It rains in the Caribbean. This rain has blown in this afternoon and sends me sheltering under a roof overhang on one of the main streets in the Zona Colonia.
People, on motorcycles, wrapped in large plastic trash bags, zip through the streets and get out of the weather in nearby parking garages. Security guards have a leisurely smoke and dogs are nowhere to be seen as water puddles, rain droplets hit your outstretched hands like little needle pricks.
Afternoon rains here are regular in March.
When we were little, in Albuquerque, we would go out after a rain like this and make little dams in the street gutters to stop the flow of runoff. Our efforts were not always successful. We would go home soaked to the bone and leave our clothes on the back porch before we went inside to change and have dinner.
While I love the rain, I love it the most when I can watch it and stay dry.
Building dams in street gutters is kid stuff but kid stuff takes a long time to rub off.
When I remark that I have a cold, Yuri asks if I want some ” Mama Juana? ”
” I don’t want marijuana, ” I answer.
” No, ” she laughs, ” Mama Juana. It is a local drink, good for colds. ”
Berluis shows me a jug which looks like it is filled with bark off a tree, which, it turns out, is. Research says this alcoholic drink was concocted by local Taino Indians who put rum, red wine,honey, herbs, and bark in a jug to make a happy time drink.The drink is good for colds, flu, digestion, circulation, and cleaning the blood.
” It won’t hurt me? ”
Yuri shakes her head ” no” and Berluis pours us all a little into plastic cups, not unlike my golfing crew’s ” birdie juice ” cups.
We drink to the Dominican Republic, and, happily, no ill effects have been noticed.
The alcohol content is subdued and the drink is sweet, not unlike Jamaica Tea.
” You can’t say, ” Yuri explains, ” You have been to the Dominican Republic without trying Mama Juana. ”
People don’t need to have a health reason to drink but having a real cold makes this sampling real good for me.
Learning about local traditions is always a plus, especially when they taste so good.
Visibility is restricted on airplanes.
Looking out through a small porthole, flyers can see parts of their plane, but mostly see clouds. Sometimes the clouds are white as your grandfather’s hair while other times they are puffed up like a boxer’s bruised right eye.
The terra firma of the Dominican Republic fills my porthole as we fly over the island and begin our descent. Instructions for landing are given over a sound system in Spanish and English. We are thanked for our compliance, urged to take all our belongings with us, go through Customs, enjoy our trip and fly United again.
This island is large, with plenty of water, and grows everything, and the surrounding sea has plenty of fish. This island is the size of Georgia and is one of the largest of the Caribbean islands, behind Cuba and Jamaica.
Setting down with a bump, on a wet runway, this ninth Scotttreks trek, has begun.
I’ll be stepping back into history this trip, jumping into the Unesco certified Colonial Zone in Santo Domingo where Spain established its beachhead in the New World.
Landing, my travel notebook is empty, waiting to be filled.
Some of what fills Scotttreks is by choice; but the rest is up to fate and the travel God’s.
Where my attention goes is what I write about and photograph, and what draws my attention usually doesn’t have lots of bells and whistles.
” Tumbling Tumbleweeds” is a Roy Rodgers cowboy song, sung around the campfire with fellow cowhands on a starry night, with a crackling fire, when the herd is quiet and coyotes are howling harmony.
The song’s lyrics are plaintive as the western landscapes shared by cowboys, Indians, outlaws, and cattle.
” See them tumbling down/Pledging their love to the ground/Lonely, but free, I’ll be found/Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.
Cares of the past are behind/Nowhere to go, but I’ll find/Just where the trail will wind/Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.
I know when night has gone/That a new world’s born at dawn/I’ll keep rolling along/Deep in my heart is a song/Here on the range I belong/Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds… ”
The last lines of the song crawl into my tent and bite me.
We all have songs to sing, but tumbling is what I like to do the most.
This rock, more than a stone but not a boulder, in Embudo Canyon in the Albuquerque foothills, has been moved onto the trail, by something other than wind, water or wishes.
It appears to have been lifted from a nearby mound of dirt. Where the rock used to be, on the mound, is a small hole that matches it’s size perfectly.
” Let’s move it back, ” Alex laughs.
If we move the rock back will some cosmic order be disturbed? Has moving rocks become against the law in an open space monitored by cameras and posted signs? Maybe the rock likes it here closer to the trail and doesn’t want to go back to where it was?
We keep walking quickly through this crime scene.
This situation has man’s dirty fingerprints all over it and I’m not putting things right.
Not wanting to get involved is a perfectly normal thing to do these days.
Palo Duro canyon isn’t far from Amarillo.
If you head east from Amarillo you hit the Texas Palo Duro State Park where you can drive down into the canyon and access its visitor center and exhibits. On road cuts in the canyon below Alan’s home we look for Indian arrow points lost in ancient hunting miscues. When we drive into the deep canyon to fish we take his 1950’s Willy’s jeep so we don’t get stuck.
From this bench, the new morning is quiet spectacular.
Light comes to our side of the planet as the other side turns dark. This switch from dark to light comes quickly. Within thirty minutes sunrise goes from a point where I can’t see the creek in the bottom of the canyon to a point I can see the entire creek, as well as homes and houses on the rim of the far side of the canyon.
I hunker down in my light jacket waiting for the sun to start warming the planet.
On Thanksgivings, when I visit, I always fall asleep in my chair while football players try to kick a pigskin through goalposts.
Having just one day a year where we are thankful and celebrate just doesn’t seem enough.
Texas, where my dad was born and raised, not far from here, feels like home right now.
On some bench, just now,around the world from me, someone is watching our sun go down.
I hope they are content too, to live,and let live.
Snow blew in yesterday and is falling earthward softly.
Big sloppy soft flakes hit a diesel power plant that runs all the rig lights and equipment, touch hot metal and turn to water on contact. Snow covers the roof of the mud logger’s SUV and dark mid west prairie mud is tracked inside the Geo-hut.
Near Benkleman, Nebraska, it takes us a couple of wrong turns before the new Caterpillar bladed road is found and we see a lit up oil derrick in the middle of a farmers corn field in a section of Nebraska farmland.
Oil is under our feet. When you drill in this area you have drilling history, some clues, some ” seismic ” data. Oil men are trying to reach layers of sand that have oil, permeability,and structure with enough pressure to push the black gold to the surface.
In old tycoon Texas days gushers exploded into the light of day and hardened drillers smiled and wiped black streams off their faces with oil soaked sleeves. There are still good finds to be made but the easy stuff has already been pumped out of the Earth.
In the Geo Hut, the guys look at samples, pour over maps with highs and lows of nearby wells marked and contour lines for the entire area surrounding this well.
Without money, as incentive, nobody in their right mind would do this.
By late tomorrow we will know whether we have anything, or not.
Most black gold is found in places people don’t live, can’t live, or don’t want to live.
After a big rain, these mushrooms appear.
This yard used to be dirt, stones, brush, debris, unused patio bricks, dead leaves and trash. There were overgrown vines, broken trellises and shrubs in need of water. A small tree was removed, litter raked and stuffed into trash cans, earth leveled and turned over. Flower beds were reconstructed. After new desert plants were tucked in, sod was brought from Home Depot. Mr. Porter, my neighbor, loaned me his wheelbarrow and twenty strips of sod were wheeled back and laid down,knitted together by hand.
Closeups reveal these mushrooms to be delicate, white with streaks of purple. Against the green grass, still moist from last night’s rain, they are very much alive.They clump like clouds and the edges of their circles, almost transparent, look like nipples.
After a day, these squatters are turning brown.
Tomorrow I will cut them down with a weed eater.
I don’t want them to take over the yard.
If I wanted them here I would have issued them Passports.
Rainbows aren’t discriminating about where they appear.
This hint of a double rainbow gracefully arches over an Albuquerque Wal-Mart that has its own version of golden arches inside.
Rainbows tell me that there is more than just here and now.
Scotttreks and rainbows have had conversations before, my last rainbow sighting in Belize on the way back from a snorkel trip at Hol Chan with sharks.
This rainbow is almost as good as the one I saw in San Jose, Costa Rica, outside the Hotel Aranjuez.
Rainbows are nature’s brushstrokes, and, as a painter, I’m hooked on color.
If I were a rainbow, though, I would find a better place to do my shopping.
These mountains are a cold hard skeleton and life is the green coat draped over their jagged bones.
Long spindly leaves of desert plants move lightly in the wind. Granite boulders have lichen waiting for raindrops to make their color more vibrant and further up arroyos, in the canyons between mountain fingers, are mule deer, hiding in plain sight.
I touch restless leaves, run my hand through their hair. Their long razor thin leaves pull at my hand and cut at my fingers.
Nature, when you reach for it, shows its defenses.
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