What a difference a Couple of Days Make

The last Friday in June found me making the 300 mile trek from Clovis to Las Cruces. It being so close to the summer solstice, the sun was still in the sky well into the trip. As I descended the 3500 feet from Apache Summit down through the Mescalero Apache reservation, I could still detect the orb's red glow like a fire over the mountains on the west side of the Tularosa Basin. If you aren't familiar with the geography of this region, the Tularosa Basin is about 50 miles wide bordered on the east by the Sacramento Mountains, dominated by 12,000+ft Sierra Blanca, and on the west by the San Andres and Organ ranges. The western mountains look like the shield wall in Frank Herbert's Dune. And that's a very pertinent analogy because those western mountains separate the shoot 'em up boys from the shoot 'em downers.

There's nothing like a good rain in the desert. Scents come alive. The very earth seems to change and welcome the moisture. The gypsum dunes that are White Sands seem to repel the droplets. But still they fall. It was just a surreal sight---the full moon rising but its body blocked by the thunderheads, its beams piercing through to light up the sky below the clouds. A flash of light, the rumble of thunder, rain so heavy the wipers could barely keep the windscreen clear. And THAT sign--"Welcome to the White Sands Missile Range"---and the first highway sign after what we supposed was a lightening strike marked the entrance to HELSTF (High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility). As the ipod commenced one of Jimi Hendrix's most way-out songs 1983 ("Hooray I awake from yesterday/Alive that the war is here to stay/So my love Katherina and me/Decide to take a last walk through the doors to the sea/Not to die but to be reborn/Away from this land all tattered and torn/forever....."), HELSTF was upon us---lights in the darkness, some activities unknown and unknowable in the New Mexico desert------was that really lightening? Was that storm really from Mother Nature? Land of Enchantment?

Sunday afternoon, sun bright, temps approaching 100F near the White Sands National Monument. All was quiet passing through the missile range. Steve Winwood's classic Mr. Fantasy filled the vehicle's speakers. No sign of any storm, natural or otherwise, just the desert and the gypsum dunes awaiting the next wanderer.............