Back …

… from a week spent camping and reading and just being in the cool (cold!) Southern New Mexico mountains, with side trips to visit the white gypsum dunes of White Sands National Monument (which look much like drifted snow, and which you can, indeed, sled down), the volcanic formations at Valley of Fires Recreation Area (whose ropey lava made me miss Iceland) (and which actually had showers, welcome late in our trip), a small historical museum at Fort Stanton, and Smokey Bear Historical Park (skip this one unless you, umm, don’t have to go out of your way at all to see it).

But mostly spent reading amid green pines and firs and baby oak trees, sun turning their leaves green-gold morning and night, dry grasses that snapped too easily (hinting at a nasty fire season ahead), hummingbirds and ravens and jays and, our last morning, several mule deer yearlings with those big eyes and bigger ears of theirs.

Came home yesterday evening to desert air just barely on the cool side of warm. This morning, it’s more solidly on the warm side of warm (98/37). Time to store up the memory of cold mornings and cutting wind and to store it up for a summer of hunkering down (with side trips to KW West and Westercon) and focusing and getting some serious work done. (Thief Eyes revisions to come in just a few weeks, plus — before and after and probably in between, too — the Bones sequel — whooosh!)

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