Cactus spines and the wrong shoes

I've already made it to the car and have the keys in the ignition when I remember the one last thing - shoes - a tradition of sorts to bring me back into the house to retrieve that final, forgotten item. I grab the cleated shoes from the shadows beneath the table and head out. From our neighborhood to the Rift Valley trail head it's a ten minute drive, the bike clamped into the rooftop rack, the sunroof open and the stereo blasting tunes over the howl of the wind.

Once there, I remove the bike and replace the front tire, then collect gear to prepare. The essentials, like backpack with hydration bladder and snacks, a helmet, ipod and headphones, and... my man's biking cleats.

In my hurry to get moving forward I neglected to verify whose shoes I tossed into the car, and now I have three choices, none ideal, so I go with more immediate gratification. I can return home and collect mine, wear these or go rugged in the flip flops I have on. Or, as the owner of the shoes tells me later, I could have returned home and rode the trail near our house, which never crossed my mind. I had a plan and shoes seemed inconsequential.

Another ride on the same trail I also forgot any cycling footwear and did wear the flip flops. That's harder than it sounds, given the construction of the clip-in pedal, a miniature egg beater centered in a small rectangle platform.

I shrug and pull on socks and slip into the cleats, assured that although two sizes too large, the velcro straps will pull snug enough to keep my feet from moving in the confines. I finish dressing, snug earbuds and set off to the tune of Modest Mouse. The trail is dry, despite the evening showers that have rolled through for the past few days, and my heart shouts out joy to see how verdant the valley looks in the morning sun.

This joy escalates as I gain speed on the first section of a gentle but continuous decline, and I buzz past sagebrush and cacti in bloom. I realize right away, though, that the shoes don't fit well enough to release contact with the pedals with any speed. I remind myself to clip out well ahead of need, and that works until I reach a place in the ride where I'm challenged.

Switchbacks, a tight elbow that brings the trail from one trajectory to another, are my current nemesis. I struggle to maintain the body position required for balance, and falter in my speed, not to mention confidence. During one tight spot I fail to slow down, shift down, and the pedal clings to my foot, so down I go, to the inside of the turn, the bike still attached to my feet.

It's one of those slow motion moments, where I have time to see that I'm falling into sage - poky but not prickly - and then I'm almost to ground and I notice the prickly pear huddled beneath the sage. I'm going to land in the cactus, face first except I throw my hands in front of my head.

Cactus spines prick both palms in just a few places, but sharp fur covers the skin along each finger, a fuzz of impossible to remove irritants. I untangle my legs from under the bike, lurch upright, duck into the shade of a piñon and pull the spines out. Teeth and massage therapist blunted nails manage to remove the majority of the prickles, and I ride the rest of the trail with the remainder a reminder of my failure to commit to the moment. I crash when I shy away from the turn, obstacles or challenge.

The theme I carry through that day: life is best lived with a fearless (not lacking fear, in fact, just not petrified by it) movement forward. When I stall out because I'm afraid of what comes next, I lack the momentum to make it through gracefully. Commitment, whether or not success ensues, at least aligns me (and the bike,or whatever vehicle I'm traveling by) with a greater chance of victory. Or less painful failures.

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Solstice celebration

Sunday's Solstice marked the longest day of the year, when the day sprawls out, light overwhelms the dark, and it is possible to play outside long after the usual limit to when one can have fun. Weekends in the summer in our seasonally driven town evoke a more rural experience - you must reap the harvest of the abundance that visitors bring from Texas, California and places farther down the road - so my partner and I finished our respective work gigs and scrambled to organize ourselves for a little trip down to the river. We loaded gear into the back of the truck, strapped the canoe to the roof rack, and I drove my car down after a quick return to the house for the necessary cooler.

Down in the canyon south of Taos we dropped off the car for the later shuttle back to the put-in and then made our way to the Taos Junction Bridge, which straddles this part of the Río Grande Wild and Scenic River. There, we made quick work of unloading the canoe and hauling gear out and into the craft, organized the load, and had a Lagunitas Day Time IPA cracked before we'd even left the beach. Oh, and of course we zipped ourselves into our PFDs (personal flotation devices), before we departed.

The Río Grande has been flushed with water, contrary to its typical meager June flow, because rains fall and irrigation has slackened in the wheat fields of Colorado. It was 1,700 + CFS (cubic feet/ second) on the Solstice, but at this time of the year it can dwindle to a quarter of that. For our purposes, the flow carried us along with minimal guidance when the water increased speed at constrictions, and we helped ourselves along, paddling through the flat water. This stretch of the newly designated Río Grande Del Norte National Monument has long been called the Orilla Verde, and it is mostly a float with several class 2 rapids, meaning these places require some maneuvering around obstacles and present faster current.

The first of two rapids we had to negotiate is named Gauging Station for the CFS gauging station that is evidence you have nearly arrived. Generally it's a descent along a tongue of water narrowed by numerous rocks, but at this water level our canoe hurtled along in the rowdy waves, most rocks submerged to form holes to be avoided. My partner, an experienced boater, guided us into the slower water of mid-river eddies formed by rocks above the surface, and we managed to reach the bottom not only unscathed, but upright and barely wet.

Although Father's Day or Solstice celebrants crowded the launch and all the places where brush had been trammeled back, we had the river to ourselves. Well, we were the only self-conscious animals to be found on the water. Dusk, at 7:30 on the longest day, is a perfect time to float the river, uncrowded except for the increased activity of these creatures, who are more welcome than humans after an intimate day guiding them in a raft or giving them massages.

Our first sighting was a four legged: a slender buck with stubs of antler covered in velvet, who watched us in return with limpid and curious eyes. We heard the crack of beaver tails on the surface, but they eluded our sight until the sky's hue dominated rose rather than blue. Once, we watched as someone dragged a flowering branch into the reeds, and guessed it to be a beaver.

The river corridor hosts many species of birds - we saw Western tanagers, ducks and geese with fuzzy, pint sized entourages, swallows and kestrels - the most dramatic of which is the night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax). I watched a bird land river right several hundred yards downstream and thought I saw the gangly, long legs of a heron, but when we approached that spot, we saw the chunky, penguin-like body of a night heron, feathered black and white, sporting feathery tendrils from its temples, red eyes turned black in the gloom. It posed, unconcerned with our proximity, and we were the ones who startled when another slap resounded next to us. We turned and watched as not one but two beavers swam upstream, their sleek bodies leaving little wake, except for a trail of bubbles to mark their passage.

At that moment, we reached the top of the second rapid and were quick to turn our attention to the choppy wave train ahead. The canoe crested waves several feet high and slapped a few when they hit off rhythm. Cool water leaped up and into the boat, playful as a child who splashes in a puddle. Once successfully through, we raised our paddles in a boater's high five and marveled at the encounter: night heron - so odd and beautiful - along with the elusive beavers spotted and a fun rapid that challenged but did not overwhelm us.

As we neared the take out, we praised the Solstice in all its glory. Late on the river, fauna to encounter, and the day transmuted into dusk, then dark. Time spent together with my partner in play and wonder. The waxing crescent moon arced above, and Venus and Jupiter came into alignment with our celestial neighbor. The río continued to flow toward the sea, part of the circulatory system of the planet. Summer has begun.

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Vegan, revisited

During high school I learned about the the dire environmental costs from and brutal treatment of animals on factory farms, and this marked the first time I tried to become a vegetarian. Fifteen years on the planet, oldest of five children, working class parents and resident of a small rural community - none of these contributed to success in weaning meat from my diet. For six months I ate whatever had never had eyes, excluding virile potatoes, and that generally meant an endless selection of iceberg lettuce salads, canned corn and the blessing of the farmer stand and tomatoes, cucumbers and Ohio sweet corn once June arrived.

Six months later, I left to live in Belgium for my junior year and bid au revoir to the moral high ground in order to be able to integrate with my host families without reservation. That year I ate whatever was offered, and took comfort in knowing that the cows and rabbits I consumed had lived their days in fields and bush rather than feed lots and pens.

It wouldn't be until I lived in a college dorm that I shifted my diet to vegetarian again. At the ultra liberal Antioch College that I attended for a year, I found a plethora of like minded folk who included lacto-ovo veggies like me -I ate eggs and ice cream with gusto - along with vegans who eschewed any products of the labor or life of animals. A year after I dropped out of that school I moved to an organic farm in Newburg, Maryland for the duration of a growing season, April to November.

On the farm, part of the worker's wage included all the food you cared to eat, essential since there was no minimum wage for farm hands then or now and we made $4.25/ hour. We lived communally, simplest after 10 and 12 hour days in the sun and doing the kind of physical labor that sculpts your body into a lean mean working machine. Each day one of the crew was responsible for preparing lunch and dinner, and since half of the people there were vegan I became one by default (except for pints of New York Super Fudge Chunk hidden in the recess of the freezer and eggs benedict during trips off the farm). My body leaned out, my mind cleared and despite the exhausting work this marked the healthiest period of my life.

I remained a vegetarian until I was 26 and playing rugby in another incarnation as a college student in New Mexico. I started craving meat; the oddity of having my taste buds aroused by the scent of blood after almost a decade of revulsion toward factory farming could not stop the need. So, I ate meat, and still do, choosing sources I know have been raised locally, humanely and organic whenever possible, with the assumption that I'd stop again some day. That time has arrived.

I have this mysterious abdominal pain that has taken up residence under the lower ribs of my right side, where liver and gallbladder do their digestive work. Western medicine hasn't revealed the culprit, not through several ultrasounds and blood work, but a DOM (Doctor of Oriental medicine, who uses acupuncture and herbs to heal) identified stagnation and imbalances corresponding with the loci of suffering, my unhappy liver and gallbladder. Last week, I gave notice to the pain and started taking Free and Easy Wanderer (anti stagnation), quaffing cleavers and chamomile tea, and eliminated as much saturated fat from my diet as I can manage. The easiest way to do the latter is to eat a vegan diet - no meat, dairy and eggs - and one that excludes the fattier elements, such as coconut, nuts and chocolate. No toxins, either, so goodbye to beer, wine and tequila.

The upsides to the 'deprivation,' as I sometimes call this minimum two month commitment? I feel better, clear mind, emotionally balanced, and the extra padding I've been collecting for the past few years is diminishing. The pain in my side is more intermittent than constant, and that is a relief, as chronic pain wears you down near to misery.

Best of all, I'm relearning how to cook food beyond meat and carb fare. I already love to spend time in the kitchen, and now I eat almost exclusively from what I've prepared myself. Already I've made cauliflower and millet mashers, roasted beet and sweet potato chickpea burgers, chips from beet and radish greens, and spiced and unsweetened breakfast cookies with carrots and gingery applesauce. Today's culinary agenda includes empanadas and a pinto and plantain stew garnished with roasted parsnip slivers.

Temporary vegan life means fun with cookbooks, raw ingredients and well-being.

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Rio Grande baptism

Yesterday I was baptized in the Rio Grande, blessed by boisterous, unruly water. The morning's Race Course trip near Pilar, NM, sixteen miles south of Taos, marked my first commercial raft trip on this river in seven years. In between I guided several trips on the float section of the Snake, that iconic braided channel river that meanders along the Grand Tetons, near Jackson, Wyoming. Three excursions didn't add up to cool confidence in running this section with five male high school students. I had transformed into a rookie again, though the end result prevailed in a positive way. 

Canoeing the Orrilla Verde section of the Rio Grande.

Nerves jangled, I had to find a place in the willows that shielded the shore to offer liquid back to the river, and I ran the lines through in my head, recalling each rock, but I reveled in the fresh perspective and lessons of revisiting an occupation I have left behind. Despite numerous summers in a boat on that river - paddle guide or passenger, behind the oars, in an inflatable kayak and once only in a hard shell - this cameo appearance attuned my eyes to new ways to circumvent or charge through obstacles and rapids, deal with situations as they arose, interact with and take charge of other's lives, all the while focused on fun, safety and the moment.


When I ski a run I know by heart, the snow, weather conditions and even the me that I am at that moment determine how I address the actions I need to take to succeed in this dance down the mountain. Each turn, movement and even breath coordinated and there's no room for mundane worries, daydreams, or to answer that phone call, text or email. This is life, distilled into the details, as vivid as it will ever be, so all that signifies is now.

In the middle of the first major rapid, Albert Falls, our boat hit a hole, a place where recirculating current creates a pillow of water hidden on the downstream side of a half submerged boulder. As our momentum halted five of the six passengers, me included, slid over slick PVC tubes and into the drink. The hero of the hour, a short kid with a well developed upper body, caught my hand and dragged me in, and then I pulled in the closest two, and we collected the third from another raft in the eddy below.

None suffered more than the chill of spring snow melt, and we warmed up paddling hard through the next two rapids. Those almost men were thrilled, even though each one had expressed trepidation about falling in the river prior to it occurring. This didn't squash their desire to risk an intentional swim in the cool Rio, which they requested only ten minutes later and were allowed to do once we had passed beyond all rapids.

As we floated down the final mellow mile, they sang a call and response: "soy marinero," and "soy capitan!" No doubt they will remember that day for a long time to come, in particular the heart pumping adrenaline, their fears realized but overcome, an adventure unique amongst two busloads of juniors. Higher risk balanced by triumphant results makes for a better story to recount. I'm humbled whenever I take a swim in the river, and cleansed, too.

In it I am baptized, vision cleared, whole being enlivened and reset to a more neutral attitude. The water clarifies, washes away the day-to-day and connects me to the source of everything. I guided the rest of that eight mile stretch, freed from my apprehension and grateful for the transformation.

Rigging for a run on the Snake River in Wyoming.                                                                      Photo by Hannah Hardaway

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Earthship travels

Maybe this is true in your town, and maybe not, but in our little mountain town most of the adult transplants have some variation on a quirky story about how they arrived and then stayed, whether they intended to prior, or not. Down in the southern part of the state, we have Roswell, with space ship crash downs; here in Taos earthships have landed. They are the lure that brought me through northern New Mexico and inspired me to move here, and they were the foundation of the first part of my story here.

Earthship? Think off the grid housing, reused, reclaimed, recycled: tires, cans, bottles and dirt, tons of dirt. These were the DIY (do it yourself) solution to housing that architect Michael Reynolds dreamed up in the 1970s that have been built by the sweat equity of thousands of people laboring in dozens of countries around the world, in climates as varied as the high desert of Taos to the rainforest of Guatemala. His vision includes thick walls (think a mid size car's tire width bulging with the earth rammed inside), oriented toward the southern sun and bermed at the north to utilize passive solar most efficiently and the earth's constant temperature as a buffer to extremes of hot and cold, rain and snow collection off the roof, and use of grey water in planters where you can grow your own meal year round. They integrate with the landscape and function with minimal external input once complete, thus the earth ship, one with which to travel the mesa sea that encapsulates much of the terrain around their origin. These buildings have other features and modifications that allow them to function in varying climates, but to find out more visit the Earthship Biotecture website earthship.com or visit their visitor center in the Greater World community when you next find yourself a few miles west of the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.

I first heard about these innovative structures in 1998 from a roommate in a cooperative house in Seattle, and my exchange student boyfriend and I were intrigued from first mention. We decided that we would visit Greater World when we drove across the southwest that summer in my 1969 Volkswagen van, and we stayed there a week out of the month and half we were on the road. We met an architect who rented an earthship for the month's duration of an internship and he invited us to stay in the spare bedroom. We fell in love with curved walls and tranquil ambiance, with the beauty of subtle details: cupboards fronted in beaten copper, plaster embedded with mica sparkling in the light that poured through ceiling high windows and planters a profuse riot of blossoms and green leaves. I slept as well in that room as I have ever slept anywhere, and the desire to return and live in such a place rooted within even before we left.

The following summer I sat in the pub where that same former boyfriend tended bar, trying to figure out my next step after I left Edinburgh. I planned to either travel to India to learn massage or fly back to Seattle, pack the van and return to Taos to work for the earthship building crew and set myself up as a contractor and build these houses myself. He convinced me that NM held more prospects and that I might get lost in India.

By October of 2000 I extricated myself from my life in Washington and headed south. I managed to survive the drive to Taos, although the van's front end crumpled during a high speed collision with a deer in Colorado. A little over 30 years old, it still rolled over mountain passes with confidence. I lived in that van in the parking lot of the earthship community's visitor center for the first month, while I volunteered for the building crew, instead of working for them as I had assumed I'd arranged before I ever left Scotland.

Around the time my savings dwindled so did enthusiasm for doing thankless hard time. I found work at the local ski area, and I connected with an absentee earthship owner and arranged a work trade for rent-free living. I never really did much more than clean up the space, wage war on tumbleweeds with fire, and battle futilely against the dirt clods that fell from the unfinished walls on a regular basis. There's not much work in a finish-upper that can be done lacking funds, tools and supplies.

The best parts of living there were my two roommates, lovely, fun and eclectic women also in their early 20s. One made beautiful stained glass art and necklaces strung with dry animal dung, and the other had a dry, dark sense of humor and became my ski buddy after I learned how to do it. She switched from snowboarding, due to our resort's prohibition on one plank snow sliding. It was this latter gal's birthday yesterday, and I cheered this woman on from afar in a social media way. You know, well-meaning but vague. And not actually on time, because I realize in writing this that I just thought happy birthday wishes, and about that long ago friendship in an earthship, but never typed the words and sent them across the web. Until now.
Thank you, friend. I'm grateful for your companionship during those long ago quiet mornings drinking coffee, dancing under the stars, for the thrill of hurtling down the mountain with you. I'm grateful, too, for the ship that brought me to this town, for the possibilities I foresaw when I arrived, and even more for the detours that became a life I'm blessed to have created. You never know where the current will take you, particularly when you travel in an experimental craft.

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Little Wildhorse Canyon

Up until two weeks ago, I had never walked through a slot canyon, but the ancient and almost alien landscape of the San Rafael Swell in central Utah provided the perfect introduction to such a place as a solo adventurer. I do hesitate to explore the outdoors alone in certain circumstances, but embrace the opportunity in ones I deem safe 'enough.' Sometimes I get that gut thumping reaction, a visceral sense of danger, and I listen to these. Call it instinct - I am an animal first and foremost - it's intuition to me, and I've learned with fortunately few failures that I have to heed those warnings.

The friends who suggested the Little Wildhorse to Bell Canyon loop advised me that it was a friendly, low risk hike of 8 miles, lacking the deep-water crossings and gear assisted scrambles necessary to travel through many slot canyons. This would be a Canyoneering 101 sort of experience. So, while my male companions rode dirt bikes on single track a hundred plus miles from our camp near Green River, Utah, I drove west and south to an area near Goblin Valley. Sola, right.

The Swell is an anticline aged between 40 to 60 million years, which means that it's one long line of rock turned back over on itself, a fold with the oldest rocks at the core. Massive sandstone reefs rise in misshapen towers across the mesa that fronts it, and flash flood erosion over millions of years has ripped away sedimentary rock to form canyons, valleys and gorges. It was up one such canyon and down another that I walked through layers of time, event and a beauty rivaling that of any cathedral.

My being requires time spent alone in nature in the same way a Catholic goes to mass: to connect with the Divine, to breath in the ever renewing power of grace, and to find the peace of prayer. Yes, there are more risks in the wild, but the rewards of solitude for my spirit and the movement of my body, and my breath, far outweigh these. I take care to watch the weather - a flash flood in this narrow space could mean possible death - and my amygdala hums at the ready in case I need to scale the rock to higher ground. My steps are measured and the pack I carry is loaded with water and a few snacks. I temper wild with caution when I'm sola, just as I do when I ride my mountain bike alone.


The trail starts out as a superhighway, an open water-graded and graveled path, until its first choke a mile in. I scramble up a nearly vertical stack of boulders and soon reach the Little Wildhorse and  Bell Canyon juncture, where I choose right into Little Wildhorse. From there, the walls undulate wide apart to so narrow that I have to squeeze through sideways, and there are enough climbs to stay challenged. I trot past groups and couples, until I'm truly by myself.

The sheer walls are painted with 'desert varnish,' or oxidation from water, and I can almost believe the art has been formed with intention. When the wind quiets in the hush I hear the earth, still now but resonant with the floods that created the space where I stand, and this is a place where the Mother creatrix reigns unique.

I reach the Bell Canyon sign and walk along a road for a mile or so, until I reach the actual trailhead, and then I descend into Bell. Downstream as the water flows where it fills the gap in the rock, so I'm downclimbing instead of upwards. I reach standing water, and remove my shoes and socks as some boys and their grandma I meet instruct me to do. It's a foot deep and the most moisture I've seen that day, the only other evidence of water pools in pockmarks in the stone or moistens the lower layers of sand. The canyon residents I encounter - lizards, birds, bees, cacti and flowers in bloom, penstemon, Indian paintbrush and globe mallow - thrive, not troubled by the dry climate.

All too soon I arrive back at the juncture where I turned right, and I exit the canyon as a family meanders into it. I am calm, happy and just tired enough, and certain I will return to Utah, and navigate other canyons, alone or with company.

I have fallen in love with this desert, this remnant of inland seas in the driest land, where a diverse ecology thrives in its environs, and beauty is found in the margins.

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Restless moon

Just shy of 3 a.m. and I'm determined to make efficient use of a restless mind, instead of staying in bed in the vain hope I'll fall into sleep, while the wind blows, my man snores and the full moon shines bright through the cracks in the blinds.

Tonight I read the first five chapters of Dave Ramsey's book on making over ones' money - per the recommendation of my sensible youngest brother - and although I skim the 'praise the lord' parts, my brain crackles and sparks with the possibility of a different relationship to my financial circumstances. Ramsey emphasizes that debt is not a tool - though in regards to buying a home he concedes it can be a necessary reality - in 180 degree opposition to the attitude of the vast majority of the US population. Most of us were trained this way, through relentless marketing, 'need it now' impatience armed with plastic, or general ignorance. I know, I'm a frustrated and indebted citizen: college debt, credit card debt and car payments. Besides that, at present my husband and me are in seasonal unemployment, which adds to the excitement of juggling funds to pay all our bills. Sort of like tossing around knives when you haven't quite learned how to negotiate apples and oranges.

We've both been followers of a summer work/winter work pattern for more than a decade, because we both believe in the philosophy that you might not arrive alive in time for retirement (at least not in good enough a state of physical fitness that we can play as wild of games as we like: ski, bike, hike, raft, etc.); live it while you can. We appreciate its challenges more every year, in particular when our savings diminish quicker than the next cycle of work arrives. Recently, this way of being has become tempered by other desires, too, the ones that more forward thinking adults appear to take for granted. A home, one to call our own. Possibly a kiddo or two, if that's what fate and biology determines. A mattress stuffed with cash, wait, I mean a retirement savings. No debt, an anchor to slow us down and potentially pull us under.

No debt? A life without debt has become the promise land, but seems as far away in this bleary eyed and moonlit moment as Avalon. No matter, I believe it to be a worthy journey, and like all distant destinations it can be attained given persistence and patience.

Traveling on a budget is a skill I've already acquired, and since I lack others related to money, it's time to go back to school. And this round I'll "just say no" to student loans. Tomorrow, I sign myself up for remedial Adulthood 101, focus on financial responsibility and financial consciousness, and I'm going to master it, previously but no longer allowing my finances to be the boss of me. The moon, on the other hand, reigns supreme.

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