The desert, day one

Looking out my window right now, the colors on the landscape are anything but red and we are definitely past shorts-weather. I'm thinking back to days when red dust followed me everywhere and sunblock was mandatory.

Every good trip starts off with a climb out of the tent to view the sunrise and see just where you ended up when you pulled the car off the highway the night before. Not a bad impromptu site.

It's always a good idea to stop and check in with the district lizard to check on trail conditions and pick up your backcountry permit.

Apparently, many parts of the desert are wondrous playgrounds for grownups. Accessing them was a tiny bit harder than I'd thought and next time I'll consider a smaller pack.

Ah, but once you're in...

You don't really want to come out again.

But outside the slots, there are cactus snakes and other desert critters to stare at.

Thanks to Jesse for spotting the weird, grey mantis in his not-grey environment.

So much out there to enjoy, and that was just the first day.

Leaf seekers

We set out over the weekend, many weekends ago, to find glowing, yellow trees.

I think we found them. All of them.

I'm so glad our sky is so blue and the trees so brilliant and the light just right.

A tale of a tree

I eat a lot of peaches each summer. Palisade make some nice ones. I've been tossing the pits on my worm bin for years and, since the worms can't gnaw on them fast enough, they usually end up spread out on the garden beds where the heat and cold wear them down.

I've removed over a dozen tiny trees and some big ones, too, from the garden and I always felt guilty doing it. I tried giving them away, but most didn't survive transplanting. The last two I pulled from the garden a few seasons ago never found new homes and they spent the season in 4 inch pots outside at the very edge of the flower beds by my door (because summer on the deck would result in death by cat).

As it got colder, I was reluctant to toss the seedlings in the compost, so I figured I'd let winter have its way with them. And the next spring, they were still there, in their 4 inch pots that they'd kicked the bottoms out of and and thrown down roots through into the flower beds. I cut away the pots and piled up some extra soil around them.

"OK, fine, you can be cute little shrubs for now," I decided. They threw branches through the stair railing and whacked me and my neighbor in the face, so I trimmed them back a little. I let them stay two, maybe three, summers and then this spring, this happened...

"Aw, how sweet, you tried to flower," I thought, as the snow piled up in March. It was cold and no where near summer, so I thought I'd cut a few branches and bring them in, so I'd at least have a few days with pretty, pink things in the house.

Spring continued to freeze and thaw, as it does, but gradually the tree branches had their own pretty, pink things outside. Bees were getting busy with them. "Use it while you can!" I told them. They weren't ever going to be more than blossoms. I planned on pulling the trees out as soon as it was warm enough. But then I saw the little, fuzzy oval shapes where the flowers had been. No photographic evidence due to a change in phones, but those little almond-shapes were everywhere. But did they have a future?

I waited. I watered. The tree with flowers was over eight feet high. The shorter one, the one that didn't flower, was cut down. I watered some more. I read up on stone fruit trees. There were way too many fuzzy almonds on the branches, so I removed enough to leave space for the survivors, who were getting fatter every day.

And by late August...

More than forty peaches. Outside my door. In my cereal. All over my waffles. In my peach melba popsicles. And confirmed by friends who were gifted them to be some of the juiciest peaches ever. My miracle fruit tree.

Even after the fruit was gone, it still had a lead role in October as my first ever Halloween Tree (read the Ray Bradbury book and you'll want one, too).

So it was with a heavy heart that I went outside today with the loppers and saw to cut it down. Every branch hitting the ground was brutal to my soul. But it didn't belong in that space, couldn't be moved and probably wouldn't fruit again for several years. The HOA would probably take notice of it by then.

As I collected the fallen twigs, I thanked it for its flowers that the bees loved and its fruits that I devoured. I still can't get the base of its trunk out, but a neighbor has offered a better saw for the weekend. Soon, all traces of it will be gone. It was never supposed to be there in the first place, but there it was and it made people happy. Some times even impossible things are possible. There are more pits weathering in the garden right now and maybe someday I'll have a place to put each and every one of them...

Hey, long time, no post...yup, still living life to the fullest with little time to record it, but it's going really, really well. The impossible, or at least very unlikely, surprises me at every turn. 

A different trip around the sun

I almost made it back to the blog in less than a month. Almost. In between, there've been canyons, sambas, stars and marmots. But this weekend almost a month ago now was Jesse's birthday and his wish was to go someplace he'd been before and someplace he'd never seen and to share them both with me.

This place isn't that far from home, but it's not a part of the state that I've ever seen before.

There's a creek that gets lost (it was near here that I walked through a fury of wasps - ouch).

If I squint at the trees above, it looks like Australia to me.

I got Jesse some moose for his birthday, but I think they cheated and used the same moose twice. He also showed up on the opposite end of the field where we camped, but maybe that was a good thing.

A mountain panorama left behind by long past insect etchers.

Starting another year on top of the (nearby) world.

This was my first backpacking trip in quite a while and I learned a lot. I probably need a new backpack (turns out they've actual gone and started making them comfortable in the last 15 years - who knew?). Jesse is very patient and encouraging when my body and mind start planning a mutiny. Wasps are everywhere. Caffeine is useful. Freeze dried meals with a lot of vegetables should be consumed with caution. Thunder is quite loud when it's next to you. In spite of the days of recovery that followed, I had fun.

Since then, there have been more mountains, more moose, a CB wedding for friends, a Portland visit, and a ride across a lake in a dragon. Next up, some more of those yellow leaves and maybe some of that cold, frozen white stuff. We keep going...

The view from 43

I didn't really disappear this time, honestly. I've just been on the move. A lot.

I just hit 43, which still comes as a surprise, but lots of things have surprised me in this last rotation. On that day I found myself of the top of a peak, thanks, in part, to a chairlift assist, sitting next to a nervous pika who thought all the tourists had gone. The Thunderbirds roared by as if on cue. We looked down on the tiny cows below us.

And this year I wanted some ice cream from The Third Bowl on my birthday, so Jesse and I split a flite of six flavors (yeah, they do that), which we polished off before dinner, because that's how birthdays are done. It was worth the twelve month wait.

I've often spent my birthday off in the woods by myself. Birthdays aren't really a big deal, but it's an easy excuse to take a few vacation days and leave town. Waking up to this view is pretty common:

Good morning from the floor of an unzipped tent.

 Now I wake up to this view, too, and I like it very much:

I'm still silly and goofy, like always, but now I have someone to be silly and goofy with, or at least near, and that's pretty great.

 

I go for longer and higher walks now. I still stop for flowers and bugs and whatever was making that rustling noise in the bushes, but I think my photos are getting better thanks to the constant reminder of what an stop is.

Yup, I had no idea where that path past 42 was leading me, but it's turned out to be somewhere pretty wonderful. And it just keeps going...