Night Night

It's 11:00 pm and I know I won't go to sleep even if I did lay down. So here I sit in the old, green metal, two seat glider that I bought used 25 years ago. I swing gently back and forth, back and forth, while I watch lightning play along the top of the Sandia Mountains. It's not the violent, zig zags of lightning but the softer kind that simply lights up the sky. The Sandia Mountains are a major landmark here in New Mexico. They are the southern most tip of the Rocky Mountains sitting just to the east of Albuquerque. If you know much Spanish you may wonder why a range of mountains are called 'the watermelons'. A very long time ago some Spanish conquistador thought that they looked like a watermelon when the evening sun shown on them turning them a pink color. And they still get the pink color in the evening to this day. In fact they were pink tonight as where the clouds over Albuquerque. The lighning flashes again, highlighting the TV, radio, and communication towers that abound on one little peak of the mountains at the tip top of the range. Here in my yard I am at approximately 6500 feet in altitude. The towers are at about 10,500 feet in altitude if I remember right. That is way up there in the clouds. The Sandia's range from desert at the base of them, to alpine flora at the top. Much of their landscape is straight up and straight down. There is a ski resort on one part and the Sandia Peak Tram is another part. The Tram is a small cable car that takes you 2.7 miles up the side of the mountain on a cable that you are sure will brake before you reach the top. For more information and to see photos go to www.sandiapeak.com

The lightning has quite. I hear the soft hoof falls of two of my horses as they come to the fence to see why I am sitting in the swing in the yard. One of them blows it's breath out in a little snort. I get up, pet them for a minute and decide it is finally night night time. I hope.