Vortex

 

 

  

Dust Devils and Physics...

''There was no room for dust devils in the laws of physics, at least in the rigid form in which they were usually taught. There is a kind of unspoken collusion going on in mainstream science education: you get your competent but bored, insecure and hence stodgy teacher talking to an audience divided between engineering students, who going to be responsible for making bridges that won't fall down or airplanes that won't suddenly plunge vertically into the ground at six hundred miles an hour, and who by definition get sweaty palms and vindictive attitudes when their teacher suddenly veers off track and begins raving about wild and completely nonintuitive phenomena; and physics students, who derive much of their self-esteem from knowing that they are smarter and morally purer than the engineering students, and who by definition don't want to hear about anything that makes no fucking sense. This collusion results in the professor saying: (something along the lines of) dust is heavier than air, therefore it falls until it hits ground. That's all there is to know about dust. The engineers love it because they like their issues dead and crucified like butterflies under glass. The physicists love it because they want to think they understand everything. No one asks difficult questions. And outside the windows, the dust devils continue to gambol across the campus.''

Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

I was born in the land of vortices. The Midwest knows how powerful they can be and how devastating. We usually saw the evidence of their passing and only caught sight of one on rare occasions. Tornadoes devastated large parts of St. Louis, my home town, in the late 1920s, the 1950s and most notably in the 1890s with great loss of life. I was a boy scout in the 1960s and we helped clean up debris from a tornado that touched down a couple miles from my house. The damage was very random-- a house would be gone but the birdbath was left untouched. Asphalt shingles from the roof were imbedded three feet into the ground by the force of the wind. I lived there for sixty-five years but only saw one tornado, about three miles away.

When I moved to New Mexico I learned that tornadoes were rare here in the desert and mountains but show up occasionally -- pretty much of a fluke. My neighbor could remember one way back in the mid-1990s. They are more common on the east side of the state.

This is the land of  dust devils. In a short time I've seen dozens of impressive dust devils travelling across the desert. I don't understand the process or physics of dust devils. They develop on sunny and clear days and aren't storm related. I assume they are created by the wind and maybe differences of surface temperatures. They seem to be short lived but can extend a thousand feet into the sky. They will suck up dozens of tumbleweeds and carry them up into the sky for hundreds of yards and then drop them on peoples' houses or into their yards. They seem playful and the couple times I've been in one or very close to one they seem almost invisible. They're best viewed from a distance. We are already on the downhill side of winter and heading toward the windy season so I imagine I'll be seeing a bunch in the coming months. I'll try to get some pictures.

N'Orleans, 1970

New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin. -- Mark Twain

I often think of New Orleans…or N'Orleans or N’Awlins…depending on my remembrances, perspective and perhaps alcohol content. Back in 2013 New Orleans hosted the Super Bowl…it was Super Bowl XLVII, which I think is the 47^th Super Bowl.  I guess we can throw cursive writing out of the schools but have to keep Roman numerals so we can count Super Bowls.

Anyway, I was paying attention to the media hype running up to the Super Bowl game in New Orleans. CBS was broadcasting the game and milking it for all it was worth...this is like the "Black Friday" of television. Jackson Square has become the venue for several broadcasts and there are countless features about the many charms of N’Orleans.

N'Orleans is one of my favorite cities. What surprises me is the large number of grown-up people, seemingly adults and experienced, that are TV personalities who said they had never been to New Orleans and are there for the first time. Good grief people....where have you been?

For people my age (aging boomers) going to New Orleans was almost a rite of passage. You know...get a driver's license, HS diploma, draft card, etc., etc., The Road Trip to New Orleans, etc. We won't go into some of those "etc."s...every generation has a few and mine had a lot. I'm sorry that gas prices have put spontaneous road trips out of reach for most of America's younger generations. They seem to have lost something important. It is something of a bonding experience.

I've been to N’Orleans probably six or seven times and never get tired of it. Some places you can visit once and declare you have seen it and never need to go back. Modern cities are like that for me. Cities designed or developed after the invention of the automobile have always bored me to tears. Kansas City is an automobile town while St. Louis is a pedestrian city (ooops -- full disclosure...I was born in St. Louis and still say I'm "from" there after living elsewhere 38 years). San Francisco is experienced as a pedestrian city while Los Angeles is more of an automobile place. To my mind, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, and Miami missed out on something. There is a stage of development where a city gains a soul and some places jump over that and are just places. But I digress...I'll save that tirade for another time and I'm sure some people will disagree.

I first went to New Orleans on a spontaneous Labor Day weekend trip back in 1970. There were three of us and we were all about twenty-two. I still use that trip as a yard stick on how tired I can be before I collapse. If I get that tired I need to pull over and get off the road. We drove out of St. Louis on Friday night, stopping briefly in Ste. Genevieve to pick up our third traveler, and then headed south through darkness and the Mississippi delta, which starts just a few miles south of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. We hit daylight somewhere near Vicksburg and finally made it to New Orleans by mid afternoon. We checked in to the Monteleone Hotel in the French Quarter and crashed in the beds for about three hours before hitting Bourbon Street around six or seven...still early.  Okay – now this was the Monteleone Hotel before it became "The Hotel Monteleone" that it is today. Our room was sparse and cheap...painted that light institutional green if I remember right. There were drain pipes running up one wall for something. We only slept there so we didn't care...and we could walk all over the French Quarter, which we did.

Labor Day weekend isn't Mardi Gras but it was still very busy and crowded. It was the end of summer and a lot of people were having one last fling. We had a great time. The movie "Easy Rider" had been all the rage the year before so we had that as sort of a mental travel guide. We had Beignets at the old Morning Call by the city market, cruised through the local cemetery, hung out at Jackson Square, saw Preservation Hall, Pat O'Brien's, the Old Absinthe House, plus a half dozen dives. (No parental guidance!!) We didn’t have much cash…but we managed. “Young Intellectuals” can make a beer last a while.

They say New Orleans changes people and in one way it changed me. The place is known for its cuisine. We were too poor (and grubby) to sample anything in a "real" restaurant but we managed to find a few spots back in the alleys or off on a side street where we could find some good food. I was a fairly picky eater up to that time but I learned to enjoy food and realized the fun of trying different things. I never ate a real salad until New Orleans. There were so many different kinds of seafood - a shrimp is not just a shrimp. I think I met my first oyster on that trip. I couldn't identify some of the food but it was good and enjoyable.

We were road-crazy and gas was cheap so we left New Orleans and went to Pensacola and camped out on the beach. We wanted some time in the ocean...or the Gulf…any salt water would do just fine. It wasn't too long before the sand fleas made us regret leaving New Orleans. We managed to get some sleep and headed back home the next morning. That drive home was surreal -- that is the memory I have of being tired. We got home safely and actually made it to work on Tuesday. I suspect our productivity was off a little.

Other trips to New Orleans have been less frantic. There is still a lot I haven't seen so I'll go back again. The food is worth the trip.

(Modified from the original posted on The Red Room in February 2013)

Watercolor Desert

I awoke to rain this morning and it has been raining all day. This has been a steady drizzle coming from a seamless gray sky. My usual landmarks; the Sandia Mountains and the Jemez Mountains those other mountains and mesas farther away, are invisible in the opaque mist. It is a little disorienting. The world seems closed in. The birds have all taken refuge somewhere…wherever birds go.  The only sounds are the dull white-noise of the drizzling rain and the staccato of the water falling off the roof through the canales…those boxy channels that drain water off of flat roofs in the desert southwest.  I have two large rain barrels that produce a low drumming sound…I can tell that they are full to capacity. They say we might have more intense storms this afternoon.

This is our monsoon season, the only wet and cloudy season we have. We have been in serious drought the last few years but this year, thanks to El Nino, we are making up for it. I don’t know how our rainy season will affect the long-term drought but we are closing in on the record for rainy years.  This is my first full experience with the monsoon season. I moved here a year ago and only saw a little of it -- mostly the spectacular lightning storms that put on a big show but didn’t offer up much rain. This year it has been more rain than lightning. Albuquerque, some fifteen miles south of where I live, had a recent urban flash flood that stranded cars and prompted heroic rescues of stranded drivers and pedestrians.  I heard that Phoenix had a similar situation. My only crisis is trying to walk out to the road to retrieve my mail. My road is only partially paved…what actual pavement it once had is mostly a memory.  There is a slight depression that collects about six inches of water and turns my mailbox into an island.  I pull on my rubber boots and galumph out to the mailbox and try not to slip on the wet mud.  Usually the mail isn’t worth collecting and certainly not worth taking a bath.

The one thing that I wish I could convey is how the desert smells in the rain. I am surrounded by sage, chamisa and saltbush that grow wild. In my front walled courtyard I have a small honeysuckle thicket and Pyracantha and Russian Sage along with desert willow and Mexican Bird of Paradise and trumpet vine. Everything puts out its small contribution to the rainy desert smells. There is a Pinyon pine just over the wall that makes a bigger contribution.   Only the Russian Sage and honeysuckle and trumpet vine are showing blooms. Everything else is bloomed out but the plants still have a scent in the rain. There is no wind today so it all just hangs in the air. It is all very subtle and very pleasant.

 

“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd...“

“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…“   My apologies…I’m no Walt Whitman. He was writing about the death of Abraham Lincoln almost 150 years ago. One hundred fifty years is a long time but some of those lilacs or roses or daffodils are still out there long after the dooryard fell into decay. The folks who lived behind the door and planted the roses were laid to rest many years ago…generations ago. They were pioneers. They moved into a new land and tried to put down roots. Some survived and prospered…or at least made a go of it. Others tried and failed.


If you are a rambler out in the world you sometimes come across what remains of an old homestead. Maybe there will be a stone foundation. Maybe there will only be telltale corner stone blocks. The wood is gone. It might have fallen into decay or carried away by fire or storms or by people who needed an extra couple of of boards because that new baby or grandma needed a room.  Maybe there is a chimney. Often the garden remains.


I am fascinated by these old places. I once stumbled upon a relic of an old homestead totally overgrown in the Missouri woods.  What caught my eye was the large patch of daffodils blooming out where they don’t belong.  On further inspection there was an ancient scrubby lilac budding out nearby. The daffodils had gone back to nature and spread well beyond their original allotted space. The old Lilac was struggling in the shade but this was spring and it was doing its best. Most of it was dead but it had good roots. It was obediently standing guard where it was planted.  There was a rough stone foundation nearby.  A few yards away there was a small pile of logs and boards and rusted parts of a wagon wheel. The wagon was inside the barn when it collapsed. I always wonder what the story was. Maybe it’s a simple tale of boom and bust. People pick up and move to better places. But why leave the wagon in the barn?  Maybe it was disease…like the Spanish Flu or cholera or something else. I wonder how long ago the place was deserted. The nails were square…hand made. That puts it back a long way.  Maybe someone lived here during the Civil War era. Maybe he didn’t come home and she moved away. It is an unknown story.




I’ve hiked a few trails in the Missouri Ozarks and come across other lone chimneys standing out in the forest. Sometimes there are rose bushes overgrown into large thickets nearby. I wonder about the farm wife who took the trouble to plant the roses. Did she bring them with her? My mom would have done that. Whenever she moved she would take cuttings and have the same roses at her new place. It brought a sense of continuity.  Some of those old fireplaces are roughly made but others are made of cut stone and are nicely constructed. Somewhere there was a stone cutter and a stone mason close by.




In Big Bend National Park there is a ruined house sitting in a slope over the Rio Grande River. This was the home of a cotton farmer who chopped out a living in the heat and sand, blessed by the river water. This family had one of the southern-most homes in the country. Mexico literally loomed over them from the cliffs across the river.  They made a living there for a while but eventually they moved away. lt was a long way to market.  Only the ruined walls and some broken glass shards remain.





I’ve seen some others out here in the desert where I live now. Some of these are old tumble down adobe structures. Here they are not overgrown…they just melt away. There are ruins of buildings made of stone. I’m not talking about the Pueblo ruins that are scattered across the southwest. They have their own stories and mysteries. Sometimes you will find something, maybe an old shepherd’s shelter or an abandoned farmstead. I recall seeing stagecoach stations sitting roofless and with gaping windows and doors. Somebody made a life out of those places.



Sometimes you might find something you don’t understand.  Some of those people of past generations left a message behind for someone to find. Maybe we can figure it out, like this one: a religious sign left by a Spanish shepherd.









The Indian stone markings are harder to fathom. The ancient Pueblo people kept Macaws that they obtained through trade with people in Mexico. Sometimes you will see an engraved image of an odd looking bird. Other images are not so easily identifiable.





 
On my most recent ramble, out among the volcanoes just west of Albuquerque, I came across an unusual man-made assembly of stones. These were purposefully collected and laid out in a certain way. It looked like a grave, except it was too small, only about thirty inches long. Maybe it was a grave for a small child or infant. I didn’t disturb it – I didn’t want to know if that was what it was. But it seemed more like a marker for something else: An attempt to mark the spot for some reason. This place is so remote that people don’t often come this way and I was way off the usual trail. This is part of Petroglyph National Monument, a place where local Indians left hundreds of engraved drawings on the volcanic blocks of basalt. There is a long tradition of leaving messages at this place. The stone marker was not recently made; these stones have been here for a long while, maybe centuries. I took a couple pictures and sent them to the local National Park office that has jurisdiction over the volcanoes. They responded that they were unaware of it or what it could be and would have a resource person go out and investigate. I haven’t heard back. I’m still wondering and maybe they won’t have an answer. I’m really hoping it’s not a child’s grave.