in the garden of the gods

No, really. That's the name of the park: Garden of the Gods. I wasn't being all writerly. I'm not sure which gods had this garden, but they sure like red sandstone. Possibly they tried and failed to raise tomatoes? I don't know. Not much grows willingly in that climate except scrub oak, scrub pine, and sage.

So we made our annual pilgrimage back to see parents, and while we were there, we got an unexpected opportunity to go hiking, and we leapt upon it. If I had my way, that is all we would do in Colorado: stay in the mountains and hike around. But his parents cannot travel into that kind of altitude, and at the moment, neither can mine, so we spend much of our visit sitting or walking slowly through Manitou Springs or Old Colorado City (read: tourist trap shops). And this trip, given all the toadshit of spring, we didn't feel like we could take time to stay in the mountains, even for a day. I told Nous not to stop the car as we drove over Vail Pass, or I'd jump out and disappear into the trees and that'd be that. Woman goes feral in forest. 

Anyway, the Garden of the Gods is basically a park full of big-ass red sandstone rocks that people climb in contravention of safety regs, and sometimes fall off of. It gets mostly road traffic, or people hiking on the paved bits around the biggest rocks (that, see above, people like to climb on in contravention of safety regulations). Locals use the trails, but it's not the kind of hiking that's strenuous enough to attract hardcores, and yet takes enough time/requires enough effort that the casual tourist wouldn't make it. And, you know, it's at 6400 feet, so that's enough altitude that people unused to it feel it. And it can get hot down there, and the trees in the park are mostly scrub. The yellow orb of death is brutal. (You see how I say down. My ideal is up there over 7K, closer to 8-10k. Tall trees, cold air, not much of it.)

We got lucky: clouds and abnormally cool.  The hike itself wasn't hard--maybe 250 feet of elevation change, no glacial rivers, maybe 3-4 miles. We'd had rain the night before, too, so the dust was minimal, but not enough to make mud. Which, you know--fortunate. I hadn't brought hiking boots. I had to do this hike in little Merrell trail/water shoes with basically mesh sides. It was five kinds of awesome and despite the altitude-induced headache (stubborn! we hiked at the same speed we would've at sea level, and paid for it) it was totally worth it. Next time, though, I am just bringing the damn boots.

And here, we see Nous in his guise as two-legged bighorn sheep. He cannot resist climbing out onto ledges. In his youth he might've tried scrambling up the big rocks and been one of those unfortunate, smashed-flat people. Fortunately he has aged into wisdom.

Now we're home again, and it's back to work on WIP. Which...well, here is a blog post! You can guess how that WIP is coming along. Tomorrow, back to work.

black sand, dancing skies

The Lyft driver was horrified.

"You're going where?" she said. "To do...what?"

Iceland, we said. To climb a waterfall and walk the black beach at Reynisfjara and hike Thingvellir

Thingvellir, site of the Althing

and ride horses. No tour buses, no sitting in hot springs, no fancy dinners. Rain gear, good boots, lots of layers, wool socks. Maybe the aurora borealis, if we were lucky. Probably not a lot of beer. Certainly not a lot of people. 340K on the whole island! Long stretches of nothing and no one. Lots of sheep and horses. Silence, I said wistfully. Maybe somewhere I can't hear any cars.

"Have fun," the Lyft driver wished us. But she sounded doubtful. (Her upcoming vacation, a weekend in Denver, was to be spent drinking and partying and otherwise not exerting herself one more iota than necessary. I do not judge this, but I also do not want it.)

Maybe it's that Nous and I are not good at vacations. We haven't been on one that lasted more than a day (visiting family does not count) for 15 years. Perhaps we could've offered that as excuse to the Lyft driver--we don't know how to relax in long stretches. And also, to us, hiking is relaxing. Seeing new landscapes is relaxing. Nous getting some quality time with his camera is relaxing.

We got our wishes. All of them.

I mean: we went to Iceland in September and did not need our rain pants. It rained exactly twice: the afternoon we arrived, and on the return from Reynisfjara.

Glymur, in Hvalfjordur

Which meant, when we went up the Glymur waterfall trail, it was sunny, and our (very enthusiastic) guide decided to take the long way, which involved crossing a glacial river twice, barefoot. No tour buses. You can't see Glymur from the road. You have to earn it.

No lie: I felt pretty badass, afterwards. And I was also very glad of my wool socks (one of my earliest pairs) which prevented blisters from lingering damp and sandy bits that stuck to me after the river crossings.

We saw the aurora borealis that night, of which I have no pictures, because I was too busy watching them. They looked like  bands of silver and the faintest hints of green. Like ghosts moving on the vaults of the sky.

And then, finally, Reynisfjara, which was my Must See from the very first time I saw a photo. We drove out of Reykjavik, past farms of sheep and Icelandic horses, past Eyjafjallajökull (capped in clouds, quiet, brooding), past a parade of waterfalls fed by the glaciers.

There is something about this long stretch of black sand, studded with rocks, ringed with basalt columns on one side and crashing grey sea on the other. Just listen to it. I wish I could share the rest: the wind, the cold salty tang of the sea, the grit of the sand. But this will have to do.

i've been through the desert in a mini named red jenny

the desert is bright and full of sunlight

Whirlwind trip back to see the parental units (both sets). We've learned that we hate stopping unnecessarily, so we typically do a 12 hour driving day first, then the shorter one so we have time to "do something" at the destination.


This time, the long hell day was the first and the very last. We also had an adventure (for us), and took the I-40 route back from Colorado, rather than I-70 across the mountains. Nous wanted to go to Santa Fe, so we did that (and had excellent rellenos and a thunderstorm and a mini-hike through the pinon pines above St. John's College). And I have a hoya cutting to root and nanking cherry bushes to sprout, gifts from the BIL, that I will endeavor not to kill.

Utah

Arizona

heart-home, inbound. 

snow!

into the storm
at Flagstaff

Now... I have a manuscript to rescue from itself. I suck at talking about projects in progress, but Nous is patient, and gods know there is nothing else to do during large stretches of Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. He mostly let me talk out loud, and now I think I have the problem pinned down. Now to fix it. (Or trash the whole thing entirely and start over. That remains on the table, too.) The original idea was more...word word word... romantic, I guess. What started writing itself became markedly less so, very rapidly (not a surprise), but it needed a Why. Nous helped me out with that. The How is still my problem, but it's always my problem.

The hours of forced inactivity (read: thinking) may have helped. I reminded myself that Enemy has a file of 40K discarded words, scenes, chapters: places the story went that did not work out, and that had to be pruned. So far I have a manuscript full of motivational holes and a small list of scenes that need to be written before I can move forward (at least in my own head). I am generally a Finish It sort of person, except with my writing. Then it's all about sitting in the land of the possible, exploring permutations, wondering about maybes and might-bes, and generally being reluctant to commit. I also reminded myself that sometimes you have to write 40K words before you can figure out what you need to be writing, and that it's okay to throw things away. I'm not on a deadline. And I can always make more words.

this is where my heart lives

So it rained most of the day. This was okay. The yellow orb of death is particularly pernicious at altitude, and there is not enough sunscreen in the world for me.

We got up stupid-early, though, to make it to the summit before the rains and predicted storms, because no one wants to be at 12000 feet in lightning.

This was the view about, oh, 8-9000 feet up. The forests are mostly spruce, some pine, some aspen. They're super dense, long skinny trunks close together, a canopy of needles, a carpet of little spruce all trying to grow up. The higher you get, the smaller the trees become, both in height and in the slenderness of their limbs. By 10,000 feet, the branches are like fingers.

Fog rolled over our position about two minutes after we took that shot.

Then we climbed into the clouds, quite literally. At treeline, we passed into a fog that rivals anything I've seen come off the Pacific. The temperatures kept dropping, too. We were in the low 40s by the time we cleared the fog and got mostly above it.

At the summit, or damn near (which is 12000 feet, the last 1000 or so of  which one must hike on foot), we had moments of snow. It didn't flake, exactly, and it didn't stick, but it blew around my face and it made me happy. It's my first snowfall in almost ten years.

This is a view from the summit, between passing clouds. The snow is leftover glacier. There were elk munching tundra grass nearby. (Nous got photos; he has a better camera, and more patience with taking pictures.) I just stood there and breathed the cold wind and soaked up as much of this place as I could.

This is where my heart lives.

mountains

I am sitting here in a little cabin in Estes Park, listening to the rain fall. It has been so long since I've heard rain in a chimney. Or smelled wet evergreens. Or been in Acts of God storms in the mountains. I have done all of those things in the past two days.

Tomorrow, I get to go hiking and spend a little time in the tundra above treeline, which is my favorite place in the whole world (at least until I see Iceland, at which point I may have to re-evaluate). We may get very wet. That is okay. We have a fireplace in the cabin. We may also see wildlife, which is great! Except bears. I don't need to see a bear up close, please and thank you.

It's a cold, wet July, which is also awesome. While I confess I'd like to see my beloved Flatirons as I drive through Boulder, I am happier with the temps hovering in the 60s than up in the 90s. I can layer. Life is good.

As long as we get to the top of Trail Ridge before the AoG storms start up again, because we don't mess with alpine lightning.

The Eddas tell the story of the jötun Thjazi,  who was killed in one of Loki's shenanigans gone bad. His daughter, Ska∂i, a creature of snow, mountains, and cold, comes looking for vengeance. She is offered a husband as compensation for her father's death from among the Aesir and the Vanir. She wants to pick the man with the best looking feet. (Do we believe that? Feet? I think it's a euphemism.) She chooses Njord, who makes his home by the sea. Ska∂i  is of course from the mountains. The marriage has some issues, because the couple cannot decide where to live. Ska∂i dislikes the sea and the crying gulls. Njord, on the other hand, cannot stand the cold winds and the howling of wolves.

I came to the sea for Nous (who came for grad school). It had nothing to do with feet or compensation or bloodfeud (though grad school does share some other elements in common with Icelandic sagas). But I have not made friends with the gulls or the ocean. The air is too thick. The winds are too tame. And there is no tundra anywhere.

Screw Njord. Bring on the wolves and the winds and the snow.

seeking quiet places

Not an easy trick in Los Angeles. There are hiking trails, certainly--a lot of them. But many/most are close enough to populated areas that you hear traffic. I, unlike Nous, can handle seeing/hearing people on the trail (He grouses. Mr. Curmudgeon). But cars? Seriously? Bah.

Anyway, in our ever expanding quest for hiking trails with trees (because that's the other thing, out here. The hills are scrubby, not foresty. We're about 5k feet lower here than we were in Boulder, so big shock! The arboreal inhabitants are different. But yeah. Not a lot of shade on these pacific coastal mountain hikes), we ended up an hour north and east, in the San Gabriels. We did find trees. They were not towering pine, but they were taller than we were. A plus. And we got away from the road. Glory! Rocks and roots and steep and running water and people, but whatever, and canyons and... it was nice. Hot, because October in Los Angeles is like that, but nice. I have the world's best hiking shoes, these magenta/purple/grey Merrell's, meant to go in and out of water. This means I don't stress crossing the streams. I just splash through. Cool feet for the win!

But anyway. The coolest part, for me, was the little break we took at a rocky little pool off the main trail. The stream, which was moving downhill with some determination, took a break here. Lots of rocks, not a lot of watery movement. The sun was over the canyon by this point, so it was shady and cool. And there were little tiny toads on the rocks. The biggest was the size of my thumb joint. The other two were smaller than my finger tips. You could just pick them out, these little patches of not-matching grey, on the river rocks.

I love toads. My first pet ever was a garden toad named Josephine. I kept her in a dad-made screen-in hutch and caught her fresh bugs every day. The day I graduated high school, I found a (cold, unhappy) toad in the gutter while I was walking the dog and brought it home. To my mother's horror and my aunt's delight, the toad warmed up in my pocket and leapt out, right into the middle of the kitchen table. I couldn't plan this stuff if I tried.

These little Angelino toads were cold, on their sunless rocks. They didn't react when you touched them (which of course I did, very gently, because toad!). I coaxed one--carefully! because they were so, so tiny!-- into crawling onto my hand, where it marched up and down my thumb and palm. I could just feel its little sticky toes gripping my skin, and its chilly skin, and the surprising strength in its toes as it hauled itself around this warm, unrocky surface on which it found itself. I don't know how much of me it could actually see, when I held it up to eye level. Then of course I let it go. It was reluctant. I think it liked the heat from my hand. But once it realized that no, it had to go, it jumped into the pool and vanished. Shortly thereafter we stood up, and the other toads noticed omg!wtf! Big Shapes! and also vacated. Just as well for the toads, because a family with very small children was on its way down.

But for ten minutes, there was no one at all except me, Nous, and these toads. And that was awesome.