Sabbatical Ends

In the words of Jimmy Buffet, “Man, it’s been quite a summer….,” and it has. Not a reason in the world to go into details, but I’m grateful this one is over. Fall has arrived, the autumn solstice has come and we are in the gradual slide into winter. We can look forward to shorter days as well as longer and cooler nights, and our daytime highs are dropping down to the low 100’s, which means the summer hiatus is over. Bears and other mammals go into hibernation in the winter, out here in the desert we go into that mode in the summer.

We took a trip up north a couple of weeks ago, to the Mogollon Rim, or, as it is called in Arizona, just the Rim. Some of you may remember Zane Grey, an author that was writing in the early 1900’s. He had a cabin up there and one of his books, “Under the Tonto Rim,” was written while he was there. I’m fortunate enough to have a first edition of it, published in 1926, so this copy of the book is 85 years old.

I have a small collection of old books like that, some of them are Arizona specific, as well as some Ernie Pyle books, some early UFO books written in the early ‘50s, and a smattering of others.

But I digress, the rim is at an altitude of 7,200 feet, so the weather up there is a drastic change from down here (1,000 feet). Daytime temps were in high 70’s, while at night it was dropping down into the high 40’s. Chilly enough to fire up some heat in the morning. We had a couple of small rain storms, and even a few claps of thunder.

Generally summertime in the desert is monsoon time, when there is a change in the airflow. Damp warm air comes up from the Gulf of Mexico, and meets cool air from the Rockies, with the result being incredible thunderstorms, with lightning displays that can’t be matched. Key word here is generally. This year we were the recipients of some of the largest dust storms we’ve ever had. Our biggest one was measured at 50 miles wide, and over 10,000 feet high…that’s a whole lotta dust!

It’s good to be getting back in the groove…happy fall everyone and I’m getting back to regular writing again!