Sunday, December 6, 2009 - Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM

Dawn, Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM, December 5, 2009

Yesterday dawned bright and sunny - then clouded over and stayed cold. Today dawned bright and sunny and the sun stayed around most all day, and took the rest of the remaining snow over the hill with the sunset. We like it. These big, colorful New Mexico sunrises and sets never fail to lift the soul.

It's nice to finally have a day with no nagging repair issues to worry about and I've given myself a day off to fool with the website and walk in the sun.

Collectanea

I've been wanting for a long time to make better use of my collection of passages I've clipped over the years and this afternoon I spent some time working on a scheme for reorganizing them. Once I get the formatting worked out on a few test pages I'll have to go in do some minor editing on each of the hundreds of pages. This will be a tedious task and I want to be sure to get it right the first time. It would be no fun doing it twice! I stuck a box with a random passage from the collection at the foot of these pages as a test to see if it works out.

Night camp

Site 37 - Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM

Verizon cell phone service - Access is via Extended Network, roaming
No Verizon EVDO service - access is via the Extended Network and service varies with many drop-outs.
See a list of the nights I've camped at Brantley Lake State Park
Locate Brantley Lake State Park on my Night Camps map
Go to Brantley Lake State Park website
Locate services on my Resources map
Check the weather here

Give it, Give it All, Give it Now

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

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