VOLCANO MONSOON

(Rats, was I out of coffee?)

Can't ignore a dry mouth out here in the desert, I said to myself as I reached for the cold, nearly-empty cup to finish it off. The huge fly who'd been taking a bath in the bottom had other ideas, of course. "BZZZTT! BZZZZTT!" In a few milliseconds he'd ricocheted around inside, tickled my nose, and escaped. Wecome to New Mexico, I thought.

The perils of an outdoor office notwithstanding, sitting outside with the iBook was actually a helluva fine thing, probably too fine. I don't know about you, but when I'm outside in a natural setting, I just have to watch what's going on. It would have been easier to do iBook work in front of my favorite TV show, if I still had one. So this time I watched the clouds.

Those clouds! The other night I'd watched a figure so powerful it made me want to hide. The moonlit clouds had formed the outline of a mile-high spirit that seemed to be toying with me. I was standing outside behind our house, with nothing between me and the Carson National Forest but a porous wall of brush and a gloom of pine trees. Anything could come walking out of those woods, I suddenly realized. The quiet space beyond the moonlit patio throbbed darkly with unknown potential. The figure in the clouds was looking right at me, and I turned to see if anything had slipped between me and the house. Good: no bears, no skunks, no surprises. I retreated a few steps back onto the patio to cover my rear, just in case. The moon emerged and moved into place to form the eye of a giant beaver petroglyph. "I get it already," I muttered under my breath, hoping I did. . .

These afternoon clouds were more anonymous but much more grand. An enormous line of thundershowers stretched from horizon to horizon like a blue-gray mountain range that slowly drifted in my direction, while smaller, lower darkish clouds moved up from the south and piled up against the rest. I saw it rain on a volcano. Now this was something, I thought: the crazy emigrant was still bleeding money, getting sunburned, and wondering where his friends were, but here he was, barely recovered from the celestial shamanry of a few nights ago, watching it rain on a freaking volcano.

What's more, there was yesterday, with its unexpected zap and synchronicity. Thinking about that required something stronger than coffee anyway, so I walked back inside for a couple shots of distilled agave juice. Yesterday, still reverberating in my consciousness, had a lot to do with why I'd spent the last two hours watching and photographing the sky outside instead of writing this column!

Oh man, yesterday. . .

I'm not telling you where we went, except to say it's rather isolated and wasn't in New Mexico, although on the other hand, you might say it is (think topography and not state lines). We went because someone had told us it was "pretty," although that's not exactly what I experienced. Along the way we passed through an honest little town where there's a college with a music lab full of Macs and synthesizers, so I'm told. We parked easily on the main street by a gift shop where I picked up a couple of intriguing paperback books about the region.

A short walk away was a wonderful newsstand and bookstore. The computer section had plenty of Mac magazines too. We had lunch across the street at the best cofee shop and café I've seen in years. Not only was I able to order a delicious cheeseburger, but the thing came with a big square patty in between two thick slices of fabulous fresh, soft, homemade bread. (I think I may have to go there again.)

And then we drove. The road was straight and took us into one of the most awesome places I have ever been. I felt a strange combination of peace and excitement looking at the big scary mountains on all sides. We drove through a tiny little town in the foothills then turned around. I stopped at an S-bend in the middle of nowhere to take a series of pictures, and on the way back we passed an odd structure on the west side of the highway. (All I could make out was a dome underneath a huge deck and a sign that read "UFO Watch Tower." Oookayy. . .) We had a fine drive home and the rest would be history, except that later that night, I gobbled up half the first paperback:

[Gasp!] UFOs, cattle mutilations, underground bases, ant people, mystery lights, black helicopters, dimensional portals, mothership clouds -- yow! Also, sacred native sites, fabulous treasures, giant thunderbirds, and prairie dragons! (Huh?) These last intrigued me the most. When I read the description of shimmering, undulating, three to four foot-long creatures moving in packs just off the ground, I longed to bag a couple with my CoolPix 950. Reading further, I found that a recent prairie dragon sighting had allegedly occurred at the same S-bend where I had stopped that afternoon! NOW how was I supposed to go to sleep?

Meanwhile, back on the porch, the rain never came. There was a brief, hard, big-drop splatter that dried up completely ten minutes later, but that was all. I watched the wall of thundershowers slide off gradually to to the East, and it eventually stopped raining on the volcano. A while later a huge shaft of sunlight appeared far out across the valley, boring down through the clouds. At least I think it was sunlight, and I think they were clouds. . .

Below is a picture of my work area. Does anything jump out at you? (Hah!)

John H. Farr edits the news for Applelinks.com and invites your comments. The Farr Site Archives will take you to the past two years' worth of columns. John also writes his WebFaust column for MacAddict.com and a monthly op-ed page column called "El Emigrante" for Horse Fly in Taos, NM. He's also got some JPEG-laden weirdness going on at a special project, Zoozone News.

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