Ah, the smell of skunk in the morning, the first harbinger of pre-spring. Of course, this year was the first in the twenty-six I’ve lived here that the skunks seemed to stay awake all winter, except for that really cold snap in December. This morning’s smell was not that horrible, overwhelming odor emanating from a squashed black and white mass in the middle of the road, but a softer, warning smell, a smell I associate with the short warm spell we often get in the first weeks of February.
Some friends and I were talking about symbols the other day, and how they are woven into the fabric of our consciousness at a very young age. I was born and raised in southern New Mexico, surrounded by Navajo art, and the endless desert. My father and sisters were artists, so our house abounded with half-finished paintings featuring thunder clouds and saguaro cactus. Wild burros still roamed the desert, their ancestors having wandered away from the Conquistadors hundreds of years before. I had collections of arrow heads and black and white pottery shards, found when I walked home from school or played ‘war’ with the neighborhood kids in the vacant lots surrounding our neighborhood.
For me, a roadrunner will always mean speed and wily survival; lightening will always be power and magic; an appaloosa horse strength and independence; and the Zia sun . . .well you’ll probably have to ask me about that in person. Raised in an Air Force town, I still tear up at the sound of the Star Spangled Banner, and the sight of the American flag, and I wept openly when the traveling Viet Nam memorial came to Montrose.
The desert held its own lessons. As children, my sisters and I would earn a little pin money (as my mother called it) by gathering the ripe red prickly pears from the top of the cactus. No matter how careful I was to try and keep my gloves on I always ended up with fingers full of prickers. More often than not, I couldn’t resist the sweet fruit, and despite my efforts at removing all the thorns, my lips and tongue would burn and ache, full of the tiny torments. The lesson in delayed gratification was not an easy one, but it stayed with me.
When I came to Montrose the mesas and cottonwoods felt familiar; I’d been surrounded by them as a child. There was much to learn however, from the name of the bird that flew up and scared me senseless during my morning runs, to the fact that driving through a bog in the adobes is a very, very bad idea. Elk were a delightful surprise, as were the then common sheep and cattle drives. I saw prickly pears on the hillsides, and the families of farm workers harvesting the cactus early in the morning. In late summer, walking my dogs I could smell their scent, casting me back to New Mexico and the past.
This morning, though, the sound of the western meadowlark calling from fence wire to fence wire in its liquid trill, reminded me again, that spring is not far away. I remember the first time I was stunned by that song. Six months pregnant, I was riding along with my husband on a fishing trip. As we bumped across a rutted dirt road, I heard a meadowlark call. “Stop the truck,” I yelled, “Stop the truck.” The bird of course, was gone, and my husband, assuming I was suffering from morning sickness, never heard a thing.
Some friends and I were talking about symbols the other day, and how they are woven into the fabric of our consciousness at a very young age. I was born and raised in southern New Mexico, surrounded by Navajo art, and the endless desert. My father and sisters were artists, so our house abounded with half-finished paintings featuring thunder clouds and saguaro cactus. Wild burros still roamed the desert, their ancestors having wandered away from the Conquistadors hundreds of years before. I had collections of arrow heads and black and white pottery shards, found when I walked home from school or played ‘war’ with the neighborhood kids in the vacant lots surrounding our neighborhood.
For me, a roadrunner will always mean speed and wily survival; lightening will always be power and magic; an appaloosa horse strength and independence; and the Zia sun . . .well you’ll probably have to ask me about that in person. Raised in an Air Force town, I still tear up at the sound of the Star Spangled Banner, and the sight of the American flag, and I wept openly when the traveling Viet Nam memorial came to Montrose.
The desert held its own lessons. As children, my sisters and I would earn a little pin money (as my mother called it) by gathering the ripe red prickly pears from the top of the cactus. No matter how careful I was to try and keep my gloves on I always ended up with fingers full of prickers. More often than not, I couldn’t resist the sweet fruit, and despite my efforts at removing all the thorns, my lips and tongue would burn and ache, full of the tiny torments. The lesson in delayed gratification was not an easy one, but it stayed with me.
When I came to Montrose the mesas and cottonwoods felt familiar; I’d been surrounded by them as a child. There was much to learn however, from the name of the bird that flew up and scared me senseless during my morning runs, to the fact that driving through a bog in the adobes is a very, very bad idea. Elk were a delightful surprise, as were the then common sheep and cattle drives. I saw prickly pears on the hillsides, and the families of farm workers harvesting the cactus early in the morning. In late summer, walking my dogs I could smell their scent, casting me back to New Mexico and the past.
This morning, though, the sound of the western meadowlark calling from fence wire to fence wire in its liquid trill, reminded me again, that spring is not far away. I remember the first time I was stunned by that song. Six months pregnant, I was riding along with my husband on a fishing trip. As we bumped across a rutted dirt road, I heard a meadowlark call. “Stop the truck,” I yelled, “Stop the truck.” The bird of course, was gone, and my husband, assuming I was suffering from morning sickness, never heard a thing.
Absolutely gorgeous post!
ReplyDeletelovely meandering sense prose poem!
ReplyDeleteso dead skunk is your madeleine, huh?
tim
Calhoun and I (Laika57) just wanted say marvelooooooous!!!
ReplyDeleteYa tickled the brain with oh so many sights, sounds, and smells I truly miss. Thank you!