Top of the World

Now here’s an interesting phenomenon.  It’s raining on the left side of this photo.  On the right side, it’s clear.

This is Taos Ski Valley, which is quite narrow.  This allows you to observe weather as it creeps along between the walls of the canyon.  There was one memorable day when I was sitting on the balcony of the lodge and watched a snowstorm soar up the canyon.  Except I was above the weather, and so I saw sunny white clouds above, and a dark snowstorm below plastering everything with frozen water.

I am not at Worldcon this year, mainly because I’m in a race to finish Quillifer the Knight, and taking five or six days off seemed the wrong thing to do.  So instead I awarded myself a writer’s retreat up in the mountains, where I can type away without distractions (except for bears, coyotes, and marmots).

I’m at Snow Bear, where I used to run Rio Hondo and Taos Toolbox, but which ran into management problems about four years ago, which caused me to move workshop activity to Angel Fire, a couple mountain ranges away to the south.  Snow Bear now books its guests through airbnb, which makes sense.  I met manager Greg, who seems to have a clear view of the challenges facing him, and so I may be coming up here more often in the near future.

Weather permitting, of course.