Dan and Lexie Gordon Family Blog: February 1, 2009

Natalyn has taken to calling herself Super-Jack

David having fun on a roll out piano.

The kids got a chance to learn how to pan for gold.

(they got to keep some real gold)

Campfires are fun

Most people don't know that I (Lexie) actually comment on most of the blogs, filling in details, helping with captions, or adding my own thoughts. Yes, it just seems easier to write about myself in third person than confuse people with a lot of switching. Dan does the bulk of the writing still. He gets credit for just about anything witty, clever, funny, political, scandalous, or misspelled. With all that said, I have been asked to make an appearance, so I am (this once) giving up my anonymity of hiding behind Dan.

I have had a love-hate thing going on with the desert. We are in an isolated part of the desert here in Quartzsite, made even more isolated by our goal of "grounding" ourselves until our game is finished. That includes jaunts into bigger towns that are further away. We both get distracted easily and it is much easier to stay focused if we stay put. Part of the love-hate thing I've had with the desert has been self-inflicted by our personal "grounding." I have felt somewhat trapped (go figure). I guess that's the distracted part of me wanting to be distracted and get moving again. The land here is quite barren here, and I have always been more of a pine-tree person. Even after spending months last year by the California coast (as beautiful as that was) I was at peace again with myself when we got back into pines. Now to the part that I love about the desert - I have been looking for things to enjoy about living here and my list is finally getting long enough to list.

Wildlife here is about as sparse as the plants, but our wildlife list has started coming along. We have seen a tarantula, the lizards are fun to watch, jack-rabbits, coyotes, and Dan and the two oldest boys saw some white tailed deer. I am really hoping to see a desert tortoise before we leave.

The sunsets are magnificent.

I have discovered the amazing smell of rain. The smell is so different from rain in the city or in the pines. I had never experienced a desert rain before, but if Downey could somehow capture the fragrance...

We have met an eclectic group of people here who have all been wonderful to visit with and learn from. I'm always amazed at what I can learn from other people, and how we need other people for our lives to be fulfilled. I believe it was Mother Theresa who said something about a life not being complete without other people. For as much as I like to serve other people and try to help, I'm always behind as so many are sharing with us and giving back even more.

My favorite part of living here has been the campfires. We often talked about putting a fire-pit in our backyard before we sold everything. Once a year, it seems, we would have a marshmallow roast in our garden after we had harvested what we wanted. Here we have been able to enjoy wonderful campfires as a family and with friends. The weather is just chilly enough in the evening that it is comfortable to sit around the campfire and enjoy it, but not so cold that everyone is just huddled near the fire wondering when we can go in to get warm. There is something about a campfire that leads one to reflection and higher thinking. It seems that many barriers go down in conversations and things take on a deeper meaning. Not always, of course. One of the kids' favorite games is to start a story, with each person taking a turn and then ending after it has gone around the fire with everyone having a turn. These times are just plain silly.

Blip, January is Gone!

(Dan writing) In case it has passed anyone's attention, I will announce here that January has passed. The year 2009 is only 11 months long now. The illusion I start every year with, about how many things I will be able to accomplish in the new year, is already fading into the reality of the way time rapidly slips away. With that said, I think I kept this year's goals modest enough that I will still be able to get them, I just have one less month than I did before.

This week in particular just seemed to evaporate. Monday I was working on catching up on basic infrastructure. For the last several weeks the kids have had flat tires on their bikes. I started the day with the thought I would take a couple of hours and get the bike tires patched. At the end of the day, and 10 patches later, we still had two flat tires. Tuesday didn't seem to be much more efficient. By Wednesday I was simply going out of my skin and decided it would be a good time to finally hike the little mountain near our camp. My knees haven't been letting me run much over a mile lately. Hiking the mountain, in lieu of a run, was a good idea. It was the best work out I have had in a long time. I have a theory, well I can't call it my theory, I'm sure there are really theories about this, I just have a mental model, that the body builds up emotional toxins if it doesn't get good exercise. It was nice to get the poison drained a little.

When I got back from the mountain I started the generator. The cord must have been worn out because it pulled all the way out as I started the generator. Since I didn't know how long it would be before I would be able to start the generator again I left it running to try to get a good charge on the batteries. I am not very mechanically inclined, so whenever I do anything kind of mechanical repair I feel a little extra excitement at having cheated my nature. I was very pleased that, with a little help over the phone from my brother, Robert that I was able to get the generator running the next morning. The prospect of being left without power didn't really sit well as a prospect for continuing my work. Even before I broke the generator I had made a 90% decision that I would by a small 1000 watt generator to charge batteries and run the laptops. Most of the work I do uses much less than 1000 watts, but since batteries are so slow to charge, I wind up running the generator several hours a day. It would be nice to have something a little quieter that uses less fuel.

Palm Canyon Hike

Ever since the first time I read about it, sometime last year, I have been intrigued by a place in the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge called Palm Canyon. The canyon harbors some of, if not the only, native palm trees in Arizona. After all of the time we have been here, Saturday finally seemed to offer a good opportunity to take a hike of the canyon. The area to view the palm trees is a nice trail of about half a mile. We hiked up to the viewing area and had lunch there. The children had a lot of fun exploring a little cave-like tunnel near the viewing area.

Viewing the palms brought to mind several feelings that I haven't yet been able to form into thoughts. The isolation of the palms is fascinating in that there aren't any others native palm trees near them. The little pocket high up the canyon is possibly the only place around that palm tress could natively survive. I don't think it is resolved as to whether the trees got there by animals transporting seeds, or if the grove is left over from the last ice age. Either way, thinking of the small little cluster of tress huddled together surviving in the only place in the area that they could, evokes a very unique emotion in me. As I looked at the palm trees I felt like there was something I could learn from them. I just couldn't, and still can't, quite form the thought. The thought is something of the same flavor as thinking about the way the earth sits alone in a very vast and empty looking universe.

After lunch we continued up the canyon a little farther. The trail mostly disappeared and left a lot of scrambling. The children did really well on it and had fun showing me how far they could jump off rocks. The canyon walls are quite magnificent. I am not a good judge of height, but I would guess some of the cliffs were somewhere between 150 and 300 feet tall. It was the kind of scenery that brings the soul a reverence for its creator. When we were almost to the point I had in mind turning around, we started to hear rocks falling down the canyon. I took the guess that there was an idiot farther up the canyon throwing rocks to listen to their echo. At any rate, I took it as a strong sign that it was time for an immediate turn around.

If palm canyon were any closer to a population center, I am sure it would be much more widely publicized. I had thoughts myself of not mentioning our hike on the blog for fear that it might loose some of its appeal if too many people went there. I decided to write about it, with the selfish motivation that with the way things are now there are not enough people visiting the canyon to make it reasonable for the BLM to put a bathroom by it, but there are too many people visiting the canyon to make needs of that nature very convenient. My conclusion is we need just enough more people to visit the canyon to justify one of those stinky little outhouses, and then the rest of the world can continue to exist without knowledge of the canyon's presence. The 9 mile drive over a bumpy dirt road on the way out was a bit difficult on a full bladder.