but mostly. I’ve actually written my state and federal congress people. I’ve joined activist groups. This is a me that surprises me. Because I see the impact first hand of political decisions made elsewhere.

For example, Nick’s program, Energy Sense. He has spent the federal (Dept of Energy) grant money that passed through the state on about half of the 400 homes they targeted for energy efficiency assistance. They thought they had several more months to complete the funded project. But he was told recently that the new administration says spend the money by May or risk losing it. The recipients of Energy Sense assistance are mostly elderly poor, many living in mobile homes. By the state’s own report, the program will save each individual about $165 in electric costs. In addition, the other arm of the program is working on large-scale solar projects to provide electricity to the town and county that will save hundreds of thousands a year. But what will the folks up in the Round House (NM’s state house) do with the money they withdraw, if they withdraw it? Can they put it to other needs in the state? No. The money is returned to the general federal funds. A drop in the ocean of debt. But someone in the Round House will get to huff on their knuckles and polish them on their lapels.

More generally, the political budget decisions being made both on Capitol Hill and in the Round House take food out of the mouths of the children here. In order to give more tax breaks to the wealthiest of Americans individually and corporately. Take health care from our elderly. Take unemployment from our mining community who work hard for the mines until the price of copper goes down and then they’re laid off. No other employment prospects. A political climate that is so bent on saving a few dollars that they lose their moral compass in the process – at least so I believe.

There is a wonderful and emotionally moving monument park to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in DC on the banks of the Potomac – well, the Tidal Basin anyway. On the walls are engraved statements made by FDR or maybe repeated by FDR. One of my favorites and perhaps one that echoes my version of liberalism is (paraphrased from memory): “You can judge the morals and values of a society by how it cares for its elderly, poor and its animals.” On all 3 scores, I think we’re stumbling badly. I would go so far as to say our political structure and incumbents are failing us.

Well, enough ranting. Back to my hurricane…uhmm…my furlough watch. Be well, everyone.