Archives
My goal here is not to write prose of which I’ll later be proud…oh sure that would be nice but right now I can barely remember the alphabet. My goal is to keep track of this never-to-be-repeated year in my or my children’s or grandchildren’s lifetimes. Hopefully. A couple years from now I want to leaf through my blog book for 2020 and say ‘you know that wasn’t so bad…I learned x… Read More
Trees are the best plants of all. In their variety, their beauty, their practical and life-saving contributions to every other thing on the planet. I grew up spending long summer days roaming around in the woods, often with a book. I am a Dendrophile too (a person who loves trees, forests). Dead trees: battered trunks, broken branches, fallen logs, scattered limbs…in some ways more fascinating in their stark jagged shapes…almost threatening…prickly sticks… Read More
el rio grande The Rio grande flows from the continental divide like a golden thread, taking the loneliness out of the Colorado mountains. The eyes of dead apache warriors express their sorrow with silent renegade war cries, as the Rio grande meanders through New Mexico.Tooh-ba-aadi is an ancient Navajo word for a south flowing river. It flows through Tejas like a carancahua red cloth, it cuts through chihuahuas, coahuila, Nuevo Leon and… Read More
Our world is taking on a bright golden hue…our natural world, not the human or political one unfortunately. Fall is beautiful in temperate zones and we snap and post endless photos of the gold and the red and the glory of it all, and repeat the process year after year. Here is my annual contribution to the too-muchness of autumn photography. It was quite a week, starting with last Sunday’s marathon,… Read More
I began preparing for the first of two consequential 2016 trips this morning. I used ‘big’ for the 2015 adventure—time to expand my vocabulary—’consequential,’ meaning trips lasting over two weeks. The reason I am preparing for May 2016 is because I did not feel immediately perfect upon getting up at 7am and because it made me tired to walk 1 1/2 hours. This is the last slow weekend before writing classes start… Read More
The Itinerary. The Arrangements. The Payments. The Luggage. The Endoscopy. True, the latter was not part of the initial pretty picture of the Big15Trip, but dudu occurs, yes? The endoscopy was simply to rule out any serious reasons for my stomach’s frequent ‘acting-up.’ And it did…rule out the bad stuff. Now a consistent regimen of prilosec for awhile will enable me to eat Norwegian, Swedish, Latvian and Belarusian prior to getting… Read More
Granddaughters are the Best. (Well, Grandsons too but I only have one and he’s in California.) Eleven days between today and The Trip. Between Last Sunday and That Sunday (August 2nd) there were 10 morning walks and six trips to the gym to get in my version of ‘shape.’ Today there are only 13 of the 16 required activity events to go. Here’s Monday morning’s 5:30am walk with PATRICA, the granddaughter who accompanies me… Read More
The Time is July 5th, 2015, still morning. My Place is Albuquerque, New Mexico. Just a little while ago it was dawn down by the Rio Grande. Quiet. Absolutely quiet. Only saw two people and one rabbit and heard a few sleepy birds. Soon the sun came to bother me but it was still a little cool and smelled of green, unusual for New Mexico. So for awhile I ignored thoughts of the… Read More