Winter on the high desert; still an enchanting place, just a different set of conditions. The daylight is too short and the nights too cold. But every day is a little longer than yesterday and the sun rises and sets just a little farther north. The weather of the season brings along its own kind of beauty only seen under the cold skies. Spring is on the way, just a matter of time, but winter is to be enjoyed now.

  

 

 

   

 

 

    Some say time is like a river: an attempt to define and visualize a force so intangible, but so powerful. As good a comparison as any other. Always moving: sometimes fishing the slack water, sometimes running the whitewater where the shoreline is a slightly noticed blur. There are days of up-valley winds when the current needs help to move you downstream. No matter what you do, it keeps flowing to someplace you can’t yet see.

 

 

 

    Just before winter closed down the back-country and many of the roads, I visited a couple of places that seem to hold on to another time. A ways down the highway is Fence Lake: in another time it was a booming metropolis, relatively speaking. The town was an important center of ranches, farms, logging, and some mining. Very little remains, but it doesn’t seem unexpected: someone appears to have understood the force of time, at least a little bit.

  

 

 

     Under the warm autumnal sun in a far-away canyon I discovered, for me, a series of prehistoric structures. They were built into various topographical spots depending on their particular purpose. The evidence tells an amazing story, over time from back in time. At a natural ‘gate’ in the rimrock, reinforced stones still remain after 700 years or so.

  

 

 

    

 

  A new dog has come to live here on the ranch: Spook, a retired cattle dog from Arizona. He out-lived the old cowboy and so my son adopted him. The son is now serving his country and Spook is a resident of the Dog Lake region.  We still dance, at no particular time in no specified way. The dance has changed with the flow of time and we adapt. ‘Don’t push the river, it flows by itself’. There is always a reason to dance, and there is always time.

   

 

 

    Winter is not just a season, but a state of mind. Results vary from exhilaration to cabin-fever, sometimes in the same individual in the same day. Spring is out there, but the journey is first through winter. Enjoy the trek, and the destination will be achieved in good time, Grasshopper.

       

 

 

                     

  Enchanted diamonds,  for you.