Way Too Short a Group Hike

Husband wanted to hike with BESC hiking group which entailed my getting up at 6 am to be at the meeting place by 8 am.  That early time is not ideal but it certainly gets us on and off the trail before a thunderstorm. (Although...it's looked like rain all afternoon but no moisture has yet been pulled out of the clouds.) 

The hiking leader wanted to take us on a special trail in the Santa Fe National Forest that was made in honor of her deceased husband; but the trail now has a more prosaic name - Trail 121 because the forest service decided it was a no no to name the trail after her husband. 

Husband and I drove by ourselves into the Jemez Mountains to the trailhead, about 13 miles from the Back Gate in Los Alamos.  We didn't offer anyone a ride because they may have wanted to get back earlier and probably wouldn't have wanted to walk 4 miles like I do.

We got to the trailhead first and then watched as the hiking leader's Subaru whizzed past.  The trailhead parking lot is small and comes up suddenly.

There were 5 people in her car.  I knew 3 of them already and the other two were new to me.  Women outnumbered men.

At first the trail is really distinct and we easily followed it but quickly ended up in a meadow with no obvious trail so we moseyed through the meadow, over to walk along the grazing fence, going as far as the Valles Caldera National Preserve (VCNP) boundary fence.

People commented on the fence signs which say that access is only with a valid permit.  After the hike, the hiking leader planned to drive a 2 mile, bumpy road into the Preserve's Valle Grande Visitor Center to ask what in the world the signs mean when they are posted at the free VCNP trails - Valle Grande and Coyote Call.  Last week, the group had turned away from walking the Valle Grande free trail because of these blasted signs!

I've started out on Trail 121 with another hiking group but they take off over a ridge and follow a path down into the popular Las Conchas-East Fork Trail area.  That is a longer hike then the stroll we did today which was only a little over a mile.

Back at the cars, one of the hikers worried that she wouldn't get back to LA by 11 am.  In addition to going to the visitor center, the hiking leader than wanted to hike some on the Coyote Call Trail to make up for the short hike.  I'm not sure what transpired because husband and I went to the Corral Canyon Trail so I could finish my daily 4 miles.

Husband breathes really hard while hiking uphill at high altitude (around 8,300' but we live at 7,200') and other than his heavy breathing, not much talking goes on unless I do it.  He stopped after about a mile in but I continued on to the intersection of FR282, Armijo Road (goes down into Peralta Canyon) and Peralta Road which is also called FR280.

I practiced what I would say if I ran into Elmer Armijo out tooling around on his ATV - "Hola, Elmer Armijo, mi amigo!!"  I wonder if Elmer bought a house in Sierra de los Pinos and moved from Peña Blanca?  His family has some beautiful acreage in Peralta Canyon.

Husband had agreed to walk back on the Calzada Trail but he wasn't impressed by my incompetent attempts to FIND the trail.  The connector trail to it from Corral Canyon is overgrown.  My first attempt shortly took me right back to Corral Canyon.

I was going to forget about it but being right there, on the ground so to speak, I really wanted to backtrack to try to figure out how to get on the Calzada Trail.  As I poked around in the woods - a mess of downed trees - husband made the mistake of saying irritatedly to save it for another day.  That only made me want to find it more, while I was there and the weather was holding beautifully.

After briefly checking the area, I did find the Calzada Trail sign and bid adieu to husband who continued back on the trail that brung him!  (Seeing the overgrowth, I was having my suspicions that he wouldn't like the Calzada Trail - especially since he hadn't worn his hiking boots.)

Only problem was that it turned out that I was following the UPPER Calzada Trail which goes the opposite direction of where I WANTED to go.   Because of all the vegetation growth, I somehow missed the LOWER Calzada Trail coming in.

For a while, though, I thought the trail was just following an uphill switchback and would eventually, sensibly, turn around and go in the RIGHT direction!  When I finally admitted that I was only kidding myself, I didn't really care and just wanted so badly to continue following the Calzada Trail the WRONG WAY but I turned around.  After some false starts, I eventually stumbled upon the lower trail by heading downhill toward Corral Canyon.  I don't walk the trail often enough to remember its tricks!

I continued back uneventfully to where husband was gesticulating to me from the fenceline - he probably thought I was lost! - after waiting in the car for 20 minutes.

I know a woman, very busy, who may want to walk the Calzada Trail with me one day because now I HAVE to go back.  Wonder if I could talk her into Las Conchas Canyon and Las Conchas Peak too??  ; D

Notable:

A small, gray bird, with white stripes on its tail feathers, that feigned a broken wing for my benefit in the middle of the trail to protect her progeny.

Butterflies, fritallaries, with lots of black speckles on their orange wings - feeding on sneezeweed flowers - chasing each other off as though the bumper crop of sneezeweed in Corral Canyon wasn't enough for all of them!  Or, were they doing a mating dance??  ;  D

Random Brain Noise

I don't live in a dollhouse.  I don't drive an amusement park bumper car.  My teacups and saucers are full size.  I have all the trappings of a grown up but still feel like a child inside.

Even though my sister terms it God, I admire her belief in letting life play itself out as it will.  I would call it Universe or Fate's Hands but will try to emulate her by putting more faith in letting life transpire as it will (with crucial interventions here and there, as appropriate!)

There is absolutely NO GUARANTEE that healthy eating will make me live longer or more disease-free but I do enjoy my pesco-vegan-way of nutrition!

I need to practice skipping and hopping.  I tried to show my Grandson how to play Hopscotch (true, I tried indoors on carpet!) but find my skipper and hopper need fine-tuning!

Looking at dust on the top of the refrigerator, I wonder what good dusting will do as it will only get dusty again?

Sometimes the repetitiveness of daily life is so boring!  (Please, Universe, I didn't mean that - don't take me yet!!)

I admired in the grocery store the other day a man who was carefully picking out mangos and avocados.  Most men use the "blindman's bluff" method of produce selection and will pick any old, semi-rotten fruit just to get out of the grocery store!  (Hopefully they don't pick woman with the same nonchalance!) Me - I gaze into the "eyes" of the produce and let it commune to me the perfection of its inner essence before gently nestling it in my cart!  ; D  (Then I cringe when the super-speedy checkout cashier blithely tosses it to the bagger!)

Don't mistake every thought as something worthy to write about!!

Don't make blogs too self indulgent!!

I need a cause bigger than myself.  Then again, maybe I just need a hike!!  Wait a minute - I had one today - up the logging road from the west on Pajarito Mountain, over to Aspen Lift and back down Rim Run - nice!

Group Hikes Getting to Me

I'm beginning to think that large group hikes are not my cup of tea.  I didn't count how many hikers there were this morning but there were so many parked vehicles at the meeting place that I had to park across the street.

I was very grateful for the ride to the trailhead given me by the WRSC hiking couple.  FR376 to San Antonio Hot Springs is a bladder-busting ride but the driver skillfully navigated the many rocks and uneven surface.

San Antonio Canyon was beautiful, of course, but the group stopped for lunch far short of the Valles Caldera National Preserve (VCNP) locked gate.  In years past, they walked to the gate, walked under it and had lunch on a hillock in the Preserve (trespassing all the while - I was looking so forward to my annual civil disobedience!)  Our much beloved, long-time hiking leader, though, has a serious, chronic disease which has sapped all her former energy.

On the way home, our driver told me the hike was almost 4 miles but I, not being the least bit hungry at 11:30 am, went further in search of the locked Preserve gate to take its portrait.  I haven't lost my Wrong-Way Whine Child touch, though, because instead of turning left and paralleling San Antonio Creek, I continued straight and crossed the creek, ending up at the Preserve fence but not even near my desired destination, the locked gate!  Oh, well - at least fording the stream was very refreshing and the cattle were friendly!  I was right where FR106 comes into San Antonio Canyon from Mushroom Basin/Thompson Ridge.

I took a portrait of the sign on the fence which says "Access Only with a Valid VCNP Permit".  That's incredibly misleading because the sign is even posted on areas that require NO special access permit, like the free Valle Grande Trail.

After the hike, I spoke to the receptionist at the BESC.  She said her hiking group was dissuaded last Friday from going on the free Valle Grande Trail due to the sign implying there was no access to the FREE Valle Grande Trail without a VCNP permit!!  I told her to not believe that sign - the trail is open and we hiked on it last week with my sister.  It's a beautiful trail that takes you right to the edge of the Valle Grande.

Back to my dissatisfaction with group hikes:  It's safest for me to go on the ones to which I can drive myself and then if I want to go further, I'll go further.  These long drives for a short hike are not satisfactory to me!!

In Love with Pajarito Mountain

Today I wanted to walk the grand tour on Pajarito Mountain but didn't start up the mountain until around noon and dark clouds were already hanging over the top of the peak.

I started up anyway - taking the jeep road from the Lodge, under the Town Sight lift.  I made it past the snow-making retention pond (it sounds so scary when rain is falling onto its plastic liner - still not filled up) and was starting uphill to go over to the Mother Lift but one big crack of thunder convinced me to turn tail and go back down the way I came up.

On the way down, there was a little rain but it didn't rain really hard until right as I got back to the car.  Imagine me at the car, the rain coming down hard, balancing my golf umbrella while trying to open the backpack's zipper (first I opened the wrong one!) and get the car keys out - all the while sure that Thor would strike me down before I could get inside the car's metal shell!

I honestly think I could have made the full route today as the lightning didn't develop as severely as I thought it would.  I'll try again Thursday but start earlier.

I tried to sing The Sound of Music on the walk down - I really did but I can't carry a tune.  I sang what I know of When You're Sixteen but I don't know much.  Best I could manage was the Do, Re, Mi song but for some reason, the "Mi, a name I call myself..." part made me want to cry...sometimes I'm not entirely sure who "Me" is...

I had so many thoughts on my hike and while driving back home that I'd like to write about - philosophical type of stuff - but by the time I sit down to the computer, I forget most everything.

I'll make one comment though - rain makes me want to be holed up somewhere with a loved one - don't know why that is...

It was so beautiful on Pajarito Mountain today - as green as I imagine the Isle of Eire!

Oh, yes - I have found where the hermit thrush lives and sings its song on Pajarito Mountain - at the four-way intersection, in sight of the red tower.  Such a beautiful, haunting melody to grace my ears on a rainy day!

Memorable songs I heard while driving today: Uncle Kracker's Follow Me, Diana Ross and the Supremes's Where Did Our Love Go and Adam Lambert's Whataya Want From Me.

Running out of time - need to start supper - salmon, cauliflower, corn on the cob and lots of summer fruit!!

An Alimentary Canal

Sometimes I feel just like a huge, pink alimentary canal!  So much of life is food related and I love to eat, of course, but I can't help but see my similarity to  a wooly bear caterpillar which is, basically, an alimentary tube - put in leafy vegetation at one end and see what comes out the other?  Frass! (Really - Google it!!)

So much of my life is involved with buying food, washing fruits and vegetables, preparing food, consuming food, thinking about food, etc., and then starting all over again.  I can understand why someone who's very busy (a working Mom with a lot of hungry kids, for instance) would succumb to convenience foods!  Eating healthy (especially fresh fruits and vegetables!)  requires some time for prep work!!

If anyone asks me my nutrition plan, it's basically to eat as many fruits and vegetables as humanly possible with some fish, beans, whole grains and nuts  thrown in here and there!  Just today, I bought so much fruit at Smith's that it will be a race for spouse and I to eat it up before it spoils (don't worry - I'll freeze it before that happens!) but I'm up to the task!! I bought peaches, nectarines, a cantaloupe, bing cherries, blueberries, mangos, on the vine tomatoes, green onions and avocados!  Yay - yummy, summer fruit season is in full swing!! 

Apparently I'm not the only one who adores summer fruit.  In Smith's today, I met a charming, young Asian woman who was as fruit crazy as I, piling her cart with bing cherries and blueberries!  She says she sometimes eats just fruit for supper and feels so good!  We both got a good laugh at ourselves!  Seriously, though, fruit is a true convenience food - wash it off and it's good to gobble! 

No matter how ludicrous the idea of me being a giant alimentary tube may be or how repetitive the food cycle is, I don't think I'll quit eating anytime soon!  Like I said, I love eating!!

Thinking Obituary - Mine!

While walking one hot day on the Rogue Trail, several weeks back,  feeling sorry for myself for all my supposed woes, I started thinking about obituaries and how inadequate they sometimes seem if they're a woman's.  Yes, "she was a consummate birder" - big deal, everyone's thinking; in otherwords, she was a housewife, a nobody.

Whereas a man's obituary is often a long compendium of what he did, accomplished or published, etc., as though the measure of our life equates with our resumé - the lengthier, the better. 

The only true measure is that we lived and loved and that we are (hopefully!) dearly missed by our family and friends.  Nothing else matters in the end.

Few People Know or Care

Few people know or care that I'm half Syrian.  When I was a child, growing up in the rural sticks of Canton, OH, my classmates seemed to care but in a pejorative way - calling me Eagle Beak (my brother was called brother of Eagle Beak), hunky, Olive Oyl.  I looked different from them.  I remember once in gym class locker room, a girl asked why I had a tan on my stomach.  I told her it was from wearing my Mom's two piece bathing suit.  This was true but I also paraded around in midriffs and shorts all summer, becoming the proverbial "brown as a berry".

My mother's family cared because that meant we were half-bloods and not real Syrians like they were.  We got part of the good, dark Syrian looks but not the thick, long, black eyelashes of my cousins and most of all, not the legitimacy of being "true" Syrians. 

Years after both my Mom and Dad had died, at a family get-together in Canton, another uncle, demented and ill by then, told me that his Mom asked my Mom "Where did you drag that in from?" when she met our father, a non-Syrian of German extraction.  At that same get together, my Mom's sister expressed contempt for my Dad.  I don't know why they heaped all that on me when I had traveled to visit the family - perhaps I reminded them too much of my father.  Even though others at the get-together were very kind to me, I cried throughout the evening each time I remembered anew the cruel words about my father and by inference, me, and also when I thought about all the years that had passed without my visiting Canton and being a part of my Syrian family.

My daughter seems to identify completely with her Dad's side of the family - the Russian, Polish and Jewish background.  That's probably because I've had little to do with the Syrian side all of her 32 years so she doesn't know them.

People where I live now don't know or care that I'm half Syrian.  They are an international cast of characters themselves!!

Yet, at the library, I saw the DVD The Syrian Bride on display.  My husband and I had seen the movie at a theatre in Santa Fe.  I felt such a swelling of pride at seeing the word "Syrian" in the title.  I took it out and watched the special features.  The movie centers around the events leading up to the bride leaving the Golan Heights to marry a Syrian man.  The conflict is that she must forever leave her family who are living in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights.  There is a lot of humor involved.  Coincidentally, my family says our Syrian ancestors were from Mount Hermon near the Golan Heights.

Anyway, even though few people know or care that I'm half-Syrian, I'm very proud of my Syrian heritage!

Annual Beheading of NM Locusts on Route

This year, my modus operandi was to step on the little buggers (so they can't run away - ha, ha!) and saw them off at the base with my handy-dandy snaggle-toothed garden saw - what fun (not really)!  Last year I pulled them out by the roots but that required wearing heavy gloves to protect against the thorns.  It doesn't matter which method I use since they'll grow back profusely anyway but the beheading method is easier than yanking them out by the roots!  ; D  Don't worry - there are plenty more NM locusts in the woods - I merely chopped off the ones that had the temerity to rear their thorny heads in my pathway!

Went to senior center this morning for 10 am talk by Bandelier Ranger Tom Betts aobut his time at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.  I enjoyed the talk.  I started wishing that I had become a national park ranger - the scenery is unparalleled!  Tonight I told husband that we need to visit all the national parks in his retirement!

I checked the library for books on Wrangell-St. Elias but found none.  

I am going to die from the heat in this house!

Cure for the Common Routine

When I hear a song from my past on the radio, like today when they played "Ain't No Mountain High Enough", it somehow distills the culmination of my longings and  yearnings to break out of my usual routine.  (I'm certainly the master of setting up routines.  Mastered it in my teens.) 

When I hear these songs on the radio, it's not even a conscious thought process - it's more a feeling that runs through me - of wanting to break away - hit the road and keep on going!

So much of life is filled with marking time.  Maybe what happens is that the song makes a direct connection to something in my brain and forcibly pulls me into the present, the Now,  to use Eckhart Tolle speak.  Goodness knows that I often need to be pulled into the Now!

Minor Grievances

Here's more whining I thought of today:  Why does our realtor, after showing us a house, start his pickup truck engine remotely as though to tell us the visit is over?  It's not like we talk and talk and take up his time.  It's rude.

Why did I have so many malapropisms while my sister was visiting the last week (like saying flush when I meant to say fluff)?  Perhaps early Alzheimer's or some other yet unidentified dementia?  The visit was stressful at times and maybe when I'm stressed, the blood flow to my brain diminishes?  How long can I use the excuse that I need more sleep (true)? I wish I had a crystal ball to see how my brain will age!

Regarding neighbor's work buddies, family or whoever they were yesterday evening, they weren't so much saying F-U as F-ING this and F-ING that.  Unpleasant in either case.  What was she thinking?

Also regarding the grousing session at neighbor's, to hear them complain about their co-workers makes me realize that no one ever really knows for sure if someone likes them or can't abide them.  We're all two-faced in our fashion!

I wonder if homeless people become homeless to escape the million little irritations involved in maintaining a home?  There is so much in homeownership that I could do without.  Why does shelter have to be so complicated?

Grandson is here for a sleepover.  Right now he's watching Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds with husband.  His Mom and step-Dad are at a concert.