Lifescapes

Winter in the mountains

Bill and the dogs, Toro and Molly, heading out for a morning walk in the snow. We're looking northwest, over the valley to the eastern slopes of the Sangres and the Pecos Wilderness. The clouds and the mountains are often tinged with pink and red in the morning, as the sun comes up over the ridge behind our house. These days (after a long history of sheep-raising here), the old Pendaries ranch in the valley is home to a herd of Black Angus cattle. The road to the main two-lane crosses the ranch, and we often drive through the herd. Carefully, since the cows are up close and personal.

Bill drove back to Texas earlier this week, with Toro. He reports unseasonably warm temps there (80 yesterday) and no rain for six weeks. Here, Molly and I are enjoying the cold weather and hoping for more snow. We take long walks along our mountain-side road, cook what we like, and work. Well, I work while Molly naps, which is her work. I'm writing all day (14,000 words into Cat's Claw), and reading, knitting, spindling, and watching DVDs in the evening--sheer bliss, such peace and quiet.

Reading for the book I'm working on, several police procedurals: Michael Connelly's Black Echo and City of Bones and two by T. Jefferson Parker: Cold Pursuit and Storm Runners. The book (which features Pecan Springs' police chief, Sheila Dawson) has more crime scene work in it than the cozier China Bayles' books, so I'm also reading Connie Fletcher's Crime Scene: Inside the World of the Real CSIs. And for background on the challenges of women in law enforcement administration: Breaking the Brass Ceiling: Women Police Chiefs and Their Paths to the Top, by Dorothy Moses Schulz. I thought it was hard to move into administration in the academic world, when I still worked there--but it's a lot more diffult, still, for women police. Hope I can capture some of those political issues in Sheila's story. So many of the novels I've read featuring women in law enforcement portray women cops as if they are just like male cops. Not so.

Just finished (last week): Limits to Growth (Meadows, Rander, and Meadows, the 2004 edition), a difficult book to read because it draws a stark but realistic picture of current and future resource challenges. (And we do need realism these days!) Also, Living Within Limits, by Garrett Hardin--written in the late 80s and a little dated, but helpful because it shows what ecologists were thinking in the decades before climate change, habitat change, and species extinctions became household words. Well, sort of, anyway.

 I've finished the holiday knitting, more or less (scarves, mittens, hats) and am spinning some merino I dyed last summer. No idea what this will turn into, but I love to spin--actually enjoy the spindle more than the little Babe wheel I have at home. Picture me with a sizeable stash of hand-spun and no clear idea of what to do with it. More scarves and hats, probably. For next Christmas.

Christmas for me will be quiet, a dinner with friends, carols on the radio (no TV here), and perhaps even snow. For you and all of us, it's my hope that wherever we are this holiday season, we will find peace, contentment, and beauty.

Reading note.  Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.--Terry Tempest Williams

 

Taos Trek

One of the traditions of our winter break in New Mexico is a visit from my brother John and his wife Jean, who live in Florida and are always glad to enjoy a brief stay in the mountains. This trip, we drove up to Taos, about 60 miles north of here, had a great lunch at Orlando's (off the regular tourist route, but a must-stop-and-eat for local folk), saw some of the local sights, and stopped along the road to capture the stunning mountain views. We didn't visit the Taos Pueblo on this trip, but if you're in the area, it's something you'll want to see--a glimpse into the amazingly rich history of one of the longest-occupied communities in North America. The fall harvest festival (called San Geronimo Day, Sept 30) is a wonderful time to visit the pueblo.

Our company has left, Bill will be heading back to Texas in another week, and I'm looking forward to some good time alone, to work on Cat's Claw, the 2012 book in the China Bayles series: a Sheila Dawson book. Sheila is the Pecan Springs police chief, so I spent some time putting together a PSPD organizational chart. I decided (with some reader input--thanks, Facebook friends!) to introduce the book with a chapter from China's usual first-person point of view, then move into Sheila's third-person for the rest of the book--or most of it, anyway. I've been wanting to do a spin-off "Sheila book" for a while. Now's the time, and Sheila and I have come up with what we think will be a strong story. The book is due 3/31, so it'll be my main writing project for the next several months. I'm eager to get started on it--always a good sign, don't you think?

Meanwhile, An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days (my journal of 2008, surely one of the more momentous years in the past decade) has earned two excellent reviews, one from the Richmond Times-Dispatch ("The only thing wrong with this book is its title. I'd call it An Extraordinary Year of Extraordinary Days. Even Albert's ordinary days seem extraordinary to me") and the other from Publishers Weekly ("This multi-faceted journal serves as an overview to the way we were"). Reviews of nonfiction journals and memoirs are very hard to come by--especially good reviews. Maybe it's a matter of luck, or of destiny: the book somehow lands on the desk of the right reviewer, who finds the time that week to read it, then writes something considered and authentic (as opposed to something canned). Well, luck or destiny or whatever, I'm grateful. And delighted.

Reading Note. You write a book and it's like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean. You don't know if it will ever reach any shores. And there, you see, sometimes it falls in the hands of the right person.--Isabelle Allende

Chilling Out

Bill and I are taking a winter break in New Mexico, refugees from the extended summer that held on until late November. The temperature hit the mid-80s the week before Thanksgiving, with a brief freeze, then more warm weather. Enough is enough. I was ready to chill out.

The drive out here, though, was on the hazardous side: clear until we passed Santa Rosa and took the turnoff north on Rt 84 up to Las Vegas. Snow, sleet, ice--and by that time, it was dark. Our usual 10-hour drive took over 12 hours. Not so bad for me: I was driving the 4-wheel. But Bill had the little Civic, which is skittish on slick roads. Two vehicles, because we had both dogs and the cat and because Bill is going back to Texas in a couple of weeks. The dogs and I are staying on here until early January.

"Here" is some 60 miles southeast of Taos, on a mountainside above the village of Rociada, near the southern end of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Our place (we call it Coyote Lodge, in honor of the coyotes we hear nearly every morning) overlooks a wide, grassy valley, home to a herd of Black Angus cattle. Before the ranch (Pendaries) became a cattle ranch, it was home to sheep, and before them, to elk and deer and mountain lions. Before the ranchers came, Spanish and Mexicans settled in these valleys, on the eastern rim of the mountains; before them, bands of Plains Indians, nomads. A fascinating history of changing times, changing peoples.

Looking forward to lots of quiet time here, reading, writing, walking. Reading: currently finishing Steven Solomon's Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization--a terrific book that's given me a whole new understanding of world history, from the point of view of a swiftly-depleting resource. Writing: working through the China Bayles novels, pulling out the pieces of Sheila Dawson's backstory. She's featured in the next book, Cat's Claw. This is my favorite part of the writing process--learning more about characters I thought I knew.

Reading note: I read the landscape to help me through, to know what’s come before me there, to find my footing in time. The land can speak us back to ourselves, a kind of autobiography. To see it as mere scenery is like looking at the closed cover of a book.—Deborah Tall