Virga

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Virga or the art of teasing as played by Mother Nature, is when the rain falls from the sky but doesn’t reach the earth below. It evaporates right before it should hit the ground. It’s like a giant game of “She loves me, She loves me not” where she pulls the petals off her garden of clouds and when she pulls one while gently singing “She Loves me”, the rain will fall to the ground and the dry earth knows she loves it. However when she pulls the “She loves Me Not” petal the rain falls to within inches of the thirsty earth but does not touch it. This is bad. It indicates that she is in a capricious mood and things can go either way. Since Mother Nature knows which petal it is before she pulls it and she’s feeling slightly out of sorts she can pull the “She Loves Me Not” petals all day long. This is what is happening in California right now.

I don’t know what those folks did wrong, it probably has something to do with Nancy Pelosi, but they better get their mind right and straighten things out. Mother Nature has a lot more will-power than all of California, even those parts like Hollywood and Beverly Hills, and can do this as long as she wants. Like hundreds of years if you really tick her off.
 
Marble canyon didn’t do anything wrong though, it just happens to be in a spot where there isn’t much rain, and what rain does fall is used sparingly. Mother Nature actually likes Marble Canyon and the surrounding area so she only teases a little. This time the Virga is sort of a wake up call saying “I’m bringing you some rain guys, get ready”. This moment in time was just a short tease however. When the canyon needs rain she pulls the right petal. The dark clouds in the background were moving in and before you knew it Mother Nature had pulled every “She Loves Me ” petal she could get her hands on and Marble canyon had all the rain it needed and more.

In the mean time anyone who wanted to could sit back and watch the spectacle unfold. The canyon is actually a couple of miles from where this image was taken so the rain didn’t reach out this far. The close-up appearance of the canyon comes from the magic a telephoto lens and the stitching power of Photoshop to put the 13 photos together needed to create this panorama. Click on it to enlarge the image somewhat for a closer look yet. Is this a great world to live in, or what.

Let’s Go In There

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See way back in there where there’s that black doorway? Let’s go in there. There has got to be something really cool back in there. Let’s go check it out. Many times you’ve been watching one of those movies where there are a bunch of teenagers in an old spooky place and one of them says “Hey, Let’s go in the basement. What’s the worst that could happen?” Why wouldn’t there be a deranged guy with a chainsaw down there in the dark.

But that’s Hollywood and this is real life. There’s no chainsaw toting guy in there. The Anasazi didn’t have chainsaws. It’s unclear if they even had metal. The darkness of that doorway draws you in, you know you want to see what’s in there. Was it simply a storage room or was it used for a far different purpose? Are there secrets you can see on the walls, written maybe way high up where the writer had to stand on someone’s shoulders to put his message there. Maybe it was the bedchamber of some Anasazi princess that waited endlessly for the King to visit. Or a place where they kept the royal scrolls filled with the history and exploits of heroes long dead. Can’t tell standing here. We need to go in.

How come we’re like that? Cursed with an undying curiosity to find stuff out. I guess you might not be but I am. For me it is the constant desire to find out the rest of the story. You may remember Paul Harvey, the man with a million stories. He’d start a story and you would be riveted in your seat as you listened to it unfold, knowing that was more here than met the eye, or in this case the ear, as he led you down the stories’ trail. Then just as he’d get to the part that explained it all he’d go for a commercial break and you’d be left hanging there, waiting for the rest of the story. He’d always come back and tell you the surprise ending, unless you were unlucky enough to have someone change the station, or the radio signal would conk out, then you’d be stuck.

Then you’d be left waiting for the rest of the story, sometimes for days, sometimes for years. I never remember the completed stories, they’re gone from my memory. But I do remember the ones I missed the endings of. Even now to this day, decades later in some cases, I’m waiting for the rest of the story. I’ll know it when I hear it. Every once in a while I would get the answer to one of those uncompleted stories and I’d feel like I had gotten a present. The, “Oh, So that’s the rest of the story” feeling. That was always a very good feeling, a satisfied feeling.

So right now we don’t know what went on in that room back there in the dark. The story’s not finished, Let’s go find out.