Sex Life of the Iridescent Green Beetle

From 2010 Summer

It's not as if there's not enough going on in our own garden, neighborhood, town. We've been busy weeding and harvesting and eating from Trina's little plot of ground. We spent a dry hour on an otherwise rainy day in the park where the dogs chased flying discs, or better, the purple martins that were flying low over the grass, hunting insects, canny enough to know the dogs were hunting them.

From 2010 Summer

From dirt & dogs

From dirt & dogs

From 2010 Summer

From 2010 Summer

From 2010 Summer

We cruised past tents where thousands of cyclists were preparing to ride through the Colorado mountains together. To us, it was amazing that people love to ride so much that they were willing to put up with being surrounded by other people to do it. Or... That people want to be around other people so much that they were willing to put up with riding and camping near a busy street just to be together.

Their first day of riding promised rain. They rode off in one direction. We went in another, and took a hike.

Two Canyons

In another part of the world -- and if we were other people -- we might explore the tops of mountains, seeking a path to the pointed peaks, striving to reach each summit. But in this part of the world, most of the high places are wide and flat. Mesas and plateaus fill our landscape.

Trina and I have found a comfortable rhythm in our small, aimless wanderings together. When on foot, we often find ourselves in one of the many canyons that cut into the mesas and plateaus. Our slow explorations of canyons suits us, I believe, in a way that mountain tops might not.

When moseying along in a canyon, there is a sense that our motion, slow as it may be, is the point of where we are. Not that our motion is taking us to a specific place. Or, rather, that the place is as broad and fluid as the water that might be flowing, or may have once been flowing down the canyon. A place much less pointed than the top of a mountain.

***

Rainy Sunday. The rain stops. We leave behind our garden, neighborhood, town and thousands of riders, and we hike down into a lonely canyon. The rock walls are stacked in layers of tan and brick-red. At this higher elevation, bright spring herbs and forbs and bushes and grasses paint the narrow meadows where clear water runs. A mix of dark pine trees crowd the edges of the meadows, tower high near the water, then skip lightly up the ledges and steps of the rock walls.

From 2010 Summer

From 2010 Summer

From 2010 Summer

We move happily through meadows as dogs romp through flowers, jump in creeks and notice all the smells that dogs love to notice. We notice bright flowers and moss forests. Bird songs and cool air. The smell of sage and the sight of iridescent green beetles coupled together in bright rays of sunshine that stab through the low clouds.

From 2010 Summer

From dirt & dogs

From 2010 Summer

From 2010 Summer

From 2010 Summer

We cross the creek again and again. Walk the fringes of beaver ponds where the trail has drowned. And then, as the clouds move lower, we move upward, back up the trail toward the canyon rim. Where, just as we arrive at the truck, the rain begins again.

***

Sunny Monday. The evening begins to cool. Another canyon, this one a bit closer to home. We wander into the shadows between the high, narrow walls, past pools and puddles from yesterday's rain. Sand, bedrock, boulders. We step and jump, slide and scuff as the walls crowd closer still.

From 2010 Summer

From 2010 Summer

From 2010 Summer

Warm shadows hide deeper pools where cottonwood trees gather and green bushes crowd, where canyon frogs live and die. Enough water for a small trickle to connect one pool to the next lower pool. Day fades from the strip of sky above. Blossoms jump from the gloom. A colorful beetle brighten a dark corner. We hand the dogs down steep pour-offs and continue.

From 2010 Summer

From 2010 Summer

From 2010 Summer

From 2010 Summer

The wall here has fallen, perhaps this year. A fresh strike on the wall where a huge mass of rock has tumbled down, and below, boulders, rubble, smashed trees, and a deep pool partially filled in. The water is tainted and stinky, but why? The clue remains on the wall where the slab released. Guano is heaped on the cliff where bats were recently sheltered in a cave behind the now-missing slab. More of the smelly guano is leaching into the pool.

We wander the twists and turns of the canyon for hours. Then emerge where the walls come down beside us. The sun has set. We take a straighter path back to the truck under the glowing skies of twilight. Then return to our town, our neighborhood, our garden, having been to no one specific point that could define our wandering.

Though, if we're lucky our wandering will have helped define something about us.

--Greg

From dirt & dogs