Spider, cottonwood, and storm. Pastel sunset.
I met Mario at Nemesio, where we weeded sweet peas all morning. We weeded one and a half runs each, before Mario said "Bueno, ya vamos a comer". Just moments before, I'd found a black spider with brown marks on its head and body. It was compact and mean-looking, and a little light blue gleamed from inside it when it opened its jaw-things. When I showed it to Mario, he said it was dangerous enough to kill someone, and he tried to smash it with his boot, but the earth was soft and the spider kept walking. We went to lunch then anyway.
Cooking rice and lentils took 40 out of my 7t lunch minutes, and it was just after 1:15PM when I went back out. Mario was outside, near my cabin, and he said we'd go pick up and store some equipment we'd left out in the field on Monday. He left to bring a truck, and I waited in place.
A good amount of "mishitos" were floating in the air, towards the gate, and I looked up at them. Then to twenty populated my foreground, and at least a hundred white dots moved behind. All together, set against the restful background of the farm tractor, the house porch, gently swaying tree leaves, long, fluffy white clouds, and a gorgeous blue linen sky, composed a sweet, idyllic scene. Two women sat on the porch, and a half-yelled dialogue ensued:
- "Does Mario need us to move the car?"
- "No he just went to pick up the truck". Pause. "Do you see the white little falling thingies?"
- "Yes, it's cottonwood!"
- "Cottonwood", I repeated, only to myself. I looked up at the flying balls. They certainly seemed just as soft and white, perhaps more so. To me they struck as traveling fairies, blessing the land, as the water and the people they flew over. Or as newborn wisps, together set off to explore the vast new world set upon them. Their exquisite gracefulness only allowed for a benign interpretation. I breathed in the sight of these fluffy traces of wind until Mario arrived, and we went to pick up two metallic tractor extensions and a piece of rope. After storing them, we went back to weeding sweet peas.
Ninety weeding-and-chatting minutes later, Mario's phone rang, and he was asked to store some old doors that Carlos had replaced with new ones. So off we went. We stored them at a white shed in the "Enrique" section of the farm, which I'd not visited before.
After parking the truck, I took two large egg boxes and walked with Mario to pick up the daily chicken eggs. Clouds were grayer and the wind was picking up at this point, and as I collected the last four eggs of the day, I held the box down with one hand to prevent it from flying off.
Walking out, I saw Mario looking the other way at the blue-grey sky and waving trees. A gust of wind blew from the right, and covered all of Mario's area with an old-west style, thick, traveling cloud of dust. Mario, unmoved, kept perusing the dynamic landscape in the distance, a fitting depiction of the stoic character of a movie hero. We said good night, and I walked off with the 18 eggs.
Halfway back to the main field, thunder clapped and the winds strengthened. I noticed today's rainclouds came from the opposite direction they'd come from on Wednesday, and even from the wind a few hours ago, and I commended the wind for its flexibility.
The large cottonwoods around me were now waving every one of their branches except their tree trunk, and an open jacket might've lifted me off the ground. A large branch at least my size fell to the ground, and I felt glad I was in an open field. Then I realized I was in an open field, and looked above at the thunder-ridden dark clouds. I wondered how'd it feel to have one's head struck by lightning. Even more, how'd it feel to have it strike one's eye, looking up at the sky? A few large trees weren't far off, though. How'd it feel to be temporarily deafened by nearby lightning? I imagined the simultaneous shock of extreme light and sound would trigger the FoF (fight-or-flight) response, and at acknowledging the futility of punching a heavenly electrical discharge, one would grasp one's way back to shelter through patches of painfully blurry colors in a bizarre outdoors utterly devoid of sound. Or overloaded with an all-encompassing beeeeeeeeeeeep, the aural flatline.
Regardless, the scene exuded the power of Nature. Far off in the distance, many large trees of different kinds rocked back and forth to the same rhythm, and I thought of heralded devastation, accompanied by the downscale part of a musical piece I can't remember, played in the Chapulín Colorado show (when there is trouble) and in the movie "The Ten Commandments", when the pharaoh sends his chariot troops down the dry path opened through the sea. Or by "Ride of the Valkyries". Anyway, epic-sounding, minor-chord style music that fits in with some battle or tempest. Large sparse drops began to fall, so I went back and stored the eggs. Then I stood in the rain and wind, feeling it surround and penetrate my skin. The strong caresses of the fresh wind and the cold, heavy drops on my arms, legs, and neck provided me with a feast of sensations for about five minutes. Then I came back in, showered, dined rice and lentils, and began this entry.
I went out for a while to see the abated storm, and I saw two women walking up the path to my cabin. A quick introduction ensued, and they asked me how they could go hiking. I walked them up to the entry dirt path into the BLM, said bye, and came back to the cabin. I was piqued though - the sun had not yet set, and the far-off clouds pointed to a beautiful spectacle of dusk. Soon I walked to BLM again and found a good hilltop to climb.
The climb was pathless, steep, and loose, but after a set of careful, conscious steps, and several thinking pauses, I reached the top. And the view was fabulous.
A high, uncovered sun still blinded my direct sight, but it illuminated the farms and fields below it nicely. To a slight right, about a kilometer away, a huge sweeping curve in the land, at least a hundred meters wide, depicted a giant dusty banked velodrome end in a perfect "C" shape, necessarily owed to some meaningful event, natural or manmade, but I could not imagine what. Area 51 covered crossed my mind, and I made a mental note to check it out up close when the time and context were compatible.
The sky blue looked white-washed, and the sunset wasn't quiet view-ready yet, so I looked the other way, where I saw five successive hill/mountain ranges in the distance; the closest was the next hilltop, the farthest a rocky mountain topped with streams of snowy icing. It was a lovely landscape, and I stared at it to analyze it color-and-shape-wise. I closed my eyes and breathed purposefully for a while. A close-by flutter opened them, and I saw a quick sparrow moving up to the northern mountains, probably to its nest somewhere. Many other sparrows passed by in the same direction. I was enchanted by their flight. They didn't just travel, or flap, or glide in their path. They bounced through the air in dainty parabolic hops, each one propelled by two or three tiny wing flaps, keeping a level height, or changing their altitude at any time if desired. One of the sparrows chirped at each set of flaps, and I thought him enjoying his flight so much, he was going "whee!", "whee!", "whee!". Or maybe telling the others: "Hey! Wait for me!" In any case, the bird was delightful.
Another such sparrow did not fly in a straight path. I think he DANCED. He skirted the hilltops one by one, banked and twisted sharply and frequently, and took several vertical dives (both up and down) for apparently no other reason than pleasure or showing off. A larger black crow flew by soon after, steadily flapping its long wingspan to maintain its level height. "Not all birds fly with the same technique", I thought.
I'd seen little of the actual sunset til then, except for a shark-head-shaped cloud eating the sun (with menacing eye and everything), and a white-and-grey cloud, under same light conditions, right next to each other. So I slowly turned to see it. The dark, grey, and blue opened up to that horizon-only greenish hue of blue. Ninety degrees later, the sun was gone. Its orange aura still glowed bright above its mountain range cradle, but the star itself I could not see. Still, the colors it projected onto the clouds and mountains were remarkable. The mountains were a pure greenish teal, and the low clouds, perfect smooth ray surfaces covering the cradle. If I knew about painters, I'd say "it was a painting!" But as I saw it, it was a beautiful pastel sunset.
Minutes later, the sun glowed orange on the bottom of the far clouds, and the color spread as the sun lowered further. At one point the spread stopped, and the bright orange began to slowly, oh so slowly, dim away. It was so slow that at times I felt I was only imagining it. It seemed to me as if the Sun was dimming its light on its baby the Earth, oh so slowly, so we wouldn't notice it too much, and would go to sleep in peace. It's near midnight now and I haven't yet, but I will soon.
I met Mario at Nemesio, where we weeded sweet peas all morning. We weeded one and a half runs each, before Mario said "Bueno, ya vamos a comer". Just moments before, I'd found a black spider with brown marks on its head and body. It was compact and mean-looking, and a little light blue gleamed from inside it when it opened its jaw-things. When I showed it to Mario, he said it was dangerous enough to kill someone, and he tried to smash it with his boot, but the earth was soft and the spider kept walking. We went to lunch then anyway.
Cooking rice and lentils took 40 out of my 7t lunch minutes, and it was just after 1:15PM when I went back out. Mario was outside, near my cabin, and he said we'd go pick up and store some equipment we'd left out in the field on Monday. He left to bring a truck, and I waited in place.
A good amount of "mishitos" were floating in the air, towards the gate, and I looked up at them. Then to twenty populated my foreground, and at least a hundred white dots moved behind. All together, set against the restful background of the farm tractor, the house porch, gently swaying tree leaves, long, fluffy white clouds, and a gorgeous blue linen sky, composed a sweet, idyllic scene. Two women sat on the porch, and a half-yelled dialogue ensued:
- "Does Mario need us to move the car?"
- "No he just went to pick up the truck". Pause. "Do you see the white little falling thingies?"
- "Yes, it's cottonwood!"
- "Cottonwood", I repeated, only to myself. I looked up at the flying balls. They certainly seemed just as soft and white, perhaps more so. To me they struck as traveling fairies, blessing the land, as the water and the people they flew over. Or as newborn wisps, together set off to explore the vast new world set upon them. Their exquisite gracefulness only allowed for a benign interpretation. I breathed in the sight of these fluffy traces of wind until Mario arrived, and we went to pick up two metallic tractor extensions and a piece of rope. After storing them, we went back to weeding sweet peas.
Ninety weeding-and-chatting minutes later, Mario's phone rang, and he was asked to store some old doors that Carlos had replaced with new ones. So off we went. We stored them at a white shed in the "Enrique" section of the farm, which I'd not visited before.
After parking the truck, I took two large egg boxes and walked with Mario to pick up the daily chicken eggs. Clouds were grayer and the wind was picking up at this point, and as I collected the last four eggs of the day, I held the box down with one hand to prevent it from flying off.
Walking out, I saw Mario looking the other way at the blue-grey sky and waving trees. A gust of wind blew from the right, and covered all of Mario's area with an old-west style, thick, traveling cloud of dust. Mario, unmoved, kept perusing the dynamic landscape in the distance, a fitting depiction of the stoic character of a movie hero. We said good night, and I walked off with the 18 eggs.
Halfway back to the main field, thunder clapped and the winds strengthened. I noticed today's rainclouds came from the opposite direction they'd come from on Wednesday, and even from the wind a few hours ago, and I commended the wind for its flexibility.
The large cottonwoods around me were now waving every one of their branches except their tree trunk, and an open jacket might've lifted me off the ground. A large branch at least my size fell to the ground, and I felt glad I was in an open field. Then I realized I was in an open field, and looked above at the thunder-ridden dark clouds. I wondered how'd it feel to have one's head struck by lightning. Even more, how'd it feel to have it strike one's eye, looking up at the sky? A few large trees weren't far off, though. How'd it feel to be temporarily deafened by nearby lightning? I imagined the simultaneous shock of extreme light and sound would trigger the FoF (fight-or-flight) response, and at acknowledging the futility of punching a heavenly electrical discharge, one would grasp one's way back to shelter through patches of painfully blurry colors in a bizarre outdoors utterly devoid of sound. Or overloaded with an all-encompassing beeeeeeeeeeeep, the aural flatline.
Regardless, the scene exuded the power of Nature. Far off in the distance, many large trees of different kinds rocked back and forth to the same rhythm, and I thought of heralded devastation, accompanied by the downscale part of a musical piece I can't remember, played in the Chapulín Colorado show (when there is trouble) and in the movie "The Ten Commandments", when the pharaoh sends his chariot troops down the dry path opened through the sea. Or by "Ride of the Valkyries". Anyway, epic-sounding, minor-chord style music that fits in with some battle or tempest. Large sparse drops began to fall, so I went back and stored the eggs. Then I stood in the rain and wind, feeling it surround and penetrate my skin. The strong caresses of the fresh wind and the cold, heavy drops on my arms, legs, and neck provided me with a feast of sensations for about five minutes. Then I came back in, showered, dined rice and lentils, and began this entry.
I went out for a while to see the abated storm, and I saw two women walking up the path to my cabin. A quick introduction ensued, and they asked me how they could go hiking. I walked them up to the entry dirt path into the BLM, said bye, and came back to the cabin. I was piqued though - the sun had not yet set, and the far-off clouds pointed to a beautiful spectacle of dusk. Soon I walked to BLM again and found a good hilltop to climb.
The climb was pathless, steep, and loose, but after a set of careful, conscious steps, and several thinking pauses, I reached the top. And the view was fabulous.
A high, uncovered sun still blinded my direct sight, but it illuminated the farms and fields below it nicely. To a slight right, about a kilometer away, a huge sweeping curve in the land, at least a hundred meters wide, depicted a giant dusty banked velodrome end in a perfect "C" shape, necessarily owed to some meaningful event, natural or manmade, but I could not imagine what. Area 51 covered crossed my mind, and I made a mental note to check it out up close when the time and context were compatible.
The sky blue looked white-washed, and the sunset wasn't quiet view-ready yet, so I looked the other way, where I saw five successive hill/mountain ranges in the distance; the closest was the next hilltop, the farthest a rocky mountain topped with streams of snowy icing. It was a lovely landscape, and I stared at it to analyze it color-and-shape-wise. I closed my eyes and breathed purposefully for a while. A close-by flutter opened them, and I saw a quick sparrow moving up to the northern mountains, probably to its nest somewhere. Many other sparrows passed by in the same direction. I was enchanted by their flight. They didn't just travel, or flap, or glide in their path. They bounced through the air in dainty parabolic hops, each one propelled by two or three tiny wing flaps, keeping a level height, or changing their altitude at any time if desired. One of the sparrows chirped at each set of flaps, and I thought him enjoying his flight so much, he was going "whee!", "whee!", "whee!". Or maybe telling the others: "Hey! Wait for me!" In any case, the bird was delightful.
Another such sparrow did not fly in a straight path. I think he DANCED. He skirted the hilltops one by one, banked and twisted sharply and frequently, and took several vertical dives (both up and down) for apparently no other reason than pleasure or showing off. A larger black crow flew by soon after, steadily flapping its long wingspan to maintain its level height. "Not all birds fly with the same technique", I thought.
I'd seen little of the actual sunset til then, except for a shark-head-shaped cloud eating the sun (with menacing eye and everything), and a white-and-grey cloud, under same light conditions, right next to each other. So I slowly turned to see it. The dark, grey, and blue opened up to that horizon-only greenish hue of blue. Ninety degrees later, the sun was gone. Its orange aura still glowed bright above its mountain range cradle, but the star itself I could not see. Still, the colors it projected onto the clouds and mountains were remarkable. The mountains were a pure greenish teal, and the low clouds, perfect smooth ray surfaces covering the cradle. If I knew about painters, I'd say "it was a
Minutes later, the sun glowed orange on the bottom of the far clouds, and the color spread as the sun lowered further. At one point the spread stopped, and the bright orange began to slowly, oh so slowly, dim away. It was so slow that at times I felt I was only imagining it. It seemed to me as if the Sun was dimming its light on its baby the Earth, oh so slowly, so we wouldn't notice it too much, and would go to sleep in peace. It's near midnight now and I haven't yet, but I will soon.
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