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Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM

Acequia Soup, Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM, March 4, 2010
Acequia Soup, Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM, March 4, 2010

In the soup

I was going through some older pictures today and came across this shot. A month or so ago the irrigation canal along NM Route 1 in front of the Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park was put in service for the season. It had been dry all winter and suddenly started flowing vigorously. I shot this picture of winter debris bobbing on the current before it washed away. Some of those seed pods remind me of sea creatures.

Mini heat wave

It was forecast to reach 80 degrees or so here yesterday but the 89 degrees and astonishingly low 3 percent RH (with a dew point of -2 degrees!) it reached about 4:30 in the afternoon was a bit of a surprise. This area of the Rio Grande valley seems to enjoy lower lows and higher highs than its neighbors. I wonder why that is. Here's a {link} to the local National Weather Service Mesonet Observations.

Night camp

Site 16 - Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park, San Antonio NM

Emptiness

Emptiness shouldn't be thought of as a negative. A lot of people misconstrue that as meaning the opposite of something is nothing. But this is something slightly different. I don't want to get into comparative religious things because that's a complicated topic. But if we were to think about it, the problem of life and death has to do with what comes in between, and what comes in between is an awful lot of suffering. We're not just talking about the pain of suffering, we're talking about suffering. Our common everyday parlance it's called stress. That's a kind of suffering and we die from this. From the standpoint of Zen Buddhism this life isn't some sort of stage mock-up for something else that comes after this. This is what we have. We're right here and we're being in this present moment. What you want to think about when you think about emptiness is a way in which to stay present. Just as, in a way, in a very strange kind of concept, there really is no such thing as time. There's no dress rehersal for anything.

The Artful Mind, Reverend Sohaku Flagg, Rinzai Buddhist priest, in an interview with Nanci Race, Jan/Feb 2003

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