back in black

"time flies like the wind. house flies like the wall"
- bottle cap

in these days of flying time, i find myself writing nearly a half year after the last installment. we have done so many things since then. a brief recap:

we spent many a cozy evening by the fireplace in our santa fe home.

we watched birds hatch and grow, and one die, in the oh-so-prickly cholla cactuses.



we watched honey stalk and unsuccessfully try to catch these birds.


we hiked into and out of the grand canyon! with my old high school friend näthan. one hot may day we lethargically (not counting näthan) hiked 10 miles down into the indian reservation town of supai, az. there we eventually found the home of a friend of a friend of näthan's, where we were given an unwelcome glare by a girl who answered the door (the friend of a friend was out), so we left. the campsites were full (way to plan ahead, jeremy) so we almost got in quite a jam. but with some good luck and open demeanor, we befriended a local resident, who happily put us up in his apple orchard! at this point we were so exhausted we plopped down for the evening. our host was very nice...and very talkative. he was so talkative that we had to say we were going to take a nap just to get a little quiet. in any case, we still felt lucky for having a shady place to camp. shady in many ways.

the man looked about 40, although he insisted that he was 30. "my wife is a good bit older than me," he said. i chimed in: "well näthan and i know how that is, our partners are both older than us. how old is your wife?"

"seventy-eight."

"what?" i said in disbelief. "damn, that's old!"

and his wife really looked that old. she seemed unfriendly at first, but eventually waved at me a little later during our stay. she didn't say anything though; she didn't seem a talker. no wonder the man couldn't stop talking our ears off!

it was scorching hot. näthan dealt fine with the heat; in fact he looked about as fit as a race walker. i dealt with the heat, but damn i was hot. julia was simply beside herself. i guess she'd do better in canada! the hike back up the canyon was, of course, especially difficult. it was like the tortoise and the hare, except the tortoise didn't win. and the one in the middle tried unsuccessfully to soothe the tortoise, and control the hare.

we camped in the grand canyon for two nights. in between we visited spectacular waterfalls, three thousand foot cliffs, lush jungles surrounded by desert, and one terrifying ladder that stretched up a cliff a couple hundred feet to some rarely visited lookout.

black widow's widower

i had a strange experience today. as i was picking up straw to mulch the spring garden, i noticed a jet black spider a couple inches from my hands. yikes, i drew back with intuitive fear. i grabbed a stick and came back to the spider, prodding it on to its back. with a couple quick delicate pokes, the creature curled up in a ball, like an animal trying to protect itself by playing dead. i turned it over and, lo and behold, there was the signature red hourglass on its underside. a black widow. a highly venomous spider here in our yard. a beautiful pitch black arachnid. i squatted there several minutes, keeping the spider from crawling away but not hurting it either. what was i to do? move it to a place where no one would get bitten? let it be? kill it? i couldn't decide. and what's more, i was struck by its delicateness, its shyness, its non-aggressive nature. i had grown up as a kid talking about black widows like they were little monsters just waiting to get the chance to BITE! and kill their helpless victim. yet here was a black widow just like any other insect or animal, trying to protect itself from something much larger. i decided that i had to make a decision right then and there. i couldn't go back to the house to fetch a container or think more. there were too many nooks and crannies, too many garden tools lying around that it might hide behind. with sudden decisiveness, i crushed that spider. i took its life in a moment. i still feel guilty and strange about killing it, and that's why i write this now. such an extraordinary little creature, a thousandth our size yet contains poison to render the weak dead and the strong weak. beautiful jet black, but with a bright red hourglass on its belly. rather shy, but kills its mate after copulating. i killed it out of fear, to keep me and julia safe. could something else have been done? should i have killed it? what do you think?

change in the air

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

- Bob dylan

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change things, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

- Buckminster Fuller

i want to do it all, and do none of it
i want to make me crawl, and make a run of it
i'm so damn dualistic, my moon has sun in it
i'm fucking comprehensive, i omit none of it
i'm strictly arithmetic, i make the sum of it
i am all that there is, packed into a little body
i am pure energy contained in a simple soul
i am water flowing slowly through the rivers of my blood
i am contemplative meditative microscopic mud

i feel changes in the air, both on a personal level and on a global level. on a personal level, my dear gramp Ralph Evans died in late november. i respected my gramp for being a kind, loving, hardworking and committed man. i miss him very much. between 2000 and 2005 i had the chance to live near him and gram while i was at acadia university in wolfville, nova scotia. i saw them often and experienced their endearing daily habits and quirks.

my family's dog cisco died recently from stepping foot in the street. an old camp friend fee died a year ago in a car accident.

i've experienced intense loss this year and i see that, well, death is part of life. death sometimes comes expectedly, sometimes unexpectedly, and it's a loss either way. while i don't want to dwell on death and fear of death in my own life, it is what it is and "no one here gets out alive." i remind myself that i have a limited time in this lifetime and i want to go for it. it's challenging to lead a meaningful life - challenging to look at myself, to acknowledge and work through my fears, to try new things and do what i love at the risk of being vulnerable to criticism and failure.

this past month i moved from technical services into sales at conergy, solar power company. a big change of responsibility and focus. it feels good and exciting to be on the sizing and sales side of the solar cycle. i had a year's run there on the other side, listening to and supporting people's solar problems.