5 minutes, go...

Where did the time go today? I saw the sunrise, perkier in the west than yesterday, the moon setting again, this time in a buoyant cranberry zizzle. The east clear but for a magenta feather boa looping over the Weimer hills. Cold again, 1 degree, but it didn't penetrate. So much going on all of a sudden that I became the swirl of it all, and got sucked into the hourglass with the rest of the sand grains. But moments stand out, still. I saw writing friends at Cid's, both making their livings at it, and talked about the road to teaching at UNM Taos. More client work developed and good connections were made. My face felt vibrant in the afternoon after a coffee and a shave, and the brace of sun and cool air. I bought a real pair of shades, rose colored lenses, as my eyes were being pulverized by the UV rays. They felt great on my face, snug to the nose and just a smidge off the eyebrows so I can make my array of expressions without resistance or discomfort. I drove to the Divis trailhead, taking advantage of the 20+ minutes of sunlight we've gained since the Solstice. Saw my friend, Matteo, at the bottom. We talked, briefly, about the Boston Celtics, and then went our separate ways. I busted it up the front and began to notice webs of paper thin ice stretched over rocks. Amazing formations, watery, cracked, furrowed, scrolled, the rock sitting underneath, yellow brown, like a specimen in a lab in a petrie dish. Strange, but happening all over the mountain. The heat of the sun warming the rocks from under the snow, and that heat melting the snow around each rock until the last layer, but that last layer made it late enough into the day when the sun fades and the temperature quickly drops below freezing. And, voila, a spider-webby, how-could-that-possibly-have-happened stretch of frozen liquid over a rock, clearly visible beneath. Like looking through slightly beveled glass. The phenomenon will be gone tomorrow, the rocks will have finished the job so they can bask fully in the splendor of the New Mexico sun.

I tried to take a picture, but my phone ran out of juice as I pushed the OK button. Rats, but memory works, too. On the way down, I saw that somebody had made a Zia (4 points, four directions), the New Mexico state symbol, in the snow and had also created wafers of hard snow and created a mini Stonehenge next to it.