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Lins

2011-11-09T06:51:00.000-08:00

Some call her Linds. Which is technically and grammatically more correct. But I’ve always called her Lins. Thankfully, she’s never complained. This girl. What can I say? She’s the human equivalent of comfort food. A lullaby. Down booties. Spiced chai.

I willingly divulge to her information that I’d be embarrassed to say out loud to myself in the mirror. We’ve spent hours on the couch together taking pictures of our eyeballs. This is the girl who turned me into a delinquent (that’s a story for another day). Got me my VERY OWN signed copy of the Bees of the World. Took pictures when I signed the papers to buy my first house. Hangs out with my mom even when I’m not there. She shares with me her ideas, her theories, her worries, and her stories. And I find myself treasuring each one—holding on to it like something precious and rare. That’s the effect Lins has on me. It’s wonderful.

Now that she lives in Reno and I live in northern New Mexico, we don’t see each other as much. When I go home to Salt Lake to see family, I can’t also see her. So when she splurged to make the trip out here to see this place… well, I may have been a little excited. (But only a little.)

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves—slept in every morning. Had picnic breakfasts in the sun. Snuck up on bighorn sheep. Made gourmet meals for dinner every night. Hiked to places I’d never seen. Watched movies neither Joe nor D-ennis would care to view. Took pictures. And talked. And talked. And talked. It was glorious. Here’re a few photos from her stay. I’m hoping to head out to Reno early next spring, for a follow-up vacation.

This is the San Francisco de Asis Church. Famous for its beautiful architecture.

This is the infamous Lins, front and back.

Lins snuck up on some bighorn. I am convinced these animals used to be someone’s pets! The bighorn in northern New Mexico are so tame!

Indulging in a little relaxation.

The leaves. How we love the leaves! How I miss the leaves...

We like these two also…

Except when they get in the mud… this was supposedly a lake. Ha!

Can’t wait til our next adventure!

ps I was bored this morning. I shouldn't have been because I have plenty to do, but I didn't feel like doing any of it. Thus I was left with nothing to do, and was bored. So when my blog suggested I try out a new design, it seemed like a great idea. Was it? Was it a great idea? Let me know if you three hate it, and I'll go back to the old way.

Anyone there?

2011-11-07T09:59:00.001-08:00

I’ve become the world’s worst blogger.

I don’t know what happened. I mean, I’ve got a couple of guesses. When my life vacillates between highs and lows, I stop being a faithful and regular poster. I’m either super busy doing fun things, or moping around the house wishing I was super busy doing fun things. Neither is conducive, for me, to blog posting. But, Sus is quickly surpassing me in the blog arena, and in an attempt to keep her from chastising me when next we talk, I’m going to stop moping around the house for a few seconds and give you a quick update on all things Me.

1) I went to California for two weeks. I had a wonderful time with my aunt. I worked way too many hours. I finished running the last (I hope) of my samples on their fancy machinery (didn’t take a single picture).

2) I spent five or so days with my grandparents, chopped off six inches of my hair, and tried my hand at sewing (more on that later). (again, didn’t take a single picture—what’s wrong with me???)

3) I picked Lindsey up at the airport in SLC and whisked her down to New Mexico for a little tour of the place. We managed to hit a deer that evening, somewhere in Southern Colorado. RIP little deer. It was a first for all three of us. I didn’t take nearly enough pictures of our time together. I think I was too busy talking. Lindsey makes me talk a lot.

4) I’ve been trying to finish something (anything) related to my PhD. This sounds easy enough, especially when my eyes first open in the morning. (“Today I will finish such and such!”) By noon, I am ready to beat myself over the head with the keyboard. Sigh. There are no pictures associated with PhD work.

5) I’ve been seeing to Jack’s wound. He sliced open his chest. It’s about 8 inches long, and was deep enough I couldn’t see the bottom. He paced the house for two days, wouldn’t settle down, and would paw at D-ennis and me. We couldn’t figure out what his problem was. With that black fur, we couldn’t see the wound. I’m a terrible mother. You don’t want to see pictures of this (me being a terrible mother, or Jack’s horrible wound).

6) I’ve been helping D-ennis thin the forest. This is healthy for the forest, and will keep me and him warm all winter, and next winter too! We’ve become ‘stewards’ of an acre of land, and it’s our job to take out all the ‘unwanted’ trees. I have no pictures of this, because I’m usually working so hard trying to stay ahead of D-ennis and his chainsaw (do you like the way I worded that? It sounds like he’s trying to get me Jason-style—really I’m just trying to paint the trees, and stack them in the truck before he finishes chopping them up).

7) I made a double-decker-pumpkin-cake with whipped-cream-cheese-frosting. It was heavenly.

For my berfday

2011-10-11T10:07:00.001-07:00

D-ennis and I hiked to the highest point in New Mexico.

Here we are before any of the actual hiking has been done.

It was a Saturday, and the last good weekend of hiking weather (so the newsman said). So with all the foot traffic we kept the dogs leashed almost the whole way up. Jack wanted to be right on the heels of D-ennis, but D-ennis hikes twice as fast as me. This was a source of great frustration for Jack. He tried his best to speed my along… while I found this constant tugging annoying below tree line, by the time we hit 12,000 feet, I was more than thankful for his added help.

Just below treeline.

The trail we hiked was brand-spankin’ new… There are two ways to the top. One is eight miles in (one way), and follows a canyon up, meanders past some meadows, tarries on a ridge here and there, before finally making its way to the peak. The other is three miles one way. The first two are flat. The last is literally straight up the side of the mountain.

That’s our destination up there…

D-ennis, of course opted for the straight-up-the-mountain one. Seeing as it was my birthday, I let him have his way.

Imagine my great relief when we got to the end of the flat part and found that the Forest Service had just installed a compromise for us! A trail that switch-backed up the straight-up the mountain trail! Steep, but not ridiculous. Longer, but not eight-miles long. We were both happy.

Can you see how steep that hillside is? So glad they installed switch-backs!

So was Jack when he saw this guy. I could tell Jack was toying with the idea of taking me for a little ride over the mountain to get a closer look. He was tied to my backpack’s waist belt… and the image of me, bouncing along behind him as he futiley chased a bighorn sheep gave my firm warning to him a little extra gravitas. Jack acquiesced.

Thank goodness.

That farthest peak on the horizon? That’s our destination. At this point my heart was beating so hard that I had to stop every fifty steps and tell it to calm down; I was imagining the embarrassment of having a heart attack on top of Wheeler Peak on the first day of my 35th year. D-ennis of course, is that dot on the ridge, with the two dogs. Curses.

Can you see me in the picture below? I’m the one that looks like she’d rather be crawling.

Wheeler Peak isn’t a big space, so since there were two groups up there already, we decided to check out Walter Peak while we waited.

And then, finally, we reached the top! I’m pretty sure this is the highest I’ve been… (planes don’t count). Jack was pleased as punch—there were eight people up there when we arrived, and all of them were eating a snack. He moved from person to person, leaning heavily on them for a pet, and eyeing their snacks in hopes of getting an extra morsel. I think he would have been happy if we’d stayed there all day to greet people.

It was beautiful. Quiet (once we had it to ourselves). And cold!!!

When it started snowing on us, we packed up and headed down.

Maggie looking for marmots, Jack, enjoying some time off his leash.

I’m pretty sure the trail got steeper between the time we went up it and when we had to come down again. My knees were extremely displeased with my choice of activity for the day. But they’ve forgiven me now and might even agree to go again sometime.

D-ennis touching Williams Lake.

Last kitty pictures, I promise

2011-10-01T03:09:00.000-07:00

After two and a half weeks, Keri called to tell me that the humane society had found foster moms for the kittens. Humans who would willingly take on the job of seeing that the kittens continued to get fed and cared for. My job was done.

I tried to be happy—I had thought I'd be elated to be rid of my responsibility. But mostly I was worried. What if the new moms didn’t do a good job? What if they didn’t give Boxcar Kitty his second feeding? He always goes back in his box for ten minutes and then comes out for more food. What if Bendy Tail had a relapse? What if they didn’t give Turkey enough attention? Typical me: total worry-wart.

And okay, I was sad too. It was nice to be so completely adored by this little bodies. They purred for me, they snuggled into my lap after eating and stared at me with complete love. Fancy Feast kneaded my feet every evening, and Turkey nestled into the curve of my neck, by my earlobe. Gizmo couldn’t get enough of my scratching the insides of his giant ears. Boxcar Kitty and Mrs. Miyagi nestled into the fold of my bended leg and sucked on each others fur every day. Even the self-sufficient Negrito liked to sit, on my knee after eating, purring softly and taking a little kitten-nap. I had saved Bendy Tail from almost certain death. These guys needed me. And it felt good.

But it was the right thing for the kittens and I knew it. They were now drinking milk all on their own from a bowl, and many were experimenting with solid foods. I couldn’t keep seven kittens for ever—we weren’t really supposed to have any at our rented house! So I stuffed them all up in a crate. Packed up all the formula and kitty food and kitty litter I had for them. Wrote a note to the new foster moms detailing what stage in development each kitten was at. And took them back to the shelter. I hear from Keri that one foster took three and one took four. Except for shots and spaying, they’ll not spend any time in the shelter, but will stay with their foster moms until they’re adopted.

Adieu little fuzz balls! Hope you are all happy, with full bellies and plenty to purr about!

My charges; OR the long post in which I share with you too many cute pictures of kittens

2011-09-30T04:35:00.000-07:00

Seven babies. Crying all the time. Feed me! Clean my butt! Hold me! Feed me some more! I’m cold! I just feel like crying! I started hearing kittens everywhere I went. I’d hear them in the night. In the post office. While on a hike. In the car. The sound of those tiny voices seemed to lodge in the folds of my cortex and stick. Kittens kittens kittens.

This is how my day went after I became the new mom.

Wake at 7. Heat kitten formula. Get a pile of seven rags wet. When kitten formula comes out of microwave, throw in wet rags to heat up. Test kitten formula on forearm. Too hot, of course. Cool with half an ice cube. Head outside armed with surrogate tongue and boob. Feed babies. Keep track of who had how much. Wipe bums and faces. Turn heating pad back on. Hold the ones that need attention. Wait for kittens to ‘burp’ and feed again. Throw rags into wash with bleach, wash out eye droppers, stow away formula. It is now an hour later.

Repeat at 11:00.

Repeat at 3:00.

Repeat at 7:00.

Repeat at 10:00.

I went through a bottle of kitten formula every day and half at first, and then every day.

Thankfully by the end of the sixth day they’d started pooping on their own and I didn’t need to wash bottoms any more. I tried setting out formula in a dish—they didn’t know how to lick it up. I tried wet meat. They’d gnaw at it, but then throw it back up a few hours later—their little bellies apparently unable to process it.

Where was D-ennis during all of this? Hunting. When he came home, he helped me name them.

This is Gizmo

Self-sufficient little dude with bouts of insecurity every now and again. Why Gizmo?

From the front he looks just like a gremlin. Biggest ears you’ve ever seen.

This is Fancy Feast.

The reason is obvious. Has a fetish for shoes, and LOVES attention. She will make a great lap kitty.

This is Mrs. Miyagi. She started out as Mr. Miyagi until we learned the truth (thanks to Keri and her training at the humane society).

She took care of herself from the get-go. First to use a litter box, first to drink from a bowl, first to venture into the yard. It must have been all that training in the womb (Wax on! Wax off!)

This is Turkey. He’s the runt, but apparently learned early on that the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

You’ve never heard a kitten complain so much. But holding him was all it took to shut him up. Once he learned how to climb, he’d eat, climb on to my shoulder, and sit there to watch me feed his brothers and sisters (while Fancy Feast curled up on my slippered feet).

This is Negrito. I have no idea if we’re butchering Spanish with this one because I only speak a little German, but “Little Black” in German would be “Kleine Schwarz” which doesn’t sound as nice as Negrito.

For one so small, he sure is a smarty pants. Mild-mannered, sweet as a button, and so easy-going you wanted to invite him in for tea.

This is Boxcar Kitty.

You’ve never seen a cat with such an appetite. All the other kittens, I had to take an eye dropper and squirt it sideways into their mouth, otherwise they’d reject my offerings. This little guy would cradle the tip of the dropper in his tongue and suck. Then he’d promptly waddle back to his bed for a siesta.

And this is Bendy-Tail.

If you run your fingers down his tail, half way down there is a complete right-angle kink. His voice was also different—an octave higher then all his siblings. This little guy gave me lots to worry about. At four weeks of age, I cam out one morning and he wasn’t there! I looked everywhere and finally found him laying, head kinked, behind his box. His eyes were open, his tongue was out, and he was completely cold. I picked him up, certain he was dead, and laid him on top of the box. I stared at his little body, trying to figure out how he’d died. As I watched, his tongue moved ever so slightly—I wasn’t even sure I’d seen it. I touched his tongue with my finger tip and it moved again. He wasn’t dead! I stuck him in my shirt next to my warm body, finished feeding his brothers an sisters and then took him in the house. I heated a rice sock (yes, a sock filled with rice—good for muscle aches!) and laid his limp body on it. I cooed over him, massaged his paws, rubbed his sides, and begged him not to die. After a half an hour his back legs jerked as if I’d shocked him with electricity. He lurched across the counter top. I picked him up before he could fall of and set him on the ground. Nothing was right. He couldn’t hold his head up—it was kinked strangely to the side. He couldn’t shut his mouth. Only one front leg was working. He couldn’t stand up. His sweet high-pitched meow was now the guttural grunt of an unconscious creature. And his pupils were completely dilated. I tried to hold him but he struggled too much. I let him thrash about the kitchen, panicked at the thought that he was going to die right there because I didn’t know what was wrong. I was certain his neck was broken. I got a plastic bag and a hammer, ready to end his struggles. I didn’t want to, but everything about him was wrong. I debated waiting for D-ennis so he could do it. The kitten’s thrashing had worn him out and now he lay, eyes closed, panting heavily on the kitchen floor. I convinced myself that when he woke, he’d maybe be a little better, mostly because I wanted to put off killing him. I did the math in my head. If I kill him now, there’s no chance that he’ll be okay. If I let him be for a little while, there’s at least a tiny chance that he’ll be okay. I laid him on my chest, and draped a heating pad over the top of him, willing a little of the life in me to pass in to him. Trying not to get him wet with the tears I couldn’t help crying. Finally I put him in a box with a heating pad over the top and let him be. He slept, not moving, eyes only half closed. Every once in awhile I would force a little milk into his still open mouth until he reflexively swallowed at least a drop.

I had to leave for an errand at 3 that afternoon. He still hadn’t moved in his box, and most of the formula we’d fed him had soaked into the fur on his chest. Keri, who was visiting, promised to continue to watch him and shove food down his throat. Now here’s the weird part. When I returned at 4:30, he’d made a full recovery and was walking around the kitchen, wailing in his normal voice because he didn’t know where he was! We fed him again and put him outside with his brothers and sisters. All I can think is that he left his box in the night and couldn’t get back in, got hypothermia, and was in shock. Keeping him warm for the day was enough to restart his little body.

We probably should have renamed him the Phoenix.

For Sus

2011-09-29T08:33:00.001-07:00

I swear, if it wasn’t for my sis, sometimes I think this blog would fade away, joining the pile of well-meaning but untended blogs that are heaped in internet space.

I’ve not been taking any pictures. And what do you post about if you can’t add a picture to it???

Plus, I’ve got this dissertation thing looming over me, and have been devoting my time to staring at papers and graphs and tables and blah blah blah instead of sharing pictures.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry for holding out on you. Blame the letters I’m trying to tack onto the end of my name. Blame the ugliness of sitting in a house. Whatever you do, don’t blame my lazy self. =) Or if you do, don’t tell me about it.

Or, you could blame the kittens.

Do you remember that cat that moved in with us last year? The six month old or so little one that was half starving? The one who got pregnant this spring and had kittens while I was in the field? The one who got pregnant within six weeks of having that batch? The one who had those kittens while Sus was visiting?

Well. Rest in peace little kitty. Three weeks and two days after giving birth to SEVEN adorable little babies, she disappeared. I’m thinking owl. Traumatized as I was by her sudden disappearance, the fact that she left seven toothless and very needy little fuzz-balls for me to attend to kept me from spending too much time dwelling on the specifics of her demise.

Have you ever fed seven babies? Five times a day? And you thought a PhD took a lot of time. When I realized mom had been absent for longer than was good for her babies, I also realized that I had no kitten formula, no bottles, and no eye droppers to feed them. I fed them a concoction of evaporated milk, egg yolk, corn syrup, yogurt, and mayonnaise through a modified visine eye dropper for the first few days, thinking that my feeding them would only be temporary and that any day mom would return. The visine bottle didn’t hold much (like three teaspoons), so I’d pour in a tiny bit of formula, squirt it into the mouth of a yowling little one, refill the bottle, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat. After that, each one got a head-to-toe sponge bath, complete with a bum-wipe (kittens only pee and poop when mom ‘licks’ their butt)—I had a glass of warm water and paper towels for this job. This process took quite some time, and about the time I’d finished the first round, it would be time to start again.

(these pictures taken the day before she disappeared)

When I realized that she wasn’t coming back, I, with my friend Keri, took them to the local humane society where Keri now works. Someone there could watch them instead of me, I thought, and then they could get shots and move on to loving homes when they were old enough. The lady behind the counter took one look at them and said, “You know if you leave them here we’re going to euthanize them, right?” Keri and I stared at her in complete silence. “What?” Keri managed to whisper. “If they can’t feed themselves we can’t keep them. Who would feed them every three hours? Who would feed them at night? We’ve got no one here who can spend enough time with them to make sure they all survive,” she lectured. We were embarrassed not to have thought of this, and left. I felt discouraged, but I couldn’t leave those babies there just to die.

On the way home, I grabbed syringes, eye droppers, bottles, and a container of dry kitten formula.

Thus began my new life for three weeks.

Tomorrow, I will introduce you to the furballs.

What…

2011-09-07T08:57:00.001-07:00

You thought because I didn’t post for awhile that I was out of cute pictures of Abby?

You must be joking.

In my humble opinion, this baby has the cutest little bum every worn by any human anywhere at any time.

But the rest of her is pretty cute too…

And the kid sure knows how to have a good time.

Please someone, bring this child back to me. I have been bored ever since she left.

An ode to my sister

2011-09-03T10:55:00.001-07:00

In honor of her birthday today, I have written a haiku.

Susanna Marie:

Little only in number.

Happy Birthday Sis.

I also wrote her a limerick:

There once was a girl named Susanna

Who looked nothing like a banana

More supple and fit,

She also had wit,

And ran faster than a young pantha’

Here’s hoping she has a fabulous birthday, and a wonderful 32nd year!

10 minutes later…

2011-08-28T04:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I’ve posted a lot of pictures of this guy, but can you blame me?

He was RIGHT THERE! IN MY FACE! He got so close I couldn’t take pictures anymore—it would have just been nostril hairs.

Here, let me show you…

And that’s about the time Jack found me, and the bighorn, and scared my buddy off before we could high-five each other.

Cool huh?

20 minutes later…

2011-08-27T05:19:00.000-07:00

Alex and I decided to sneak around the lake to get a better look at the horned fellow. I went right, he went left. Apparently the sheep sees better out of his right eye, because he didn’t like the look of Alex, and ran right past me instead!

He didn’t see me at first; the wind was blowing from him to me, I was scrunched up in a little ball, and his mind was on Alex.

Then he noticed. Paused. Thought about what he was seeing, and decided to go behind me so he could get a good whiff of me.

He got behind me and hid himself in the bushes a little. (As if I couldn’t see him, silly).

After debating for a bit, he decided he needed an even closer look. Now its your line:

How close DID he get?

I’ll let you know tomorrow, my internet superhighway won’t let me put any more pictures in this post.

One specimen in particular…

2011-08-26T04:59:00.000-07:00

Do you see him?

Jack does…

How ‘bout now?

We thought it was an elk at first… nope. It was a big horn! Just the one, hangin’ out near somebody else’s camp, digging through whatever they’d left out. Hardly concerned about the five (+ 2) of us across the way. Twenty minutes after I took this picture, I was close enough to shake his hand—er.. paw. But, I’ll save those picture for tomorrow.

Some nature pics, from our hike…

2011-08-25T05:45:00.000-07:00

Well duh, did you think that just because the adorable Abby was there that I didn’t take pictures of nature things?

Its just who I am. Abby-lover. Nature-lover.

Here is another specimen that I found on the trail… I have yet to identify it.

Can I just tell you…

2011-08-24T07:12:00.001-07:00

This house is just too quiet since these guys left.

Isn’t that reason enough for them to come back?

I want to go hiking this week, and it just won’t be the same without this little one giving me a look every time I want to take her picture:

Or yelling at her daddy every time he crosses a log: “You got it, daddy?”

Who is going to look at every detail with me? Pick up every stick, point to every butterfly, touch each tree trunk?

Who’s going to steal all the m&m’s from the trail mix?

I mean, I could just go with D-ennis, but his idea of a good hike is racing the dogs. I’m not kidding. He sprinted the first mile or so of our hike on this day, then turned around and ran it back. “Just to get the blood flowing,” he told me. I think I’ll have to start throwing the ball for him in the evening, like I do Jack.

Jack and Abby

2011-08-22T09:11:00.000-07:00

Now why isn’t Jack this patient with the Fed-Ex man?

Why isn’t he this chill when there’s a little thunder?

Or when I use the fly-swatter?

How come he can’t just go with the flow like this while the washing machine is going?

When I leave for the grocery store?

When I talk on my cell phone?

Why can’t he channel his inner turtle when he sees another dog?

Why can’t he just give me that look when he hears a muffler?

These are questions to which there is no answer. Not that Abby or Jack seem to care.

Bubbles

2011-08-21T08:56:00.000-07:00

My sis, her husband, and their adorable daughter came to visit. I haven’t had so much fun since… well, I can’t remember when.

Abby kept us entertained everyday—crabby or smiley, that girl was the most entertaining thing Northern New Mexico has seen since… well, I can’t remember that either.

One day, we blew bubbles… I posted about this on www.outsidemom.com.

But here are just a few more pictures. Why more pictures? Because between Sus and I we took several thousand, and I can’t let them go to waste.

Please ignore the fact that my mouth seems stuck in the open position and that there is a vein on my forehead that is bulging. I have no control over these things.

Everyone enjoyed the fun.

And I do mean everybody.

This is my favorite person in the world.

2011-08-20T08:44:00.001-07:00

Okay, I guess that’s a pretty big statement, and the truth is I have a whole lot of favorite people. But she is definitely one of them.

I should probably break this to you gently, but I’m just going to tell you straight up.

I’ve got things to post about again. And many of the pictures will involve this little one.

Just some cool pictures…

2011-07-25T08:30:00.001-07:00

Since I posted all my cool pictures at once yesterday (what was I thinking again?), here’s some cool ones somebody else took…

1) My favorite fish

2) Awesome pictures of sand dunes

3) The fire that has been affecting my view of the mountains for weeks

4) A few funny videos to make you giggle

Recent happenings

2011-07-24T11:48:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I wasn’t as consistent as I said I would be. But I have an excuse. And it’s a good one.

I lost my camera battery charger. And if I can’t take pictures, I can’t blog. That’s all there is to it.

My new camera battery charger arrived in the mail Friday afternoon at 2pm. By Friday at 6pm I had taken enough pictures to post again for the next four days. However, instead of dragging it out, I’m just going to fill you in real quick-like.

1. I still have kittens at my house.

2. If anything, they are getting cuter by the day.

3. There are more cute kittens on the way.

4. Maggie is also still cute

5. She and Jack have me on a very strict ball-throwing schedule. If I am off by even ten minutes, they complain for days.

6. Please pardon the lack of lush green grass. We live in a desert. And it is a drought year.

7. The sunset yesterday was incredible. If only it didn’t have to happen at 5:45 am.

8. If only D-ennis didn’t have to be to work at 6 a.m.

8. I made a new friend. I will let the picture speak for her level of Awesomeness.

Elk Scouting

2011-07-15T02:55:00.000-07:00

D-ennis has had one day off since I got home. Did we spend it lounging in bed, feeding each other chocolate-covered strawberries and saying all the things we’d wanted to say for the last three months, but couldn’t because the phone reception was so bad?

Nah. Besides, I’d just put clean sheets on the bed and getting strawberry stains out is a bugger.

We went elk scouting. D-ennis is hunting elk with his new and state-of-the-art bow this fall in ‘Section 50-something’. We had to go see if there were actually any elk there. The area is on the west side of the Rio Grande, which means we had to drive a long ways on bumpy dirt roads, cross the river on a rickety old bridge, and see lots of new country. Bummer. =)

We climbed to the top of one of the peaks in his section. Its an old volcano, so the top is a depression, hidden from view, and with more water than the rest of the mountain.

Needless to say we found 16 elk (including two bulls). I can see the future already… this winter we will be fed by elk-stew, elk-burgers, elk-burritos, elk-steaks, elk-pudding, green-eggs-and-elk, and elk-benedict. Did I mention he also has a deer tag?

Jack was thrilled with the day’s events, and put up a good chase to one elk. I’m pretty sure I could hear her snickering under her breath as she stayed just in front of him. Now Jack knows how I feel trying to keep up with D-ennis.

So the plan is for D-ennis to backpack in to the area for a week, shoot an elk and field-dress it, and then we’ll haul the meat out. We’re thinking six trips should get his stuff and the elk out. At 2.5 miles one-way, with a pack full of elk-meat… Oh boy.

Sunset on the way home, by the way, was spectacular.

This is Ada

2011-07-14T02:41:00.000-07:00

She is just now one year old.

When I saw her she had just learned to walk, and was quite pleased with herself.

I’m used to babies taking a minute or four hundred to warm up to a new person. Ada liked me instantly.

Which is good, because I liked her too.

I stopped in to visit her and her parents twice during my whirlwind tour of Utah. The first time, her parents shared with me fabulous lasagna, cheesy bread, and salad from the garden. (These are the same folks that met me with dinner at Calf Creek two years ago, by the way). I had such a great time chatting over lasagna and Utah beer that I went back down for more! This time I took them out for dinner… honey-mustard/chicken/bacon/pizza (to die for, by the way), wine, and spinach dip. Yum! Here’s hoping I get to see lots more of Ada and her parents in the future.

Blech.

2011-07-13T03:01:00.000-07:00

Can you see him?

Don’t ask me why I hate spiders. I try to be a rational person (most of the time), I know I shouldn’t hate spiders. But I do. Maybe it was the giant wolf spider that lived in the drain in the laundry room when I was a teenager. When I’d come into the room, he’d shrink back into his hole just a little. It made my feet tingle to be in that room, knowing he was right there watching my ankles. It didn’t help that my bedroom was right next door. Maybe it was being in the front of the canoe during an eventful float down the Ghost River in Tennessee. I swear Sus purposefully steered me into every spider-web that spanned that river. I believe it was karma that she also had to steer us back up stream to get the paddle that flew from my hands when she ran me into one particularly nasty web, complete with yellow monstrosity dead-center. I shudder at the memory. Maybe it was watching a girl eat cave spiders on Fear Factor. They clung to the corners of her mouth with all of their many legs. Writhing and twitching while she gagged. Ugh.

Or maybe, just maybe, it is that they are ugly creatures with too many eyes, and ghastly mouth parts and way too many legs. Shouldn’t something shaped like that at least make noise when it moves? So you know it’s coming? And such terrible intentions.

Look at this little bugger, just hanging out, waiting for some poor innocent little bee to come along.

Horrible.

Terrible.

Okay, he’s a pretty shade of green; but even Ted Bundy was charming.

Armadillo Lizard

2011-07-12T02:43:00.000-07:00

Check out this little cutie!

And the lizard too!

Speaking of babies…

2011-07-11T03:34:00.000-07:00

Five bucks to the person who can tell me what kind of ear this is first!

Did you guess it belonged to one of these?

You win! Come and visit me and I’ll give you what I owe you!

I rescued this little guy from the campus of UC Riverside. All we can figure is that his mom was run over (or met some migrating raccoon from south of the border and she ran off with him). He spent 45 minutes calling for her, and I finally decided she wasn’t coming, and he was just going to get run over to if he wasn’t stuck in a cardboard box. We found him a temporary home at a rehabilitation center about an hour away.

They’ll teach him to hunt and do whatever it is raccoons do, limit his contact with humans, and then will let him go in the vicinity of where I found him when he’s grown up this fall. If his eyes had still been closed, they would have had to keep him forever, as he would have imprinted on humans. Then they would have raised him with lots of human contact, lots of training, and would have used him to educate folks about wild animals.

Here’s one that imprinted on humans:

They trained him to sing the Star Spangled Banner, which he is doing for us here.

Just kidding.

It was really O Sole Mio.

Meanwhile…

2011-07-10T02:21:00.000-07:00

While I gallivanted around the west, what was happening back home?

This:

And a little of this:

There was some of this:

And a fair amount of this:

Anyone want a kitten? We’ve got two left.

And it looks like mom went and got herself pregnant again. I need to have a serious talk with her now that I’m back.

Cathedral Valley

2011-07-09T03:13:00.000-07:00

Technically, the middle of nowhere place I was has a name: See Above. Then See Below.

Note that the picture (See Above) was taken on July 4th, in southern Utah. Normally green is a color that goes out of fashion with Mother Nature around the middle of May in Southern Utah. Pretty impressive! That’s Boulder Mountain way in the background.

I borrowed my mom’s jeep (See Above, the one that is slightly Below) for the trip. Thank goodness! I had to ford high rivers (the Fremont is running higher than it has in 50 years or somesuch), climb gnarly hills (See Below), and bouncy down miles and miles of washed out road (See Below and to the Right) to get here. Thanks mom.

Sunrise, in the middle of nowhere

2011-07-08T02:54:00.000-07:00

The last four days of my field work were… I hate to say it…. miserable.

It was HOT. 103° worth of hot. I sat in a lawn chair in that heat for eight hours every day, cowering from the sun’s rays in long pants, a long shirt, a bandana, gloves, shoes, and a hat. All of which made it hotter. My water was the temperature of hot-coffee. My cheese brick melted like a watch in a Dali painting.
It was a banner year for the little no-see-ums, who partied in my hair, behind my ears, and across my collar-bones from 7 in the morning til 9 at night. When they got hungry from their rave, they’d munch on my skin, maybe head down to my wrists for a little break from all the goings-on near my eyeballs. Every once in awhile a deer fly would try to crash the party.
Did I mention it was hot?
How about the no-see-ums? Did I mention those?

This was the only redeeming feature of those four days: Sunrise on my last morning there: I had 20 minutes of bliss before the no-see-ums returned that morning.

Okay, this time I mean it…

2011-07-07T07:58:00.001-07:00

I wrote that last post in a hotel room, before I headed into the middle of nowhere for four days. That was a silly way to re-start!

Now I’m home. REALLY home. After two and a half months of living out of a green duffle bag (filled with a limited selection of clothing items) and a filthy backpack, I am home. Sitting on my balcony, watching the sun change from deep red to blinding white as it climbs above the smoky haze that fills our valley. The dogs are laying at my feet (or I should say were laying at my feet. A squirrel just chided something in the yard and the dogs are now growling and breathing heavy.) Inside, my clothes are cleaned, and put away. No longer do I have to rifle through my little green bag, shuffling un-worn jogging shorts and just-in-case skirts to get to my stack of shirts. Now the shirts are hanging together in the closet, next to the other just-in-case skirts, and the jogging shorts (still unused) are in a drawer. I have fresh socks, a different pair of jeans, and D-ennis’ fire sweatshirts to wear now. I have a fridge full of my favorite condiments, a large collection of spices, and someone to cook for. I also have someone to snuggle up to at night, someone to send off every morning, and someone who has fallen waaaayyyy behind on his laundry. It might interest you to know that these are all the same person.

Aaaahh. It is good to be home.

I’ll share with you a few pictures from the last (ahem) month or so this week. I didn’t take many for large periods of time, because the subject matter was the same every day: bees visiting flowers. Yes, I love bees, and I love flowers, but there are only so many angles from which to photograph these two, and I’ve tried each one six times now. Here is something a little different.

My first day in Utah, mom took me to see some Globe Mallow. We found this lady and her two little ones.

Has it been that long???

2011-06-29T21:22:00.001-07:00

Holy cow. A whole month and a half???

Man, I’ve been busy. Very busy. Stupid PhD.

Sorry folks. Hopefully things are almost wrapped up as far as field work and I can catch you up on what I’ve been doing. I know you’ve been on the edge of your seat just waiting to hear what I’ve been up to!

Of course, I’m starting with a flower picture. =)

Science gone crazy

2011-05-17T17:43:00.000-07:00

I am immersed in sciencey science stuff all day these days.

To celebrate, I present you with this quiz. Can you guess which one is the REAL title to a paper? These authors put what I'm doing to shame.

Enjoy.

(and good luck!)

Man, this snake really hated me

2011-05-15T20:36:00.001-07:00

I’m going to guess because I interrupted his digestion of who-knows-what. (He had a distinct bulge).

He’d picked the warmest sunniest stretch of road he could find.

He didn’t seem to care that his five foot length was stretched across a piece of highway frequented by cars driving 60 mph.

Me though, he really cared about me. He hissed, and wheezed, and twisted, and flared his jaw, and rattled his poor rattle-less tail, and showed me his toughest poses. He stood his ground, insisting that I leave him be. I couldn’t. First time I’ve used my tripod this whole trip, and it was to move a large unappreciative snake off of a busy road.

Did you see it?

2011-05-11T18:08:00.000-07:00

Here, I’ll give you a close up…

Pop Quiz…

2011-05-11T18:06:00.000-07:00

What’s wrong with this sign?

I’ll give you 24 hours to figure it out…

Favorites

2011-05-11T18:05:00.000-07:00

I have a few. Here’s one of them.

Here’s another

To be honest, I’m partial to their parents as well… I guess you could say I like the whole darn family.

I had so much fun hanging out with these favorites of mine last weekend. Even if it was windy enough to blow us off the road! (We bagged the camping in Death Valley for a fancy room in Pahrump—can’t say my back minded one bit). I think we had the same amount of fun there that we would have had in the desert. Every minute with these guys is enjoyable!

Lindsey and I had a ladies’ night out before our failed camping trip. It included a bit of time at a skate park watching beginners and experts on every wheeled contraption you can think of; a movie neither of us would ever see on a ‘date night’ with our significant others (Jane Eyre); watching the World Boxing Championship; and some fancy pasta dishes (butternut squash ravioli for me, and spinach manicotti in pink basil sauce for Lins). There was much talking, a little snickering, and lots of fun. The happiness and sense of calm that night (and the whole weekend) brought me with will last for some time.

The only spiders I like…

2011-05-09T02:57:00.000-07:00

are jumping spiders. And these guys have to be the coolest ones of all!

Thanks Kristal for sharing this!

Happy Mother’s Day

2011-05-08T00:04:00.001-07:00

to all the many wonderful, amazing, and inspiring mom’s I know

My newest best friend

2011-05-05T03:12:00.000-07:00

This kitty loves me. It may be that he loves everybody, but that doesn’t change the fact that he loves me.

He snuggles up next to me at night, follows me around the house, helps me cook, gives me hugs (I am not exaggerating, he jumps in my lap and gives me hugs), and talks to me a lot. We are best buddies.

Maybe he will accidently find his way into my luggage, and not find a way out until New Mexico. Maybe.

Yarrrr…

I guess I love this kitty too.

These guys…

2011-05-04T02:00:00.000-07:00

have been keeping me company while I collect scent during the day. They have a serious Napolean complex… you’ve never seen such a tiny creature take itself so seriously! I guess when you’re that good but that tiny, maybe it’s okay to act like a big shot all the time.

Wherein I tell people about sucking scent off of flowers

2011-05-03T20:41:00.001-07:00

Its funny the reactions you get when you put a ‘scent trap’ on a flower. You’d be amazed how many people either a) feel incredibly curious, but can’t bring themselves to ask or b) ask me if I’m giving the plants an iv. These folks pictured here were curious and not embarrassed by it. We talked for almost an hour. And because I was in a botanic garden that emphasizes education, someone was there to take pictures of the whole thing.

I like my hand gestures. I look like a field version of Vanna White, except not as elegant, as tall, as pretty, or as well-dressed.

Okay, so maybe I don’t really look like her.

And now for something a little different

2011-05-02T01:01:00.000-07:00

While I analyze scent samples…

2011-05-01T03:58:00.000-07:00

This is what D-ennis is up to. Good job mister!

Looks like my favorite fire fighter is going to be busy this year.

Anybody want to come hang out with me til October? Looks like I’ll have the house all to myself ‘til the snow flies.

Wish I knew what kind of bird this was…

2011-04-30T01:53:00.000-07:00

Yes, it’s time for another bee

2011-04-29T03:03:00.000-07:00

Compliments of my PhD.

White-tail, dear

2011-04-28T03:52:00.000-07:00

Is that a giant nose or what?

I think she heard me…

Sorry, dear, it’s true. Your nose is gi-normous.

My Georgia O’Keefe moment

2011-04-27T03:33:00.000-07:00

Here’s lookin’ at you

2011-04-26T03:30:00.000-07:00

Another flower…

2011-04-25T03:22:00.000-07:00

Because that’s what I’ve been seeing. If you don’t want to see pictures of flowers, there’s always this picture instead.

I dunno…

2011-04-24T03:10:00.000-07:00

I like how gold and glowy the center is, but I’m not sure I like this picture…

What’s missing? Is it the framing? The edges out of focus? The sunburn I got today?

Do tell…

Liz is going to hate this post… =)

2011-04-23T01:46:00.000-07:00

Out the car window… who are you???

Oh. I see.

Hello gorgeous.

Mind if I sneak in here for a quick picture?

Much obliged.

My readers will thank you, considering how sick of flowers they’re going to get in the next few weeks…

It’s a field season

2011-04-22T03:04:00.000-07:00

What field season would be complete without pictures of bees?

I’m sure there are more to come (it’s me, after all)…

(That’s my reflection in his butt there…)

So many pictures, so little time

2011-04-21T19:53:00.001-07:00

The field work has begun. So far, so good. I’ve pictures of all sorts of things to share, but internet is a rare commodity…

For now, this one. Hopefully more to come.

Just a few more…

2011-04-15T01:35:00.000-07:00

I know you won’t mind.

The conditions were difficult—tornadoes, wind turning 180° in a few hours, fences, etc. But they had planned and planned and planned. D-ennis was up til 11:00 every night planning before a fire, preparing for any contingency, communicating every detail, establishing clearly who was supposed to do what. And then on the days the burned, he was up til 2:00 in the morning. He came home absolutely exhausted.

But it was essential that everything go well (I mean, how embarrassing would it be to mess up a burn while all the farmers in the area are watching???)

You have to start by making a strip of black, so that when the fire reaches it, there’s no fuel and the fire goes out. Then you burn towards the strip of black, one strip at a time (hoping the wind doesn’t change its mind). The hard part is establishing that strip of black—what’s to stop the fire if there’s fuel all around it? Water. Lots of water. And lots of attentive folks. That UTV there carries 100 gallons of water, and has a nozzle right behind the front wheel. As the UTV drives forward, it drenches the ground with water and the back wheels press the moisture into the ground. Then a man follows right behind with a ‘torch’, lighting the grass on fire.

This creates a perfectly straight line of black.

Then you can take your torch and walk away from the line of black at an angle, almost straight into the wind. Slowly the grass gets burned.

What’s the end result? Healthy prairies and happy buffalo.

So pleased…

2011-04-14T03:06:00.000-07:00

…that D-ennis remembered his camera.

Fire pictures are so cool.

So is D-ennis.

What D-ennis does…

2011-04-13T11:03:00.001-07:00

In the mid-west, every land owner (it seems) burns his property every spring, before it greens up.

Lands owned by the state, the department of defense, the nature conservancy, etc. need someone to burn them too.

A group of folks who know something about fire from all sorts of different agencies come together to accomplish the task.

They learn from each other, they learn from the landscape, and they do something that they’re all passionate about—the role of fire in natural settings.

Perfect Day

2011-04-12T12:48:00.001-07:00

D-ennis is home (and handsomely bearded)

Strawberry pancakes on the griddle

Glorious sunsets out the window

Life is good.

See you in two months!

2011-04-11T03:10:00.000-07:00

So hard to part with Jack and Maggie. I know it’s silly. They’re just dogs. But they have undeniable personalities, and they like my company, and they make me feel important, and they make me laugh.

I should be happy: No feeding, no wiping off dirty feet, no barking at the neighbors, no arguing over bones, no pressing need to throw the ball, no need to vacuum every day just to stay ahead of the hair.

But I am moping the loss of my furry friends.

Even if it is just for two months.

Be good, pups. Don’t embarrass me.

Why are sunsets…

2011-04-10T03:18:00.000-07:00

More intense than sunrises? This sunset last week made me notice that I never see sunrises this dramatic. Not that I am awake for as many sunrises as I am sunsets, but still, I think my sample size is large enough… Am I wrong in this? I don’t think so. I want an explanation. Pronto!

Mom has a new guy in her life

2011-04-09T03:00:00.000-07:00

He loves adventure, long walks, his brother Ben, food, and talking. As Grandma would say, “He’s a keeper.”

Continuing on…

2011-04-08T04:52:00.000-07:00

On top of the bluff is this tree, which has bark like an Alligator.

It also looks something like my hands after a field season.

But I digress.

On top of the bluff is also this ruin, called Atsinna. Built by the Anasazi, they say, who are now the Zuni who live below and a few miles to the west.

They say the Anasazi moved up here during the drought in the 1300s. When resources are scarce, it’s a good idea to protect what you have.

Not a bad spot to watch the sunset, I imagine. I may have like the Anasazi life…

Maggie most certainly would not have liked the Anasazi life. It involves elevation and being up high.

Right after this picture, she started crying and sat down, refusing to walk another step. She was certain we were going to fall off of something. What, she didn’t know, but something. I had to carry her for about a half a mile.

When I (in sandals, carrying Maggie, who was tied to Jack who heeled behind me) passed a lady, in hiking boots and thick socks, inching along with two walking sticks, carefully testing each rock before putting any weight on it, it occurred to me that I was looking at Maggie in human form. I’m not sure what simultaneous thought she had of me.

El Morro

2011-04-07T03:29:00.000-07:00

Maybe its because history makes me so giddy, but I highly recommend El Morro…. a national monument I had never heard of until I stumbled across a reference to it while reading a book about Kit Carson. The place is only a few square miles in size, but within its boundaries is a sandstone rock outcrop that is tattooed with the names of every explorer to pass by the area over a period of 400 (700?) years. At the base, in a secluded alcove, is a small pool of water that persists year round. Providing a much needed resource in the hot and dusty desert, this place was a natural stop over for generation after generation of intrepid European travellers—conquistadors, pioneers, engineers, and cavalry. But even before that, the road between Acoma (the oldest city in the U.S.) and the Zuni pueblos led right past here.

I stopped here on my way to meet my mom, and the national monument was kind enough to allow Jack and Maggie to walk with me, as long as we were tied together.

The outcrop is about a quarter of a mile long, and both sides are riddled with over 2000 inscriptions, including more than 700 petroglyphs, and the signatures of infamous Spaniards, settlers, cavalry members, railroad workers, children, and rulers.

They even give you a nice pamphlet telling the stories of many of the names on the wall.

You can’t see them…. from ten feet away it is as if they aren’t even there. They are so insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but still so… so telling. So meaningful at the time they were made. So fragile.

My imagination ran wild—what would it have been like to travel through here 100 to 400 years ago? I love thinking about the people that made these marks. How they shared chisels. What jokes they made. How horribly they probably smelled. Who they wished could be there with them, seeing what they saw. How annoyed they were with certain travelling companions. What they were craving from back home.

Here’s what little bit we know about the amazing people who passed through here. I know it’s overkill, but it truly fascinates me. And it’s my blog. So there.

These are petroglyphs likely made by the Anasazi that frequented the place (and lived on top of the mesa) 700 years ago.

This is the oldest signature there, and some say the first graffiti made by a European in America. Made on April 16, 1605, Juan De Onate exclaims on the success of his recent adventure: “Governor Don Juan de Onate passed through here, from the discovery of the Sea of the South on the 16th of April, 1605”. The South Sea was the Pacific Ocean, which he had left to find the year before. Born in 1555 to owners of silver mines in Mexico, and married to a descendant of Cortez, his prestige earned him the job of the first governor of New Mexico. His tasks were to assist in the ‘saving ‘ of as many Indian souls as possible, and to explore and map out the coastline of New Mexico (that’s right, they thought the coast wasn’t too far to the west). With a column that stretched over nearly 2 miles, consisting of 400 men, plenty of friars, 7000 cattle and sheep, he set off from Mexico City in 1598 for the new capital. They settled in an area that I pass every time I go to town—the first Spanish settlement in New Mexico was just outside of Espanola (makes me wonder who put those two crosses on that rock—it’s so close to where they set up shop!). Onate spent so much of his rule in those early years exploring the countryside and looking for fabled wealth, that those who had travelled all the way north with him finally deserted. He came home from one expedition to find that only 25 soldiers remained in the capital city—all the rest had headed back south. He shrugged, and took off on another expedition, this time looking for the Pacific; meanwhile those colonists who made it all the way back to Mexico City complained that he was a terrible governor. He was removed from his post almost immediately. Mexico almost gave up on its northern most lands at that point, but the friars who had come north with Onate had converted 8000 souls (so they reported), and the Mexican government/catholic church decided it needed to maintain a presence. They sent up a new governor, who resettled in Santa Fe, the city of “Holy Faith”.

In 1680 the Puebloans (Native Americans) revolted against the Spaniards for their harsh treatment, led by the charismatic Po’Pay (near where his home once was, there is now the Ohkay Casino, where D-ennis loves to play Blackjack). Any Spaniards who weren’t killed in the revolt fled south to El Paso. For 12 years the Puebloans held Northern New Mexico—every attempt at reclaiming the area failed miserably. Po’Pay, while a great rebel, turned out to be a terrible leader. Making himself out to be something of a deity, the areas under his control soon became unstable, and the Spaniards finally reclaimed their hold—Don Diego Vargas marched north in 1692 with a handful of men and easily reclaimed one pueblo after another—many of the Puebloans were starving and their villages still in ruins from the revolt 12 years before. When he stopped here at El Morro, he couldn’t help but leave a note to the rest of the world about his ‘success’.

Ramon writes: "On the 25th of the month of June, of this year of 1709, Ramon Garcia Jurado passed through here on the way to Zuni." Ramon was born in Puebla Mexico in 1678, but moved to Santa Fe with his parents when he was 15. Twenty three years after inscribing his name on this wall, he became the mayor of Bernalillo (north of Albuquerque), and was subsequently accused by local priests of mistreating the Indians in the pueblo under his supervision. He was banished to Zuni (near here) for two years, and had to pay a large sum to the mistreated Indians, as a result.

Don Feliz Martinez wrote: “Year of 1716 on the 26th of August passed by here Don Feliz Martinez, Governor and Captain General of this realm to the reduction and conquest of the Moqui by order of the Reverend Padre Friar Antonio Camargo, Custodian and Ecclesiastical Judge.” The Moqui were the Hopi Indians, and he was marching west from Santa Fe in order to conquer and convert them to his catholic faith. With his cavalry he brought several missionaries. His conquest didn’t go so well, and he returned to Santa Fe defeated, having only managed to destroy a few cornfields.

Though hard to read the next one says: “The Ensign Don Joseph de Payba Basconzelos passed through here on the 18th of February 1726, the year he returned, at his own expense, the members of the cabildo of the kingdom”. Those Spaniards were long winded! It seems that Basconzelos, a council member in Santa Fe, kindly paid for some expelled council members to return home, after being banished to Mexico City for 3 1/2 years.

J.A. Lucero signed his name on this wall in 1890. He was 42 years old. He was born about 20 miles away in Cebolleta (Seboyeta), a mission town settled by Spaniards on the Navajo lands (with permission) in 1749. The relationship was not good, and the Spaniards built a ten foot wall around their city to try and prevent raids. In the 1850s (when Lucero was still a boy), it was known as a place where Unsavories from Mexico traded slaves, whiskey, and guns. His parents were farmers and sheepherders, and I imagine they lost a fair number of sheep to the raiding Navajos.

E. Pen Long, F. Engle Jr., and P. Gilmer Breckenridge passed through the area in 1857, accompanying Edward Beale, who had been appointed by the president to map out and build a wagon road that ran from Fort Defiance (just west of El Morro) to The Colorado River (on the border of California and Arizona). This is the route that I-40 now follows. At the same time, the men were to test the feasibility of using camels in southwestern excursions (The Camel Corps). He had 25 camels brought over from Tunis, and rode them (each carrying ~700 pounds!) across the desert. The camels did great, but the horses and mules were so scared of them that they ended up deciding not to use them in the future. (Beale is a very entertaining writer by the way, I recommend is journals of these expeditions). P. Gilmer’s first name was ‘Peachy’ and he was fresh out of Virigina Military Academy, after leading the camels across the desert, he returned home to fight for the south in the Civil War, where he was killed.

R.H. Orton was one of the ‘most efficient officers and best Indian Fighters in the territory’, a distinction that eventually earned him the title of adjutant-general of California after the Civil War. In the early days of the Civil War, Texans (rebels—south) moved on forts in the New Mexico Territory. California sent reinforcements to aid the northern-held outposts of New Mexico, under the guidance of General Carleton (after whom, this lovely plant is named—LIZ).

They got their rears soundly beaten by those Texans, who easily took Santa Fe and Albuquerque. They were headed around the Sangre De Cristos and up into Colorado, when they were defeated in Apache Canyon (with the help of this dude!). After that the California Column spent the next few years fighting the Apache in the territory before eventually disbanding. It is likely Orton made his mark here on his way home to California after they disbanded.

After Beale and his Camel Corps established the Wagon Route across Northern Arizona and New Mexico, Udell was one of the emigrants on the very first wagon train to try it out as a way to get to California. Led by Mr. Rose, he and forty other families stopped here and left their names before travelling on to the Colorado River. There, they were attacked by Mojave Indians. The Indians stole 383 of their 400 cattle and all of their belongings. They were so close to California, but still had to cross the rest of the Mojave. They (including 60 year old Udell and his wife) opted instead to walk all the way back to Albuquerque to wait out the winter, a distance of over 600 miles.

Lieutenant Simpson had a long military career in both the east and the west… everything from the Erie Canal to the ‘Utah War/Standoff’. In between he found time to document everything he came across on his expeditions, even hiring watercolor painters, photographers, and sketch artists to accompany him on his journeys. It was likely on this same trip that he first described Canyon De Chelly to the rest of the world, a place he visited while tagging along with a military group sent there to bring in the rebel Navajos holed up on its barely accessible plateaus. Simpson loved the barren desolate deserts—a love not shared by many of his colleagues. I wish I could have met him. (note that he misspelled inscriptions and had to add the r in after the fact!) From his travels, especially on this tripa, he made this map.

The last markings were made by railroad workers surveying for a railway line across New Mexico. They settled on a line 25 miles north of here. Travellers no longer needed to stop at this rock on their way to anywhere. And besides, the government made it illegal to write on walls anymore. The first managers of the National Monument sand blasted out anything written after 1906.

Funny how we define graffiti. Someday we’ll regret those lost signatures from the 1920’s; the mark of those who survived the depression and two world wars in this area. It’s only precious once it is in the past, it seems…

Of course

2011-04-06T02:03:00.000-07:00

Of course the week D-ennis goes to Kansas to burn the prairie, I find that the front lawn has turned into a bubbling spring.

Of course the shut-off valve for this particular section of pipe is the shut-off valve for the whole entire house.

Of course access to the likely source of this waterline break is underneath a giant pile of rocks.

Of course the pipe running up from the ground is coated in concrete

Of course when I get to the bottom, where any normal person might expect a waterline to break, I find that the waterline break is somewhere upstream of this.

Of course I don’t determine this until I’ve turned the water back on, and my hole is no a swimming pool of muddy water, which has to be drained bucketful by bucketful.

Of course the break is actually seven feet upstream, and two feet under muddy ground.

Of course the closest place to get a plug for this break is a 35 minute drive away.

Of course upon getting the necessary plug to fix the break, I lock myself out of my running car, in the middle of the street in front of my house. And of course the neighbors are watching while I climb in the back window of my little truck and get my hips stuck on the window latch.

Of course once I fix the break and go to turn the water back on, I break the main shut-off valve so that no water will flow what-so-ever.

Of course it takes two hours to trouble-shoot this and fix it.

Of course I celebrate with a bath.

Navajo Country

2011-04-05T04:21:00.000-07:00

On the downside:

1) all the roads are one-lane, and most of the cars drive 50 mph

2) gas stations exist around the edges, but not so much in the middle

3) there are no radio stations that last for more than a 10 mile stretch

4) there is no cell phone coverage that lasts for more than a 4 mile stretch

5) all the land appears to be private

On the upside:

1) things like this just hang out by the side of the road

2) it is like an undiscovered Southern Utah—vast expanses of breathtakingly beautiful country and no tourists.

Makes it so you hardly notice that your phone and radio don’t work.

Twinkle twinkle

2011-04-04T11:29:00.001-07:00

Went to St. George this past weekend and performed the Semi-Annual Moving Of The Dogs, an event wherein my mother very graciously opens her home to our two mutts so that I can do field work and D-ennis can put out fires (literally). I don’t know how I will ever repay her for this service. It’s not enough that she keeps the dogs, loves them as if they were her own, takes care of their ailments, takes them for walks, adjusts to each of their special needs, and cleans up after their breakdowns… she does all this with complete patience, forgiving their transgressions almost before they happen; and while caring for her own two dogs (oh, and my two cats) (oh, and 20 boxes of my stuff from childhood). I can’t believe I even asked her to do it again this year; I feel like a schmuck right now. But I am a very grateful schmuck! I have pictures of the SAMOTD to share, but right now I’ve got to unpack, restore order, and maybe take a nap. It was an exhausting trip.

I will (for now) share just this one photo I took the first evening where Jack and Maggie and I camped. I took this approximately fifteen minutes before someone started shooting an automatic rifle somewhere in the vicinity of my supposedly secret camp. I was looking to get away from the crowds. Apparently so was he (she?). Needless to say Jack was… alarmed. I, wanting to keep my location secret, was alarmed that Jack was being so loudly alarmed. It made for a sleepless night.

The desert

2011-04-01T03:09:00.000-07:00

So barren, desolate.

Overwhelming and enormous.

And so beautiful.

Here is one I didn’t even know existed

2011-03-31T03:02:00.000-07:00

Mohavea confertiflora. Mojave Ghost Flower.

I just call it Gorgeous

As in “Hello, Gorgeous”

When you’re all by yourself in the desert for days on end, you start talking to the plants.

They don’t seem to mind.

And for those of you who are living where the flowers aren’t blooming yet

2011-03-30T03:57:00.000-07:00

Here are some flowers

And. Of course.

Here is a picture of a bee for you

2011-03-29T03:52:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of the road to the dump, outside Anza Borrego State Park.

Spines

2011-03-28T03:46:00.000-07:00

They’re everywhere. I’m still picking them out of every body part I have. Why are desert plants so darn spiny?

Even the petals have spines.

And now so do I.

Let the field fun begin

2011-03-27T21:41:00.001-07:00

First, let me introduce Sherry, who I dragged 3200 miles around the Sonoran Desert last week.

We were looking for these, and their cousins

Not really my cup of tea, little Sherry, but she did pretty good all things considered.

Never take for granted a little thing called ‘Clearance’. It’s real nice on dirt roads.

Don’t tell Sherry, but I sure miss my Jeep.

Ha!

2011-03-10T07:45:00.001-08:00

This fell out of the photo album I had out yesterday when I was scanning in those pictures of the Missouri.

Ha!

Ha! That’s the only word that comes to mind when looking at this…

This is was just before my first ‘bee talk’ ever, a fire side program for the National Park where I worked… back in the days when fire side programs involved a slide projector and a tape player. I’d even written a poem to go with my program. I was so nervous. So very young and nervous. But my even younger sister sat in the front row with my mom. She had heard me practice so many times she knew every word by heart. I could look out of the corner of my eye and see her mouthing each sentence as I said it. At the end of the program I had forgotten to mention the part about how you tell a bee from a fly or wasp. She raised her hand and very sweetly said, “I was wondering, is there any way to tell a bee from a fly or a wasp?”

How did I get such a nice sister?

I hope she’s available for my PhD defense…

Huckleberry Schmuckleberry

2011-03-09T12:01:00.001-08:00

This is the Missouri river. But this isn’t Missouri. It is Montana. I like looking at this picture and imagining Lewis and Clark trudging upstream here, pulling their boats behind them, slogging through mud, wishing mosquitoes didn’t exist.

We canoed this river, but we went downstream only, so there was no pulling of boats. And we didn’t have to draw any maps. And we had bug repellant. And mostly we wore sandals.

We did it more Huck Finn style, but without the racial issues. We only had to relax, hike, watch birds, and relax some more.

(Side note: I just figured out how to use Adobe Photoshop to make Sus look like a watercolor painting.)

Did I mention that it was relaxing?

And beautiful.

(Another side note. This is ‘crosshatched’. I can’t decide if I like it).

Did I mention that it was beautiful?

And windy. When the wind blew downstream in the afternoon, it really blew. One day the wind was blowing so hard that it picked up one of our empty 17 foot canoes and flipped it end over end down the beach.

We, of course, took advantage when on the water…

Check out that wake!

Not to be outdone, Sus and I built a bigger and better sail. Sus lashed it together, while balancing in a canoe in the wind, out of a tarp, some rope, and a few pieces of driftwood. I directed. I’m good at that. Telling Sus what to do has always been a skill of mine.

When the wind filled our sail, Sus had to work hard to hold it up, leaning back like a windsurfer and trying to keep the darn thing straight. And when a crosswind blew…. whew! We were lucky to keep the canoe upright. I am not exaggerating! While Sus worked, I directed, and steered from the back. Considering the width of the Missouri river, steering wasn’t particularly difficult.

Sigh. So much more fun than writing about bees and cactus.

I took some pictures!

2011-03-07T09:18:00.001-08:00

They’re nothing special. There’s not much color in the world here right now. Its either muddy, or snowing. Sigh. Spring, where are you???

But I’m complaining. Let me start again.

We went on a hike in the ‘badlands’ this weekend. Scrambling around in the soft dirt, exploring eroded out caves, looking for the remains of trappers and the buttons off of the cavalry outfits. Good times.

We started here:

Well, we started at the car, but meandered up to here.

The stories I conjured in my head related to these two crosses… They look old, don’t they? Weathered? Like maybe they’ve been there since all the Spanish missionaries were taking the Camino Real up to Taos? There’s a spring just down from here, and I am convinced the Spanish equivalent of Friar Tuck made these while his mule got a drink.

Here is the journey D-ennis and I took:

This is the path Jack took.

Needless to say, he was a bit tired when we got back to the car.

No words necessary

2011-03-06T03:03:00.000-08:00

My mom sent these to me

2011-03-05T04:26:00.000-08:00

And they made me giggle til I cried. And since I still have no pictures for you, I'm posting these instead. Trust me, its a worthwhile way to spend ten minutes today!

Newest favoritest fish

2011-03-04T03:08:00.000-08:00

The American Paddlefish.

I’m pretty sure I saw one of these on a canoeing trip down the missouri once. It jumped out of the water and hit the side of the boat with that long nose. I’d show you pictures of the Missouri, but I can’t get the scanner to work here…

Imagine a bunch of water, some rolling hills, a lot of sun, and a few canoes. Only prettier.

Anyhoo. I found this video of the fish and decided it was the best fish ever. It eats like I do.

(p.s. If the video doesn't work, go here...)

Fire and brimstone

2011-03-03T03:08:00.000-08:00

I just can’t get enough of this website.

The post this week gives a whole new meaning to that child’s game where the ground is hot lava…

My kitty

2011-03-02T01:10:00.000-08:00

Is so happy its getting warmer here—she HATES stepping in snow. She tried to step only in my boot prints when the snow was deep here this winter, and if (heaven forbid) a paw happened to touch the fluffy stuff, she’d shake it furiously. I always wondered how she managed to pee without getting her feet wet.

In honor of kitty:

Chuck Bent

2011-03-01T00:40:00.000-08:00

I still haven’t taken any pictures. But I did happen to have my phone with me last weekend…. when I went to the Charles Bent Museum—his house, to be exact. The place where he, the first governor of New Mexico, was shot by 20 arrows and scalped and left to die. In front of his family. There was no display on Charles Bent in the entire museum other than the ‘restored’ hole in the adobe wall of his living room, where he tried to escape. And there was a lovely printout at the door that you could purchase for 50 cents, describing the final moments of his death, as recalled by his then-five year old daughter.

There was also a skull painted silver:

a buffalo skull that had the skin from the head taped on to it, some pottery from Mexico and Alaska, and… this:

And this:

I don’t know either.

Craziest museum I’ve ever been in. Totally worth 3 dollars.

Hi Folks

2011-02-28T12:37:00.001-08:00

I think I feel guiltier about not writing anything for the last week than I should. I figure if I just confess and get it over with, I’ll feel much better.

Sigh.

Here goes.

I haven’t taken pictures of anything.

And if I don’t have any pictures… well, without pictures, I’m kind of boring. (Don’t tell D-ennis).

I went to Albuquerque a week ago, but was so busy playing Tickle Monster for two adorable sisters that I never grabbed my camera from the car to document the occasion.

I’ve been on a few dog walks, watched some nice sunsets, and read some papers about bees. But the camera has sat neglected in its case. And my blog sits unattended to.

Soon, I will do something picture-worthy. In the meantime, here are some pictures from elsewhere to entertain you:

From photo.net

From naturepictures.org

From photos.500px.com

Your poem for the week

2011-02-17T03:55:00.000-08:00

He comes, - he comes, - the Frost Spirit comes!
You may trace his footsteps now
On the naked woods and the blasted fields
And the brown hill's withered brow.
He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees
Where their pleasant green came forth,
And the winds, which follow wherever he goes,
Have shaken them down to earth…

--J.G. Whittier

Pop quiz

2011-02-16T03:31:00.000-08:00

Look at this picture. What do you see?

Loving brown eyes?

A smoochable snout?

Malleable ears?

Adorable paws?

Something that you just want to love and spoil and pat on the head and pet and cuddle with?

Interesting.

This is what I see:

Fur. It’s everywhere.

And I am convinced that Maggie is cloning herself, slowly creating her offspring under our very noses, one piece of hair at a time.

I’m on to you Maggie. Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on here. Your sweetness doesn’t fool me one bit.

Oh, and one more thing…

2011-02-15T08:02:00.001-08:00

The price of being skinny

2011-02-15T04:01:00.000-08:00

When I was a teenager, I was skinny. You know the kind—the gawky long legs with no meat and too much knee. I could out-eat my dad any day of the week, but nothing stuck. (Not to worry, I rectified that situation later in life. Now even the dust I inhale is stored away on my inner thighs, just in case I’m ever starving to death). But back then I had neither fat nor muscle. My backside was as flat as my cutting board… so was my front side, come to think of it. This caused me no great distress except for one fact: I couldn’t stand cold water.

With no insulation, and no means of generating heat, the cold seeped between the cells of my skin, settling around my bones. And they would ache. Ache. I remember my mother and sister jumping into bodies of mountain water without so much as a moment’s hesitation at water’s edge. They’d frolic and splash like polar bears. “Come on in! The water’s fine!” Like sirens they’d try to cajole me in to joining them. Oh how I wanted to. But the water ached on my feet. I couldn’t imagine putting my whole body through that torment. And when I did give in, it was miserable. I’d gasp uncontrollably, sounding like that guy in Termnator II who blows up Skynet as he gasps his last breaths (sorry, they just had a marathon on TV). My arms would flail in an attempt to keep as much of me out of the water as possible. And then I’d swim to shore while others laughed at me, plant my bony butt on the shore, and shiver like a those wind-up chattering teeth for hours.

My grandparents took us kids up the canyon one summer afternoon for a ‘float trip’ down the Provo River. They brought four inner tubes (one for each of the grandkids), and the plan was for us to launch ourselves at one gentle port, and be picked up an hour or so later somewhere down the river. I remember the excitement as we drove up the canyon (upriver) to our put-in spot. The current looked perfect, the sun shone brilliantly on the water—it was going to be a fabulous day. My cousins and sister launched themselves first, butt planted in the center of the tube and feet and arms dangling in the water. Grins and laughter echoed off the canyon walls. I grabbed my tube, set it in the water, and stepped in after it. As my feet hit the water I made the astonishing realization that water pouring down a canyon in the mountains of Utah is fed by glaciers.

There was no way I was going to leave any part of me in that icy water for an hour long float trip. My sister encouraged me from the current, which was slowly pulling her and my cousins away from me. My mother shouted from the bank to hurry up and get in or I would be left behind. But…. how could I? In desperation I devised a plan. Carefully I crawled on to the tube, hands and feet holding my entire body out of the frigid water, crouching over the center hole, wobbling like a bowl of jelly. The current pulled me out of the eddy and over a small ripple. Of course, the tube tipped and I was dumped sideways into the freezing cold current. The shock was complete and instantaneous. My being revolted and, as I shot to the surface, I was both trying to breathe and trying to scream at the same time. My feet forgot how to kick, my arms flailed uselessly.

How encouraging it was to see my grandparents and my mother on the shore, laughing so hard they could hardly stand. What a wonderful last vision of this world, I thought to myself as I froze to death in the Provo River.

Except of course I didn’t freeze to death. I drug myself to shore, sobbing and shivering. Mom wiped the tears from her eyes, met me with a towel, and I waited on shore, shivering while my relatives played in the water.

I’m still not sure how I feel about cold water. In fact, I’m so unsure, I think I will now go take a warm bath and try to forget that the substance exists.

Failure

2011-02-14T08:10:00.001-08:00

I had high hopes of going down to the Rio Grande this weekend and getting pictures of Mergansers and Buffleheads and Scaup and Grebes. You guys were going to be so impressed, and think to yourself, “Wow, that Liv is really something,” while you looked at pictures of Mallards with a glint in their eye, water beading on their feathers, and still reflections in the water below them. I thought maybe I’d catch a picture of an bald eagle grabbing a trout from the waters right in front of me. This is all I saw, all day long.

I am reading an interesting book about such thoughts. Apparently it is quite common for our imaginations to get the better of us when we envision the future, and this leads to disappointment when the future looks nothing like what we imagined.

Color me disappointed.

With a tinge of hopeful. I’ve got plans to go back to this spot and wait in the weeds for the birds to land around me. Then you will have something to talk about! (I won’t bring the dogs next time, either.)

And hopefully I also won’t get a flat tire by driving over a screw in D-ennis’ truck, thus ‘breaking in’ his brand new ten ply tires. Sigh.

Adventure: check. Pictures: maybe next time.

Running low…

2011-02-11T08:09:00.000-08:00

My dear friends,

Please forgive my brief pause in posts this last week, and the one likely to happen tomorrow. Things are boring here, and I realized just this morning that it is my own darn fault. The dogs and I head out tomorrow morning for an adventure or two, and then I will have something to write about. I have two more river posts, but they require me to scan in some pictures, which, for some reason, the ol’ printer doesn’t want to do. I will throw it out-I mean sort it out soon. In the meantime, please enjoy this picture from years past.

Arizona with Sus

2011-02-10T15:00:00.000-08:00

The first time my parents ever let my sister and I take a solo road trip together, we went to southern Arizona by way of Death Valley. They gave us their deluxe Subaru, complete with a bike rack on top, and we headed off for an adventure. I think I was 21, which would make Sus was 18. The trip always makes me think of Tony Hillerman (we took turns reading his novels while the other drove) and Britney Spears (her first single was on every radio station). It makes me think of a few other things too…

In Death Valley we were pummeled by headwinds so strong that we had to pedal downhill on our bikes in order to go forward. Sus, young though she was, cursed her way up the uphills, daring the wind to blow harder, taunting it, its children, and its mother. I hummed the 1812 overture in time with my pedal strokes. In some ways, Sus and I are very different people..

We arrived in Phoenix after dark, where we had reserved a hotel room in what turned out to be a bad part of town. While waiting at a red light, we noticed a homeless man lounging on the ground against a building. He noticed us too, and stared, unsmiling at the two young girls in a deluxe Subaru with bikes on the roof. As we waited for the light, he approached the car and tapped on the window. I went to roll it down an inch or so to see what he wanted; the deluxe Subaru tried to read my mind. It rolled the window all the way down, slowly, silently, ignoring my futile pounding on the up-half of the window button. The man leaned in the window, his arms resting on the door. I knew we were going to be mugged. I tried to imagine how I would explain to my parents that we had lost the deluxe Subaru in Phoenix and had had to ride our bikes home. “Got any change?” he asked, still not smiling. We gave him everything we had, silently. As the light changed and I sped away, the window decided to roll itself up.

In the Chiricahua mountains we camped in a national park, which we had arrived at well after dark. We ate dinner in the dark and fell into our sleeping bags, exhausted from hiking and driving all day. We were awakened in the morning by a park ranger who tapped on our tent and hollered for us to come out to talk with him. He chewed us out for leaving food on the picnic table—an obvious invitation to all black bears in the area. He was furious. We almost got a ticket. There were signs on the picnic table which clearly stated in large letters to leave all food in the bear boxes. We had set our camp stove and our food box exactly over the signs in the dark and never saw them.

Just outside of Phoenix, we went to a drive-thru Taco Bell (but of course). We were high on candy and freedom. We stopped giggling long enough to place our order, and zipped through the Taco Bell archway that marked the entrance to the covered drive up window. The man gave us our 36% beef and burritos and we zipped out of the other side of the arched drive thru. As we left we heard a horrible crashing noise. It was then that we remembered the bikes attached to the top of the car. Somehow we had exactly cleared the archway on the way in, missing the sides with the bike handles by mere inches. We weren’t so lucky on the way out… well, we were still pretty lucky, the bikes were fine, just twisted in their perches on top of the car.

Kitty

2011-02-04T03:06:00.000-08:00

It was 20 below 0 this morning… as in: 52 below freezing! That was just as the sun was coming up, so I’m guessing it was even colder at 4:00 this morning. That earned Kitty a night in the house. She was extremely pleased.

She patrolled the bathroom counter tops, the kitchen sink, under the cupboards, and on top of the towel shelf.

She checked out my coffee cup, my water glass, the dog’s dishes, and the compost jar.

She slept on top of the tv, on top of the towels, on top of our coffee table books, underneath the coffee table, and on Jack’s bed.

She didn’t catch any mice. Maggie ate all her kitty food this morning and will likely be sick later today. Jack is disgruntled by her mere presence anywhere near his water bowl, food bowl, Maggie’s food bowl, or anything that looks like a bed he may someday want to lay on. He has spent the morning pacing the house and making huffy noises (I believe this may be because he’s been cooped up in the house for two days as much as because of Kitty, though).

And she thinks my writing utensils are a toy.

Be careful Kitty. You don’t want to wear out your welcome before the temperature warms up!

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program…

2011-02-03T03:09:00.000-08:00

For a SNOW DAY!!!!

17 inches.

I know, I know, many of you have already received much more than that this year, but its been a dry year for us.

The ski resort has suffered.

There was no suffering yesterday… not even during a good tumble.

We were joined by this family.

At four years old, that little guy handled the powder better than I did.

And his older sister is practicing for the Olympics already. I could barely keep up with her!

Their parents, of course, were pro tele skiers who reminded me how far I have to go every time they sashayed passed me.

Sigh. If only everyday could be that much fun.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Rivertrips. The Grand Canyon.

2011-02-02T03:05:00.000-08:00

Isn’t it funny to think that the same substance sitting dispassionately in a glass beside me can carve out the deepest canyon on Earth?

I’ve been down this river on two occasions, managing to float the entire thing between the two trips. The first time I hiked in with Sus, and she and I rode from the middle to the end. The second time I started at the put in, and hiked out by Phantom Ranch. This place has so much to offer. In addition to the geologic history that slaps you in the face every moment your eyes are open, there’s the human history:

the beautiful flowers, somehow the more beautiful because they’re in the Grand Canyon,

the take-your-breath-away beauty.

And of course, adventure.

On a trip like this, if you don’t know how to drive a boat (and I don’t know the first things about driving a boat—I don’t even know where the blinker-switch is, let alone the headlights or brake pedal), your job is to:

1) hang on tight and stay low during a rapid (so nobody has to figure out how to rescue you later—or tell your mom why you won’t be coming home afte rall),

2) throw your weight to one side of the boat or the other if the boatman tells you to, and

3) BAIL like a madwoman the minute you can stand up after a rapid. The boats take on so much water that it becomes difficult to turn them, and if there are a series of rapids, the sooner you can get that water out of the boat, the better the chances your boatman can steer you easily through whatever is to come. This is a cold and tiresome job. But its also a great way to shed some adrenaline after a big rapid.

My comrades who also went on these two trips could tell you some stories (hint, hint): Bek was in a boat whose ‘driver’ popped out midway through a big rapid and she and her buddies had to steer the boat by throwing their weight from side to side. I watched Larry, The Grand Canyon Master, pull a flipped boat out of a whirlpool where it seemed destined to spend eternity (somewhere I have pictures of this…) I sloshed through Lava Rapids with Sus and a married couple—they were rafting experts, but seemed especially nervous about Lava… granted it’s a Class Ten Rapid (in the Grand Canyon, ten is the ‘hardest/most difficult’ rapid—dropping 37 feet down in a relatively short stretch of river, multiplied by the volume of water that you find in all the watersheds of Utah, Colorado, and Arizona that feed the Grand Canyon)... but they hadn’t been nervous before then. We found out later its because last time through they’d flipped and it hadn’t been pretty.

Needless to say, no experience floating down the Grand Canyon is ever forgotten, and all experiences floating down the Grand Canyon leave you craving more.

Rivertrips. How I love thee.

2011-02-01T03:46:00.000-08:00

I remember my second time on the Green River. We did a mellow stretch, where the river is known more for its ability to lull you into forgetting to frequently apply your sunscreen than it is for capsizing your vessel. Yet in the afternoon on warm days in June, the wind likes to run up the canyon, cleaning sand from every alcove and herding the normally lazy river back upstream. Water doesn’t like to move upstream, and the ensuing struggle between these two elements can lead to some dramatic waves. These waves are most dramatic when you are sitting in a 17 foot long canoe, to which all your possessions are tied, and on which your dog rests. My mother and I were sharing that particular canoe, and we clung to the side of the canyon wall like barnacles, feeling the boat pitch beneath us and trying to holler directions to each other over the sound of the wind. We watched while the wind and waves capsized my sister and her friend Alisha, who were trying to ride the bucking waves in the middle of the river¹.

I love the river. I love that it demands respect, even as it lets you pull on its ears and twirl your fingers in its hair. I love its extremes. Joy and delight, pure sloth; or working as if your life depends on your next move, and joy and delight can wait until you make it through this next rapid, or after this thunderstorm passes. But always there is happiness. Peanut butter and jelly never tasted so good as it does on a river. Same for eggs, pie, beef jerky, and pickled peppers. Everything is better on a river. I love that you have only yourself and your friends to count on when you are on the river. Wit and grit really matter on the river. And whatever is happening back on shore, in the land of soft beds and furnaces, will just have to wait. My dad always said: “Half an hour after you push off from shore, you’re days from civilization.”

The river pulls you in, drawing you from all that you thought was important and hustling you to the present.

Have you ever had one of those suction cup things that you stick in your shower? And when you want to get it off the shower wall you have to pull slowly from the side until it releases? That’s what the river does to you. Pulls at you slowly so that you don’t notice. And then suddenly you are free of all that other stuff you were clinging to.

The river is deceptive—it seems so mellow and slow, welcoming you and washing away your social sins. But don’t forget that it dictates everything: where you camp, how soon til you camp, which side of the canyon you’ll be seeing, and whether you’ll be seeing it while hanging onto an upside down raft, or from a comfortable perch on top of your floating home. Sure, if you play nicely and learn the rules of the river, you can steer yourself hither and thither. But never forget who runs the show…

It isn’t you.

¹This is a great story that I encourage Sus to tell in all its glory on her blog, next time she wants a break from programming…

Rivertrips

2011-01-31T03:31:00.000-08:00

I will be highlighting them this week.

Why? Because it is cold here, and not very wet and not really all that exciting at the moment. And I am needing an adventure in the worst way. But since that will have to wait until I am a) rich and b) not trying to write a PhD, I am going to re-live old ones. And you’re just going to have to bear with me. So there.

On the slopes.

2011-01-30T03:24:00.000-08:00

Here are some awesome slopes for you to enjoy. I have the travel bug something awful. I either need a dip or a round trip ticket to somewhere in South America.

http://ynotshare.com/top-15-most-beautiful-roads-in-the-world/30566/

Because I can’t write haikus

2011-01-29T03:21:00.000-08:00

I will share a limerick

How marvelous is evolution

Which always invents a solution;

Consider the bee

Efficient is she

Whose lunch rides on legs Lilliputian.

Thank you.

A haiku for you

2011-01-28T00:33:00.000-08:00

Winter solitude--
in a world of one color
the sound of wind.

--By Matsuo Basho

The year the forest burned down

2011-01-27T03:20:00.000-08:00

Those piglets were in this place, northeastern Oregon. There is no record of feral pig problems in northeastern Oregon according to my internet research. There are two kinds of feral pigs, by the way. Sus domesticus which is the piggy pig that was featured in Winnie the Pooh. And Sus scrofa, which is the wild pig shown in the wikipedia map I showed yesterday. I think my pics are of Sus domesticus gone astray; more than that, I think maybe they are a new subspecies… Sus domesticus oliviensis. Pretty sure…. at least, they were until this happened:

Now they’re extinct. Barbecued.

Too many lightning strikes all at once on a hot summer day that had been preceded by a month without rain. The fire was the first big fire I’d seen or experienced in anyway. Being a member of the forest service at the time, my duties shifted from identifying little ferns and figworts on the ground to bringing Gatorade to the masses living in the cities which sprung up overnight in the high elevation meadows around the fire. Literally cities. Hundreds of people camping, showering, eating, planning, and cavorting under the looming smoke plumes from the nearby fire. The fire drew the locals, eager to make an extra buck providing whatever services the firefighters might need. It drew people from far away too, people hired on to dig line for two weeks before they moved on to another big fire growing somewhere else in the west. Fire brings with it a culture. A lifestyle. And a lot of smoke.

They almost evacuated us when the sky started looking like this. I had to get a new windshield. The ash that fell on my poor car left a lasting impression.

I was doing work for a wonderful lady working on her masters degree at the time. Our job (among other things) was to survey plants in the wilderness area there. When fire hits a Forest Service Run wilderness area they leave it to its own devices, letting it go out when it feels like it. It burned a good chunk of the northern half of the wilderness (and bit off the south too if I remember correctly). It burned all the plants my friend was studying; changed the soil; shut down all her work for several weeks. I have a feeling that fire made an impression on more than just my windshield!

How I would love to go back now, and see how this wilderness looks 15 years after the fire.

Pigs

2011-01-26T03:58:00.000-08:00

These are Feral Pigs. So The Great Internet tells me. They’re a problem in several parts of the world… not native to the U.S., but ‘naturalized’ so to speak in several regions (shown in blue on the wikipedia map below). I’ll give you two guesses as to where in the world I was when I saw these piggies and their piglets.

A request for birds…

2011-01-25T03:44:00.000-08:00

A smallish individual from the eastern side of the country put in a request for birds over the weekend. These are for you, Roo.

Newest favoritest website

2011-01-24T02:05:00.000-08:00

http://web.mit.edu/~jmcmicha/www/globegenie/

Enjoy. But don’t spend too long…

A hike last weekend

2011-01-23T03:40:00.000-08:00

I found this:

A rock that was shiny like silver. I was pretty excited.

But of course.

Then I looked up and saw that D-ennis had found this:

Peek a boo

2011-01-22T08:22:00.001-08:00

These rascals eat the kitty food every morning. Imagine their surprise yesterday when every time they took a bite there was a clicky sound off to their left (me, with my camera, hiding under a blanket).

Sorry for the lack of posts… I only get so many MB per day on our little internet connection, and I’ve been using them to download PhD stuff. More soon.

(I love how I say that as if my lack of posts has somehow affected your lives in some negative way.)

Anyone else ever felt this way?

2011-01-17T03:02:00.000-08:00