Autumn in Taos

It’s autumn in Taos, New Mexico, my favorite time of the year in the high mountain desert. We live in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in an old adobe house on four stony acres of land. A rio runs through it. (The land, not the house.) We are right on the edge of the national forest at the mouth of a rocky canyon, so wild animals wander through here every day.

In the past month I’ve seen a raccoon sleeping in the crotch of a cottonwood tree down by the river, a bobcat watching me from the top of a cliff, a big blue heron fishing in the rio, a large black bear standing in the driveway, a great horned owl, hawks, ravens, flickers, magpies, wrens, stellar jays, vultures and many other kinds of birds. Not to mention mule deer and mice that are called deer mice because of their protruding brown eyes and big deer-like ears. I catch the mice in live traps and release them several miles downstream, almost to the confluence of the Rio Hondo and the Rio Grande.

Life here is never dull. Yesterday a storm swept in. It rained, hailed and snowed. I didn’t want to drive ten miles to Taos to have dinner with a friend. I just wanted to hunker down in bed with a good book. But okay . . .

Driving out I was startled to see, on a hill overlooking the dirt driveway, not one but two mule deer with dark, stately racks of horns. It’s rare to see two bucks together. I wondered if they were in battle. I glanced down into my neighbor’s field and there was the whole herd--or had two herds combined? About eight or nine does and yearlings looked up at me with dark eyes and big ears forward, all curious. Maybe the storm drove them down before dusk. I hope those two bucks don’t end up in someone’s freezer.

I always feel blessed when I see a deer. I hear them outside my back door at night blowing out their breath, “Uhh! Uhh!” like Santa stuck in the chimney. The other night, driving out in the dark, my headlights picked up a doe wandering in the road between barbed wire fences. “Hi, Bambi!” I said, and braked to watch. The deer was in no hurry. “I know you can jump right over that fence,” I said, “because you have such springy legs.” Sure enough, the doe backed up a step and in one fluid motion floated over the wire like Michael Jordan making an effortless shot.

I drove on. Half way to town, it happened. (It used to happen more often when the air was really clear.) The sun broke through a cloudbank close to the horizon and glorified the landscape with a rich translucent light like some melodramatic painting. In the center of a field three dead cottonwood trees glowed amber, surrounded by a herd of black cows, framed by whale-blue clouds, and above that, veils of snow sweeping across white peaks. Along the highway, gold-leafed poplars shimmered with rain; the road was bright with scattered leaves.

As the Earth rolled away from the sun, the sky colors deepened to tangerine, royal purple, turquoise, magenta and an embarrassed blush. I pulled over, leapt out of the car and tried to film the drama with a slow video pan, but my sleeve caught in the barbed wire fence and the light faded.

I sighed and climbed back in the car. Oh well, I’ll go home and write about it.