Another night in the vortex. I use that word improperly all of the time. Maybe because my vocabulary is limited. Most likely. It's been an eventful couple of days, hell, it's been an eventful couple of months, or years even. I have a hard time keeping up. I really do. I always have. I'm lucky in a sense. My life has been for the most part filled with adventure. And craziness...each day seems to bring something new. Rarely have I had days of little activity or emotion, or finding or learning something new. I seem to be plagued with over stimulation. But I can't help it. I've tried to escape it. I've tried to tone it down. I've tried to understand it. It's impossible. I've just learned to ride it. And to not ride it hard, but just ride it. Being here makes it easier to see it from afar. Not to be so wrapped up in it. I see beauty in almost everything. I see the lesson given to me...and I'm so lucky. But I get tired sometimes, and weak. And sometimes it's just hard to embrace everything given to me.

Yesterday I hiked with my friend Maegan on the Pinnacles trail with the goal of Emory Peak. I was insanely tired from the previous days activities, and all that I had seen. But I was excited to have the time to hang out with Maegan. She's had quite the life. And she's young. Under 25 she's been all over the world, has a degree in environmental studies, has spent time sailing, doing conservation work, fire crew with the national park service and plant surveying with the park. She's hilarious, intelligent and has the ability to make a person live in their imagination for periods at a time. She's a remarkable human being and doesn't even realize it. She just kept telling me how slow she was on the trail. She said it over and over. And I never really sincerely noticed. When I hike, I HIKE. I move. I go. I push on. My brain makes a map and i just absorb. I push my body hard and don't listen when I'm tired. I don't listen when I'm in pain. I just try to own the trail. Being with Maegan was a real lesson in paying attention. I learned to see everything around me. And she thought she was slow, but it was wonderful to actually see things in detail. See the light playing on everything I was seeing. She showed me details I've never noticed while blazing the trail. She showed me the evolution of plants in the most minute detail. She explained their genus, their origin and their name. She made me crush a simple leaf I'd never noticed between my fingers...and i smelled one of the most refreshing scents I've ever smelled...and god did it bring me a pleasure. I ambled on...like I normally do and i felt guilty doing so, because I could see her behind me, just looking at everything and taking her time (as any normal inquisitive person would). I've been on that trail so many times and never got to see all of the beautiful things I saw with her. I hope she knows how lucky I felt to have such an excited and informative teacher. The hike in and of itself was glorious. The light changed dramatically the entire time. The light played on everything. We climbed closer to the sun, to the sky. The mountains spread out all beneath us, the colors played tricks on my brain. I didn't feel tricked by the trail. With Maegan, I felt more intimate with the path. I felt closer. And I understood better as I had the time to enjoy it as I walked up to the top. There was no sense of urgency. No figuring anything out. Just me..and Maegan...and all that was around us. I felt quiet. And light. And not filled with any want to find a solution to any problem. I just saw the trees, and the light, and the dirt and rock, the old history, the ghosts...I heard the wind. I felt the breeze. Our actual descent was my favorite part of the trip with her. We had more time. The end of the day was beginning. Everything was golden. Her smile when when she gave it to me was pure. It's easy to love her. You can't help it. I wished I could show her how beautiful and knowledgeable she was. I wanted her to know how thankful I was. But i didn't convey it right. I never do. But I enjoyed every second of it. I felt alive. and calm. and perfect. We wandered down the mountain, through meadows, through valleys, on switchbacks, into the life that we live out here. And she left me to go home. And I sat and ate a salad and soup alone in the EDR (employee dining room) and prepared myself for the walk down the hill to home...

And I walked home...with a bit of time before the sunset. Casa Grande glowed like it was on fire. The chisos mountains all looked aflame. The sky began to turn red and blue and purple. Bruised almost perfectly. Sarah got here almost as soon as i did. We cracked open a beer apiece and half paying attention shared our day with one another. We sat and watched the continuation of the sunset and drank our beers, getting ready to hit the road to Terlingua. Town. Sort of. I don;t want to write about that quite yet, because Terlingua deserves it's own "blog" and my friends Magen and Hogan also deserve their own piece. But it was a lovely time. Complete with the most beautiful sunset. The most wonderful times walking along a dirt road with sarah under the milky way and loving her like always, and a drive home...on the park road, seeing a coyote, a ringtail and giant owl perched on a cactus in the moonlight. I slept unusually hard last night and awoke...knowing what I had set out in my brain to do..and hoping I could do it.

I was sad I had woken up so late. The trail system here in the basin is one that I have been wanting to explore alone since I've been here. The full extent is over 16 miles. And it brings you to many places, to many varying places. You start at the basin and climb the mountain. The views above are mind boggling. They are hard to comprehend. The trails are like veins and arteries. They lead you all over the chisos mountains...circulating you through each system. Pulsing you through the body of the living breathing organism. I wanted to venture through my host. I wanted to explore the places I had not been. And I wanted to be alone to take it in at my own pace. So I woke up...late. I walked up to eat something...to prepare myself. I was lazy and tired but decided to buck up. I prepared myself for the hiking alone with my brain and body for at the very least 5 hours. Hiking long distances alone can be glorious and it can be maddening. It can be both. It can bring you close to god or close to any evil you have within yourself. It's a great test to see where you stand with yourself. It's a fairly easy test in the nature, as all that is around you is pure and untouched and well, beautiful. The first hour I was simply amazed with all that was around me. The volcanic evidence of the past. The sweeping and endless forest of oaks, the coolness in the shade of the trees. I felt silent and simple. My heart didn't beat too fast on the slow ascent I had taken through Laguna Meadows. I walked fast, but had a nice calm relationship with the well paved path ahead and I climbed and climbed...listening to that breeze in the trees. I walked through many meadows that made me slow down. Everything felt calm. I was literally seeing the layers of the history of this place peel back. As I got higher up, the plant life change. The trees changed. Ancient pines were all around. Yellow brush waved to me in that high elevation mountain wind. The colors were more vibrant in the sun. My skin was getting burned I was parched. My back was soaked in sweat. I had reached my second wind calmly for the first time ever. I was gently rocked. And when I stopped to drink water, my knees were on fire. I hadn't realized it, but my body was moving more than I had realized. I lost time there in the forest. It's easy to do that..on a trail. It's easy to let the path just sort of take you. I hiked hard, to the top. I moved through some of the most beautiful places. I really felt as though I was having a relationship with this trail. I felt mind fucked in a sense. My brain and body were sucked in. And I did in fact feel as though I was being circulated like a blood cell through a living breathing organism as I moved along the dirt and rock path. I was shot out finally onto the south rim. The South Rim. I suppose I had sort of just put the South Rim to the wayside after being up on top of Emory.

The South Rim was just as amazing as the Dawson-Pitamakan Pass in Glacier, and Avalanche Peak in Yellowstone, and The Paintbrush Divide in the Tetons. Goodness, I sat and lunched alone and even fell asleep for a bit up there...on top of the world. Emory is so removed from everything up there, you have a 360 degree view of the entire park. The south rim gives you a closer look at all that is below. And it makes zero sense. The world down there is unreal. I mean really really unreal. The expanse looks ever sweeping from the south rim. The earth is pushed up in all sorts of strange ways on the flat earth. Giant formations scrunch up, bunch up, from almost nothing. Rocks reach up to the sky in a long brown fist. Juniper trees climb the scaly backs of rolling hills that point toward nothing in particular. Greens and Yellows mix with the unforgiving red and brown of the flat lands and the mountains. The reflective light from the sky gives of an eerie purple and blue. The land below looks uninhabitable in some places, and then so lush in some places you wonder how these landscapes can be brethren. The wind up there seems to give off a transmission from another planet. An unearthly static. After lunch and my glorious nap on my day pack, I headed back...toward the Pinnacles trail. I passed along more epic views of the South Rim and I was overwhelmed all over again. It didn't seem to stop. And I went to each and every overlook up there all alone...and just sat and stared. And listened to the wind. I finally came to Boot Canyon, which might easily be my favorite new found nook.

Wow...I am actually too tired to finish this blog. I can barely keep my eyes open. I had a really long two days. I'm sunburnt. I hiked all day and then sat in the hot springs...and I feel like I'm going to fall asleep at my computer. I suppose I'll have to finish this up tomorrow. Although I'm sure you folks are tired of reading about pretty hikes and mountains...and blah blah blah. Don't worry, there's always the drama and the actual trade off of living here. I'll get to that when I feel ok about exposing it...but for now. I need sleep. I'm wiped out. Good night from the ether....Im going to have more insane dreams....i hope you all are too. Maybe we can meet on the south rim. follow the maps above. I'll see you there

-KG