This is the end of the first week of Discover Prompts on WordPress (not in real time, but as I finally got to them after discovering the challenge a month late). The subject is “Below”. And, LOL, “below” is my blog response!
For years, as I have been out and about, I have taken pictures of a multitude of subjects – arranging them into various albums and filing them away (in the film era) in boxes or various files (in the digital age).
One of the subjects of a digital age file was “My Feet”. Now, don’t laugh; it wasn’t just my feet. It was my feet in different locations. And if you stop to think about it, my feet were “below” just about everything I viewed or that I participated in. The following is a sample of those photos.
This first example (below) is just to show my feet. Good contrast, no actual flesh, general introduction to their shape, and an opportunity to get to know them. Nice, huh?
The next image (again – and for all future images – below) shows that I am not the only one interested in my feet. Check out this young cat named Stan Lee. I have to be very careful when Stan Lee is around. He has very sharp teeth and claws. My feet and legs are frequent targets.
I’m pretty sure that taking pictures of my feet started with them accidentally ending up in photos that I took while traveling. The next image shows an example from New Orleans a year or so ago. The lesson learned was that you can take pictures of your feet and folks will always relate them to where you where and what you were doing.
We had gone to New Orleans in order to board a ship for a cruise. The result? Another image of my feet. And anyone looking at the photo would instantly know that I was on a cruise. Check out the wake “below”!
While we were on the cruise, we realized that the carpet in the hallways was decorated with fish. And the fish, it was pointed out to us, were always swimming toward the bow (front) of the ship.
Having been sucked into the practice of photographing my feet (or shoes as the case might be), my “art” background started influencing my choice of feet “scenes”. This is an example of a sidewalk with interesting cracks. Portions of it look like arctic ice in the spring time – cracking apart with small pieces floating in between large icebergs that have yet to separate and float apart into open sea. But then your eyes are drawn to a couple of Maple leafs – which grabs your wandering mind and smashes it back into the reality of true scale.
Another sidewalk has cracks filled in and obscured by a cement filler. Not as interesting as miniature icebergs, but certainly an interesting pattern. And, again, something visual to dwell upon below my feet.
Then there was the day I was eating lunch at Taco Bell and noticed the shadows being displayed on the floor by the bright Arizona sun. Couldn’t resist myself and ended up with another photo for the “My Feet” album.
So, you are out traveling and you spot an image on the sidewalk, stenciled there by the local publicity folks to encourage tourism. Absolutely requires a photograph. Which once again tells everyone exactly where you were that day.
Or you are walking along at the Florida location of the Ford and Edsel homes and spot some pieces of cement scratched with the name “FORD”. A helpful docent provides the background of the pieces of cement and you leave with another photo of what passed below your feet.
I’m always drawn to small details. Rocks, leaves, sticks, patterns in nature, whatever. When you get home and zoom in on the detail, you find many things you did not observe when in the field. That process works well in the forest, at the beach or out in the desert.
The subject was “Below”. The actors were my feet. You were the audience. I hope you enjoyed the show.
Hands. They are there from the beginning. Tiny. Delicate. Warm. With a strength that belies their size and portends a future full of touch, warmth and promise. This is Luna Sofia – about a month old when this picture was taken and close to two months old when this blog was written. My granddaughter.
Hands. They can reflect years of wear and tear. Work, play, travel, chores, accidents and more. Evidence of love and marriage. As time goes on, they record everything. Both good health and bad. They don’t lie.
They can also be reflective of their surroundings – in this case sun light shining through a window covered with rain drops.
Hands can be used to show things. Relative size, shape and color. In this case a prehistoric pottery sherd in the Southwest. Infused with a temper which can contribute to an understanding of it’s temporal origins. Found during a long, hot hike on a mesa previously inhabited by agriculturists prior to the arrival of the Spanish.
In the image below, a younger hand (evidenced by smoother skin) holds a sea shell for photographic purposes. Maybe documenting a vacation find on a Gulf of Mexico beach.
Hands. Staged properly and in conjunction with other features in a photo they will express emotion. In the case below, bemused contemplation. On closer inspection, the hands also reflect, by themselves, a life of dedication, service and hard work. And, possibly, the thought of that pending last taste of wine…
At the end of life, hands can offer comfort, love and a sense of reassurance in those last moments. They speak to an understanding of fear, of family close by and the of coming afterlife where there will be a reunification. They were there at the beginning and are now there for the ending.
OMG! This prompt, “Dish”, is so unfair! We’re locked up in self-isolation, hundreds of miles from home, unable to visit our local eateries (which may be closed anyway) and “Discover Prompts” on WordPress suggests we write about food. Argh!!
We have been able to get some takeout that I like (Chipotle Salad) and Zac (my son), Kasey (his wife) and Carly (my daughter) have all made absolutely wonderful dishes over the past few weeks. If you didn’t already know, we are all sort of quarantined at my Son’s house. We came here over a month ago because he and Kasey were blessed with a new baby!
Below is a photo of a dish Carly made a few days ago – Salmon and couscous with lots of really nice and spicy stuff all over the top of it, along with a little spinach.
I DO like spicy! One of my favorite dishes is from a restaurant that was relatively new in our neighborhood just prior to the Coronavirus pandemic, PT Pho. They have a Crispy Calamari dish with some really spicy dipping sauce (Sweet Chili) that is out of this world.
Then there is a really fantastic, small, out of the way restaurant in Boulder, UT, called Hell’s Backbone Grill. It’ll take you ages to get there, but totally worthwhile. One of the dishes I really liked was their Garlic Trio – a small platter with farm garlic purée, grilled spicy garlic & garlic pesto with gruyere crackers, farm radishes and zucchini.
This is really starting to get to me, but I’ll tell you about one more. Earlier this year, just as the Coronavirus was beginning to be more of a thing, I attended a conference in Ajo, Arizona. I lucked out and was able to stay at a little private bed and breakfast which brought me a tray each morning with fresh food – some hot off the skillet or right out of the oven. This example was a green chili burrito. Yummm!
So, today’s blog cheated a little. Rather than describe all the fantastic tastes with words that created the picture in your mind and made your salivary glands ooze with anticipation, I used some photos that I took – those times that I remembered to pull out the cell phone and take them.
A narrow three story brick apartment building standing by itself. Trees arching over a bumpy concrete sidewalk. At four years old the first street I remember living on was in west Denver. Douglas Place? I had a tiny trike to ride on the sidewalk. It was mostly cold and I wore a big snow suit coat when we were outside walking. I remember a big street about half a block to the south – probably W Colfax. We lived there for short period on the upstairs level. Shared a bathroom with two other apartments on the same floor.
The second street I remember was the street that went by the end of our barracks on Lowry AFB in Denver. That was where the trucks came by selling vegetables and ice. I was five. The kids in our neighborhood used to chase the ice truck and hope for a piece to hold and lick and chew on during the hot summer days before air conditioning. We lived on the second story and you could see the hospital where my Dad worked across another street to the north.
There was an MP guard shack at the gate a few buildings to the west of our barracks and the hospital. That was where we went to get on a bus and go to kindergarten. They had a coal burning stove in the shack and on really cold days it was a place to get warm. I still have periodic dreams where I am pulled closer and closer to that stove and can’t keep my hands from reaching out and being burned on the red hot metal.
Then my Dad got new orders and we moved to Mesa, AZ. He was stationed at Williams AFB. We lived on the side of a small dirt street which dead-ended at an irrigation ditch. Alfalfa fields lined the other, south side of the ditch. Some play friends lived a few houses to the north on the opposite side of the street where there was a large palm tree with lots of dead palm fronds infected with large nests of wasps. Fun to throw rocks at when you are six. Not fun when you get bit by a wasp.
When we finally got base housing we were in a small home along with many others stretched alongside the street. When you went out the front door and turned left, the neighbors a few houses down from us had a TV. Round screen with a funny pattern on it. It was only on for a couple of hours each day. We could stand outside and look thru the screen door at the TV when there was something on it. I learned to ride a bike on that street.
Arizona was really hot. All we had for cooling was a swamp cooler in one of the windows. I had two smaller brothers – the third wouldn’t arrive for a few years. The two brothers ended up getting heat-related health problems and we ended up getting moved back to Colorado. We lived in Englewood on three different streets: Acoma, Pearl and Pennsylvania in that order. The first two were in rentals. The latter was where my parents bought their first home.
It was on a block that had all new homes. There was a K-3 elementary school across the street with an older home and barn with really big (Oak?) trees just to the south of it. All the families on our side of the street would play in the front yards, ride our bikes up and down the street and periodically get into the biggest water fights I’ve ever experienced. The school yard was used many times for impromptu baseball games. Much fun.
Today that elementary school is gone, replaced for awhile with a city center for adults. My Mom volunteered there for many years. We had planted a small Blue Spruce in front of our house when we moved in. I could easily jump over it without touching. When my Mom moved out over 50 years later, that Spruce was so big it hid the front of the house. I lived on that street until I graduated from high school and left for college.
There are many other streets, boulevards, highways and more that have crossed paths with me over the years: Broadway, Champs de Elysee, Canal Street, Highway 66, Pacific Coast Highway, Ocean Drive… All created memories. But, none of them had the same feeling of neighborhood families living and growing together, experiencing all the youthful memories that color one’s understanding of self.
The word for the third day of Discover Prompts is “Song”. I’m supposed to write using that word as a starting block. Now, that creates a problem for me. I’m without a doubt, the most unmusical person I know.
When I was six years old, living in Mesa (my Dad was stationed at Williams AFB), my Mom tried to get me interested in the piano. She got me some lessons from a local piano teacher. I HATED practicing. Ultimately she gave up trying to make me practice.
When I was in elementary school I got signed up for band and was assigned a clarinet. I can still taste that clarinet reed. And practice was just about the same. I hated it. But, being a little older, I did stay with it a little longer. But, ultimately, I quit band.
In high school I got personal reward out of volunteering for projects through student council and physical development out of participating in Track and Field – mainly long distance running. I mention the latter because as I and other members of the cross country team would run our races, we used to whistle or sing a musical ditty, “Cool aid, cool aid, tastes great!” When as a team we came up on another team running, the sight and sound of us singing that musical piece (probably from an advertisement for cool aid) would unnerve the other team. They were struggling to continue due to muscle exhaustion and lung problems; we were obviously doing just “great!” – because we were singing!
My Dad used to listen to records. Stuff like Johann Sebastian Bach. I DID like listening to the music my Dad played, but there was another problem. I have problems remembering titles, authors, words, etc. Been that way all my life. Could I tell you if a piece was someone’s 5th concerto or 18th or whatever? Not on your life. So, lots of music is familiar, but I can never tell you by who or what it is called.
My Dad was also a very accomplished whistler. He could do trills, warbles, high notes, low notes, the whole works. He would sit in his chair out on the front lawn and whistle until you’d think all the birds within earshot had stopped to listen to him. I’ve tried to duplicate his whistling at times in the past and never even come close.
As for musical genres? Pop, country, rap, rock n roll, R&B, hip hop, classical, jazz – when I’m listening to music or songs I would have a hard time telling you which genre they are. In fact, I had to ask my family to tell me some types so I could write this paragraph. I can tell when something is country because someone’s dog always dies or their girl friend dumps them. But, when I was asking my family about the genres, I was trying to remember what you called it and was think, “Western?” “Southern?” I couldn’t remember the right word, but if it had been a multiple choice question, I could have picked the correct answer.
Anyway, that’s it for the word “Song”. Dinner is ready and I’m going to stop now.
Okay, so it is day two of the Discover Prompt blogging recommendations. This time the suggestion is the word “Open”.
I had two thoughts as I was reading their blog recommendation. First, I really wish that we were released from all the quarantine requirements and able to go out again without restrictions. I would love to walk down the grocery store isles, impulsively picking off the shelves whatever I wanted and physically placing it into my shopping cart. That totally feels different from clicking on something to add it to an Internet “Cart”.
Secondly, how about getting to experience those wide open spaces in the great outdoors again? I really miss walking, hiking and exploring in my own personal favorite “Happy Place”: Agua Fria National Monument (AFNM). Over the past month I have been able to get out once to walk some paths in a local park and, yesterday, to visit the Falls of the Ohio State Park.
The photo above, taken at Falls of the Ohio, shows some of the numerous scatters of drift wood. Previous visitors piled some of it up to form shelters, artistic representations, pathways and more.
I’ve been able to explore AFNM for more than 15 years, experiencing fresh air, beautiful wildflowers, exhilarating climbs, fantastic scenery and stumbling upon prehistoric features everywhere. There is the initial feeling of relaxation, then wonder at the beauty of it all, and afterwards the understanding that the experience has removed all the stress and daily grind of city life.
This AFNM photo shows a rock formation in the Long Gulch area with view off to the west in the back ground.
Anyway, toward the end of two months of isolation, I’m really getting stir crazy. Can’t wait to get back out there!
So, this “Discover” site/blog/whatever suggests that I blog every day. And they will provide me with a word every day that will prompt me as to subject. This all started on April 1st and I’m just seeing it today, May 2nd.
Their first word was “Joke”. And I’m supposed to start from that theme and begin writing.
First of all, within my own family, the standing thought about me and jokes is that I’m worthless. I know no jokes, and if I hear one and try to pass it on, my timing is off and I have no idea what the punch line is. So, we’ll leave that right here.
Now, I have to figure out how to “tag” this blog post with “Discover Prompts” and then publish it.
About a month ago I attended the 6th Tri-National Symposium in Ajo, AZ. That was early March. The Corona Virus was flaring up around the world and people were beginning to notice. There were several hundred of us at the symposium, mainly archaeology-related folks from around the Southwest and from northwestern Mexico.
During the meeting I remember being really shocked when a lady with long, light-colored hair loudly coughed just as she was walking toward me at the end of one of the breakout sessions. She had been sitting near the front of the room and I had observed her coughing during the session. For several weeks afterwards I worried that maybe I had been exposed.
The major concern after I got home from the symposium was determining when my wife Jill and I would travel to Sellersville, IN for the birth of our first granddaughter, Luna Sofia Campbell-Hoogendyk. Eventually, it was determined that the birth would be by C-Section, it would take place on March 20th, and we would not be allowed into the hospital due to the virus. As a result, we flew to Louisville, KY on March 24, rented a car, and drove to my son’s house in Sellersville.
The flight to Louisville was notable for several reasons. One, we flew on a Southwest Airlines flight with thirteen people in an airplane built for around 160 passengers. We were all seated in the front one-third of the aircraft and all separated by about three rows from each other. The flight attendants all wore rubber gloves and masks. Many of the passengers were wearing masks. They only served canned water – nothing else. When we arrived in Louisville, it was to concourses empty of travelers other than the few from our flight. Quiet, with footsteps echoing down the empty halls which appeared like antiseptic, empty tunnels devoid of humanity.
During the drive to Sellersville, I was struck by the numerous scattered trees that were fluffy white with blossoms. In places they were single by themselves. In others there were small orchards of them, but they were all beautiful and attractive. I had no idea what they were, but eventually learned they included crab apple trees.
My first impression on seeing Luna, who was already home from the hospital, was that she was SO small. 7 lbs 9 ounces is not large, but she looked tiny! And I was in love all over again.
Jill and I were able to help Zac and Kasey with their newborn by holding her, rocking her and taking care of her whenever she wasn’t nursing during the day and between maybe 9:30pm and 4:00am. As I sat in the living room holding her I could see out the front door and dining room windows. The trees in the distance were bare, brown skeletons, yet to show their spring leaves.
Within a week or two the white blossoms I had observed earlier had disappeared, the bare tree limbs had sprouted new green leaves and there were other trees which were now blooming with different colors – mainly light purples and pinks – in the distance across fields to the west. I began to realize that the seasons were changing while I watched. Back in Phoenix the temperatures were going from an average in the mid to upper 70s to an average which is now approaching 100s. At the same time, I realized that once again I was missing out on one of the two major hiking seasons in Arizona, Spring and Fall, which in Arizona are short periods of cool weather, dry trails and mild winds. By the time I get back my body will have to acclimatize to temps over 100 degrees and hot, glaring sun. I’ll do it, but will have to walk slower, conserve energy and be much more cautious.
To make matters worse, my friends and acquaintances in Arizona are all out practicing social distancing in the wild and posting pictures of wonderful scenery, petroglyphs, prehistoric artifacts and features, and making me extremely jealous. Hopefully, they will continue posting though, because it is the only Arizona desert hiking fix I can get at the moment.
Our youngest daughter, Carly, who lives in a fourth-story walkup in Manhattan’s Chinatown with several others, was being self-isolated in her cramped, 8×10 bedroom. Unable to go out other than for groceries, exposed to the worst of the pandemic across the nation when she did, was going crazy from boredom. Jill decided drive to NYC, pick her up and drive her back to Indiana to stay with us – which she did on Friday, April 10th and Saturday, April 11th.
Because of the possible exposure the two of them had to the Corona virus, Carly and Jill had to be self-isolated in the basement of my son’s home while he rest of us, including Luna Sophia, stayed up stairs. This was a fourteen day proposition which all of us agreed to in order to get Carly out of NYC. Carly and Jill had their own beds, a small refrigerator a bathroom to share and separate access to the backyard and to the street out front for walks and bike riding. Food, laundry, trash, etc., was exchanged at a landing half-way down the stairs between upstairs and downstairs. After anything was exchanged, washing of the hands occurred in case any Corona germs were involved. As of this writing, so far, so good. No one has gotten sick.
Kasey’s Mom and Dad, Deanna and Bruce, come over each day to help with baby sitting Luna Sophia, making dinner, bringing food, etc. They live about fifteen minutes away and are self-isolated in their own home with no exposure to anyone except us.
Zac and Kasey took me to a park across the street from her parent’s home one day to take a walk in the park. It was a welcome break and an opportunity to take lots of cell phone photos. Trees, flowers, a small river, trails, patterns in the ground cover – all were a interesting visuals and became part of my photographic journal on the phone. Luna Sophia was pushed the whole while in her new stroller – and I got a family picture of the three of them.
Since we arrived in Indiana, Southwest Airlines has cancelled numerous flights – including some we had set up as possible flights going both ways for alternative travel options. To some extent that has contributed to my personal uncertainty over our future plans for getting back to Phoenix. Today I got another clue to the possibilities: The date for reopening NYC has been extended until May 15th. That probably means we can’t take Carly back and then fly to Phoenix until then… 😦
Before we left Phoenix, our house was in the process of being painted – and they finished the day after we left. It has been almost a full month and we’ve never seen the finished product. That included sealing some cracks in the wall around our yard and refinishing some stucco on the front decorative wall by our front door – which were then repainted themselves. Wish I could check them out, but it will probably be another three to four weeks before we make it home.
Overnight last night Zac and Kasey went to bed around 10:15pm and I was holding Luna Sophia in the living room watching TV. I have gotten used to watching HBO, Hulu, Sling, Disney Channel or whatever for hours on end with the baby in my arms. My favorites are documentaries and comedic episodes. They make the time pass very fast. I usually am able to watch for 2 to 3 hours straight before she wakes up and wants to nurse or needs to be changed. I do that until maybe between 3am and 6am and then turn her over to Kasey and I go to bed.
This time, around 2:30am, it felt like she had peed and her diaper had leaked on my shirt front. As she awoke, I took her into Kasey and explained what had occurred. When I went back to pick Luna Sophia up at around 3:00am, Kasey explained it wasn’t pee – it was poop. Which explained why the wet spot on my shirt had hardened into a pancake type of hard spot during the half hour. So, I had to clean up before I went to bed at 5:15am.
When I’m not on baby duty, sleeping, reading, eating or writing, I try to help with chores around the house: dumping trash, unloading the dishwasher, filling it, cleaning the stove, washing and folding laundry for Jill, Carly and me, sweeping up the floor, vacuuming the carpet, or whatever. Wish I could do more, but part of it involves learning where things are kept, what Zac and Kasey use to clean, etc. And then you have to do it when and in a manner that it doesn’t wake the baby. Or whichever parent might be sleeping for the moment.
My reading has picked up quite a bit during the weeks here in Indiana. I had gotten out of the habit of book reading, concentrating mainly on Internet news and magazines. I had heard Craig Childs talk at the symposium in early March and decided to read some of his books. I’m on the third one now: House of Rain. It’s very interesting to me since many of the places he describes visiting are places in the Southwest that I have visited and the ideas he describes are ones that I have pondered myself. Even many of the people he discusses are familiar to me and I find myself really getting involved in the book. I wonder sometimes if I could write anything half as interesting and have pretty much concluded that if he has spent the last 25 to 30 years doing that writing, I, at the age of 76, don’t have much of a chance to accomplish anything close to what he has.
Every few days Zac and Kasey order food and supplies on-line for a later scheduled pickup at the grocery store or wherever. Then Zac goes and picks them up. When he gets home, everything is unloaded onto one end of the kitchen table, disinfected, and moved to the other end of the table. Then it is put away or taken down to the landing halfway down the stairs for Jill and Carly in the basement. During the process and afterwards, hand washing is part of the normal routine.
My biggest problem with the food process is that I’m constantly going into the kitchen looking for snacks – and the normal snacks that I have at home are non existent. The good side of that is that I’m probably losing a little weight, although I have no empirical evidence. Need some party mix, trail mix, Oreos, crackers with cheese spread, etc.
Zac and Kasey live in a very new subdivision. Looking at Google Earth, the image of their subdivision is a horse race track attached to some farm buildings and corrals. It only shows a small portion of the entrance to the subdivision as being completed. From the back windows or balcony of their house you can watch the backhoes, road graders, bulldozers and dump trucks working to expand the subdivision on the western side. That involves pulling down forests, burning or moving the stumps, leveling the ground, grading new roads, putting crushed rock on them, paving them and then beginning to put in all the rest of the infrastructure and starting to build new homes. There have to be about 8 or 10 of those in various stages of construction from foundation to roofing and new grass and trees. I feel really conflicted in terms of the forest destruction. Especially since today (as I write this paragraph) is the 50th Earth Day.
Today is rather gloomy outside. It’s been raining most of the day and the rain varies from misty drizzles to more moderate showers. The home just to the southwest of us doesn’t have sod in the back yard yet and accumulates large, muddy pools across it due to poor drainage and clayey soils. The result attracts shore birds, mainly plovers, and our thought is that at some point the state is going to have to establish an avian shorebirds sanctuary of several thousand square feet in size. Right where we can always watch it. Although mosquitoes might become a problem…
Maybe in a day or two things will dry out, chores will be caught up, Jill and Carly will be released from quarantine in the basement, and we can all go for another walk in the park.
ASPT. That stands for Arizona State Parks and Trails. Starting late last August I began volunteering two days a week at their offices as “Volunteer Assistant Site Steward Coordinator”, helping out my friend, Dr. Will Russell, Archaeologist, who is the actual Site Steward Coordinator for the state. Biggest problem, funding and priorities. The Site Steward program is so far down the list of priorities at State Parks that it takes MONTHS to get approval for a simple newsletter out to the 800+ site stewards. Very discouraging.
Rotator Cuff: Tore mine on March 1st while out hiking on Agua Fria National Monument – which I was still trying to do on a weekly basis. Now up to over 880 prehistoric structures documented, close to 20K photographs and over 1,500 km of hiking. The rotator cuff debacle occurred as six of us were heading into the last 1/2 km of a 3.5 km hike – from Horseshoe Ranch, up Indian Creek to Long Gulch Creek, up the creek for 1/2 a km, then up to the south onto the top of Long Gulch Mesa, visit a couple of sites there and then back west to the Jeeps. The “back west to the Jeeps” involved climbing down off the mesa – which the young BLM ranger with us was able to do by hop/skipping/jump down from basalt boulder to basalt boulder in front of us. As he was looking up at the rest of us, I jokingly told him he’d have to wait for about 30 minutes for the rest of us old folks to work our way down to where he was. Then I took two steps, lost my balance and fell backwards onto my right elbow and shoulder. I heard a distinct “POP” and felt lots of pain in my elbow and shoulder – mainly the latter. As the ranger and others hurried to help me, I rolled over onto my back and discovered my right arm was worthless. Total inability to raise it up at all. It just laid there. They bandaged up my bleeding elbow, we took an easy trail back to the Jeeps, I struggled in with some help from others, and then drove myself to emergency care. No broken bones, but could be torn tendons – which an MRI a few days later confirmed. Now I’m scheduled for surgery on March 23rd. Followed by 6 weeks of slings and 3 – 5 months of physical therapy. 😦
My son, Zac, is getting married in August. On Macinack Island in Michigan. To the wonderful Kasey Campbell. So excited.
Jill, my lovely wife who is a mortgage originator, is now back working with Veritas Funding out of Utah. Nice people, great products and wonderful support for Jill. She has her own office only a mile or so from our house (along with an office in our house). With her thirty years or more of experience in real estate and mortgages, she is probably the most knowledgeable and experienced mortgage originator in the area, if not the state. I’m so proud of her, her accomplishments and her reputation. She even teaches mortgage licensing and law all across the nation.
Well, time to get back to work. I have a meeting today with Parks folks to go over 2018 Site Steward award nominations and another meeting at 12:00 noon with the Cultural Resources Committee for the Friends of Agua Fria National Monument. I’ve been working with the latter group for over 9 or 10 years now and find it very rewarding.
I have continued to hike Agua Fria National Monument (which is currently threatened by the Trump Administration’s “review” of monuments set up over the past 20 years – but, that’s another story and I’ll cover it later). I’m up over 16,000 photographs, 730 habitation structures documented, 300 plus trips to the monument and over 1,450 km hiked.
I also tried to get back into running last fall. Jill (my absolutely better half) and I signed up with a 3 month training program designed to get you running a 10k. The program was done by the local Runners’ Den and included group runs every Saturday. We were in the slow/beginners group. I jogged. Jill walked. We did it together. Slowly. Our miles were about 18 to 20 minutes each. At the end of the program you were registered to run in two different races. The first one was 10k and we finished. We were so spectacular that we had a police escort right behind us. Motorcycles, bike and patrol car. And right behind them were the city workers picking up the orange cones marking the race course. Yes, we finished dead last. For the second one we downgraded ourselves to a 5k and finished it, too. And there were a few people who came in behind us. Maybe 10? So we weren’t last.
This weekend a group associated with the Friends of the Tonto National Forest did an archaeological survey up on Perry Mesa. The west half of Perry Mesa is Agua Fria National Monument and the east half is Tonto. I got to participate. There were about a dozen of us, including a retired Tonto archaeologist and a professor from ASU as leaders. We had lots of fun. Found five or six field houses, lots of pottery sherds, a rattle snake, a horney toad and several petroglyph panels. I normally walk alone up in those areas because I love the peaceful nature of it and use the opportunity to clear my mind. However, the benefit of a dozen extra pairs of eyes in locating exciting archaeological artifacts or features cannot be underestimated. Afterwards, several of us stopped in Rock Springs on the way back for their third and last 2017 “Hogs in Heat” all-you-can-eat BBQ event. Spent several hours eating, talking and watching the local Black Canyon City folks whoop and holler as they danced to the music of both a band and a DJ.
Later this week I’ll try and remember to spend some time typing up a blog entry about the Trump administration “review” of national monuments. I need to gather more information and also stop ranting so much or what I blog will be nothing but curse words.
arizonamike 