I came home last week to find our friendly spider newly deceased, fallen from her perch between the garage and the porch. She lay cold on her back, her legs gently folded upon her abdomen. She was a good spider. We will miss her. I picked her up and carried her over beneath the Buddha statue, under the mimosa tree. That will be her final resting place, and she will become food for something else. The huntress becomes the prey (or carcass). The ice flower images I took on my way home seemed to be a fitting tribute to this frozen beauty.

Oh, Spider.
You decorated our doorway for the greater part of two years,
your messy webs blowing in the breeze after you used them to catch your food.
I will miss your shadow cast on the wall by the garage light.
I will miss your crouching presence hidden up under the eaves by day,
your bold and quick climbing by night.
Thank you for your service.
Your body will now feed our tree.

The stretch of highway on 550 between Cuba and San Ysidro contains some of my favorite land formations in the area. If I have a choice, I'll pick 550 for travel, though often it is not overly convenient for most places I'm going these days. I used to travel this stretch of road almost every weekend, going home to visit when I first moved to Albuquerque for school. These days, I don't drive this way often, usually opting for the faster route through Santa Fe. I was up in Cuba doing some outreach presentations at the elementary school there, so got to experience the hills and mesas lit up in the afternoon sun on my way back home.

I also did some alterations to a couple of the photos from my trip, turning the photo of the motel waiting room into an architectural kaleidoscope and making a strange alien-insect face out of one of the highway panoramas.

I probably added a half-hour to my drive home, stopping so frequently to try and capture the beauty of my surroundings lit by the setting sun, but it was well worth it.