THE MULE’S EARS
In late August weather in the Gila country begins to change. The days are still warm, especially since the winds and storms have stopped. If the rains of July and early August have been kind, the grasslands on the plateau’s floor resemble impressionist gardens but on an impossible scale—a mile of gold, a mile of white pointillist dots, a mile of purple. The nights are hushed and cool, the stars so brilliant in the washed air that you would think their burning must make a sound.
But the planet moves and tilts. If you visit one of the remnant puddles on the plain early in the morning you might flush a snipe or a yellowlegs or a teetering sandpiper, an early commuter from the already ice-locked tundra, on its way to the beaches of South America. Big white-chested ferruginous
