falling waters

water music
No, I'm not on the west coast of northern Mexico, or even southern California, but I did drive toward the Ski Valley early this morning after the farmer's market and the Rio Pueblo is dramatic and turbulent with snowmelt from the mountains. Through the years my visits to the spring river have turned into a personal rite. The sound, piney smells, sheer exuberance of water set free, the much cooler crisp air. Once we took a basket of bread, cheese, grapes and wine and settled down to the mesmerizing noise of the river, so great that we couldn't hear each others' words. In summers past (when the river is calmer) I brought my young granddaughter there when she visited from the east - her neon pink Big Bird backpack loaded with gingerbread bear cookies that she always insisted had to be baked the moment we got home from the airport and she'd unpacked her stuffed animals (once she brought a suitcase full of 55 Beany Babies with her). I miss her and those days, but will see her in about a week and we'll add to the memory bank. And someday I'll take baby Dante to the river and we'll eat cookies together. The weather is perfect today and I wouldn't mind if it never got any warmer than it is in those woods. Woods that looked summer-hazy even as icey water tumbled over their roots.

Water that originates from dark and mysterious deep places where the sun rarely shines and eventually ends up meeting the Rio Grande and flowing down down down until it reaches the Gulf of Mexico. It really is amazing. People all along the way for hundreds (thousands?) of miles, diverting some of it (even into Texas) and irrigating their fields.

Aspens have finally unfurled small shimmery leaves. Growing at higher elevations where it's colder, they take longer to leaf out than other trees. But today patches of lime green are showing up on mountainsides like fake carpeting. In late September and early October they will turn salmon orange. But that's a long way off and I don't want to think about it. Right now the river banks are lush with saplings.

The farmers market yielded lettuces, bread, eggs, and what I wait for - nasturtium petals for our salad! Forget practical. I just want to eat flowers.

aspen leaves whispering
secrets we can't hear as
ice cold river water tumbles past
reflecting every sky along the way
in waters we thirst for