Gulls await at the bosque trail’s end

The trail deposited us at the Rio Grande’s edge, the channel to our south too wide to cross.

Gulls wheeled overhead, glints in the blue.

Gulls at 5,000 feet elevation in the high desert? Why not?

They’d come a lot further than we had to be here.

We’d planned to hike on a mesa west of town. But when we got up there, high and exposed, I could barely open the car door against the fierce west wind.

Back down into the valley we went, into the bosque. The cottonwoods stood brown and gray and naked, but they provided some shelter from the wind. A few last dead leaves trickled to the ground.

We wandered two miles south of the Montano bridge on the river’s west bank. Trails  braided toward, then away from the river. An enormous flood control spillway stood empty and sunbaked, begging for skateboarders.

Not far beyond it came the dead end at the river.

On our return, we walked out onto the Montano bridge. The river’s surface rippled in the wind. Miles away, clouds dripped a light rain onto the northern half of the Sandias.

May that riverbed fill, and fill, and fill.

Hike length: 4.6 miles

Difficulty: easy

Wildlife spotted: ducks, geese, ring-billed gulls, sparrows, sharp-shinned hawk

Trail traffic: moderate