It’s a little before 11:00 p.m. as I start this. Right around freezing now, headed down to 15 degrees tonight. It took its time getting cold enough to snow at this altitude (about 7,200 ft.), but it’s certainly snowing now. Not a lot, I don’t think, although they say there might be half a foot by morning.
All day long, off and on, it rained. Gray sky and rain coming down, shades of days gone by. From about 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., we were in the sunshine during an extended break in the clouds, so I decided to go outside and look for something dramatic. This will give you an idea of what I found after a ten minute hike in the mud. In the shot below, the wind is blowing hard from the left, and the clouds are stacking up against the mountains the way they always do:
Snow on the mountains above 8,000 ft.
While I was hiking up to get that shot, I turned at one point to look behind me, and I saw something: in the upper third of a dead piñon tree a little taller than me, a quick black flash, like a jet-black flag snapping in the wind. Just for an instant, but it was there. I relaxed the focus of my eyes for a moment to take in a deeper view but found nothing. Focusing again on the sparse thin branches in the top of the tree, I thought they were in shadow. Not a solid shadow, but more like a filter, and just in that part of the tree — with nothing around to block the light, and all else in full sun. This made no sense.
It was one of those moments, more readily experienced in el Norte than anywhere else I’ve been, when I knew I was “seeing” something out of the ordinary. This time, however, I dropped my gaze and turned to resume my walk. I didn’t like that it was black. Several times out on that mesa, I’ve passed by a certain spot and been made to contemplate my death. Once I actually saw myself collapsed and dead on the ground, after which I had a little interview with the Man in Black, I kid you not, and I don’t mean Johnny Cash. So I take these things seriously.
The black flash and a gray shadow like a thing in hiding, best to leave it be.
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