I strolled up the south bend trail of Caprock Canyon at dawn leaning into the wind screaming out of the north. Blew both the hoods off my Gortex shell and approach jacket. I had to tighten the outer hood. It was around 2 degrees Celsius (about 35 F.) I took a few hundred snaps taking off my leather mitts and composing until my hands hurt.

I crossed ten or twelve river eroded flood gulches as winter storm clouds ripped across the sky and I lost the light.

I couldn't see much of the huge Texas sky from inside the canyon. I had no idea what weather was coming in, fast, on the north wind.

I saw no one on my walk, only coyote and deer tracks in the red mud of the damp path that smelled like a ceramics studio.

I returned to the caravan and picked up Mary for a drive. There were sunny breaks like this one that warmed the umber back of a bison. They told me at the ranger station not to bother the beasts.

"If their tails are up it means they are perturbed and you better high tail it."

"Can I poke them with a stick?" I asked.

An old Texan camper exclaimed: "You bettah nahhot, it'll send yah flyin'!"

"You cannot poke the bison with sticks." The ranger told me.

At sunset yesterday Mary and I were at one of the back country campsites. She spotted a herd of deer about to cross the river... mouse over. I am writing "mouse over" to myself. My web site is still down and I am writing a diary. If I can ever get, care to get, the thing up again and publish this as a blog, you could mouse over and zoom in.

There was nobody out there, sunrise and sunset. I like Texas! Sunrise and sunset, is that a conceptual framework? Maybe, but it doesn't comply with the "conceptual art" window onto the "artworld". Way too out turned? An idea for a composite, cubist painting; maybe?

We could hear coyotes howlin' and yelpin'.