...or are you just happy to see me?

So...what I did on my summer, uh, fall vacation:
I hiked every day. I climbed and scrambled up steep, rocky trails with frustratingly unsteady footing. I hiked along the ridgelines, high up where I could see in all directions. Not that there was really much to see. I trudged along the rocky canyon floors and sandy dry washes. I immersed myself in the amazing silence. Of everything, that was the most wonderful.

I took some pictures but not a lot. After the first 20 or so, I realized that pretty much everything looked the same, so taking more pictures was really unnecessary.

I got wet in the pool. It was quite small so actual swimming was really not possible. But it felt great to cool down after a couple hours of sweating in the desert sun.

I wrote. Yes, every day I wrote. Sometimes I had to force myself but I did it.

I napped. I took siestas. Under normal circumstances, I don't take naps. I can't. It doesn't work for me. But there, in the heat and the silence I was able to. Interesting thing about the heat - even though it got up into the high 90s every afternoon, I never once had to turn on the air conditioning. The place had ceiling fans in every room and there were doors onto my little veranda which I kept open. It was warm but totally comfortable. And the nights were wonderfully cool.

So that's what I did. I hiked, I wrote, I slept. I spoke to almost no one for the whole week. The checkout girl at the Safeway, the checkout girl at the Walgreens. Two rotund ladies by the pool. That was about it.

It may sound pathetically lonely and boring, but I loved it. I wasn't lonely or bored. I was totally enveloped by the place.

Oh yes, I also heard coyotes on a couple of evenings. They kind of sounded like squeaky doors.

Another thing about Arizona: they have great highway signage.