A warm evening, after a string of soft, warm days. It is as though spring has made up her fickle mind. The moon is huge on the horizon, the earth swinging down to catch the light. Last month, the full moon fell on a blanket of new snow, and I wished for a hand to hold on a nighttime hike as bright as day. Already winter feels like a childhood story faintly recalled, a bite to the wind that brings back memories of I don't know what. Of course, this winter was hardly a winter at all, just a collection of cold nights and a scattering of storm. The oaks are not less brown, and today I drove past an empty field that last April was awash in flowers. The whole state was awash in flowers last spring; this year is barren.


I remember thinking again and again last year that it was a pity there were so few people living so that the bounty of the land could give them joy: what celebrations a year like that would have garnered in a land of gatherers! The saguaros were dripping with fruit, the pinyons bursting with nut, cottontails starting behind every bush. A pity there was no one to rejoice in the generosity of Big Mama.


But this year I am glad of it, for how many babies, concieved in celebration, would die of drought and famine now? And what does it say of us that our lives go on, untouched?