Sunday, February 20, 2005
Gold Canyon:
Time races by. We both remain so busy that one week fades into the next and the next, and we're already more than 2/3rd through our second season at the resort (link above). Pat is extensively involved in tennis, and I've found a new love, hiking. To keep my resolve, (always a difficult thing for me where hard exercise is involved!), I'm a member of a hiking group. That keeps me trekking, where otherwise I'd be inclined to doze in bed.
Wettest winter that anybody can remember. "We need the rain," is the commonest official sentiment, while the unofficial one is: "but why does it have to rain on US right NOW?" Lots of gloomy days, and nary a day goes by without some warning of flash floods here or there. The desert is almost impossibly green. Lawn-green grass in ever-stretching fields beneath palo verde trees and sagauro cacti, and wildflowers popping up everywhere. The highways are lined with lupine, and yellow-blooming brittlebush. Everywhere you look there are waterfalls where nobody has seen them before. The combination of greeness and running water casts a whole new light on the desert.
As I said to one friend, "this feels like the place where I should be," which is something I haven't been able to say since leaving Taos, N.M. about 25 years ago. The value of being able to say that is truly something incomprehensible---it's sort of the difference between being glad to be alive and living "on hold" for whatever-it-is-that-you-really-want-to-happen. Given the number of years of "on hold," I wonder at myself.
Ask if you want a photo tour of the southwest at any point. Some of the hikes we've taken are quite memorable.
Time races by. We both remain so busy that one week fades into the next and the next, and we're already more than 2/3rd through our second season at the resort (link above). Pat is extensively involved in tennis, and I've found a new love, hiking. To keep my resolve, (always a difficult thing for me where hard exercise is involved!), I'm a member of a hiking group. That keeps me trekking, where otherwise I'd be inclined to doze in bed.
Wettest winter that anybody can remember. "We need the rain," is the commonest official sentiment, while the unofficial one is: "but why does it have to rain on US right NOW?" Lots of gloomy days, and nary a day goes by without some warning of flash floods here or there. The desert is almost impossibly green. Lawn-green grass in ever-stretching fields beneath palo verde trees and sagauro cacti, and wildflowers popping up everywhere. The highways are lined with lupine, and yellow-blooming brittlebush. Everywhere you look there are waterfalls where nobody has seen them before. The combination of greeness and running water casts a whole new light on the desert.
As I said to one friend, "this feels like the place where I should be," which is something I haven't been able to say since leaving Taos, N.M. about 25 years ago. The value of being able to say that is truly something incomprehensible---it's sort of the difference between being glad to be alive and living "on hold" for whatever-it-is-that-you-really-want-to-happen. Given the number of years of "on hold," I wonder at myself.
Ask if you want a photo tour of the southwest at any point. Some of the hikes we've taken are quite memorable.
