Days of miracles and wonder

Midweek this week the Red Pony and I took to the road to explore some of the public lands in the area. Though I’ve been to them all previously, none of them are one and done experiences in my mind. Call it a necessary time out from the discordant cacophony of democracy crashing and burning in an apocalyptic bonfire of the vanities endgame. One can marinate for only so long in the toxic sludge of disgust, fear and despair.

Heading north, after about an hour, the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge was my first stop, arriving just at sunrise as the late winter wetlands landscape was burnished with a brilliant luminosity.

The numinous is made tangible at this hour at this refuge where migratory snowbirds: geese, ducks, cranes, swans, pelicans and a myriad more gather to overwinter or pass through on annual migrations.

I sat a while on a bench on one of the boardwalks which have been developed at strategic points around the area, breathing in the duck-heaven damp, swampy primeval mud scent, surrounded by watery plops and contented squeaks, quacks and honks, watching as some of the the refuge residents upended themselves in front of me in a synchronized feeding dance.

In this exquisitely peaceful setting, devoid, at this the most magical liminal hour, of other humans, I thought about the meaning of the word refuge, the Hawaiian concept of pu’uhonua, (a place of refuge and safety) about animal and human migrations throughout history, and about the notion and value of public lands in this troubled county.

Wanting to get some background on US public lands and that “America’s best idea” quote, I deployed my usual lightweight librarian burrowing techniques, but kept coming up against blank spaces, page not found, or some version of this screenshot below when accessing official government websites which have been my trusted, go-to resource for information and data for 25 years. Perhaps not so much anymore.

Oh.

Did anyone tell the ducks they are in danger of being archived and not updated? Airbrushed out of the picture? Let this be a testament. They were there. I experienced them. This refuge. This pu’uhonua, this place of safety. I saw them. Heard them. They are real.

I was suddenly really really cold, sitting so still in this beautiful dawn wetland. Being called to testify so deeply, to stand for truth when it’s suddenly unfashionable, is chilling.

When I returned to the car, Red Pony’s temperature read 34 degrees (that’s 1 degree C). With the heater dialed up high, I turned east at San Antonio (New Mexico) onto Highway 380 to take my wondering wander to lay at the feet (feat?) of earth creation, volcano goddess Pele and the black pahoehoe of the Carrizozo lava flow landscape (next post) at the Valley of Fires.

Use it or lose it. The map is not the territory (attributed to Albert Korzybski in a 1931 lecture to the American Mathematical Society)

My junk attic brain decided this was the moment to put the 25 year old Paul Simon song on the soundtrack in my head.

The Boy in the Bubble - Paul Simon. 2000

A slow day and the sun was beating

On the soldiers by the side of the road

There was a bright light, a shattering of shop windows

The bomb in the baby carriage was wired to the radio

These are the days of miracle and wonder

This is the long distance call

The way the camera follows us in slo-mo

The way we look to us all

The way we look to a distant constellation

That's dying in a corner of the sky

These are the days of miracle and wonder

So don't cry, baby, don't cry

Don't cry

A dry wind swept across the desert

And it curled into the circle of birth

And the dead sand was falling on the children

The mothers and the fathers and the automatic earth

These are the days of miracle and wonder

This is the long distance call

The way the camera just follows us in slo-mo

The way we look to us all

The way we look to a distant constellation

That's dying in a corner of the sky

These are the days of miracle and wonder

So don't cry, baby, don't cry

Don't cry

It's a turn-around jump shot, it's everybody jump start

It's every generation throws a hero up the pop charts

Medicine is magical and magical is art

The boy in the bubble, the baby with the baboon heart

These are the days of lasers in the jungle

Lasers in the jungle somewhere

Staccato signals of constant information

A loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires, and baby

These are the days of miracle and wonder

This is the long distance call

The way the camera follows us in slo-mo

The way the camera just finds us all

The way we look, the way we look

These are the days of miracle and wonder

So don't cry, baby, don't cry

Don't cry, don't cry