Monsoon

There's been a lot of rain lately; Walker Canyon Road has been just about impassable. The worst of the rain seems to be east of here and slightly over the ridge, down in James Canyon over by Iron Gate. But we've had plenty; I think we had more before the fourth than sometimes we get all year. Since the fourth, it's been more of a typical monsoon maybe. For example, today it's looking a lot like rain but not raining.

I don't pretend to hold it out as evidence that the whole world is going down in a climate-change microwave, but there's plenty enough evidence for that without me even having to provide any. Hundred thirty in California, fires all over the place - is this because we are hording the rain? Are we getting what rightfully belongs to someone else?

It's a ritual, I think, to poke around the ground hoping that some of the water is still close to the surface, taking its good old time getting back down to the water table. I myself will feel better if some of it makes it down to the water table. I feel like everything needs water, all the way down, even the things that live maybe ten or twenty feet below. They're all parched. They've been waiting for years.

Then, as to the problem of restoring the balance, that has been thrown way out of whack by everything from over-fracking to pulling enough water out of the aquifer to provide for vegas' fountains, all I can say is, let's get to it. I hardly know where to start, but I could start with myself, pulling a little less water out of the ground, and using it a little more wisely. I think people are not used to thinking this way, and may have some adjusting to do once we realize we have no choice.

Space Rocket

 I thought the news out of New Mexico the other day was stunning, international news, the biggest thing since the day they dropped the bomb on New Mexico. And yet you may not know what I mean right away, unless you read the title.

That's right - a private space rocket was launched, with people on it, and it went into space, and it came back, and they made it back ok. I find all this a little hard to believe. But apparently it launched from the site near Las Cruces. So now we have private expeditions into space from our own back yard, allegedly.

I was out in my yard with my weak hearing and new powerhouse hearing aids, and an incredible roar came and stayed in the air for a few minutes. I was a little surprised because I saw nothing, but it was so incredibly loud, I figured it had to be up there somewhere. Usually when a sound is that loud you expect the plane to be right overhead, but this time, there was nothing I could see. But based on that experience, I believe that it happened.

Now another thing happened that might actually be a coincidence. A fire started in the night or early morning, over in the scrubby mountains between Alamogordo and here. In Alamo, it looked dramatic, but then Alamo always looks dramatic, with those huge dry mountains right up against it. Well anyway, this area where the fire started is way back there, out West side road where almost no one ever goes without four-wheel drive, an extra tire pump and gasoline, you get the drill. Who could have been out there? 

My wife says, lightning did it, obviously. I say, maybe the space rocket did it. How could you launch a space rocket and not make a few sparks?

OK so here are my questions. First I believe it happened because I heard it. But was it really manned, and if so, where are the people? Second, can they assure us that it will not drop sparks, as some years a single fire like that one could wipe us all out; this whole season, January to July, we have an average of about a half inch per six months, and a single spark, poof, we could be gone. What if that space rocket did start that fire? Third, is that incredible noise just something we and the other creatures will just have to get used to after these launches become regular things? 

Just wondering.

Let's deal with the wild horses

 

I am disheartened by the news that someone shot the four wild horses in the middle of the village, but then someone (perhaps that same person?) went and shot two more out on a rural road.

I think most people in the community have profoundly mixed feelings about the horses, which technically are feral, not wild, ok, but which have an increasing presence in the mountains around us. My version of what has happened goes something like this: They have for many generations been allowed and encouraged on the Apache reservation, where they've flourished; now they are expanding in territory, being somewhat too successful out there; and, in coming toward Cloudcroft, they don't always even know that hanging around the village will cause problems.

The problems people point out are somewhat like those that elk and deer pose: cars hit them, with great damage and sometimes fatality; in town, they are not exactly friendly, so that people who walk up to them might get hurt or trampled. We are especially concerned because some of the best grass is in the city park and the schoolyard, and that of course is where they are hanging around.

Now I think some private landowners have ways of getting rid of them if they really don't like having them around. Making noise is one that comes to mind; it's not necessary to shoot them, is it? But the problem for the village is that nobody did anything. They were there for about a week before whoever it was came by and shot them.

Then, I guess he/she thought that if he got away with it, he could keep doing it.

I would like the village and the area to take a stand and say, please stop shooting the horses. Maybe if we have too many, we can invite people to come and domesticate them. Or maybe we can just shoo them off into an area of the forest where there's plenty of room. But shooting them, and then leaving them for someone else to pick up, seems heartless and cruel.

I think we need a community plan to deal with them. I say this vaguely, knowing I'm not the mayor, and won't be in charge, and can't even drive a fire truck. Nevertheless, someone should do something, don't you think? There are plenty of possible positive outcomes for this, that don't involve needless killing of innocent wild animals.

Pioneer Leveretts & the 1600-mile journey

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Part of the Leveretts in the New World series

OK I admit this is for my family, as it's about my great great great grandfather. A legend was always told in our family about a 1600-mile stagecoach journey from Maine to Illinois, and I finally found enough information about it to put it in a book. That journey was in 1834, so this book starts at the beginning of the 1800's and moves right up through the Civil War. It is third in a series. I am finding it extremely interesting that truth, sometimes, is way cooler than fiction, and, it's true. Enjoy!

Tall Corn State

My first novel
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ACX coming

There wasn't much crime among the Actualist poets or the vegetarian restaurant people of Iowa City in 1975, but there was crime in the town around it. This is a crime and coming-of-age novel about those communities at that time.

e pluribus haiku anthology: 3487 haiku

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This volume combines all the haiku from e pluribus haiku 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and the original, e pluribus haiku (2011). The 3487 refers to number of haiku, not kind, as they are all 5-7-5, given a somewhat unique style. This single volume will ultimately replace the others, as it contains everything that is in each of them, with an updated style.

Being Part of the VFD

The Sixteen Springs Volunteer Fire Department is very active. When things happen, they are there. We all have to stay alert during the fire season because we could lose so much so fast.

I joined the minute I got out here, but then the pandemic hit, and my efforts to do my part had to take a back seat to just getting four teenagers what they needed without endangering the family.

This post is basically an affirmation of my commitment to get it all going again. To really be a member (of any service) I should complete thirty hours or so of computer training; I'd gotten about two hours into it and just petered out. It may be that I'm the kind of person that can't do self-motivated, online training without someone watching over me, slapping my wrist when I fail. But I've gotten absorbed in the business of being a writer, and just haven't got that stuff out in a while.

We know that the department is necessary, because a few years back a fire snuck up on Mayhill from behind and ended up burning hundreds of acres up by our way - if we go west, or even south, we come to a "burn scar" where literally everything was just burned up. ten years later, and it's still trying to recover. this may be the natural way that things always were up here, where it's real dry, and spring is the windy season, and fires can start from just about anything, but for the purposes of protecting our homes and families, having trucks and water ready, and the people to manage them, is at the top of the list of survival tactics.

My point is, I'm in. I'll do what I can to help. I'll tell all the mountain people to join your VFD; I'll try to do it myself. A few hours by a computer is nothing, in the big picture.