Where did I go today? Zero Road East up Pajarito Mountain, where else!! Don't know what it is about that road and that mountain which makes me start thinking philosophically but I started thinking about how just a week ago, I was moaning about the high heat - 90 degrees inside the house! The only relief was to spray myself with water, again and again. Then, lately the monsoon graced us with an appearance. Dark clouds formed, rain fell, thunder rumbled. The spring flowers are long gone and summer flowers are senescing. I now believe that summer will NOT last forever and cooler temperatures WILL come. But, and here's where the philopsophizing begins: I don't appreciate summer, or anything, enough while it's here and the cause is cosmic. Each minute is 60 seconds. Each hour is 3,600 seconds, etc., etc. Think how fast a second is. It feels as though my life has flown by and I was largely "sleeping" during most of it.
OK, now for reality: I picked up a 8" diameter ball of discarded, plastic caution tape and carried it down the mountain, depositing it in the wastebasket in the ski hill office. I think it had been left there by recent construction activity on the skinny tower with the more than 20 guy wires. The tape closed off the ski hill jeep road just uphill from the tower. When the tape wasn't needed anymore, someone broke it off the road but left it wrapped around shrubs and trees at the side of the road to lay there for eternity so I hauled it away.
Further reality: At the back of the mountain, just before the snow-making pond, I looked to the southeast and could see smoke from a small fire in the distance. It could have been on Bandelier National Monument land. We had a lot of rain, thunder and lightning last night so it was probably a lightning caused fire. I called the Los Alamos Police Department non-emergency number just to make sure it had been reported and it had been.
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| Looking toward Pipeline Road - so green! |
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| Tschicoma Mountain and Caballo Peak on the way up Zero Road East. Note blue skies and no storm clouds. |
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| Little cloud dots (low down between the big clouds) flying overhead. |
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| Tschicoma Mountain and Caballo Peak on the way down. Cloud cover has increased but no rain fell on my watch on the mountain. |
