Drive Taos to Santa Fe New Mexico. After the sharp peaks of Colorado, and the tall sharp Ponderosa pines, here we find the slightly rounder peaks of high desert, and the more rounded Juniper pines; everything dryer, more worn down; softer rocks? We find a cold spring by the Rio Grande while looking for a hot one. And as usual the clouds build up more cumulus in the afternoon.
Author Archives: jbstubley
St Louis Valley
Driving down through Gunnison, Colorado, then through a small valley with creek and red rock walls, over Buffalo Pass and eventually into the wide St Louis Valley—a rift valley, like the ones we have flown over recently in Africa. We stop at a roadside hot springs and sit in the almost boiling water, and look out at the desert with mountains behind. We pass through towns like Moffat and Crestone; drive by some piles of clear white sand at the foothills to the mountains. And all the while I can feel the opening-up-ness of the valley, the water, its springs. Amidst the industrial junk and flatness, there is a life—a watery life—ripped open and springing up still. We pass on to the Rio Grade Gorge, with its bridge, beyond the Taos Earthships. Down down into the valley we look, and see that water—more water—flowing out, and down, and on. Mexico on.
Crested Butte Circlings
Summertime Crested Butte, Colorado, some 22 years since I was last here working on a winter ski lift. And I have never seen it like this: snow only on the upper peaks, while down here near the base, and on the way to the old T-bar lift, all that lay beneath wintertime snow (and even springmelt) is now revealed, bright and shining green: long, tall grasses; aspens white truncked with round flickering and flitting green-to-gray leaves; dandelions large stemmed and leaved, rising to a big yellow flower or cosmic cluster of seed; yarrow stretching off along the ground in an infinite number of indentations like a rivery floodplain or liver system; small blue birds sitting on ropes courses; new trenches where they’re improving things along the line of lift. And then from slightly down the mountain I spy somethign dark against the pale blue of Sunday morning sky, gliding, rising, slowly circling, wider and wider, higher and higher—some kind of raptor—hawk maybe, brown mostly, circling up from out of the aspens, until here’s directly overhead, and the red of his tail is obvious. He circles around us standing on this one piece of open ground above the old T-bar and the nearby lift; round and round above us he circles, not flapping, merely gliding, not rising, just circling in the morning light; sun above, slightly to the north and east, rising ever higher over us, over the circling red tail, over that butted peak of the rocky mountain looking down. And we stand there in that circling moment, together, until we begin to move, or he does—circling off towards the west, and is gone.
Solstice Halos
Lyons, Colorado. Season of my cousin’s birthday; of northern summer solstice; of full moon approaching. We wake in the morning to a couple of cumulus and cirrus; about 30 degrees C; dry air; 5-6,000 feet; front range Rocky Mountains, with the flatlands of the prairies to the east. And up above, where the sun has risen over the ridge that reminds us of red dirt and green grass of post-rain Pilbara, the sun has slipped behind the clouds—and on their feathered edges they glow a halo of full-rainbow colours, all shimmering and pearly colour-spectrum light.
Everglades
Apparently an everglade is a slow-moving river—very slow, but always moving. Apparently the Florida everglades start up in Orlando and slowly, very slowly, make their way down here towards Miami, splitting off on the one side towards the Atlantic coast, and the other side towards the gulf of Mexico. We take a boat ride. The guide says the levels used to be lower, before they dammed and sculpted the flowing water; says that dear and boar used to walk these shores. He takes the big-fanned boat through watery canals, and then right over the top of the sword-like grasses. He points out an island—something he won’t be going over—and says that first-nation people once used to live on islands such as these. He asks how we think they dealt with mosquitos; I can only think of fire. He also mentions mud. We see turtles, and fish, and birds, and alligators waiting in ‘holes’. These everglades used to be seen as a kind of dead land; now they’re seen as an ecological asset. I have a picture of them as a kind of lungs for the breathing of this part of the east coast. All that water slowly moving; all that water flowing out.
Parakeets at Sunset
South Beach Miami, amongst the long sandy island now built-up, with art deco hotels and other layers. We’re sitting on a rooftop amongst the humidity and cooling wind, amongst the cumulus clouds and passing rain, amongst the sunset flaming golden over the city to the east. And even here, amongst these differences and similarities to all things West Australia, there are the parakeets shooting past, sunset screeching.
Massachusetts Connections
I take an afternoon walk north out of Cambridge in light rain. I see a bird on a fence—grey, black eyebrow, blue tail-feather part—bluejay? juvenile? I walk to a neighbourhood ballpark, under pines, and back. Later I have dinner outside with two old friends—they are tired from their program; we keep the wind at bay; there is no rain. And somewhere on this longer walk I feel a strong connection to all this Massachusetts.
Cambridge Cold Front
Boston, Massachusetts: stratus, maybe cumulo-stratus when I first walk outside, looking up. It’s humid, warm, high 20s, little to no wind on the so-called Charles River. I walk along the water’s edge, all brown and slowly going, towards the Longfellow Bridge. I make my way gradually, pondering the slow pondering of rivers. Then, eventually, reaching a kind of narrowing of the path by a road’s edge, I turn back and see a large, black-grey cumulonimbus rolling over Cambridge from the north west. The wind whips in first, the air is cooler, dust blows up, trees begin to lose leaves and small branches. The rain is light at first, then larger drops. People begin to scurry; then they start running. I head back to a café near the hotel, rain beginning to increase; I go in, order at the counter, then turn to see torrential rain outside; lightening and thunder; people scurrying, running. Someone walks undeterred, drenched, without shoes. I sit by the window and watch, eating, waiting it out for about half an hour; lighter drops eventually. I begin to walk back. Some people are very wet. A small finch—or more likely what they call a house sparrow—appears under a curbside tree, hopping on his two little stick legs.
River Charles
Today, still a little sick, I take to the street and sun and walk out of the MIT area up towards Harvard. I try to find a centre for environmental humanities. Someone there tells me he just met a bunch of West Australians last week—a foundation I won’t mention. He redirects me to an empty entrance of a building; I take a brochure and walk down to the river Charles, where some 22 years earlier—half a life ago—I stood on a pedestrian bridge one Saturday night in September and watched a bustling 2002 world go passing, walking, sailing by; a kind of mirroring of life—the middle of which would be 33. And I look down on the river again now, reflecting; the bridge and river empty; the sun is warm, sharper than I can handle with illness, and higher than it was 22 years ago. I begin to head back, but not before cutting through some bushes down to the water’s edge. I throw in a handful of dirt and (re)introduce myself. I remember. It remembers. We remember.
Turtle Island
We walk the island at Hudson Crossing, upstate New York, with old friends and their family. At one point I go down to the river, causing me to fall back a bit from the group. And suddenly I’m struck by the love of the first people of this place, and the way they held something down here—a kind of double. I go on as I slowly catch everyone up, and come across, at the river’s edge, a turtle statue. Then on the bridge we are together again, and I look down and see, in the river below, an actual turtle…on the edge of this island—on this Turtle Island.
John Stubley 