Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Home Again...

I'm back in Ann Arbor! Well, I have been since Saturday, but it's been super busy and I haven't had time to post. Even now I should be doing other things, so I'm going to keep it short. I'm back, and sad that I had to say goodbye to the open road. But it's for the best, I've got a bunch of stuff to take care of before I leave for the Peace Corps. 27 months is a looooong time!

So yeah, now I'm spending time with friends, getting paperwork done for Peace Corps, sorting out my wants and needs for the next 27 months and getting everything settled and ready to go. I'll report on the rest of my road trip within the next week or two, I just wanted to shoot out a quick holler so y'all aren't worried I've forgotten about you.

Talk soon!

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Plans Changing...

I'm going to take another pause from the normal blogging updates to write about a very significant event that happened yesterday and the ramifications it will have on my trip. Yesterday, my invitation to the Peace Corps finally arrived! The low-down skinny is that I will be a "rural development extensionist" in some super-rural community in either the north-central highlands or the pacific lowlands of Nicaragua. Orientation starts on May 12th and, from the looks of it, I'll be heading out to Nicaragua on the 13th or 14th to begin the three-months pre-service training. The service period will be August 1, 2009 through July 29, 2011. So if you want to come visit, do it in between those dates (plenty of time, right?).

From what I can gather, rural development extensionist basically means I'll be working with families to develop their agricultural gains, build community, teach lifeskills to kids, and generally help them improve their quality of life. According to the pamphlet, it's an "overarching approach" that involves everything from value-added techniques to agribusiness to integrated patio management, and I'll probably be responsible for working on all five project areas at the same time (which hopefully doesn't mean I'll be spread too thin to actually make meaningful change...). There are currently 35 volunteers that work on the project, so I'll have 34 americans around the country to keep me from going totally native.

I don't know what else to say about the assignment right now. I've got a lot of reading to do about the country, the program, the preparations and whatnot, maybe once I get through all that I'll have formed better opinions on the whole plan and hopefully will be less anxious about what comes next. My dad overnighted the packet to my cousin at Stanford, so I'll pick it up there for further reading.

Which brings us back to this road trip I'm on now. Seeing as how I ship out eight weeks from today, I need to get back to Ann Arbor asap to get all my preparations ready, tie up my loose ends and say goodbye to all my homies. So it looks like I won't be able to make it all the way up to Canada, much less the Pacific Northwest more generally. Instead, the plan now is to spend the weekend in the Bay area and start heading back East on Monday. So the planned drive back will start with a night in Vegas, a night at some national park in Utah, then Boulder, Omaha, and Chicago before heading back home (maybe visiting my bro in Allendale on the way). I'm gonna try to keep at a fairly quick pace too, since I would like to be home before the end of March. Gotta get my ducks in a row!

Oh and also, now that I know I'm going to a spanish speaking country, I really gotta get back to working on my Spanish. So I'll actually listen to the Michel Thomas CDs I put on my iPod on the drive back. Español, here I come!

Ok, my computer battery is about to die so I'll leave it at that for now. Wish me luck, and if you have any advice for stops along the drive back, let me know! Ciao for now...

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Ode to a Cactus


I found my poem, yay! I wrote this in the middle of the Sonoran desert. It's deep.

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Ode to a Cactus

Cactus cactus, touch the sky
Desert Organ, sing so high
Though at times you may get lonely
Don't forget the other cactii just nearby

O sir Cactus, rising high
I can chart my last two weeks on your body
From nub to root.
Like a treasure map, x marks the spot

At the top of your head,
Where the needles are softest, fresh and clustered close,
Where the view is the best.
I can see deserts, painted with god-sized brushes.
Red, yellow, orange for miles on end.
Canyons, grandest as can be
Cutting deep into the earth,
For feet both innocent and worn to trod down and back up.
Ancient trees, long dead and fallen,
Uncovered from Earth to reveal
Gems and crystals unique from all others.
A snow-capped peak, ripe for alpine fun.
And just below, a cozy town only few call home.
The rest call it Flagstaff.

Oh look! Three little birds have perched on your head!
Mama bird Heidi, watching out for her flock.
Sings a warm and beautiful song until she senses danger.
Best make sure you're not on the end of those talons.
Industrious Kelli, wings of an eagle.
Flying miles along riverbeds,
Just to feel the wind in her feathers.
And then there's the crazy little sparrow, Leigh.
Spunky little thing wants it all and takes what she can reach.
Beat your wings fast, little sparrow,
But don't get confused.
To get anywhere you must first point in one direction.

Moving down the spine we find
A spot of red, strange and foreign,
Full of riches, we shall call it Sedona.
What could be compunding parasites
Erupting from the surface,
Only to wear away in the wind.
This must be where the aliens landed.

Just below, a ring called Prescott,
Old and worn, battlescarred and raw.
Two ravens have made their nest here:
Reuben and Jourdie.
Friends to plants and animals alike
This majestic pair has built its next from recycled plastic string.
One day they will leave this ratty old Cactus
And fly somewhere even more desperate,
And their presence will move mountains.
In an eco-friendly way, of course...

Near the base the cactus swells,
Other plants, furry, prickly and hardy alike
Swarm around the ground, basking in
The protection of the Mighty One.
We shall call this mess Phoenix,
Though its many parts would beg to differ.
In the middle is Pam,
A pine tree from the north
Whose roots transplanted many years ago.
It recently started bearing oranges.
The tree is much happier here.
A two-headed Prickly Pear, recently re-seeded from the East
Named Nick and Brian, respectively
Bring with them the comfort of home.
Until an angry coyote called Chino
Rips a hole in them.
Good thing plants heal.
Coyotes only get shot.

A kind-hearted roadrunner named Isabel,
From a pretty little place called Tucson,
Drops us some water to help us along.
This, in spite of the many problems
She is dealing with herself.

And here we come to the root.
Dry, old, waorn down and grey,
But beautiful still, empty and quiet as it is.
I have found my heart,
And it lies in the center of a cactus
In the middle of the desert.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Something to keep you occupied

So I wrote this long poem while I was camping down in the Sonoran Desert basically comparing my experience in Arizona to a saguaro cactus, but the notepad I wrote it on has gone missing and has yet to turn up, so we'll have to make due with more of the same boring old journaling for now. Hope you don't mind too much....

Day 2 in Prescott.... let's see how much I can remember... it feels like so long ago! I remember Reuben and Jourdie were going to go pick up their chickens for the chicken coop that morning, but the people they were going to get them from sent them an email or text or something a bit before to inform them that the chickens had been killed by a coyote the night before, so in a fit of frustration they decided to drive out to Phoenix to buy some chickens from this guy on craigslist. I spent most of the day just trekking around town and checking out the sights. I visited downtown Prescott (everybody's hometown), checked out the arts district, visited the local info shop (complete with community kitchen, free box, and some lady complaining about water politics), got some lunch at the local greasy spoon, hiked down the creek, picked up some gatorade and more minutes for my phone. In some ways less eventful so far than my first evening in town, but fun, informative and enlightening at the same time. Did you know that if you pull bananas apart from each other when you get home from the grocery store they won't ripen as fast? Also, if you peel from the other end of the banana you don't have to deal with all those stringy things that come off! Interesting stuff!

So I came back from my little walk and chilled for a bit before Reuben and Jourdie got back, then we finished building the coop, put some posts in the ground for the fence and chucked the chickens into their new home. Jourdie made some food for a potluck dinner we went out to after we were finished working. The potluck dinner was more of a party with food, and all they had to eat with were chopsticks, so that's what I used. Ever try eating a pound cake with chopsticks? Not easy!

Made some new friends, chatted it up with an old guy (the dad of one of the guys at the party, tagging along for fun) who apparently went to Michigan back in the 60s (but after my dad had graduated, unfortunately), drank some Jaeger, listened to some MJ and generally had a merry ol' time.

I like these small towns with small colleges. It feels like everyone in my age group knows each other and lives really close to each other too. It was pretty wild going into the InfoShop and finding out that the volunteer working the desk was a friend of Reuben's, then going to the party in the evening and finding all these new people (and a couple familiar ones) who all seemed to know everyone else that went to school with them. I'll bet it makes for some interesting dramas at times.....

The morning of day 3, before I left for Phoenix, I met up with an old family friend and got some breakfast (at the same greasy spoon I went to for lunch the previous day, nonetheless. Small town, right?) and chatted about life, the world, the future, and all that big heavy stuff. It was quite a nice morning. I then headed out to Phoenix, but about 45 minutes into my trek I realized I had forgotten my pillow! Tucked inside the pillow was Geronimo, my stuffed giraffe of significant personal value (yes, I sleep with a stuffed giraffe), so I had to turn around. It's all good though, I had left a couple hours earlier than I was originally planning anyways, so I ended up arriving in Phoenix about when I said I would. Not bad, right?

I was welcomed into Phoenix with open arms by my aunt Pam, which was a great feeling, as being with relatives always is. This was especially poignant this time because I hadn't seen Pam since I was really little, and to be honest I really didn't even remember what she looked like! But when I saw her answer the door it all came back to me and I began to remember bits of memories from my first time in Phoenix (I must've been 6 or 7 at the time), beyond the large-breasted lady in Old Tuscon who danced with me (the visceral experience of having my head stuffed within her busom being the only part of that memory that stuck). We ate spaghetti and caught up that night, and I got to sleep in a real, very comfy bed for once. It was awesome.

Last thought for today, Pam's dogs: Bakhi and Gizmo. Both dogs were gifts for other people from Pam, and they both ended up back in her home through strange coincidences and long stories. Both little toy doggies, Bakhi was the energetic, needy and emotional one, light tan with shaggy hair and floppy ears. He was cute, yes, but I personally preferred Gizmo, the "regulator," as I liked to call him. Gizmo was a dark ash grey color, short hair (except on the head) and shorter ears, and a much more confident stride to his step, as if he knew he was the Boss. Bakhi would try to mess with Gizmo and he would just stand there and ignore him, it was hilarious. They were the cutest dogs too, I can't believe I didn't get a good picture of them! Oh well, c'est la vie.

Ok, next post I will talk about my week in Phoenix and the desert, then we'll be almost caught up! Until then, my friends..

Friday, March 6, 2009

Big ol' hole in the ground



So. The Grand Canyon. If you've never been there you probably won't understand, but it truly is the most epic sight you'll ever see in terms of natural geography, hands down. Standing from the South Rim, looking out over the canyon, it's hard to fathom how huge it really is. It looks more like a huge painting, beautiful and magnificent, but something to look at, not really something you could go down into and explore. So after about 2 minutes of standing there on the rim, saying "ooh, aah" and taking lots of pictures, I was asking myself, "what else?" With such a large area it was really hard to decide where to start. I wanted to be home by dinner-time, which limited the length of any hike I could take. I wanted to avoid large crowds of people, and seeing as how there were really only 4 day-hike trails, 2 of which were "easier" and more popular, the other 2 more "difficult" and less scenic, the options were fairly limited. I decided then and there that next time I visit the GC I would bring full backpacking gear and go on a 3-day minimum overnight hike through the canyon. There's really no other way to experience the Canyon in all its glory, I figured.

Nevertheless, I had several hours before I needed to return home, so I decided to go hike down the Hermit's Trail for a while. Seeing as how it's farther down the canyon from the main touristy area and in a part of the canyon that is not as deep or magnificent, I figured it'd be less congested in terms of hikers and I'd have more of a chance to experience the wilderness sans interruption. And I was right! I only ran into a few people on the trail, and (aside from the European tourists whose english didn't seem to good) they were all very friendly and talkative. Experienced hikers they were, none of these silly city-folk who are used to walking with their heads down and their eyes forward. The first guy I ran into had been out in the canyon for something like 5 days and looked just exhausted. But he was still really friendly and took our encounter as a chance to catch his breath and prepare for the last leg out of the canyon (he was really close, considering how far he must've hiked the past few days). We chatted for a while and talked about the midwest (he was from Wisconsin, I think), and then parted ways.

I just want to say, when I'm hiking in the wilderness I really enjoy the encounters I have with fellow hikers. Some people are more reserved and shy, but by and large, hikers have been hiking for so long either by themselves or with the same person/people, when they run into you, a lone wandering soul, they just get so excited that they have someone new to talk to the conversation can end up going on for a long time, and I'm usually the one who ends it, since I want to continue on my adventure. It reminds me of the inherent good and companionship of wandering souls and makes me smile.

So anyways, I ended up making it down to the bottom of the canyon (which wasn't as deep as other parts, since the part I was in was formed by a feeder creek instead of the full Colorado River), ran into some more hikers and asked them how far it was to the "dripping falls", and they pointed to a distant canyon wall (the white one in the pic, if you can figure that out). It felt very far, so I walked a bit more, took a picture and turned back, expecting it to take twice as long to get back up to the rim as it did to come down (I had been hiking for about an hour and 15 minutes or so by that point). Well, I dunno, maybe I'm just good at meditating on long uphill hikes or something, but it really only took me about 10 minutes longer to get up the wall as it did to get down, so I still had an hour and a half to kill before I had to leave. I guess they were right, slow and steady really does win the race.

So I drove back into the main area and searched around first for some postcards (which were easy to find), and then a belt buckle (which, it turns out, are not sold anywhere in the Grand Canyon tourist area. Surprise!). By the time I decided to send the postcards though, the post office was closed (bastards closed at 4:30!) so I couldn't even get stamps. The postcards are still sitting in my car..... lol. I suppose I'll send them next time I get some more postcards, though by then I kinda feel like they'll have lost their significance. Postmarks are important to me, so if it's not postmarked in the Canyon itself, what's the point? Meh, oh well.

After driving back to Flag and eating some leftovers for dinner, Leigh, Heidi and I headed out to check out this Reggae show at a local venue called the Orpheus. The band itself was....okay, I suppose. Not worth the $15 cover charge, but it was fun nonetheless. They were really weird, they kept switching between reggae and hard rock. And the guy's voice was really weird, it kept wavering all over the place and to my ears sounded really pretentious and annoying. But I'm a bit of a music snob, so if you're not as critical as I am you'd probably like it. Heidi left after only a couple songs to help some friend who had been taken to the hospital, and around that point I lost track of Leigh, who didn't return that night.... but still had a good time, apparently. Whatever, it's all good. No 40-year-old republicans to buy us drinks this time though, but $2 pbrs so it's all good. I hung out and listend to a couple more songs, giving them the benefit of the doubt, but then got tired of it and headed outside. I then ran into a couple friends from before and hung with them for a while, smoking cigs and chillin outside, before heading back to the casa and hanging out with Heidi for a little while (they wouldn't let her visit her friend in the hospital because she wasn't related). Then it was bed time and I passed out on the couch once again.

So that was Flagstaff. Crazy college party town, I had a really fun time. The next morning, Kelli and I drove down to Sedona, had lunch at a Panera-esque restaurant with a beautiful view of the surrounding red rocks, and hiked around for a bit on some trails near town. Then Kelli went to hang with her old golf friends and I walked around Sedona for a while before heading down to Prescott for my next couchsurfing experience.

Sedona is full of fortune tellers, mystics and psychics, and rightfully so. It really does feel like the twilight zone, or maybe a martian oasis, with the crazy red rock formations and the super expensive tourist shops. I did not get my fortune read (I'll save that for the wildnerness of the northwest), though I did see some pretty cool art in "Sedona's number 1 art gallery" or something. I guess they're too rich for Artists' Cooperatives though... didn't see any of those.

On the way from Sedona to Prescott I stopped in the little mountain village of Jerome and found it quite endearing. Very narrow roads up and down steep mountain inclines with 15 mph speed limits, rickity old buildings repainted so many times the paint was peeling underneath the peeling paint, very eclectic little stores and art galleries, and...lo and behold...an artists' cooperative gallery right there in the middle! I went straight in there and looked around for a bit, but the postcards were all $3 each and I'm poor, so I left emptyhanded (save for a photograph of the gallery's sign). It was really cool though, to see a successful co-op out in the middle of the mountain/desert. Artists are the shit.

I then arrived in Prescott to my hosts' house (Reuben and Jourdie) to be greeted by Reuben's friend Clancey, who was also there visiting from California. We hung out for a bit, then Reuben came home and we talked for a minute before heading out to a friend's house to witness a pig butchering. Apparently the way they slaughter pigs in the third world is by taking a sledgehammer to their head to stun them before stabbing them right in the forehead and again in the jugular (or something like that). Well, the only sledgehammer this guy had was a small hand-sledge, so whacking the pig with it really just shocked it more than rendering it unconscious. So it wasn't the most humane slaughter, but I guess it worked, since the pig was already dead by the time we got there. Surrounding it were four mexicanos with blades who obvoiusly knew what they were doing, and while we were there they were shaving all the hair off the pig so that the skin could be left on the meat. Hot water, knives and a sharpening block was all they needed. It took forever, they were still shaving after we went to visit another friend in the neighborhood, walked home to grab my camera and walked back, but it seemed like once they got that done it was just a matter of chopping up the pig itself, which really couldn't have taken too long.

Anyways, visiting the other friend was another interesting experience in urban farm animal raising. These guys had just purchased about 100 chicks, which were all chilling in 3 big tubs under some heat lamps, chirping their hearts out. One had managed to escape and was running around the floor of the garage, but we grabbed it and put it back. It was a trip seeing all those little baby chickens, apparently they have a farm out of town a little ways where they were going to take the chicks once they got a little bigger to begin producing eggs. But 100 chicks, it really was kinda ridiculous. They were super cute though, so I can't complain.

After all that excitement we went home and had dinner, then headed over to another friend's house for a little party/jam session and I got to play the bass for about 45 minutes, which was super awesome. I haven't played bass in years, and it all came flowing back to me really quick. It felt good to make music again. :)

While at the party I met one guy who had been working as a park ranger for a while, another guy from Vancouver who was coming back from some sort of desert living-off-the-land convention and stopped in Prescott on the way, got to eat some tasty Caribou and Elk meat (wild caught game is the tastiest!) hunted by the sister of one of the guys at the party (I really wanted to meet this girl, but alas, she was not there), and drank some tasty Tecate beers. (note: Tecate is not tasty beer). All in all it was a fun and very surprising afternoon/evening. Who knew there was so much urban farming going on in Prescott?

Oh yeah, finally, a note about Prescott's geography. The city of Prescott is located in the middle of a "valley," though really it felt like a crater, since there were mountains in every direction but the area surrounding Prescott was very flat. It was really cool, and seemed like the perfect place for a city to thrive. Apparently Prescott used to be the capital of Arizona when it was still a territory, and according to signs around downtown, it is also the Cowboy Capital of the West, being one of the first thriving towns in the southwest and also a capital. There was a lot of history to this town, and it all felt strangely familiar.... I definitely have cowboy genes somewhere in me. It was cool.

Ok, that's it for today. This afternoon I'm going to Tucson with a couple friends, then tomorrow is Beerfest at the Tempe Town Lake (yes, they have a man-made lake in Tempe, just south of Scottsdale. It' a big waste of water, but hey, who can really complain about a significant body of water in the middle of the desert?), so the next post probably won't come until Sunday. But stay tuned, there's much more to discuss! Prescott day 2 and Phoenix/Scottsdale, coming up!

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Alpine Hippie Wonderland

The drive to Flagstaff really was quite a trip. Before I crossed into Arizona I was under the impression that I had entered the desert and wouldn't be leaving until I got to California. Little did I know, Flagstaff (and most of northern Arizona, for that matter) is in a world of its own. As the altitude rose, the temperature dropped. Even though it was still sunny as all get-out, I started seeing snow patches in the shade. The wind got chillier, to the point where I had to put the top up on my convertible. I could begin to make out a very large, snow-capped mountain in the distance.

As I got closer I realized that Flagstaff was at the foot of this mountain, and I began to realize how different of a world it really is up here. Flagstaff has four seasons (well, three and a half, but still). The air is thinner, the wind less predictable, there are occasional morning mists and a constant buzz of conversation about how to get into the expensive ski parks without paying an arm and a leg. There are few places in this country as unique as Flagstaff: a large State-funded university, a thriving tourist/skiing industry, an altitude of about 7000 feet, and the crisp, low-precipitation desert weather, Flagstaff is pretty much beautiful 90% of the year. Though it was still "winter" when I was there (a fair amount of snow was still in the shady areas), it felt like early spring in Michigan, highs ranging in the mid- to upper-60s, sun shining, winds not too strong. I immediately felt at home. And then there were the people!

The couch I surfed while in Flagstaff was hosted by three peace-loving hippie girls, covering the range from über-shower-once-a-month-subsist-on-granola-and-tofu hippie to the still-semi-religious-laid-back-river-guide hippie. They were all hippies and all their friends were hippies too, and pretty much everyone I came across in the town had at least some tinge of counter-culture to them, so that only increased the sense of kinship. I only noticed a few Generics (i.e. frat boys/sorostitutes), and they seemed to keep to themselves. This town was like Austin minus the big-cityness/government, like Ann Arbor minus the frat-dominance. And then there was the mountain, which attracted all the skiers and the tourism and the money. It was really quite an interesting dynamic, I can only think of a few other places that might be like it (Boulder? Somewhere in Washington?).

So anyways, back to the story. I arrived about an hour earlier than I was expecting to Flagstaff, but it ended up working out fine. When I finally found the house, Heidi came out to meet me and led me into the kitchen where there were 4 people (all with varying degrees of hippie indicators on their bodies) standing around chatting, none of which actually lived there. This came as a startling surprise, particularly because all of the communications I had had with Heidi had indicated that they were all going to be super busy with school work and wouldn't be much fun. But hey, it was Fat Tuesday, I guess a little letting loose was in order right?

A few minutes into meeting all these people, more people came in, and one (Leigh, who did live there) was carrying a 30-pack of cheap Mexican beer. Beer for dinner! Works for me! So I cracked one open and by the end of it Heidi was like "oh yeah, by the way, you're in a high altitude, so alcohol's going to affect you more." I'll be fine, I thought, I can handle beer... lol, well that was something of a mistake. 2 beers in I was already pretty tipsy (probably much of which having to do with the emptiness of my stomach), so I made some salad and ate that along with some bread, and then drank more. We did some shots in celebration of the festive occasion, as more people kept filing in and out of the house. Then eventually, after we were all good and crunked, we headed out to the Green Room, where there was a reggae/funk band playing (no cover, yay!). [pic to left, me and my hosts, Kelli, Leigh and Heidi, several drinks in...]

At the bar we met up with another friend, so it was Heidi, Leigh, their friend and I. Heidi said "watch this" and then somehow managed to convince this 40-year-old republican guy to buy us all a couple rounds of drinks, so we got to drink for free! All I had to do was, well into the second round, argue with him about Obama's stimulus policy. His main argument was "research more," and when I told him I had, and made some valid arguments about success versus opportunity for success he got kinda quiet, then just repeated his research mantra. It was kinda funny. At one point Heidi jumped in and said something about McCain wanting to reinstate the death penalty for children, and I think I heard him say he was in favor of capital punishment for 12-year-olds... some guys I'll just never understand. But hey, free drinks, so what the hey. I'll roll with it.

During the band's intermission (around midnight, probably), a drumming troupe came in and performed on the floor. We lost Leigh a while before to the crowd, but I think at one point we noticed her with a drum, or maybe just dancing like a wild thing in the middle of it all. Towards the end of the drumming we decided to head out (after Heidi noticed her foot was bleeding profusely from accidentally stepping on some broken glass). After spending about 20 minutes trying to get Leigh to come with us (she was very resistant...and also very drunk...), Kelli told us to just go home, she'd deal with Leigh (ominous, but effective). We went home and started fixing up Heidi's foot, and not 10 minutes later Kelli and Leigh walk in. We were dumbstruck. Kelli must've just hauled Leigh off by her keester, kicking and screaming. At any rate, it didn't last long. Kelli went to bed and about 15 or 20 minutes later Leigh grabbed her dog Luna and headed into the night again. We didn't see her until the next morning. A Wild Child, that one. She's gonna go far....

So yeah, first night in Flagstaff, epic win. Made lots of new friends, heard some fun music, got some beads, some free drinks, and ended up with a great story! I think I'm beginning to like Flag... The next day I decided to explore the town. First I headed up towards campus and found a relatively empty cemetery (compared to cemeteries I visited in places like New Orleans, Savannah and the like), then I turned around and headed into town, finding lots of eclectic stores and art galleries, murals and restaurants. There was a crepe store right by this one really cool mural, but it was closed (why I could not tell...), so I hit up the Flagstaff Brewing Company, drank some beer and had a killer green chili burger. While I was sitting at the bar, I got into a conversation with the guy next to me and he told me to check out the Walnut Creek National Monument. I had seen it on the NPS website and on the way into Flag, but hadn't really considered going there, as I figured the Grand Canyon was enough. But hey, from what this guy said, it was only like 15 minutes away and there were some really sweet Indian ruins. And with my annual pass, how could I pass it up? So what the hell, I thought, I've got an hour and a half or so before the park closes, I'll check it out.

I got back to the house and was going to invite Heidi along for the excursion, but she was napping and I didn't want to wake her, so I headed out solo. Walnut Creek really was quite a sight. Half the trail was closed off due to a rock slide, but even still, seeing the way these Indians lived was amazing. As opposed to the last Indian ruins I saw on mountains, these guys actually lived IN the mountain. There were different types of sediment along the side of the hill, and so the Indians dug out the softer rock and used the harder rock above as the roofs for their houses. It was so cool! These Indians were mountain goats true and true, it was quite impressive.

I returned to the house around 4:30, about when Heidi was waking up from her nap, and proceeded to nap myself. That evening was pretty chill, just sat around, read, put photos up online, just chilled. It was nice, especially compared to the craziness of the previous night, so I was thankful. I had to get my beauty sleep, for the next day I was heading to the Grand Canyon! More on that in my next post, to be continued..........

Monday, March 2, 2009

Catching Up round 2...Natural Wonders and Jake the Snake

Full Day Numero Uno in Santa Fe. Main excursion: Bandelier National Park. Bandelier was about an hour or so away from Santa Fe, right in the first big canyon of the mountains to the west. The main attraction of Bandelier was the Native American ruins. There was a pretty standard pueblo at the bottom of the canyon, but once you got up the north side a little you started seeing man-made holes in the mountainside, with blackened ceilings and small holes at the top for exhaust. Turns out the Natives that lived in this area actually built their homes attached right to the mountainside. From the pictures in the brochure, it looked like they would dig holes into the rock to insert poles into and build roofs and walkways along the side of the mountain. So they weren't actually living "in" the mountain, more just attached to it. But it's all good, these were my first Indian ruins so I was excited nonetheless.

So I don't know if it's St John's' curriculum or just the people I was staying with, but every time they came back from school we just jumped right in to some deep intellectual conversation, complete with points, counterpoints, arguments and counterarguments. It was really something else! I'm used to Michigan, where you get home from school and your brain is mush and the last thing you want to do is talk about the day's intellectual conquests. Maybe studying only primary sources instead of all of the varied criticisms and rebuttals of said primary resource leaves peoples' minds more ready to form their own opinions. I think I like this way of schooling. Apparently they have an Eastern Philosophy graduate program at St John's, I might have to look into that when I get back from PC. Talk about throwing your head into a spin! The farthest we got in Eastern philosophy in any of the classes I took on the East (particularly Chinese Politics and Zen Buddhism) was the conclusion that the fundamentals of eastern thought are pretty much the polar opposite of that of western thought. I can only imagine what spending an entire year immersing yourself in only those fundamentals would be like......awesome!

So yeah, if I remember correctly, that evening was the night of the Oscars, and my hosts also had "band" practice (they're in a band that started out as a joke then became reality. Anyone want to be in my joke/reality band?), so I met up with some friends of Greg's who he got me in touch with on the way in to town for some drinks. This was when I came to the stark realization that Santa Fe really did have no nightlife. First we met up on the town square around 8 or so (the square was virtually empty). Then we went into a bar/restaurant on the square that they recommended as being pretty good. We sat down and I noticed how high the prices were (yes, everything is expensive in Santa Fe), then I noticed how few people were in the bar (maybe a total of 6 people not including us or the waitstaff). The TVs were on to the Oscars but the volume was all the way down, so it was really hard to tell what was going on. This obvoiusly was not the scene on a Sunday night. But then my new friends told me that this is pretty much what it's like every night of the week. Crazy! I guess people only go out for gallery openings and other rich-person-type things. Or house parties for the college kids. It was kinda sad, to be honest. I don't think I could handle that in a town. I like going out too much!

But Greg's friends were awesome! Eddy, Greg's bud from volunteer stuff over the years, is working for the State restoring New Mexico's riverbeds, pulling out invasive species and replanting native ones (among other things). Tia, Eddy's girlfriend, is a struggling artist, like so many of Santa Fe's socialite hipsters. Maybe she can get with Jodie, the other struggling sociarthipster I met, to start that Co-op I think they should start! One can only hope..... They also told me I should visit Prescott in Arizona on the way down to Phoenix, as it had a similar young/artsy scene as Santa Fe and was cool, so I took note of that (but in the end ended up having a completely different experience in Prescott, as I'll get to later).

It was around this time that I found out that a few friends of mine were going to be in San Diego at different points during the second week of March. Originally, I had planned to be in San Diego the first week of march, but in light of this revelation, I decided to slow down my trip through the Arizona/New Mexico desert so that my arrival in SD would coincide with that of my friends, creating a greater chance that we might be able to meet up. So, taking this into account, I decided to extend my visit in Santa Fe by a day, along with stopping a couple extra times in Arizona on the way from Flag to Phoenix. In effect, I just decided to make my trip through the desert a bit more relaxed, which I will never complain about.

In the morning of full day number two in Santa Fe, Annie and I walked down the local art street (where all the galleries are, just a block from their house) and saw some interesting stuff, then went to a local coffee shop and read for a while over tea. In the afternoon, I decided to make use of the national parks annual pass I picked up the day before and go visit the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks national monument. This place was not even listed on the NPS website, as it is maintained by the Bureau of Land Management and thus not deemed worthy of note by those elitist National Park Service goombahs. It not being listed at nps.gov got me excited though, it made me feel like I might've found a gem that not so many people knew about, and in the end I guess I was right! There were certainly still people there, but it felt much less crowded than Bandelier, and thus more personal of an experience. I hiked up a trail, through a narrow canyon, up the side of a mountain and onto a high mesa with an absolutely beautiful vista of the surrounding area. I could see mountains of all different colors in every direction, and below me were the most phallic rock formations I'd ever seen. It was a remarkable experience, not only because of the view but also because I was the only person on the mesa when I got up there (there were a few people heading up as I went down, but not more than 2 or 3 groups). It was so peaceful, I could just sit there watching the birds, letting the hard (but warm) wind blow through my hair. Awesome.

By the time I got home from Kasha-Katuwe, it was naptime, so I slept for a while until my hosts came back from school. That evening I taught them how to play Euchre and then they taught me how to play a game called Dos Manos (or something). All the while we drank beers and then I broke into the whiskey and ended up losing a lot of games, but still had a great time. Thankfully there was no betting or money involved, or I probably would've lost a lot more than my wits... lol

So that was pretty much my experience of Santa Fe. Adventurous day trips into national monuments and low-key evenings hanging with friends. A little art here and there, but I really didn't do a whole lot of exploring of Santa Fe itself. Guess I'll have to save that for next time.

Tuesday morning (again with a bit of a headache from the night before) I headed off to Flagstaff. On the way I stopped at a couple more national parks, first at El Malpais, an off-the-beaten-path national monument of million-year-old lava flows. Driving down the local highway to get to the park I picked up an Indian hitchhiker who called himself "Jake the Snake". Jake was hilarious. He told me stories about how his woman in Albequerque is always complaining, how he was married for four years, had six kids, and then his wife died of a heart attack, how good piñon is hard to find these days (he was in Albequerque looking for piñon... I still haven't figured out what piñon is.....), and how he was only going home to change clothes and then head out again to Gallup to meet his uncle for some sort of event (maybe a Rodeo?). It was an entertaining 20 minutes or so before I turned into the park and let him continue on his way. I would've driven him all the way to Gallup, since it was on the way to Flagstaff, but I was on a fairly tight schedule and didn't have the time to wait for him to get washed up at home. Oh well, I'm sure he made it there soon enough.

El Malpais is one of those parks that is really not very well developed. In order to truely appreciate the area you have to go backpacking for at least one night. It's a big park with lots to see, but only two roads that run on the north and south edges of the park, so the only way to see the inner parts is to hike in. I had to get through the Petrified Forest and on to Flagstaff by dinner time, so I only had time to trek in for about 15 or 20 minutes before turning back. Another thing to add to my to-do list for next time. I did see some pretty neat caves and sinkholes though! Shoulda brought my (currently non-existant) headlamp!

After El Malpais I stopped at the Petrified Forest national park. First of all, let me say that the Painted Desert is probably one of the most magnificent vistas I have ever seen. Absolutely beautiful scenes of desert hills in all different shades of red, orange and yellow in every direction. The air was so clean and clear you could even see the mountain neighboring Flagstaff, something like 90 miles away. Absolutely amazing. Almost more amazing than the grand canyon, if I do say so myself. Even just driving through the park was amazing, with all different kinds of millions of years old rock and petrified tree remains, the sense of natural history was so impressive.

The petrified trees were pretty awesome too. Beautiful colors in those rocks, so many different shades and hues. Great photos from there, here's a taste.



I'll leave it at that for today. Next up, Flagstaff hippies, the Grand Canyon, and more!