Gold, Dust

While the rest of the country is experiencing Spring in unusual ways--more snowfall in the Northwest, and lack of snow and early summer-like temps in the Northeast--we are having the usual early Spring weather here in southern New Mexico.

The Organ Mountains still have bits of snow on the eastern side. 

Fields of poppies are in bloom.

These poppies were blooming at the site of one of last summer's wildfires. You can see the scorched yucca trunks here.

Click to enlarge

In this last photo, you can see the beginning of another springtime tradition here: Dust storms. The dust here in the distance is gathering along the floor of the Tularosa Basin. Later that day, back in Las Cruces, we experienced howling winds and "brown-out" conditions all day. As we paced around uneasily inside the house, listening to the shrieking outside and watching as dust made its way inside through every crack and under all the doors, we couldn't help thinking that the Dust Bowl of the 1930s never really came to an end. And I thought of the long-ago settlers out on the prairie quietly going mad in their earthen dugouts, as the unmerciful dirt-filled wind scoured and tore at everything they had worked so hard to build.