Eastern New Mexico is a desolate plain.  Wind whistling through the northwest corner of my paternal grandmother’s house left me with memories of nights when “lonely” seemed the only fitting word to describe a place.  As a child, I loved to visit my grandparents by myself.  The family of four kids and two adults provided little in solitude, and I enjoyed being able to explore the farm buildings, with their (seemingly) ancient books and relics of years gone by.  At my paternal grandparent’s house, nightfall brought amazing skies, and my taciturn grandfather wasn’t much for conversation.  Occasionally the wind would make the old house wheeze and groan, and I would lay there and listen, and think of my ancestors living in “half-dugouts” and houses that today wouldn’t be acceptable for hay sheds.

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I had another article ready to post…got called to a fire…and lost my draft.

Y’all stand by for more.  We got moved to a large fire in Southern California.  Beautiful terrain, lots of smoke.