Twisted

Saturday December 11 2010

Gray. Gloomy. Dreary. Heavy skies. The Owyhee mountains are gone. Can't see the next ridge - it is consumed by the low sky, fog, mist, drizzle.


Too cold to rain, too warm to snow. Sleet. Spitting, stinging drops that prick the eyeballs and numb the cheeks.


Horses are soggy. They sport the Wet Chicken look, though as long as they're eating, they don't seem to mind.


Birds are waterlogged. The Ravens sit silent, holed up in a leaf-less cottonwood tree, feathers fluffed up to insulate against the wet and cold, waiting for a better day to raise a ruckus.

The desert scrub is sodden. Dripping, drooping, dark brown, dull gold.


Water, soon to be ice, fills coyote tracks. The tracks are deep, heavy. Mud cakes to feet, weighing them down.


Predator and prey have advantages, disadvantages. One slip in the slick mud and the prey loses. One miscalculated slip and the predator loses. She loses the energy it took to go after a meal, and she goes without a meal another night. Not many places in the desert sleet to get dry.

I take to the hills, vanish into the murk. Sleet stabbing my face. Mud caking my shoes, water soaking my clothes, minute icicles dripping from my hair, making me laden as the saturated desert.

I love it.

I must be twisted.