Like many locations around the country, seasons on the calendar have little meaning here in the high desert of NM. The arrival and passing of the seasons are noted and named by conditions affecting the people and not a particular day when the sun is in a particular place relative to the Earth. Equinox and solstice are tremendously important and powerful days, but first-hand conditions affect us more on a day to day level. Snows of winter give way to the warm Spring days, but not on the equinox. The furnace-like heat, brown skies, and ‘no-see-ums’ of June are now replaced by clean and humid (relatively) air, afternoon storms, and flies and mosquitoes. No place on the calendar is this seasonal change noted, but it is very real; we all know it and discuss the new season at the cafe, post office and farmers’ market. 

Monsoon storms have had their impact on me and my life here on the ranch. Small trenches had to be cut to divert run-off away from the east door, soil had to be replaced and bolstered with rock where the rains had washed it away at the base of my feng-shui fence where the skulls live. On the topo maps of the area there is a seasonal, intermittent stream; the most recent series of storms proved that and showed me unconditionally exactly where it flows.  My fire circle sat on the very edge of the stream but my pistol range in an earthen barrow-pit is now full of water, quite deep on the western side. The BIA road to the ranch washed in three places in a mile or so when I drove home through a storm a few days ago. I should not have been on it, but I wanted to get home before it got worse and completely impassable. I saw the old Navajo man up on the mesa between rains, looking far away to the SW or maybe someplace else. He moved slowly, the soft tones of his clothes blending with the misty landscape. He saw me below on the road and raised his hand in distant greeting: a good neighbor.  

Many times during the past week or so I have been considering Henry David Thoreau and his ways. Christmas time of 2002 my son Dylan and I were at my sister’s house in MA. My dad had planned a family Christmas there but passed on just a couple of weeks before; our little family came together as ‘the old sailor’ would have wanted. Our drive to Walden became a pilgrimage that I was unaware of until sometime later. We walked the path to the site of Henry David’s cabin and waded in the cove just below. The water was ice-cold that time of year, so only momentarily were we in the water before replacing still warm socks and boots. Since then, I have felt more of a bond with Henry David even though he died 92 years to the day before my birth. Lately I have been thumbing through the copy of “Walden” I purchased at the visitor center/museum there at Walden Pond.

Walking through the words of Henry David, a few of his ideas stuck to me more than others. My darling companion is a gentle soul, trying to walk through life barefoot, wearing boots only when necessary. Her idea is much like Mr. Thoreau: “The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.”  This problem vexes her a great deal; she wishes this were a more tender world. Along that same path is another of Henry David’s considerations: “Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates his fate.” Whatever we think of ourselves, even though held deeply private, must be honest and true or we live a lie. One of Mr. Thoreau’s thoughts that sticks to me like a burr picked up along the path especially since I moved to the ranch has pushed me to look very carefully at me. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”  I am not Henry David Thoreau and I don’t live in the woods but his words and my visit to Walden have impacted me in ways that are only now becoming blatantly obvious. In the essay “Walking”, Mr. Thoreau speaks of not just walking but ’sauntering’, much more than a mere walk, more beautiful and free. Seems to be time for Louie and me to saunter out over the mesa; a slow dance in the warm morning sun and sage flavored breeze:  thank-you, Henry