A morning walk is a whole different beast when it happens in a snow-dusted arroyo. Trailed by or trailing Kanga, the ever-curious doberman sweetheart, I forget about the existence of direction or the semblance of a trail. Instead I just smell things, and realize that the wind can come at any time from anywhere, and sometimes you just have to follow.

Snow covers the Sangre de Cristo mountain range on one side, and the Sandias to the south. Much closer, hiking distance from here, loom the Cerrillos hills, behind which are the Jemez mountains. Cerrillos, Madrid, Galisteo - old mining towns that have yet to figure out how to thrive now that the hills have been scraped clean.

Kanga is above us, now below, now out of sight. What treasure does she find in this desert dust? I have always found it curiously oceanic: the unpredictable rolling and tumbling of the landscape is far more complex up close than from a distance, just like the water. Far more difficult to navigate than one would have expected.

The sky is blue, blue, blue, as if the state of New Mexico has a patent on this shade, like UPS or Yves Klein.  I try to imagine what this gully looks like after a big rain, gushing water along an ancient path, through what looks like such dry, dry land.