Wintering

Good morning friends!

Greetings from the Gallup Sag! In the last week, I've traveled east past the Zuni Uplift to the Sangre to Christo Mountains and South along the Rio Grande River and Rio Grande Rift to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, near Socorro, New Mexico. Water from the Rio Grande is diverted here to form a wetlands suitable for migratory birds. Thousands of snow geese and sandhill cranes winter at the Bosque and hundreds (thousands?) of birders in down jackets carrying macro lenses covered in camo print come to watch the birds. Despite a fever the night before, I woke at 5:30 the morning I was in Socorro to watch the snow geese Fly Out from their nighttime rest spot. When the sun's first light hit the lake, all two thousand geese on the lake flew up and over the people watching from the shore. The noise of wings flapping was incredible. In the afternoon, I saw mountain bluebirds, coots, mallards, pintails, shovelers, Harris' Hawks, Cooper hawks, Red tailed Hawks, two bald eagles, one loggerhead shrike, one pheasant, a few great blue herons, and ravens. (The call of the west, Angie!) I hiked up an arroyo to the top of a mesa and found sandstone, breccia, and volcanic rocks. I have to admit that I was even more excited by the rocks than by the birds.

When I woke up after my second night in Socorro, I found that it had snowed all night and that every road west (homeward) was closed. I drove North back to Albuquerque and resigned myself to sleeping at my grandparents house. My friends and I had a violent snowball fight and made a snowman on what looked like sidewalk, but turned out to be someone's front yard. It was the largest recorded snow ever in Albuquerque. It snowed 11-20 inches throughout the city in 24 hours, breaking the past record of 10 inches in 24 hours. The road home opened up that evening, and we got home safely. The sun set as we drove from Albuqerque to Gallup. Snow covered all the mesas and hogbacks and flat land for as far as we could see and electric pink and orange light flooded out from behind the clouds, so that even the snow looked pink. It was the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen.

Yours, Elspeth