camping again. a quick 20 mile road ride after breakfast. the kids and Janet off fishing in the West Dolores River. Janet, Lexie, Loki and I convoy up from Prescott yesterday, picking up a new doxycycline (tetracycline antibiotic) prescript that Jason phoned in on Sunday. sheesh. he’s having dental work done as well, much more serious than mine, and so far, more expensive. so it goes. but the pain is really strange, coming and going, more depending on my attention than anything. if I focus energy elsewhere, it goes away, but before sleeping last night, there was a wave that washed over the left side of my face, filling all nerve pathways with boiling acid. the nerve structure of the face seems compromised by the combination of the pain impulses and the pain shunting effect of the ibuprophen. like the impulses hit a wall and then ricochet around the ends of the nerves, hurting. pain and hurt. what a concept!
but back in Colorado. high altitude, especially relative to the sea-level cultural perturbations of the last six months. it always tickles to be back in the ponderosa, aspen, and spruce glades here in the Rockies, the San Juans, to be precise, mountain biking, sleeping in a tent, and cooking food in the open air, just a few days or weeks after putzing around Berlin, or some other Euro-capital. so far away. yet both being so comfortable and inspiring.
Arizona is a dusty-dry, parched, de-hydrated, stricken and cooked land. wind-devils swirl in air that is tinged and hazy from down-wind firestorms to the south. the run across the Navajo reservation is blessed with a little rain and extensive cloud cover, and, leaving the dry wild-fire land behind, we make it to Colorado with time enough to set up camp, eat dinner, build a fire, and for the kids to make s’mores, then wearily crawl into bed before the real rain hits. down-slope breeze carries it. a bit unusual for this time of year, long night-showers. usually it’s day-time, afternoon up-slope thunderstorms, but seems to be some kind of cool air coming in strongly from the north.