life's little hurdles

life's little hurdles –

climbing over a fence to chase

a pig in the mud

After the bus got stuck in the mud high on the hill, we walked down to the highway to wait for another bus to pick us up. A little pueblo is stretched out on the lower part of the hill. It starts to rain so we take shelter under an overhanging roof. While I am looking over the adobe wall next door at all the laundry getting wet, I spot a black pig trotting under the clothes line. Then a woman climbs over a low fence and chases the pig through the muddy yard. Life in a pueblo is lived out in the open and close to the earth, sometimes literally in the mud.

mud left by the flood

mud left by the flood

from ice melt and rain – sculpted

into soft scallops

The receding creek deposits shelves of soft, luscious mud. For the past two days, walking along Pilgrim Creek, admiring the mud, I keep thinking of my friends in Japan, wondering how they are faring. I have not been able to contact them directly, but from the online maps I see that their area near Fuji-san is not in the major earthquake and tsunami zone, though I’m sure they experienced the incredible shaking. My friend Hiroko Goto at age 3 lived through the Great Tokyo Earthquake of 1923, which spawned fires that wiped out Tokyo and Yokohama. After the Great Pacific War and the fire bombing that destroyed Tokyo, Mrs. Goto became a peace pilgrim. Now, at age 87, she is witnessing the destruction caused by an even more massive earthquake and tsunami. The flood and the mud left by this flood will cause untold damage.

glistening mud banks

glistening mud banks

sculpted by water into

voluptuous curves

The banks of Pilgrim Creek are marvels of mud laid down in delicately striated layers, wet and shining in the sun as it suddenly breaks through clouds.