The Luminous Steppe

The other day while bird hunting in the fog I said to Robbie, “Doesn’t it seem like the ocean has been drained away and we are standing in the middle of a coral reef?” There is nothing more magical than the steppe draped in a heavy blanket of hoar frost. IT. IS. EXQUISITE. Whimsical. Crystalline. Delicate. Holy holy holy. Otherworldly. I live to be out on the land on these impossibly beautiful days. I break my own heart when I brush past a sagebrush and ruin the perfection of one million tiny, clinging crystals.

The lichens and mosses have turned plump and electric in the damp and cold of winter. The spring creeks rustle beneath sheets of thin ice. The hawks hunt. We see chukar tracks in the snow. We hear the quail call from the willows.

It is such a relief to go outside, to walk in these wild places, to see the way all things come together and exist here in a swirl of life and death and energy. The same and different. Like all things.