Maybe a title is a good idea..how about Web Log

It's a strange evening, as I suppose it always is here in the Chisos Mountains Basin. The word Chisos is usually interpreted as meaning "ghost" or "phantom" and i guess that the fact that I feel like I live in a bizarre ever changing place where time doesn't pass normally must make some sort of sense. Nothing ever stays the same. Really. Moments change radically, not only in the weather and the landscape, but also in the moods, emotions and literal situations of the people who are here. We're at high altitude up here, i think just a little over 5,000 ft. Mountain Lions, Black Bear, Javalinas, Foxes and a multitude of birds and reptiles live up here in the basin as well. I have no idea how many types of plants and trees make up the lush landscape in these molten rock mountains, but it's a plenty. This place is an oasis in the sky. And I do believe it's full of ghosts and phantoms. The Apache word "chise" means people of the forest and I suppose that the few of us up here in the basin who call this our home are the people of the forest. Everything feels slightly off kilter here...and you have the feeling that you never know what is going to happen.

Yesterday is a good example. I woke up and the sun was shining brightly. It felt like a late spring day. It was warm up here in the basin. I sat at the kitchen table with the front door open and worked on my project before work. I showered and hiked up the hill to the lodge and started the beginning of a great day. I stood and took the clear sunny photograph above of what we call the window. A few hours later, I stood at the same place and took the dark photo...a massive wind storm had blown up off the desert floor. It looked like the dust bowl. The bright blue sky had turned dark. Clouds billowed in off the floor and up through the window. Howling winds knocked things over. The trees were bending and trying to maintain their balance. A giant roving dust monster crept up over the window and instantly covered the mountains in a fine brown dirt. You could feel the destructive nature of the storm in the air. The temperature dropped considerably and then, then the power went out. EXCITING! People started freaking out. Guests wanted to leave immediately, they thought they'd be stuck on the mountain. They were scared about the way the storm moved in so fast and just started destroying everything. It did indeed feel frightening as you listened to the shrieking and unforgiving wind making it's way across the basin. But it felt good! And it looked unreal. And I was stuck at work, at the front desk, trying to calm people down and handing them flashlights. I felt bad for being so excited and giddy as they were so scared, angry and annoyed. The storm didn't last as long as I had hoped and the power came back a few hours later, and the black clouds in the sky made for a spectacular sunset that looked like the outside of the waiting room in hell, and then, darkness of the night...just a flat darkness made from a cloud filled sky. When I had gotten out of work at 9:30 I had expected that cloak of darkness, but no, now the sky was bright and star filled, and the full moon proudly illuminated everything. I was freezing, but I'll be damned it the silhouette of the glowing mountains wasn't just downright beautiful. Matt and I decided to go hike down on the desert floor by moonlight and as we drove down to Panther Junction to pick up our friend Sara, the weather got warmer and without the towering mountains, the fairly flat desert floor lay like a pristine carpet, unrolling endlessly for us. I didn't know how to take the day. We seemed to go through every extreme. I felt exhausted just witnessing all of the changes. My body felt tired from adjusting to the temperature and the light. We drove on a dirt road out to the middle of nowhere, to a trail head, rocks crunching under the tires of the car, headlights giving us some visibility in the dust we were kicking up. I didn't realize just how bright the moon was until we reached our destination and cut the lights. I also didn't realize how quiet the world was. Or how massive the giant rocks were all around the place we had gone to hike. Again, I was overwhelmed, but this time, I was insanely insanely disoriented. I felt like i had taken a heavy dose of hallucinogens. I had never ever seen anything like what I was seeing in my life, and so I had nothing to reference it to. And so I was visually very confused and overwhelmed. It was easily one of the most amazing things i had ever seen. We walked the trail, and I was surprised at the ease I had in seeing the trail with no headlamp. I could see everything around me, for many many miles. The cactus and plants glimmered all around. Everything literally had a real life glow to it. I felt like I was walking through a story I had read as a child, except I wasn't using my imagination to see, I was ACTUALLY seeing. I was humbled and felt a feeling I have not felt before. I cannot describe how I felt because i still don't understand it. We reached our destination and sat together. I could see so far away. The landscape looked martian beyond belief. I sincerely for a moment or two convinced myself that I had been sitting on mars, overlooking the land around me. And I was sober. My brain was working overtime to try to make the reality around me make some sort of sense. Some random clouds floated in the sky, and changed dramatically and I do say, the three of us lost time marvelling at those clouds, talking like children and making up stories about them. Anthropomorphizing them. I lost all sense of time completely...and I forgot where I was for a bit, and really I just enjoyed it.

I led the trail on the way back. The air was slightly humid and all I could smell was the damp scent of creosote all around. I looked in wonder at everything and was quiet as i walked. A childlike fear that a mountain lion was going to eat me crept in and I slightly enjoyed the fear and let it move around in my head like a pinball until we reached the car. I did not want to be enclosed in the car. I felt so free and small and pointless in the giant glowing foreign world all around me. Rocks in the dirt sparkled, mimicking the stars and distant planets in the massive endless sky. I felt like an innocent child again for a minute. Because I forgot about any of the bullshit that the years weave into our idiot minds as we grow up. And it was lovely. Nothing ever stays the same here. Not the weather, not the landscape, not my brain or anyone else's here for that matter. Now I'm sitting in my dorm, everyone is asleep, it feels like winter outside and the clock is ticking. And well...I'm very tired, my wonder for the day has burned down from the bright ember it was last night, and i feel older. I suppose tomorrow will be entirely different. I'm lucky to live in such unreality. G'nite.