This wild country I live in with its ruined pueblos, its red rock, its mountains, its hailstorms, its scraggly pinon, its flash floods, its trailer houses, its golden hawks, is as honest as the day is long. Either it will kill you. Or it will not.

I've ridden through hailstorms high in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that beat the leaves off of the aspen trees, their limp skeletons strewn across the forest floor, and make the meadows look like a snowscape in the middle of the summer. Where all of a sudden you can see your horse's breath on a June day. And then your own. And you pull the collar of your oilskin slicker closer, realizing it's a mighty thin thread and sheer force of will and a little gravity that holds you here on the face of this windswept place.

It's raining today.

Rain is always an event here in New Mexico, where the sun shines almost every single day. I woke up to the sound of the rain on the metal roof and thought first of the horses who have endured days of bitter cold and snow, and now this gray wet downpour. But stubborn creatures, they won't be in their shelter. They'll be humped up instead with their backs to the weather in the pinon trees. Resolute and drenched in their shaggy coats.

And I think of a summer rain a few years ago, when my little boy C. and I didn't run into the house for shelter as the thunder boomed and all of a sudden the storm was upon us and the cold wet rain pummeled our bodies, our t-shirts and jeans sticking to us like second skins. No. We ran and yelled and waved our arms at the dark clouds, daring it to bring it on, come on, bring on the rain. Our tenacious heeler dog, Matilda, grinned and gladly joined in the fray.

We stood beneath the eaves of the house and let it run off of us in great rivulets, rivers of ozone, silver waves. C.'s blonde hair was plastered to his head. He was laughing as raindrops clung to his long eyelashes--the ones that most girls would envy and that the ladies at the grocery store always comment on until he ducks his head half in embarassment and half in enjoyment at the attention.

We jumped up and down in puddles, splashing mud all over our blue jeans.

We had ourselves a time.