I walked outside at dawn to be confronted with a world gone silvery-white. It looked like fog, an embracing shroud between us and all sight of the peaks . . . and then I remembered: There is a forest fire not far west of here, and the smoke first made its presence known to us late yesterday.
Now, however, early morning winds have driven some of it out, and the sky above is its more ordinary shade of blue — blue enough, in fact, that it has turned the water that has again filled the pond into an ambient turquoise. Below and above, water and sky have finally emerged into spring, and into the blue that is the hallmark of this place.
It turns out that we may need to make a sudden quick trip to Santa Fe, although we’re hoping to avoid it. Not because the trip itself is unpleasant, but merely because our week is already filled to overflowing with obligations and tasks here. but should we make the trip, we will have the singular pleasure, once again, of wending our way downward along that wedding of water and sky, the Rio Grande.
Part of the river has another name, too: the Quartzite, named for one of the minerals ubiquitous in the geologic formations of the area (and sharing the name of one of those ancient formations, too). The name summons images of shimmer and shine, of the gleam of metal and the glimmer of glass, and it is fitting for such a watershed, one that races and runs, sparkles and laughs year-round, catching the glow of the sunlight and the flash of minerals in the boulders that line its banks.
But the river, like our pond, is at its best when it captures the image of the sky: turquoise blue atrace with clouds, and like the sky, ever moving, ever changing, seemingly silent and yet never still.
Water is breath, and life, but water is also power: It carves canyons and cliffs from solid rock, worries at barriers and erodes obstructions, sculpting shorelines and making its own insistent path beneath the sky. And the sky gives it the wherewithal to do so, forming and reforming from sere blue to black rain and back again, simultaneously source and guide.
We can learn much from both, these twinned elemental spirits, these turquoise beings that anchor our world: They are breath and life, sustenance and progress, gift and guide . . . water and sky.
~ Aji
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