Rather than traces of snow on the deck this winter morning, frost has formed a sparkling veil over everything. Sunrise colors paint the sky, a watercolor wash of pink above the horizon. Oddly it is the northern horizon, slightly bearing west, long low winter rays above the mesas.
When first visiting these parts, it was those mesas that drew my imaginings. When the light was right, striations upon them glowed red. When the weather produced some sort of extreme desert cloud effects, shadows of them added textures of light and dark, and the sky became a canvas of sapphire blue and brilliant white. My camera and I spent many sets of hours seeking the byways with the biggest views.
Today belongs again to my Hawaiian crow. It would be wondrous if it made another appearance, here, where I am studying the photos from yesterday. Seeking out images of crows in flight to match the tilt of wing, signature variances in motion, I watch again and again for any nuance.
Kiwi would know the shapes and movements of the crow in flight. I could send her the video via email, hoping she will see it amidst the dozens of clamorous outreach pieces that inundate us every few hours. She is not a fan of electronic communication but it is what we have at hand for this purpose.
Kiwi is a world renowned avian expert. She has spent years upon years as a nomad, following the birds and recording her observations. We became friends in Hawai’i through my daughter, who fell in love with her. By then Kiwi had traded her gypsy ways for a one room house in the rainforest. All she had wanted was a sleeping platform but regulations forced her into a few hundred square feet. She had acquired a lot one of the neighbors had hand cleared over the years, making a forest path several hundred feet long, lined with nursery logs of fallen ohia inter planted with native lobelia and mamaki. Ohelo berries grew on vines that stretched into the canopy, the food of the endangered nene rarely seen amidst the numbered streets of the subdivision.
It is a bright day, and the frost has vanished. No mystical mist today. Ulf waits patiently for his morning sniff about. He is old now and no longer the rowdy beast barely controlled on leash. He stays close when we go out, running ahead then stopping and waiting for me to catch up before he takes off again.
He stops to scratch the ground. As many times as we have walked together I am uncertain what causes him to want to uncover something below the surface. Is there an underground creature that has tunneled beneath the path? Is it a trace of scent from a paw?
A shard of pottery pokes out of the dirt near the scratches Ulf has made. I used a stick of juniper to prod it fully into view. It looks to be an old piece of Sandia Pueblo pottery, but rather than the usual reddish clay with eggshell and black motifs, it has a faint white wash with a blue gray design. The shape suggests a beak design. Maybe it was a figure of a bird.
A flat boulder nests at the side of the path. I prop the pottery shard there and we continue to walk. All along this path are rocks with other rocks placed upon them. I have done that, for no particular reason. No one comes here but Ulf and me. I know this because ours are now and always now the only footprints in the sandy dirt or in the snow or sometimes the mud. We see coyote scat now and then. Rabbits.
A dusky grouse flies so close to my face I can feel the air moved by its wings as it circles into the arroyo. Ulf lunges toward it then stops short and turns with his tongue hanging off the side of his mouth. Once upon a time, he pulled birds out of the air, but rarely in front of me. He knew I didn’t like him hurting the birds. But he never understood that the captured torn carcasses also let me know what he was doing.
We continue on to the center of the path. We have been constructing a labyrinth there. I carry the design sketch in my jacket pocket. Some days I add three or four rocks, some days only one. There are pieces of jasper I have brought in, serpentine, banded river sandstone, red rocks with mica sparkling on the surface. Others are simple flint from the hillside. Chunks of obsidian and textured lava from the quiet volcanoes that surround the area sometimes turn up on our journeys and end up here. I want to bring back a boulder from the far north, marked with lichen, for the centerpiece. How to move it is a mystery I have yet to work out. The size I wish for is outside my capacity. I do not wish to seek help as this is my solitary project. A meditation.
We return to a breakfast of poppyseed strudel and cappuccino. Making morning coffee is as close as I get to a ritual ceremony any more. I used the notebook kept by the cappuccino wizard, specifying the grams to use, the timing, temperatures and valves and the feel of the thing. I used the notebook until I could just do it, each cup of coffee being like the one before it, finished with a swirl of pourable foam. He showed me how to do it, but I never had to. The coffee was his morning ritual. I made the toast and eggs.
It is not useful to wish for anything to be different, to be as it was. As you can see the mornings are still beautiful, the birds keep us company, Ulf takes me out into the chill. The labyrinth is coming along.
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