I balance on a wishingwell that all men call the world**

Finally Lake Caballo level has risen enough to paddle again.

There is still a fair portage over ankle twisting rock hazards to get to the water, but not nearly as far as a month ago.

Yes, I did pick up that plastic bottle and a whole sackful of trash before leaving the lake, but not before it spoiled my picture. Sigh.

The powers that be took the opportunity this summer to drain the lake right down to almost just the old river channel, in order to do repairs on the dam wall.

In the absence of a salt water shoreline, Lake Caballo is my favorite place to paddle. It is an irrigation reservoir throttling the Rio Grande, completed in the late 1930s as a project of the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) which was a federal government work relief program in response the economic depression of that time.

This summer water levels in both the lakes near me have been exceptionally low anyway, because the Colorado Rockies had poor snowpack last winter. It was a good time to do maintenance. Caballo lake was closed to motorized boats for a few weeks and the Elephant Butte hot air balloon fiesta, which normally draws over ten thousand visitors for the weekend, was cancelled due to dangerously low water levels (3% capacity) on that lake.

The water was midnight sky satin when I put in just before sunrise this equinox morning. A great flight of swallows swooped and dove overhead. I felt the wind of their wings caress my skin. Blue herons fished in calm majesty from the shoreline.

The sun slid up over the horizon in a blinding blaze, putting the midnight blues to route.

The eastern shore became a resplendent gilded Rorschach test.

A Turkey buzzard spread its wings to bask in the first rays of sunlight. Sorry. I only had my cell phone. The picture doesn’t do the buzzard’s black hole dark magnificence justice, but it’s on the skyline, center-ish, in above image.

Equinoctial greetings of balance and harmony to all.

** Title for this post and soundtrack for this equinox

Leonard Cohen’s Stories of the Street

(wherever you get you music, listen to it)

The stories of the street are mine,the Spanish voices laugh.

The Cadillacs go creeping now through the night and the poison gas,

and I lean from my window sill in this old hotel I chose,

yes one hand on my suicide, one hand on the rose.

I know you've heard it's over now and war must surely come,

the cities they are broke in half and the middle men are gone.

But let me ask you one more time, O children of the dusk,

All these hunters who are shrieking now oh do they speak for us?

And where do all these highways go, now that we are free?

Why are the armies marching still that were coming home to me?

O lady with your legs so fine O stranger at your wheel,

You are locked into your suffering and your pleasures are the seal.

The age of lust is giving birth, and both the parents ask

the nurse to tell them fairy tales on both sides of the glass.

And now the infant with his cord is hauled in like a kite,

and one eye filled with blueprints, one eye filled with night.

O come with me my little one, we will find that farm

and grow us grass and apples there and keep all the animals warm.

And if by chance I wake at night and I ask you who I am,

O take me to the slaughterhouse, I will wait there with the lamb.

With one hand on the hexagram and one hand on the girl

I balance on a wishing well that all men call the world.

We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky,

and lost among the subway crowds I try to catch your eye.

This song appeared on the 1967 album Songs of Leonard Cohen, the first ever LP record I purchased way back then. Do I date myself? Does it matter? I can probably quote the words of every song on the album verbatim, yet can’t remember whether or not I took a blood pressure tablet this morning.