Say cheese

Between Taos and Embudo, NM by Beth Surdut

My heart opens with joy every time I drive the mountainous road between Taos and Embudo. The rift gorge is still aflame with golden cottonwoods leaning over the Rio Grande, and I wonder how to paint the emotions of this day. 

Glory fades as the road eventually widens and flattens into the traffic lanes and ratty median strips of Espanola where a dead dog lies bloated in the sun. Some kind of cattle dog, the spotted fur still visible—Australian or maybe Blue Heeler. The truck in the lane next to me passes, the silver trailer hitch glinting and wobbling so much that I consider honking to tell the two guys in the truck cab that something is wrong, but this being Espanola, I better be damn sure, so I speed up for a closer  look.

It’s an aluminum scrotum sack...about the size of a bull’s, complete with bulging balls and little indentation marks like rippled skin, just swinging low to the rhythm of the road.

My potential Good Samaritan act foiled, I returned to wondering how best to describe the sound of  wind moving through the cottonwood  leaves like dry  rain, or how to paint the flash of pinon jays lofting in blue notes of  surprise.

Raven in the wood

“We heard that if you split a raven’s tongue, it’ll talk like a parrot,” said the beautiful girl studying my raven drawings. My breath caught and fluttered in my throat like a trapped bird. She’d already told me that she used to steal raven nestlings in Ruidoso where she was raised up. Then she cut her eyes at me, “but that didn’t sound like fun, so we didn’t do it.”

Raven in the wood carved by Beth Surdut  2012

Raven Boys

Nesting season here, so the players have changed. No sign of the courting couple--he who delicately picked up an egg and brought it to her a couple of yards away where they dined, leaving a mosaic of white and brown shells on the desert.
Once she took to the nest, one sloppy eater dined in place, leaving pieces of shell and a glutinous haze of egg white. I wonder, courtship over, if it was the same male or some young bachelor.
Two days ago, seeing five shining ravens swooping around my piece of New Mexico sky, I put out three eggs. I heard the whoosh of wings and some ravenish comments as soon as I went inside,walked down the hallway to my studio where through the glass door I saw winged shadows lofting. The eggs were gone.
Just for fun, I immediately placed two more eggs in the usual spot atop the rock fountain, and for the next hour, watched desire being overcome by confusion. These guys thought they had raided a nest, so much as they wanted those eggs, well, something wasn't right. Swooping in, slowing to look but not land and touch, they wove a loose tapestry of yearning. The eggs remained until the next morning--- a new dawn, a new raid.
The Audubon Wildlife Invitational, which includes one of my raven pieces, opens May 21 at the Randall Davey Audubon Center at the top of Upper Canyon RD.