After the caprice of yesterday’s weather, marked by wave after wave of small furies of snow and sleet, today has dawned impossibly clear and cold. It’s one of those mornings when the mercury falls, rather than rises, in the moments when the sun comes up, a day when warmth is as scarce as the food supply for wild creatures. A few moments ago, the pups came barreling off the deck like buckshot, chasing off a wayward coyote hungry enough to have ventured up underneath the northeast window of the house.
It says something about the conditions of the wild earth here that, in the middle of the first good winter we’ve had in years, a coyote is still sufficiently starved to be willing to come right up to the house. I don’t think we’ll be letting the chickens out of their barn today.
The forecast for this week is daunting, to say the least: more snow, carried on winds projected to gust at speeds in excess of 60 miles per hour. Extreme winter weather is nothing new here, but the winds have long been more properly the province of spring, a March-through-May phenomenon.
Now, all bets are off.
We were given a stark demonstration of how weather has changed along with the climate here last week, on our two forays down the Gorge to head to Santa Fe. Last Thursday morning, in the aftermath of the previous day’s small but fierce blizzard, the canyon country was blanketed with a thin rime of wind-driven snow. wings captured its essence, displayed here in yesterday’s image, when we stopped on our way down.
Returning some four hours later, the same spot appeared much different: no snow in evidence, the sapphire waters dulled to a metallic blue-gray in the afternoon light. These, too, are the lands of Red Willow — and red willow — and it has always been the case that they are lands of extremes changeability, but the pace now is stark, even for this place.
This land has always had a love of winter, but now, it seems both deeper and more urgent, as though the earth itself here is acutely aware that time is running out.
In this place, winter is the mother of the watershed, birthing life anew each spring after a season’s gestation in the snows. Our snowpack has been in decline for years now, reaching precipitous lows in the last half-decade and near-bottoming out last year. There was, in virtual terms, no snow, no rain, and no runoff, either. What little water trickled down from the reservoir was rerouted to the village itself to ensure that the people would have water for basics; irrigation was nonexistent, and so, too, were crops.
Further down, in fully colonized areas such as the Gorge, the river ran low and slow, the fields and vineyards (yes, there are several colonial vineyards in the region, and a number of them line the banks of this particular stretch of the Rio Grande) dry, dusty, and arid all year round. Last week, even with the afternoon’s melt, snow remained on the few flat expanses at the base of steep rocky slopes, thence to freeze solid again overnight. But while the river itself had picked up speed, roiling downstream and boiling over boulders tumbled into its watery center, its level was still frighteningly low for this time of the season.
February is very much midwinter here, but it is also that pivotal moment when spring begins to be more than a memory, when you become convinced that you can see it, feel it, just slightly too distant still to grasp it. And by now, the waters should be running high.
In the near-week since Wings captured these images, the mercury has risen far too high for the season: near fifty on Sunday, and likely again today. There’s likely to be precious little snow left in the Gorge now, even on the flats. The peaks here certainly have no more than a dusting, even after yesterday’s repeated storms; down here on the ground, the only snow that remains is that which froze hard in place after the last big snowfall near a month ago. In a few hours, the exposed ground will be mud.
So for now, we pin our hopes and prayers to the forecast, to the welcoming of the next storm, a day off yet. The winds, should they materialize, will be their own special burden, but they are what will bring the snow, and on that ground alone we cannot afford to turn them away. Our year, and with our lives, depend upon it.
Here at Red Willow, the Pueblo is closed — has been for two weeks now, and will remain so through most of March. the work remains, both inside and outside the village walls. And even as we look forward to warmer winds, we share with the earth itself a love of winter . . . and a prayer that it delivers on its promise for some weeks yet.
~ Aji
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