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I posted some views of monsoon sky over at my other blog, realty.krall.org. Here are a few that aren’t on that blog, more are in the Arizona Redux Album, which can be viewed full-screen. There’s a slideshow button at the top of the right column, and then a control in the slideshow popup to go full screen. The first two are sunrises….
So the monsoon is here. It arrives in this area over the Mexican border, roiling up over the mountains to the south. With the added humidity and lowered temperatures arrive previously covert lifeforms. One evening driving home I watched a surreal-but-real black spider the size of a housecat scuttling across route 80. I could almost hear its spiny legs clacking as it headed west and into the brush. There are tiny and delicate manifestations, like this airplane-shaped visitor to my patio door…
On a typical walk after a rain, one might find some ants moving a precious mesquite seedpod, much beloved by all animals for their sweetness, a good way to make friends with a goat, for example…
Or a rare box turtle, resting under his sou’wester…
Or a sleeping reptile with bad judgment about sleeping locations…
All the above were from a single walk a few days ago. Then a persistent rain came along. The sky stayed dark and it felt like an autumn day in the Northwest The newly-dominant animals are invisible, but deafening. Ululating amphibians have taken over the soundscape, drowning out bawling bovines and mischievous coyotes. Dry areas have become ponds overnight and not small ones…
Many of them sound like the high-pitched frogs common to summers in the midwest. But other, larger ones sound like an agonised muppet, perhaps Beaker with heartburn. Multiply by thousands and you get the idea. And what looks to me like wild squash is beginning to bear fruit…
So cross off that idea of AZ being perpetually dry and sere and boring and monotonously sunny, for anon we shall croak again. According to I Write Like, into which I pasted the previous entry… 
I write like
Arthur Conan Doyle I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing! Pure poppycock of course. So a few Sundays ago Maggie The Wonder Dog and I went a bit further than our usual walk. There was this line going up the ridge to the west of the house that I was curious about. An older dog that sometimes tags along had slept through our departure, so we had a bit more destinational latitude, and it was yet another sunny and splendid morning, promising lots of heat later. What’s wondrous about Maggie? We live in open range country, which means cattle of various descriptions are running around loose on the roads back there, and some of them are largish. Maggie, an English Shepherd, could care less about any avoirdupoidal disparity. She just runs right at whatever it is, and after the bovine shock wears off at this appearance of this speedy approaching missile, the target takes off in a sprightly and undignified manner, often uttering a protest. Maggie does not discriminate, calves get the same treatment. Thus the roads are all clear by the time I get there, like magic. Sometimes it goes a bit overboard, and cows are cleared away that aren’t even near the road, but it’s all in the name of keeping in practice. Here we are in a cow-free space… So it turned out that what looked smooth from far away wasn’t so when viewed from a more intimate perspective. Nonetheless we headed on up to savor the view, up being the operative word. Our eventual destination as seen from below… We got around what is left of the upper curve, looked back, and realised we’d gained some altitude, which our legs already knew… The view on west from near the top… We walked back east to get to the edge of the rocks…that’s the road that winds over from the house down there…the house is near the base of that small hill not quite at the upper left… We took a rest… Gazed at the view… And then headed back down in the rising heat… More photos in the Arizona Redux Album |
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