Tag Archives: outdoors

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Austere choice

What could be more austere than rock?

Taken in Echo Canyon in the Colorado National Monument, Thanksgiving, 2024.

Austere choice

Why do I still feel sad when I think
that I am best off with my cat
and that I should eschew dating.
Why do I feel like I am rejecting love?
I don’t have that sort of love.
It’s not like I am rejecting anything.
I am rejecting looking for it.
I am rejecting active interest in a partner
other than my cat.
What is wrong with that?

I do not ever want to reject hope.
I am not trying to reject wanting.
Hope and want are the deep and terrible ache
for the Beloved. I do not reject that.
I am still open, Beloved, to what you send,
though getting more particular in middle age.
A writer says that he uses a pencil and a pad,
because no better tool has been invented.
I take the same approach to wanting love.
If the relationship is more work than my cat,
for less love, why bother? It seems silly
and until I go home to the Beloved,
so far, I am best off with my cat.

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The first thing Sol Duc does when we go out for a walk, is roll on the sun warmed dusty sidewalk. The house faces south.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: austere.

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Vision

What will peace look like? People
will still disagree often
but like my parents they will appreciate
evidence and science. They will listen
to each other with interest, with respect.
They will bet a penny or a quarter or a million
imaginary dollars and one will go to look up
the correct capital of Azerbaijan, while
the other argues that they MEANT back in 1478,
really, so they do not owe one million imaginary
dollars and they both start laughing again.

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The photograph is of the ice in Echo Canyon, two days ago. Or maybe it is angels, waiting.

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Surreal failure

I am still thinking about Friday’s Ragtag Daily Prompt: failure. Now that I am middle aged (by my clinic definition, which put over 90 as older), I think the biggest failure of my generation is a peaceful world. For me, a peaceful extended family. I am good friends with my father’s family and my ex-husband’s family. But the maternal family, well. I have thought about that for the last two days: could I have changed that?

Yes, but at what cost? My sister followed the “family rules” on that side. She is dead from cancer. My mother also followed the rules and died younger than me from cancer. I can’t say that the rules cause cancer. But doesn’t our culture say over and over, be yourself? To fit in the family diaspora, I would have to play the triangulation game and gossip about others as they have gossiped about me. No, thank you, no. I don’t want to. They seem to need a family member to hate and have chosen me and labelled me and call me angry. I think they are silly and emotionally immature. At the very least, I would have had to keep my mouth shut and accept them gossiping about me.

The family failure and untrue gossip, with no one ever asking for my viewpoint, mirrors the US culture. Split and needing someone to hate. At this rate, we’ll need the hippies back, with flowers and joy and counter culture and dropping out. Someone fun, at least until the drugs wear off. Someone to say, we need joy back, we need friends, we need love.

It’s not just my failure though. The family failed. They make cruel choices and target people. It happened in my generation, my mother’s, my grandparents. I wonder if it is happening in my adult children’s generation. Who is the next target? Who will refuse to counter-gossip and fight with each source? My adult children are not part of it at all, because I had less and less interest in spending time with mean gossips and I did not want to expose my children.

Lies and drama and meanness and gossip. I hope my adult children’s generation does better. We went to Wicked on Thursday. I did not like it much. Too much drama. Why do we want drama? The world seems more and more surreal. Give me the lovely hike we did on Friday instead, Echo Canyon.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompts: failure and surreal.

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Chew on this

No, hummingbirds don’t chew as far as I know, but they sure are tough. I had an Anna’s hummingbird that would overwinter in Port Townsend, surviving even when it was snowing and got down to 17 degrees. The food would freeze and I would have this small fierce creature swooping over my head making a ticking sound to remind me to thaw the food out.

My daughter and friend started over the mountains last night but holed up in a motel partway. They said that the roads weren’t that awful but the lack of visibility was exhausting. It is hard to see where the road is in the teeth of the storm! I am glad they are safe and we will see what happens today!

I learned to take the food in at night, so it would be all ready in the morning.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: chew. (Choo choo! I wonder if the train is getting through!)

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Snew

“Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Snew.”

“Snew?”

“I don’t know, what’s snew with you?”

I will have to pull out my patience cards today because, yes, it’s snowing. And I have family supposed to come from east and apparently that atmospheric river is dumping in the mountains. It’s supposed to snow in the mountains until midday Thanksgiving. I’m not sure I can have the whole meal all ready for them to arrive.

Ok, but patience, and let’s get creative. We could always do the cooking and have the meal on Friday instead of Thursday.

It is supposed to turn to rain here and the snow will be gone by noon. I jumped out of bed like a little kid, though, shouting “SNOW!” Sol Duc is unthrilled. The roads don’t look too awful and I wonder if anyone will cancel in clinic or it will be as usual.

Yesterday was a bit of a zoo, mostly because over 100 people realized that they are nearly out of some prescription and called for a refill. I knocked my message box down from 48 to 31 in the first 25 minutes and then it kept piling back up over 50. I also wish that if an 87 year old has a serious emergency room visit, they’d give me a longer follow up, because it can’t be done WELL in 20 minutes.

I expect that today will continue a bit nuts. Getting ready for Thursday and Friday off, to lie around pooped!

It’s all good.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: patience.

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Sad about the cows

The first photograph is Sol Duc. She is lying on my jacket to object to and obstruct me going to work. She has learned the new schedule, but things are a little different. In the three weeks we were gone, the night time temperatures have dropped into the 20s, so it is frozen outside. Yesterday it warmed to a high of 53 but not for long. It is dark in the morning and dark at night when I get home and we have not been walking with the harness and leash as much. Brrr, cold. We had a long walk yesterday at 10 am because it was my administrative day and I was caught up.

Sol Duc can’t find her pet toad any more. I think the toads have dug in for the winter and there are fewer and fewer insects. I think she is a bit bored. I’ve been building cardboard box puzzles for her, with the cat food ball inside. She has to roll the ball around to get the dry food to fall out. Maybe now she misses Elwha a bit, too. My work days are a bit long, leaving at 7:00 am and sometimes not home until 6:00 pm. Right now I have to drive to the other end of the valley.

The second picture is this morning’s sunrise. Gorgeous, yes? But that is the field across the street from us and that changed while we were gone too. They are building roads, all of the wild plants are gone, and it is staked all over and has large machines. And kitty corner, to the southwest, no more cows! The cows are gone! Are they inside for the winter or really gone? I think that they are really gone, because I see cows in other fields. The hay barn is still in use, but the cows have been moved. The city of Grand Junction is building and encroaching on the farms. We are right on the western edge of Grand Junction. No more early morning roosters, either.

I am not sure how to tie this to the Ragtag Daily Prompt, circular. Sol Duc is pretty circular when she curls up. The earth and the sky are circular. Emotions circle, happy to sad to surprised to worried and back. I am a little sad about the loss of the field and the cows, sigh, but happy Saturday to you.

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Maps

I really like maps. I have a small hiking book for the area and a book of hikes. When I am riding in my daughter’s care, I admire a map of Colorado, a geologic highway map and shaded elevation map. My daughter says, “You gave that to me when I moved to Denver. Take it!” She doesn’t like extra stuff. Use it or lose it.

The geologic side fascinates me. It shows color coded zones of different rock formations and has some history. Rocks and mountains, delightful!

Some of the hikes here are also mountain bike trails and loop in all sorts of ways. I try to remember to photograph the map at the start of the hike, so that I can refer to it on my phone. Lots of hikes are out of the range of phone towers, so I won’t depend on GPS!

Grand Junction lies in the Grand Valley and runs mostly east/west along the Colorado River and Interstate 70. They have named the streets on a grid with letters and numbers. This has some odd charm: I live off of 21 and 1/2 road, which is 21 and 1/2 miles from the Utah border. There are some 1/4 and 3/4 roads too. The lettered roads start with A at Orchard Mesa. There is an F and 1/2 road. How fun! There is also a downtown switch, where suddenly the numbered roads go from 1 to 7 and drop out of the numbers set from the Utah border. There is an article explaining here.

The photograph is part of the Colorado Geologic Map. The altitude map is on the other side. Isn’t it pretty?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: guide.

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Pick one, delete two

I went through my blog this morning, picked a month two years ago, and deleted a bunch of photographs and the accompanying posts. More room! It is not a very fast process.

I am thinking about the Ragtag Daily Prompt today, hamfatter. It makes me think of Miss Piggy first. Don’t we all have a little bit of ham in us if we are in the right situation? Even if it’s just a dream or a daydream. Hamfatter also brings up ham and my inlaws. My son and daughter-in-law and daughter were all home for my birthday earlier this year. We also stopped at my daughter-in-law’s house, to pick my son up. Her parents heard it was my birthday and gave me a ham. How surprising and kind!

Yesterday I ordered prints of photographs to send to them, almost all with their daughter. She told me not to print any of the climbing gym or of the pets that her mother dislikes. Got it! I tried to pick ones that they will enjoy. It is a start of holiday gifts.

I am still having disaster nightmares, last night about my house. My house is far away right now and apparently my brain is worrying. I dreamed that there were clean baby clothes folded and piled all over the place in the upstairs bathroom, even on the commode. I took them off it and discovered that it was backed up. Then the walls dissolved and I realized with horror that there was water flooding through them! Then I woke up. Not a fun dream and no, there are not clean baby clothes in the upstairs bathroom. I think it is a combination of being far away and the coming administrative change. In some states it is illegal for a physician to discuss abortion. Will vaccines be next? And the most abortions are the spontaneous ones, where the pregnancy ends and passes. We call that a miscarriage but it is also called a spontaneous abortion. I wonder if those are illegal too.

I dress a bit more formally for work then at home. Maybe there is a bit of hamfatter there, too, entering the role of doctor.

I took the photograph in 2007.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: hamfatter.