The tumbleweed pinball season is starting! There were some mildly brisk intermittent breezes this morning and the small weeds were breaking loose and hitting the road. There were a few rugged individualists and many traveling in what a colleague of mine refers to as "herds." With attention and care it is usually possible to dodge the singles, but the herds are tough. Added is the directional factor. The road is officially designated Highway 70 South - BUT the stretch I drive is certainly not that simple. It starts out heading south, all right, but about half way down you come to the Big Curve and then a little farther on the Other Curve. After that point, the road is actually heading southwest - and with that the driver is dealing with wind from a totally different quarter with respect to the vehicle. This morning the wind was basically out of the north - which means that the herds were running right down the road for the first part of the trip. The gusts were supposed to be up to 35 mph, but even my rambling wreck goes faster than that and there is no way to dodge them all. After the Curves, they were running obliquely across the road - a very different challenge.
Along the sides of the road the Big Mamas were beginning to strain against their root systems and soon it will be really exciting. We had some visitors out here from some place back on the East Coast once. They rented a car and drove the hundred miles from the airport to the campus. They were could hardly wait to tell us:
"And then we got hit by a tumbleweed!"
"How big was it?"
"Oh, about the size of a basketball."
"Wait until you run into one the size of Volkswagen ... bus."
Exaggeration? Well, maybe a little, but the babies out there this morning running in herds were the size of basketballs and this is definitely only the beginning.
Down where I come from (much as a military brat "comes from" any place in particular), it is, or used to be, fairly common for folks to go out and pick their Christmas tree from the available crop of tumbleweeds. My great-aunt had a terrific tree one year made of three tumbleweeds in graduated sizes stacked artistically and spray-painted white. It was about seven feet tall. The color is optional - I have seen silver ones, gold ones, red ones, even green ones as well as the avant garde - in their natural color. There were also occasional spectacular fires at the homes of those who insisted on putting lights on them - maybe these new LED Christmas lights are cool enough to be at least comparatively safe. But that tree of Aunt Jane's was a wonder - and hung with red and green chiles - absolutely beautiful.
Around here, their function runs to sport rather than decor. More about scoring when the season heats up.
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