Spring prepares to!
Well, our New Mexico weather is following its usual pattern. As seems to be the case most places, the seasons change quite definitely on or about the first of the month - not three weeks later, as per the bureaucratic (or fascist) calendar. And you can start sensing the onslaught of the seasonal change - not just by temperature and length of days, but the color and quality of light, the feel of the air, the smells - a week or two before.
Sure enough it’s begun to feel springlike here of late. The temperature’s trended up. Unfortunately that’s also meant we’ve started with the winds that makes Spring my second-favorite season as opposed to first. Yesterday, despite the fact it got above 60, the winds were savage, making it unpleasant to venture outside during the day. (Also, despite the warmth down here in the valley, the mountains were dusted with snow clear to the bases; a good deal remains today.)
Today I went to meet with a friend to walk by the Rio Grande Nature Center. When I woke up it was cloudy. When I left the house it looked as if it was clearing up and definitely wouldn’t rain. When I met my friend at the RGNC parking lot ten minutes it was solidly clouded over and seemed to threaten imminent rain. Ten minutes later when we left the pond it was clear overhead and getting bright.
So it remained for most of what would turn into a 9.31 mile walk. I’ve intended for a time to work up to 10,000 steps a day, as measured by my trusty Omron HJ-112 pedometer
So today I took 16,457. No, seriously. And that’s just counting between the time I parked my car and the time I climbed (gratefully, I’ll add) back in.
Anyway, the dominating theme, especially for the walk’s beginning, was cranes. I could hear them before I even parked, that vast, piercing burble they emit in large flocks.
And large flocks they were. I’m pretty sure I saw over a thousand individuals flying over in several humongous waves by the time I’d walked the block and a half to the RGNC lot.
Except for the time in the early ’90s when I went with my then-lady Raina and her son Sean to the Crane Festival at the Bosque del Apache down south I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve felt excited when I’ve seen four or five hundred total cranes go overhead in the space of a two-hour walk.
I wouldn’t care to estimate how many flew over during the walk today. They were loud enough to be distracting for as long as we walked near the river. We could still hear them at the Los Poblanos Open Space (the Vineyard) a mile or so from the river. Just amazing.
So it seems their Spring migration has begun for true.
As for me … oy. I had fun - it was just a beautiful day. But I definitely made a hog of myself with the walking. When I got home Emma smelled me as assiduously as she ever has. And of course I felt like Hitler for going for a walk without her, especially since it’s been days since we went.
After I got her loved on and dispatched outside I tottered into the bathroom singing, “Ibuprofen, here I come!” Literally.