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.