WHERE I LIVE -- Part One

[Note: This experimental segmented FARR SITE is in two chunks to facilitate downloading. The following essay has nothing to do with computers, either, except that it was created on two magical Macintoshes and takes advantage of the miracle of digitally manipulated imagery. -- JHF]

This is one helluva strange place, I must say.

It's as dry as the proverbial bone this year, yet there's water where you'd least expect it -- like over your head! Since moving here I've learned to recognize rain by sight and smell, if not by actually feeling it on my face.

They even have a name for the local variety of precipitation: "walking rain," they call it. That's where the clouds and storms sweep across the sky trailing long slanting columns of rain that "walk" across the mountains, wetting each peak in turn. Very impressive, but unless you're up where the action is, you'll never get wet. (You might get a few hailstones on your noggin, though.)

The technical name for this phenomenon is virga, a rain that evaporates before it reaches the ground. Take a look at the picture below. That's rain, believe it or not, at least to someone at 11,000-12,000 feet. Unfortunately, we live at 8,000 feet! That's why the house wears a bright green collar all around its perimeter (in the shade of the eaves, you understand), but everywhere else the grass is brown and crunchy. Most of the time the only way to know that it's rained at all is to note the spots on the flagstones, assuming you're quick enough to look before they disappear.

No, I've seen enough rain from the side to grow a forest of redwoods! I even know what it looks like from underneath (kind of a bumpy, grayish-looking mass). And I know what it smells like. . . People who live in wet climates only think they know what rain smells like, but out here where the humidity hovers around 11 or 12 percent, evaporating rain has an acrid, almost chemical smell, kind of like a nearby gasoline or solvent spill. When I was a kid I used to see my Saturday matinee cowboy heros go staggering across the desert, facing certain death, until their horses smelled water and everyone was saved. But friends, I'm here to tell you that you don't need a horse! Anyone who couldn't smell water all by himself under those conditions would use a dead skunk for a pillow and not mind a bit. The smell is that strong, believe me.

There's nothing like that going on today, however. It's about 75 degrees Fahrenheit under a mostly clear blue sky.

I'm sitting outside in the shade under the porch as I write this, iBook in my lap. Any minute now I'll have to go find my moccasins, though, because the flagstones are literally freezing my bare feet! The stones in the sun are too hot to walk on and the shaded ones are too cold. Very bizarre! A little while ago I finished 90 minutes worth of garden work in the blazing sun and never sweated a drop. Oh, it's dry, all right. It's dry, hot, and cold, all at the same time. This is pretty weird, but I kinda like it -- and there are benefits.

For instance, the effect of sunlight on dirty hiking socks is amazing. After a couple of hours they actually smell clean, I swear. Before we moved out West, I never knew you could wear any garment more than once. Here all you have to do is keep yourself bathed semi-regularly and your clothes will take care of themselves. It's a bleedin' miracle, I tell you! Back in Maryland they could just as well be having another one of those "three T-shirt" days.

A few minutes ago, as I was pondering these climatological marvels, my wife stepped outside to say that a coyote had just ambled past the window (see below), and did I know where the cat was?! (Yow!) The last I'd seen, he'd been sleeping in the shade a few feet from where she saw the coyote. Having heard no awful sudden death noises (a cat would not go quietly), I assumed he was all right. Still, I set the iBook down, got up, and walked over to the fence. There was the coyote, all right, trotting along peaceably on his way toward the creek for a nice cold drink. He wasn't carrying his dinner with him, so there wasn't any crisis -- but that's how pets disappear around here! In any event, the cat had apparently moved to the opposite side of the house before our visitor waltzed through. I found the little bastard staring down into a gopher hole, blissfully unaware of how close he had come to being history. He greeted me by rolling in the dirt, the moron! (WHY do they do that?? Geez.)

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.

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January 08, 2009