The Trinity Site - These Badlands - These Red Reed Beds

The Guadalupe Mountains are part of the finest example of an ancient marine fossil reef on Earth. The reef was formed when portions of what is now Texas and New Mexico were covered by a vast tropical ocean 260 to 270 million years ago. The reef forms a 400 mile long horseshoe shape with exposed portions in the Guadalupe, the Glass and Apache Mountains. The mountains surround a rich oil region known as the Permian Basin

We realize our own nature only in the course of time – Marcel Proust – The Captive

Black rock sullen stiff
Once flowing molten glowing
Oozing imperceptibly moving
Stickedly adhering slowing flowing
Down into the red reed beds  – Tularosa


These badlands in a badcountry
Four score and fifteen years have passed
      A blast that made glass
But only a blink in geologic time
Leaving a collapsed bubble where
     Man laid fire to keep the beasts away
Staying away the heaven’s pin pricked
     Inkiness indistinguishable from
         This land - Trinity

We hear things retrospectively when we have understood them – Marcel Proust – The Captive

The dog is a good ice breaker. The Sierra woman came over and talked until the Israeli guy got their permits revised. She didn’t want to do the fifteen mile hike today, not after yesterday. She said that she was due to fly out  to Cleveland the day after next. Her mother was to have cataract surgery. The park rangers said that the best hamburger west of Chicago was in Queen. Oh, I said, I didn’t even see any buildings there. He has sent the assistant ranger there for lunch, I had passed him on my way to Dog Canyon. Fifty miles is not too far to drive for lunch in a government truck especially if the burgers are as good as he claims they are, but will the survive the trip back as good as they came off the grill or does that even matter? Oh, someone later said, everyone claims the best hamburgers in the country. Well, I said this really was in the country. I considered making the drive myself. They must be mighty good.

To understand what a sign means is not to interpret that sign…. No it is [to be] trained to react in a certain way – Laurence Goldstein – Clear and Queer Thinking, 199 p69

The lava flows at the Valley of Fires may be among the youngest on the continental US with the most recent flow occurring about 1,500 to 2,000 years ago. The lava flowed southwestward for 44 miles. Pahoehoe cover 125 square miles with scattered small areas of aa. Six rodents, five lizards and one snake have adapted to the lava with melanistic color changes to blend in with their dark rocky environment.

I thought… that it would bring us closer together when I lie to you, it’s always out of affection for you – Marcel Proust – The Captive

The neighbors came by for my campfire. I had invited them but had given up expecting them. Oh, we are not married. Not at least to each other. We left our spouses at home. We’re just friends, she says. He had been so contentious earlier, contradicting everything that I had said. But he had taken a shower and was now well behaved. God I wish this wind would cease. The temperature itself is not that bad, but, oh God, the chill factor. I heard them in the dark: “There’s no light. Maybe he has gone to bed.” I came out of my alcove in the brush – what I was calling the cave (a collapsed gas bubble in the lava) with a light in my hand. “No, no I’m over here.” And they followed me in and he wanted to came back the next day and take some pictures for his son. “Yes,” I said, “it’s the sweetest little campsite I’ve ever had. They might have to come and physical boot me out of here to get be to leave.” The two were headed next to the Guadalupes and were coming from up on the Gila after visiting the cliff houses, it was cold at that elevation espically at night they said.

To the general everything was very simple. The road to military glory ran according to the recipe at 6PM the soldier got goulash and potatoes, at half past eight the troops defecate it in the latrines and at nine they go to bed. In the face of such an army the enemy flees in panic – Janoslav Hasek –The Good Soldier Svejk p538

Words have meanings just as gold has value

Words are the burden of poems – William Carlos Williams

As the weather cools
The cacophony of this
     Coffee shop
Grows – women conversing
Intern preachers in sharing
      Experiences
Fall colors in fashion
     Are dull – earth tones
     And some purple
Blacks, whites and grays
     Are good choices
     For automobiles
There is one red one


Coffee shops attract the
     Serious minded
It is not a place to be
     Frivolous
Discussing professional
     Objectives, carrying
     Your bibles
The sincere make horrible
      Fashion statements
      So do liberals


We don’t have much time
We only have an hour and
      Fifteen minutes or a
      Little less
So let’s get to the financial
      Goals here
And she moves her finger
      Down across the sheet
      As she talks
While the other one just nods


This place is a rookery
Most trees are now without
      Leaves having returned
To their bare bones

Fear to vary from the average, fear to feel, to see, to know, to experience – safe under the opacity of a mist of equality, a mist of common mediocrity is our character – William Carlos Williams