The silver blades | N E W  M E X I C O

Out there, in the place that one might least expect it, there’s a spinning silver of the bladed windmill.

Some of them reach to storing power — and have been, for decades before the large whirling windmills that array on farms, the landed plains, mountain ranges — even far out at sea.

But these have been spinning for a long time — here, in the states, the old wind “generators.” Simple, but still working.

When I was young, I used to climb them — nearly all of them that I saw, and those on my grandparent’s farm. These were for water.

And the sound of the clanking draw of the water up the pipe, spilling into the chamber of the cooled cistern — the sound, the scent of the cool earthen water, the taste of its cold minerals, the touch of the iron — moving up and down; and too, the balance, in being in the tower, as the wind blew through the girders.

I remember that well — seeing them out on the New Mexican landscape — and stopping to listen to them, it takes me back to another memory — now recalled, today.

T | Ghost Ranch