One last trip to Chelly

A friend came up from Tucson earlier this week for a couple of days and we went to Canyon de Chelly. We managed to get to a couple of new turn outs that I hadn't been to before, so it was like a first trip for me all over again.

One place was Spider Rock, on the south rim of the canyon. It's a bit of a hike back to the viewing area but worth every step. 

Anyone who knows anything at all about photography knows that the light makes all the difference. The light shadowplay on the mesas in the background adds texture to the view that would be missing without the clouds. 

Spider Rock, in the middle foreground, is about 750 feet high. According to Native American tradition, the taller of the two spires is home to Spider Grandmother. This from Wikipedia: "The Spider Grandmother is creator of the world in Southwestern Native American religions and myths such as that of the Pueblo and Navajo peoples. According to mythology, she was responsible for the stars in the sky, she took a web she had spun, laced it with dew, threw it into the sky and the dew became the stars."

This is my favorite photo from my last trip to the canyon, at least for this year. It will be interesting to see it under winter skies when I return after the first of the year.

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Thought of the day:
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts...there is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature - the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter. The lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world are not reserved for scientists but are available to anyone who will place [herself] under the influence of earth, sea, and sky, and their amazing life. (Rachel Carson)

All creatures great and small

After coming home one afternoon to find a gigantic snake heading for the shade under the picnic table, I now take a glance around before putting my foot just about anywhere, including bare pavement. It turned out to be a harmless gopher snake, harmless even though it was about 3 feet long. Somehow all my photos of it have disappeared but they weren't that good anyway because it was doing a good job of hiding.

Other snakes have either shown themselves, like the rattler we saw on the road during the night ride,

or leave just a trace behind, like this track I found on old Route 66.

 

Then there are the snakes that are caught as part of a wildlife survey the biotech performs all season, like these two that she brought to show me.

An Arizona elegans, obviously pretty 
harmless.







I don't remember this one's name. It was a little on edge, so she left it in its bucket and I photographed from a safe distance. She weighs and otherwise documents everything she traps, then returns them to where they were found.










I saw this guy just the other day and should know its name but am honestly too lazy to find out. It was warming itself near Puerco Pueblo.

The same is true for this chunky one, distinguished by its turquoise belly, that I saw on the trail into the Painted Desert, aka The Trail from Hell.

This is a horned lizard, which I know only because my friend who was with me told me so. It has a gimpy front left leg; every shot I have shows it tucked underneath. It was also seen at Puerco Pueblo.

And my all-time favorite, a collared lizard. I was so proud to have gotten pictures of this one, thinking I'd found something unusual, only to find they're pretty common. Isn't it handsome, though? I spotted it early on in my time here, on the Long Logs trail.

Then we have the various flyers. This raven was trying its best to cool off on a day that didn't feel all that hot to me, but then I don't wear black feathers. It was sitting on a wall at Crystal Forest. Gorgeous.

Normally I wouldn't save, let alone show in a public place, a photo as blurry as this one, but I just couldn't leave it out. This is a hummingbird moth. I watched it flit from flower to flower, extending a proboscis just like a hummingbird, and thought it was the smallest one I'd ever seen. Then I saw the antennae which you can kind of see angling out on either side of its head and knew it was no hummingbird. It never landed anywhere and this is the best I could do on the wing.

 
I think I've seen more monarchs here than in my entire life combined. They don't stay still for long.

I think these are monarch caterpillars. I've rescued a few from the road and put them back in vegetation where they belong.

[edited 9/6: wrong on the ID on the "monarch." This is a monarch caterpillar: 

I still don't know what the fuzzy one is.]


I don't know what this one-incher is. I found it on old Route 66 one day.

Another unknown. They're all over and usually on the wing, so it was just chance I caught one at rest on Route 66 the same day I got the caterpillar above.

You just have to hand it to an ant. Look at the size of the seed this one's carrying - more mass than itself. I think I can, I think I can.

How totally cute is this little guy, spotted at Blue Mesa. A chipmunk? I don't know. What I call chipmunks other people call ground squirrels.

A really beautiful coyote, spotted near Newspaper Rock a couple of days ago, unsuccessfully hunting and pouncing on something in the grass,

but nothing as large as this jackrabbit.

And then we have domesticated animals. There are two horse-rangers that perform really good public relations in the park, Pintado and Trooper. They're ridden by people-rangers and are a hit everywhere they go. Pintado, on the left here, performed admirably by laying his chin on the girl's shoulder when her mother took her picture. Trooper used to be a race horse and had to be taught different manners when he was being taken out to the public. They're both gentle, calm animals that are great ambassadors for the park.

These rangers spotted me with the camera pointed their way and obliged with a friendly wave at the close of one beautiful evening on the road to the Painted Desert Inn.

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Thought of the day:
 
Animals don’t lie. Animals don’t criticize. If animals have moody days, they handle them better than humans do. (Betty White, If You Ask Me)

Serendipity

Tonight was a night of serendipity, good karma, pure luck. I just happened to look out the window when the sky started going dark after a truly beautiful day, the kind of dark that hints at a good storm, and decided to go out for a look. Wow. What color in the east. What a glow on the painted desert on the other side of Interstate 40. Look at the white semi truck on the lower right for scale - this is one huge place.

Shot after shot and the sky continued to change color. How gorgeous. How could it get more gorgeous than this?

This is how. I turned around to go back in and this was in the west. I've often wished I could paint but no amount of talent could produce something like this. Look about a quarter of the way in from the left for a telephone pole on the horizon. That gives a clue to how large this configuration was.

I have never, in my entire life, seen a sunset like this. Which morphed to this.

And then to this.

Life is good. This is one of those things that makes my problems petty, that makes me very glad to be alive.

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Thought of the day:
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. (Albert Einstein)

Blindsided

Grief is an assailant in the night, one that comes from nowhere, attacks with pitiless ferocity, and leaves you bleeding and gasping for breath.

I thought I'd kept a step ahead of my own personal demon, was living a life that filled me up with accomplishment, acceptance, friends, challenges, and experiences I never knew existed. I thought I'd done a pretty good job of leaving that other life behind like an already-read book that wasn't worth carrying along on the rest of the journey. I thought I was making progress and maybe I was, but the assailant took a mighty swing at me last week and took me to my knees.

A friend asked to see my house, the one I still co-own in Washington state, and I had no idea I would be blindsided. There was my house on Google Earth, with our motorhome in the drive, waiting to be sold "due to divorce" as he phrased the Craigs List ad (and left town so I could be the one to deal with all the lookers). There were the two raspberry patches that I weeded and tied up and harvested buckets of berries from. There were the apple trees that I picked bushels from, then peeled and cut and canned for days and days. There was the indestructible rhubarb that produced gorgeous stalks from spring to fall. There was the multitude of rhododendrons that I pruned and shaped. There was the grass I cut all the time I was killing myself at our bakery. There was the insidious English ivy that I tried and failed to eradicate. I saw all this in about fifteen seconds of looking at the computer screen. I saw two and a half years of living in that house and I was knocked flat.

I've shown people the interior of the house, too, especially the kitchen that we finished remodeling about six weeks before I learned my life would inexorably change. I loved that kitchen and seeing the photos I took of it before, during, and after the remodel always makes me sad. Sad because of the loss of what I expected my life to be, sad because I was so ignorant and trusting that I never saw it coming, sad because it was perfect but it was a veneer over rot. But it was seeing the house and the yard and the gleam of the canal from the air that took me down. It was a tsunami of anger, sadness, hatred, and bitterness more vile than I could imagine. I felt like stone, red-hot and nearly immobilized, and could do nothing but sit and cry.

I hate with fierce passion the control this situation still has over me. When I said to my friend that I'd told the ex-husband some time ago that I got it, that I understood why he did what he did, and that I forgave him for it, all my friend said was that I was still bitter. He was right. I don't know how forgiveness works after all. I thought I could will it but I can't. I don't know how to walk this path with heart I thought I was so firmly on. I don't know where to go from here but the only way that seems open is forward. I guess that's where I'll go.

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Thought of the day:
Perhaps I am stronger than I think. (Thomas Merton)

I lost my job, my dog died, and my wife ran off with my best friend

People steal petrified wood from the park. They do. How much is up for speculation, but it happens. In the past the entire focus was theft prevention, dating back to the early days when Theodore Roosevelt declared the area a national monument in 1906 (it didn't achieve national park status until 1962). Tons of the stuff were carried off and legend has it logs were blasted with dynamite to release the beautiful crystals that were inside some of them. 

The author Edward Abbey worked at the park in 1961 for a few brief months before being fired for being a "wrench in the operation." He said his job consisted of sitting in the entrance booth for 8 hours at a time asking people if they had stolen petrified wood, and feeling like they were all lying to him.

It's true that the park was inhospitable to visitors for years, but the emphasis now is on making the park open, accessible, and welcoming. Still, a sign at each end of the park says vehicles are subject to inspection, a kind of "trust, but verify" philosophy.

Some folks all of a sudden remember a chunk that's made its way into the car, and they're found on the side of the road between the sign and the exit.

 

I've been out there where the stuff lies thick on the ground, I've seen these truly beautiful and unique marvels of nature, and I understand why people want to take one home. 

Sometimes the pieces that make it out of the park also make their way back home. I was in the post office one day and saw this box, a lot worse for wear, waiting for someone to pick it up.

 

The box was already open on one corner, so I took a better look. Not the most gorgeous piece I've ever seen, but apparently attractive enough for someone to take home.

 The returnees are often accompanied by a letter. I don't know about this one; maybe the sender thought the note on the box was enough. 

The park keeps all the letters. There are at least a couple of boxes of them, and I sorted through some scans to find a good one. Many, many of them tell tales of bad luck coming in waves since the wood came into their possession. Here's one that's a typical account, sounding like a bad country music song:

If you absolutely have to have some, just buy a piece in the gift shop or from any of the vendors along the road. Stolen petrified wood is bad juju. 

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Thought of the day: 
A guilty conscience is the mother of invention. (Carolyn Wells)

Never, ever pass up fry bread

In a panicky flurry of day-tripping a few weeks ago to see all the places I'd put off, I made the return visit to Canyon de Chelly that I'd promised myself. The first time I went I didn't have the time or the water or the shoes for a hike into the canyon to see White House, but the second time I was prepared.

This trip was made on Highway 12, which crosses from Arizona to New Mexico and back to Arizona across Navajo land, and it got me wondering if there is a blah stretch of landscape anywhere in this part of the state. If so, I haven't seen it yet. I'm so grateful that there are usually wide shoulders to on which to pull over because otherwise, I'll tell you, I'd be sorely tempted to stop right in the lane with an eye on the rear view mirror. How could anyone pass up views like this?

Wild horses, I think. They're all over the area.

Knowing I was on Navajo land got me thinking about fry bread, and lo and behold, at the intersection of 12 and somewhere, there was a food truck selling just that. You betcha I stopped.

  

No turkey legs for me but plenty of people lined up behind me ordered them (at 8 bucks a pop!) and must have depleted the supply because by the time I left the sign was down.

The young woman forming the bread allowed me to photograph her tossing the dough into discs just like pizza makers used to do.

The discs were slapped into the grease in the pan over the gas burner one at a time and a short time later this is what I got for ten thin dimes. Yes, just one dollar for this most delicious fresh, hot disc of fry bread. I went back and bought another, which I definitely should not have done.

After eating way too much of the second piece I headed directly to the canyon just down the road. After nearly two pieces of fry bread... well, I had to try to work them off.

The trail is three miles round trip and in one of those weird circumstances that makes so sense whatsoever, it was much harder going down than coming up. From the rim, the trail looks somewhat steep but at least smooth - but they are faking you out.

This is what the trail really looks like, except this section is fairly level. Somehow it was easier to navigate the loose rocks leaving the canyon than it was going in.

Once on the canyon floor, a big disappointment was finding a fence all around the ruins. I know better than to climb all over but apparently enough other people do not, and a five-foot fence was the only way to get the message across.

I suppose the same ladders used to climb to the upper section were used to carve the petroglyphs.

The dark streaks are desert varnish, a mineral that's deposited slowly and often serves as canvas for rock art.

You can see how the upper level is somewhat protected from the elements.

This line of eroded rock was about thirty feet off the ground and interesting because of the stones piled up in a couple of the holes. Who? Why?

I met a nice young woman on the climb out, a traveling nurse from Alaska who was sightseeing before beginning her first assignment. She took this ever-so-flattering picture of me in all my sartorial splendor. In my world, dressing appropriately for the activity and dressing anywhere near fashionably are mutually exclusive conditions.

 

I expected to feel the spiritual 'pow' at White House that I've felt in other places, but didn't. Maybe it's like any other thing you expect to find or look for too hard - love, happiness, fulfillment -- whatever is missing in your life and think you desperately need to have right now - it's never where you think it should be. Just live, and it'll show up when you're ready. Maybe, probably, when and where you least expect it.

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Thought of the day:

It's a good place when all you have is hope and not expectations. (Danny Boyle)