Anasazi Pots

On Sunday we were out in Recapture Creek looking for Anasazi potsherds.  EDO found a nicely painted one (above).  After a while, I took a walk up the creek for two or three miles and started climbing around on some small sandstone walls.  When I dropped down to start back, I noticed a nearly intact corrugated pot under a rock (below).  It may have been sitting there for 800 to 1,000 years.  (Still is sitting there, in fact, because obviously I didn't touch it.)

Light Christmas; White Christmas

Like she did last year, VSO decorated The Homestead with luminara for Christmas Eve.  By the evening of Christmas, though, we had quite a different decoration:  A foot of snow.  It is one of the larger snowfalls we've had since we bought the place.  Arriving home from Grandma's house last night, we were confronted with a snow-plow berm over which I didn't feel like driving the car.  Quite a bit of shoveling was required to make space for ourselves.

Last Day of Autumn

 

It was one of the drearier days of the year.  The sky was gray from horizon to horizon.  It was spitting a little light snow.  The effect on this loaf of rock was to frost the top and streak the side.  White and black.

Where the Coyote Walks

Sometimes when you're out looking around, especially when there is snow, you'll start to notice that you're walking where the coyote walks.  I know this sounds vaguely aboriginal, but it's not.  It's just that, at least for me, I prefer walking where it is easy.  Evidently, he does too.  (The only difference is that the coyote doesn't mind low branches.  The coyote's preferred easy walking space is within two or three feet of the ground, mine is twice that.)

Cloudscape

It was a good day for a short walk.  Not in the woods like on Tuesday.  But out in the basin and range country.  Pinyon and juniper country.  After three or four miles of easy going, I got back to the car for the drive to town.  Through the Parowan Valley.  The late afternoon sky was billowing with clouds.  Towering clouds, virga draped below.  I stopped at the Little Salt Lake for a picture.

Too Close for Comfort

There is one thing that makes me feel better.  The tree was forked.  It had a double top.  It had a "V" shaped junction about 12 or 14 feet up.  This is a well known weakness in the stem of a tree.  It makes me feel better because I hope that we were not at risk from every tree in the forest.

It was dusk.  We were out in Center Creek looking for a stupid Christmas tree.  It was windy.  Not horrible, but steady 20s and 30s probably.  I was down in the wash near the truck.  VSO was up on the bank.  In the brush.  Picking her way along.  Looking for the perfect four-foot white fir.  A gust came.  A bad one.  Maybe 60.  I don't know.  70.  I was watching her.  I was thinking that it was hard-hat weather.  The people that work for me.  If they are in the woods when it is windy they'd danged well better be wearing their hard hats.  But this was a little family outing.  Getting a tree for Grandma and Grandpa.  I heard a terrific tearing ripping crash.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw two stems.  Falling.  I yelled at VSO.  Harshly.  Get outta the woods.  I may even have used the F-word.  It wouldn't have made any difference.  There was no way she could have outrun it.  Outrun them.  They fell to the side.  Obliquely.  She skittered down the bank.  The wind dropped.  We stood there.  Whew.  She said.  I've never seen wind-throw like that.  Yeah.  Neither have I.  We probably shouldn't be out here.

Last Try

As my reader may know, I like literary fiction.  In fact, along with oil painting, I consider it to be the finest of the fine arts.  While I try to keep an open mind, I have a strong bias towards the art as practiced in 20th century America.  I mean, Hemingway, O'Connor, Fitzgerald?  Sinclair Lewis?  Walker Percy?  Harper Lee?  Wallace Stegner?  C'mon.  It may be the best line-up in history.  The only problem I have is with William Faulkner.  Clearly influenced by James Joyce, I find him inaccessible.  Where Hemingway is lean and mean, Faulkner is meandering and verbose.  So why is this a problem?  Well, because Faulkner sits atop the pantheon.  A two time winner of the Pulitzer, he is widely considered to be the best of the best.  (Hemingway won twice, but the 1941 award was stripped when For Whom the Bell Tolls was found to be offensive.)

There are, of course, plenty of good things in life for which a taste must be acquired.  Probably Faulkner is one of them.  I'm going to give it one more try.  For the month of December, I'm removing everything from my reading list until I finish The Sound and the Fury and Light in August.  If I can't get the hang of it by then, I'll quit.  I mean, I've got Elmer Gantry sitting here unopened, so it is not like I'll be bereft without Faulkner.  But, I need to give it one last try.

Getting to Work

You know how some days you feel kind of lazy and just want to do something fun?  Well, I was having one of those days, just sort of goofing around on the rock bands above Bowery Creek, but I decided that I needed to buckle down and take the opportunity to do some learning.  For the past couple of weeks I've really been irritated by my inability to distinguish, on the fly, between the Utah (Juniperus osteosperma) and the Rocky Mountain (J. scopulorum) juniper.  As I'm sure my reader knows, sometimes this kind of thing just takes a little concentration.  So, I made myself work on it for a couple of hours.  I'm not confident I can do it from the freeway, but I got to be pretty good at species ID while walking briskly.  As you can see (from the image below), once you take a close look, the leaves turn out to be quite easy to distinguish.