30 September 2021: Regal Sandia
Yesterday, Sandia sang a song to catch my attention.
It was a clear afternoon, perhaps the clearest in a month in terms of air quality. The sun lay mottled across Sandia’s ridges, projecting shifty cloudy shade. But when the sun’s rays struck her sound, they illuminated parts of the mountain in such a way that Sandia appeared to be sprouting a sparse and irregular beard of emerald velvet: her patchy, sometimes dense evergreens shone.
My mind forced metaphors. Royal emerald velvet robes? Perhaps in some places, but that’s not a great analogy for her entirety. Nonetheless, there she sat on her throne, bedecked in royal emerald velvet…the city of Albuquerque bowing in reverence at her feet, rooftops like backs in prostrated adoration.
I swear, I could write something fresh about Sandia every day. She is cantankerous, moody, changeable. She is not the same royalty today as she was yesterday, and she makes no promise of consistency tomorrow.