Wayfaring Traveler: Green Pastures

Clouds black and roiling as I went to bed, with gusts of rain and the added frisson of a tornado watch and thunder booming down the valley.

This focused the mind. I checked location of beeswax candles and matches, filled water jugs as the temperature suddenly dropped and down comforter went back on the bed.

At 3:30am, all quiet, I slipped outside to check on things, and as Granddaddy used to say, "saw a thang"... Moon setting deep orange to the west, lightning pulsing over the peaks and stars blazing out.

How many times have I blundered into wonders just by poking nose out the door!

Yesterday, setting out to do errands on a day with time-flex, a yard sale sign caught my eye. The route grew convoluted, many turns toward the mountains, and the road rose to meet me alright, dust and gravel.

Creatively lost, I did find the sale, of lovely things way over-priced, still imagining a bull market in everything, and counting on arrival of the "greater fool."

Which in the larger scheme of cycles and surprises, may be us.

The Rockies run north-south, I would aim wherever and find my way back. Spectacular cumulus clouds were massing up behind the peaks, for once, sans chemtrails, just startling deep blue.

I followed lanes through agricultural land and first cutting hay looks ready and very fine. Rural and away from the traveled roads, a land of old barns and adobe homes and acequias for irrigation flowing down from the mountain springs.

Last year many parts of the US had no cutting of hay, just crushing drought, farmland repossessed and scrawny livestock sold.