First Cavalry Arrives Again

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Reality Warning: Philosophical material to follow
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As I watched their taillights disappear over the last visible far away stretch of our canyon road at dusk, I realized that I had never taken their photograph and I sighed heavily in regret. Now I could only hope that Virgil and Jen's return trip home was safe and uneventful. They had brought me desperately needed supplies without hesitation and even though I still have no means of paying them. This was their second trip into our far boonies. They had already come to the rescue within two days of Terry's passing, being there as both family and friends to quietly share in trying to make sense of this unfathomable turn of fate.

This post is for Connie, Virgil's mom. In her many caring and encouraging e-mails, and like so many of you, she has worried about my predicament alone out here and she lamented not being able to help, wondering what she might be able to offer in this very challenging time. Connie, you have helped in more ways than you could ever imagine; you have shared your son with me - so I thank you, deeply and from the heart.

Virgil came to us from the gas field. He came to us via their good neighbor policy but stayed to become our loyal friend throughout this and so many toughest of times. He did not abandon us when fate transferred him so far away from us either. So many people who cross your path in brilliant comet-like colors will fade away quickly when circumstance and convenience change; he did not. Nor did his equally sincere wife, Jenny. If you can count such people as friends on even one hand at the very end of your life, you have been extraordinarily blessed. I feel as though my two hands are full and am now running out of toes to tabulate such blessings. This is what keeps me going when unseen influences do their best to beat me down to my knees and shove my face into the dirt as they have tried so many times before. And as long as I can feel even a small amount of a goodness and love in mankind, I will keep fighting that good but often discouraging fight. I may retreat into the solitude of my aerie when the sum of events become too burdensome but I bring your caring with me as a balm for heart wounds which might otherwise prove fatal. We all bear the responsibility for mankind's future by caring for others in genuine and selfless ways ... don't drop the ball and then point a lamenting finger at the rest of the world. For all we know, there may be a scale of planetary proportions with a preset point waiting for the day when just one good soul dying away will be enough to set the cogs of our fate into reverse.

That was my big philosophical rant; thank you for indulging me. With any luck and blessing, I will be back to the utterly mundane shortly. In the meantime, get defiant and fight your own good fight; never let them get you down for long because rising from your knees to victory is the finest of life's wines that you will ever taste and remember. If I can do it, so can you - don't ever, EVER forget that.
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The Adirondacks of the High Desert

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Below: Previous seating experiments on the Rat's front porch. Sad at best.
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A) Having been through at least six of them, I can say that this configuration was by far our worst investment. Within a year, their fabric rips, their tubing and connectors break and you might incur bodily damage or possible sterilization depending on where and when they inevitably let loose. Land-fill cloggers. Don't even go there.

B) Unrestored chairs from the moving trailer. Don't wince - almost ALL the furniture in the Rat looked like that at one time. This Renaissance Revival survivor will look very different some day when I get a real shop back into my life. In the meantime, these long neglected relics might have a leg or a seat pan let loose at the most inconvenient moment, especially if you have that unforgivable habit of rocking back on their rear legs - ask any cowboy.

C) Yes, it's the ever versatile dairy crate again, ONLY called into play when more than one visitor showed up. But do note that it has a much better pattern for avoiding waffle-butt than the one shown in The Generation Wars.

D) Another desperate measure in porch seating. It might have surpassed the dairy crate but for one fatal flaw; notice that there is a molded-in hinge in the lid which is well offset to one side. It does not, therefore, match the God-given symmetry of the human buttocks. This will cause an never-ending shifting in hopes of finding a comfortable alignment. Somewhere in that process, you will find yourself radically off its safe center of gravity. At that point, if the container has been used to store the product well-used by felines, you will not only find yourself flat out on the porch but with a goodly amount of cat doodoo and litter covering you. So avoid this one if possible and resort back to option C if necessary. This one is safer being used as an end table.

Our visitors have all been incredibly good sports up to now but we didn't want to push the limits of their endurance so we recently hit the catalogs hard. Catalogs are another invaluable resource which you will rely upon heavily if you move to the middle of nowhere and I mean for far more than classic outhouse use. When a supply run involves half a day of commuting, you no longer have time to stop here or there to browse on the slight chance of finding the occasional non-staple items you desire.
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Tah-dah!!! . .In fear of calling the Southwest Decorum Squad down upon us, we compromised and ordered four chairs like the more mission-styled chair in the middle of the photo above and only two of the Adirondacks. They all showed up unassembled in flat cardboard cartons and the assembly was done easily without referring to the somewhat odd 'Engrish' on the single page instruction sheets.

What's nice about the center chair is that it comes without any finish so you can let it weather or apply stains, embarrassingly gaudy paints and stencils, whatever your heart's desire. We will eventually use them as outdoor dining chairs. While they look great, their one drawback is that, after sitting down, you realize that the arms are strangely low and therefore amazingly useless unless you happen to have the torso of a circus midget. The advantage of the low arms is that they will fit under a table much more easily and therefore save needed space when not in use. We found those on-line at Northern Tool.

It was the surprising comfort of the Adirondacks which blew us away. Before we moved here, I had the templates to make a fixed-position Adirondack chair which was famous for comfort back home. Even if those paper patterns had survived the move, the time and materials would have been more than these cost us; under $60 each on sale from Sportsman's Guide. These were equally well constructed but arrived with a clear finish. When I finished assembling the first one, I plunked myself down in it for a skeptical try out. I had sat in plenty of uncomfortable Adirondacks in the past but this one was immediately downright cozy and relaxing. If it hadn't been sitting out in the scorching noonday sun, I would have dozed off immediately.
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. But wait, there's more! Here is that chair folded down for storage. I was as equally skeptical about the promise of how compact it might be for winter storage but when I pushed back on the lower end of the back rest, the chair easily relaxed into what you see above. And it doesn't appear to be interested in collapsing when you are occupying it (perhaps, if you are behaving like a complete and talented idiot, it could be accomplished though). Now I only regret not having ordered four of these instead of two. Okay, so maybe they look more at home beside Schroon Lake ... but color us pleased and comfy on the Rat's front porch ... finally! .
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Home Cummins, Part 2

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Retrospect: Mid-September 2006
Continued from Part 1 (for logical reasons) . If you haven't already done so, please read Part 1 posted below or you will miss the flow of the story.
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There is a reason why I believe in unseen benefactors. While this could not be considered one of their most spectacular saves in my experiences so far, it stills deserves noting.
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When the front wheels broke through the berm as though it wasn't even there, we both closed our eyes, at least on a psychological level. The nanosecond functions of our analytical brains told us that the mass, inertia and lack of friction would make our plummet into the raging wash below a guaranteed result of physics. We were toast.

The front wheels slid completely over the embankment and then the truck simply stopped dead. It took a moment for either of us to acknowledge this strange stay of the inevitable, finally voiced by simultaneous gasps of relief. When both of us returned to normal damage control thinking, I volunteered to get out and apply reverse force to aid any traction the rear wheels might still have.

I stepped out in my 'go to town' shoes and immediately had my feet slip out from under me so that I was at a 45 degree angle to the road, held there only by the grace of a hand clutching the bed of the truck. It was obvious that I had no more traction than the truck did. Despite my new frustration and despair, Mark decided to give reverse a try after I slid myself and my mud-caked shoes back into the cab. How the truck managed to gain traction with the remaining two wheels and free itself on the first attempt still defies all logic but it did.

We made it to the intersection at the second nearest neighbor's house and were tempted to ask them for lodging for the night but remembered that we saw their parking lot full of visitors' cars when we first passed by. So ... we took the turn towards the bridge and what unknowns lay beyond.

There were blessings to be had in that the two washes which lay beyond the bridge had not collected enough rain to run yet. I suppose this could be called a blessing in that this allowed us to commence 'the goat path' run. To imagine this 'road', remember back to the Roadrunner cartoons and the precipitous paths carved into mesa walls where the coyote always met a semi head-on. No, those depicted super-highways in reality. This is a one lane dirt path with climbs, falls and turns so tight that you expect to see the truck's rear-end as you swing back sharply into the skirt of the mesa. The other option is a 30 foot fall into the creek below.

To make the drive more challenging, the rain run-off not only turned the clay into slime but brought down boulders to obstruct the path. There were occasions when I would have sworn that we would leave paint on those boulders as we squeezed by. In this two mile run, the terror of hoping for traction on the steep climbs and again for the steep descents into sharp turns had drained us of all the adrenaline that either of us possessed. Numb floating sensations in the limbs and shallow breathing had become normal now.

I heartily thanked our unseen friends as we finally dropped down into the canyon flats again. We both knew that only one more wash crossing and a few less harrowing rim rides lay between us and home-sweet-home. After a few more fish-tailing blasts through boggy spots in the road, we finally made it to the last wash. We stopped at the top of the approach and rolled down the windows to listen. What we heard sounded like wild applause at Carnegie Hall; the creek was running full and hard. We stepped out long enough to confirm that we were now stranded in place. Despite the seasoned advice that a couple of hours waiting would see the washes slow enough to cross, the creek did not die down that night and so we settled in to our predicament. The black hood of night descended and the temperatures dropped rapidly ... and the rains persisted, everywhere, it seemed.

Eventually we realized that neither of us had eaten that day in the rush to pick up this new truck. I hauled the meager bag of sale groceries into the front seat. "Tonight's menu consists of, uhm, this package of ham, this loaf of pumpernickel and ... these itty bitty pecan tarts!" The prospect of sand dry sandwiches prompted Mark to ask "Anything to drink, I hope?" "Yes! I also bought a case of beer! Mind you, they're 'shelfer' warm. That okay?" As though we had other options. And so we had our cab front supper and talked as though we were comfortably home in the Rat. The warm beer helped lighten the mood but also caused several exits for relief. Each time we did the dreaded potty run, we returned with another pound or two of clay on our already cemented shoes but grateful that we had not lost balance in the ooze and fallen down. The dealer's paper floor mats were soon stuck to our shoes permanently, impeding the comfort factor considerably.

It was around midnight when we abandoned all hope to still make the crossing before morning. The creek had shown no signs of calming at all and the rains kept coming down. We gathered our light jackets over us and pushed the seat backs as far down as possible. And I thought of Brou, the poor young pup who we had left outside since we would be back soon enough. I ached at the thought of him surviving his first night out alone in the company of rains and crashing thunder and, forbid the thought, the coyotes.

With such concerns on my mind and the plummeting temperatures, I would awake shivering and chattering from a cramped and fitful nap every few hours and nudge Mark to start up the truck for more heat. This was going to be a very long and torturous journey to morning, resting in this very place which the native peoples will not venture through after dark.

To be continued
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Humor of the day: It may seem odd to include humor in this post but you fellas will appreciate it given that Mark had to navigate the goat path with 'the help' of a passenger. (sent in by buddy Jim in upstate NY)
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A wife was making a breakfast of fried eggs when her husband burst into the kitchen.

"Careful"' he said, "CAREFUL! Put in some more butter! Oh my GOD! You're cooking too many at once. TOO MANY! Turn them! TURN THEM NOW! We need more butter. Oh my GOD! WHERE are we going to get MORE BUTTER? They're going to STICK! Careful . CAREFUL! I said be CAREFUL! You NEVER listen to me when you're cooking! Never! Turn them! Hurry up! Are you CRAZY? Have you LOST your mind? Don't forget to salt them. You know you always forget to salt them. Use the salt. USE THE SALT ! THE SALT!"

The wife stared at him incredulously. "What in the world is wrong with you? You think I don't know how to fry a couple of eggs?"

The husband calmly replied, "I just wanted to show you what it feels like when I'm driving."
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Home Cummins, Part 1

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Pre-Ramble: Current News
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The roads are still a mess out here, declared an emergency by some estimates. Mark dutifully made the supply run into town even though we were hardly in dire circumstance. The prospects of it deteriorating further made this small window a wise decision. He got out on the freeze but ran into the mud on the way back in. Still, it was great to get fresh supplies and pick up the mail in the process.

In one of the town newspapers, there was an article about volunteers making 4WD supply runs into the boonies, how some people were down to one quart of orange juice in the fridge and their animals already dying of starvation. Is it just me here or have people who have lived out here all their lives lost any common sense about how to be prepared for nature's expected twists in this harsh land? Has every one of us become so nannied that we need to rely on outside help to save us from our own responsibility to think and plan ahead? How prepared are you if your power goes out for almost 70 hours like Bruno's did recently? He had back up plans, do you? Can you keep warm, do you have enough stored food to survive a week while waiting to be bailed out? Please give it some thought.
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Above is one of the few vehicles that made it out here this week. Note the mud covering the headlights and windshield - they had obviously run through some good mud already. I took this photo merely seconds after both occupants stepped outside to relieve themselves well within view of the Rat. Why they couldn't have planned ahead and done so behind the berm of the new well site is an annoying mystery to me. Apparently planning ahead is a vanishing human trait.
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We awoke to another inch or two of snow this morning, a remarkably small accumulation since the storm had disabled our satellite connection last night.

I stepped outside and noticed that Mark's Ram looked great considering the road conditions. Then it occurred to me that this fine beast had endured unusually hard assignments from the get-go and that I was very grateful to have it here. That, in turn, has prompted me to journal the story of its arrival. It experienced a baptism of mud within hours of rolling off the dealer lot. That mid-September of 2006 was loaded with tales and trials, some still untold.

Retrospect: Mid-September 2006

After months of research, Mark found this most suitable truck up in Colorado. We piled into my Dakota and headed up there. Mark hung firmly to the agreed price despite the dealer trying to slip in profitable unannounced add-ons like the $127 piece of chromed plastic they called a bug shield. A quick $80+ profit times a couple of hundred trucks off the lot adds up but we weren't buying into it on principle alone. As they played the 'wait 'em out' game, thick thunder clouds formed and rain started to fall so we set off in a full blown thunderstorm. I will not forget that trip or that dealer for delaying our departure by three hours. Their cheesy profit ploy could have cost us our lives that day. Also, since they wanted to charge us high retail on a set of fully necessary BFG Mud Terrain tires with no credit on the factory installed tires, we still had one more stop to take care of that before heading back in. But without those tires, I probably wouldn't be here now to write this journal.

I followed Mark as we climbed back up the mountain on the steep roads, ever mindful of the sheer drops hidden by the blinding rains and that uncomfortable feeling of greasy pavement beneath the trucks. We raced on to the tire outlet, beating the storm back to New Mexico only temporarily. Now there was no time left to peruse the sale ads and pick up groceries but I was able to dash in and pick-up a few clearance items to salve my thwarted sale-lust while Mark picked up parcels.

The clouds caught up and let loose before we could even run back to the trucks. Mark called down to the nearest neighbor and was told that it was still all clear down there. We might have never attempted the trip back that day otherwise. By the time we began the 35 miles of dirt roads, the rain had already turned the clay into flowing gumbo and my old motorcycle sense threw me into high alert even though I was highly unlikely to hook up and fall down on four wheels. This acute sense of contact with the road and balance is not necessarily a plus in these conditions, at least as far as adrenaline output.

For the next two hours, we gingerly crawled up hills and hugged the inside of off-camber curves to allow for 'side slide' outwards. I didn't start getting antsy until we hit water running down the road at such a rate that Mark later noted that he was almost convinced that he had led us up a running wash in the blinding rains.

With my lower Dakota, the waters rushed beneath and against the body with a deafening roar and I could feel them draining away my connection with terra firma. It is here that our approach to driving departs radically. Mark was slowing down ahead while my urge was to stick a foot in it, fishtails or not, and just get it done. I pounded the dash with a free hand, yelling "Move it, MOVE it!!" like an old drill sergeant as the Dakota started to lose resolve and drift towards the ditches and sage.

Just when I thought I was going to play clam in the undertow, Mark reached the far side of the torrent and booted it. I was now lathered up and hot on his bumper all the way. I had a good twenty minutes to calm down before reaching our mailbox at the neighbor's place. She came out and, without thanks, grabbed the clearance bread I offered and announced that the washes were still not running. That was when I pointed out a very large tree limb that bobbed frantically as it passed by in their normally small wash which stands between us and our main wash crossing. Within another minute, we all witnessed a roiling tawny head of foam vanguarding the brown waters raging down the main wash. We heeded her insouciant command to head back a few miles, take the bridge there and use what we now call 'the goat path'. We hadn't had that pleasure yet. Meanwhile, I made a mental note of how, in her position, I would have treated what she clearly thought and often derisively voiced were a couple of clueless green horns in the neighborhood. I would have been concerned and asked them to stay. Then again, I did not have the poop-chute genes that we later heard have infamously run in that clan for generations. But you eventually learn and that is good.

So we left my Dakota there, unloaded the mail and my small bag of remaining sale groceries into the Ram and started back down the road. By now, the little daylight hinting through the storm was disappearing. While edging down a slick grade, three elk charged out in front of us to add to the already pounding blood rush of adrenalin. We had been rolling on tires now so thickly coated in clay that they no longer had treads to grip, not even ABS brakes would stop us now. The main wash had rushed ahead of us roaring bank to bank, 60 foot across. We had a good view of its fury from this ledge 30 feet above as we approached a sharp right angle in the cliff road. I felt an ice-watery pang when my stomach snapped up against my lungs as I sensed a complete and hopeless loss of traction. We both inhaled the seat covers with our buttocks as the Ram slid helplessly towards the cliff's edge. I vaguely remember saying "Oh, man, we're . . . ." as the truck's front wheels burst through the small grader berm at the edge of the cliff and the murderous waters below came into view front and center.
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To be continued
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Sunday Sundries

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"It's quiet out there ...." .........."Yeah, too quiet."
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Remember that much quoted old Western movie cliché? Well that's the state of the onion out here right now. The snow has been melting and running off. Our creek and the major wash have been running bank to bank at times. The roads are one big mud bog. The BLM has just circulated the 'if you can't drive and leave less than a 6" rut, don't do it' declaration which effectively silences the gas field for the time being. Yep, we are in full rutting season at the moment. It's been a couple of weeks since our last supply run to town and might be another couple before we're able to do it again. Our food supply is holding out well but beer and fuel might become an issue before then. So if I disappear, you'll know that the generator has finally run dry. I'm giving you that techno heads up now, just in case.

With the weather and road conditions, it really is quiet out here. The two new gas wells in progress have become ghost towns. We haven't heard or seen another vehicle in days. The howling winds have been the only source of noise here. Well, except for the fella below.
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I had been hoping for Moose to send down one of Alberta's famous Chinooks, the warm dry winds that pierce the bitter cold of their winters. Above is what I got instead. It was hidden by the mesa's edge but a brawny whup, whup, whupping had me first conjecturing that it was multiple helicopters. I was only able to capture a marginal photo after it loomed into sight well to the east of us. It was an impressive creature stubbornly defying gravity as it plodded along but not necessarily a handsome one. Both ends looked amusingly like cartoon creatures but it's rear end (on the right above) unfortunately reminded me of Barney the Dinosaur grinning down at me. Only that aspect left me wishing for SAMs. Otherwise, it was a very much appreciated air show to punctuate the silence.
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So Daisy here sums up the current mood at the Rat; seen here grinning and lying with her front paws crossed; "Hey, we can't dance so let's just hang out and goof around."
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Saturday night just insisted on some kind of classic comfort food so I dug a loaf of frozen bread dough out of the freezer. Unburdening the freezer remains a priority and good excuse. Found my coveted 16" pizza pan, primed it generously with olive oil and then worked the softened dough forever to spread it out to the edges and applied the pizza sauce. Then a layer of quartered large pepperoni and the inevitable extra herbs and spices. But I had an urge for something extra gooey and a taste for mushrooms so I got out a can of cream of mushroom soup, hand-whipped it into a lighter texture and carefully applied small dollops of it all over the sauce and pepperoni. Shamelessly applied over a pound of stray mozzarella (found in the freezer as well), a light sprinkling of Parmesan and then tamped it all down very gently to spread and incorporate the mushroom soup into the cheese. Then the final layer of more pepperoni, fresh mushrooms and some ancient frozen green pepper slices (those were 'OK' but obviously not as good as fresh ones).

It presented the answer to everything I had hoped to satisfy. Thick and creamy, rich enough that both of us were happy in leaving the second half for another night's treat. I love those meals that don't leave you looking for 'a little something else' to finish off the hunger and even better if they provide a second sitting on another night.
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So, Saturday morning, I'm looking out a Rat window, up at the mesa top and something registers as unusual. I saw what looked like a mound of snow on a small stump. But the stump just seemed out of place so I got out the field glasses. During one of our supper and social evenings, Slim had mentioned how you just get used to what looks normal and what looks just a little off when spotting game. He was right; the glasses revealed the white rump of a mule deer doe. I took out the new camera with the great 12X zoom lens and fired away. The absolutely worst feature of this Canon S3-IS is the view finder. Unlike my adored old SLR where what you see is what you get, you look into the view finder and see some very vague digital image. It's absolutely ghastly so you point in the general direction, cross your fingers, click and hope for the best.
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Fortunately, the auto focus is reasonably efficient and the views above are similar to what my field glasses had revealed. Remember that you can click on any of these images for a larger view but do so especially for these deer photos directly above.

These two does took their sweet time munching around the base of that pine tree. I'd love to find out just what food source they were so enthralled with; they were there for well over an hour. I have a feeling that these were part of the three doe group I had seen just the day before as they grazed down in our canyon bottom. We had discovered a well-worn trail which ascended the 300 foot face during one of our 'all critters of the Rat' outings last Fall. They could flit up the mesa face in five minutes and not even breathe hard. This is an awesome place to quietly exist and observe.
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The Rigs Up, Pal

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Less wordy, mo' piccy today.
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This dawn sky above greeted us this morning in a heartening way. Hopefully the next storm will hold off until Mark returns from today's big supply run after three weeks of waiting out the weather, construction and bad road conditions.
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Mark had reminded me to catch a photo of the rig from the first mesa bench. I brought the cats along since it was only going to be a short hike up there and back. They had been very miffed at their confinement during the heavy construction traffic. The dogs joined us and it soon became apparent that all parties were up to a much longer hike than I had planned. I should have known.
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We headed east along the first bench as usual and Dave found this amazing sandstone boulder. As old as the sandstone is, this one appears to be encasing even older rocks. These black rocks appealed to my imagination and reminded me of huge Anasazi pots. Dave is giving us his best vicious wildcat look.
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Beyond the second spring, the dogs found a new deer trail heading up to the second bench and it looked more knee friendly than our other trails so we all followed it upwards. The photo above shows Ming on the right, investigating these new rock formations and the high view.
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Here is the rig, a small town unto itself in the mud. While it hadn't rained in a few days, there were no winds or beaming sun to dry anything out.
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Oops! As I just said, the mud was still alive and well and helped this very large rig slide off into the ditch as he left the well site. All traffic came to a stop for a couple of hours until its companion rig with tire chains returned to drag him back to the main road. You can see the condition of the access road (the white patches are ruts full of standing water).

And to think that Mark is now still out there after dusk without chains after so many monsters like these have chain-gouged ruts in the road today nearly as deep as their tall axles.
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Here is the drilling rig right after the first heavy rainfall. The rainbow had an easy guess this time as to where the pot of gold lay. I missed the perfect shot due to camera problems AGAIN but the rainbow's base had been clearly resting at the foot of the rig just moments before.
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Next up: What it was like living with a drilling rig next door 24/7 and a report on if it really will leave at o:dark early tomorrow morning. We won't have to set any alarms for this event. Don't get too excited for us yet - we've heard that the next stage could be a wee bit more obnoxious.

Update: 7:00PM - Mark made it back home. It was warm enough that the mud did not freeze last night so he couldn't travel out "on the frost" this morning but he made it into town without too much misery. He noticed that our five mile road was by far the worst of any out here. He was not at all happy about the greatly deteriorated conditions he met this evening, despite gas field talk yesterday about grading the road today in preparation for the rig move. I guess they say what you hope to hear but do what they darned well please in the end. Unfortunately, it looks like another frost free night and it will be too dark for me to take photos of the rig getting stuck later. Oh, and those round-the-clock back-up beepers are starting to give me a serious migraine attitude.
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First Snow - We Got It All Right

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We had plenty of advanced warning all right. Red e-mailed and asked us what we thought of the snow storm warning - ??? Well, it hit. Prior to this morning, we had one odd afternoon several weeks ago where snowflakes fell lightly in a half-hearted manner and died before hitting the ground.

Last night brought the first of this year's real snow, followed by many low and long murmurs of rolling thunder. We are still not used to snow being chaperoned by thunder but it seems common place out here. I was already in bed and counted patiently to 50 last night before the first long growl of rolling thunder ceased.
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This morning, we awoke to the scene above, well not quite. We awoke to a pristine mantle of snow but by the time I got the camera out fifteen minutes later, Brou and Daisy had already embossed the landscape irrevocably once they remembered that this white stuff was delightful. Daisy was the least inclined to try it and this probably hearkened back to her previous life of solo confinement outside. When Mark tried to get her to join Brou, she politely declined, turned tail immediately and went back to her bed. After some coaxing, she finally discovered the joys of running free in the snow with Brou and cavorting in their usual summer-long manner. It feels wonderful to see her slowly shedding some of her over-shadowing memories.
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The above photo was taken around lunch time. The clouds had become sparse and a generous amount of clear blue sky was reigning above them but the clouds were moving in noticeably fast fashion - you didn't have to find a fixed point and wait patiently to discern which direction they were moving today.
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Barely ten minutes later, I snapped this photo. Any hint of the blue sky had disappeared. The far juts of mesas were rapidly disappearing and the snow began to fall lavishly once more. Nature was not done with her venting by any means. By the time it was all done, we had picked up about four inches of snow.
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About an hour later, I took this photo. Sporadic patches of blue skies had returned and we sensed that the heaviest assault had passed. The temperatures climbed a little, enough for the accumulated snow to start melting and running off the roof of the Rat in a frequent and steady "tap, tap, tap". Not a single vehicle passed by to disturb the wide, white band of snow which had been the road just yesterday. This whiteness without blemish and the silence was a heady elixir of pure peacefulness.

Tonight it's going to be a few tasty chicken club sandwiches on broiler-toasted French bread with real live French fries after my Thanksgiving folly. That's the thing about living out here without the never-ending onslaught of media hype; I thought that TG was still at least a week or more away and didn't put a turkey down on last week's shopping list. We certainly had stuffing out the wazoo though. If you are going to live this far out and have so few supply runs, you need to plan efficiently for them. Well, we are obviously still working on that aspect. Don't want to hear any smug snickering either - try a supply run only twice a month with absolutely NO little cheat stops at the local quick mart - I would dare you to try it in fact. It might tell you things about yourself that you didn't know or care to acknowledge.
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