there's more to life than this

I'm back and making that surrealistic transition from living in a tent to living in a structure that seems so overly convenient now that I have some perspective. Not having to hover over a public toilet or squat in the woods fighting the mosquitoes trying to get at my ass seems like an amazing luxury.

I hardly know where to start with telling the tales of my trip; each day was filled with new and ever beautiful surprises of nature. There's the laundry list of critters spied with my little eye: chipmunx, a hawk, a snake, bluejays, woodpeckers, squirrels, fishies, tons o' flutterbys, deers...but no actual bear sightings this time. Wednesday night we snagged a super great camping spot next to a meadow and were visited by Mr. and Ms. Deer, chomping their brains out on the greenery.

There were great hikes, waterfalls, the alien world of caves, skinny dippin' in the icy cold pools of the river below the waterfalls...there's some pictures (no, not nude ones, sorry!) that I'll share with y'all as soon as I can transfer all their pixels/bytes to my machine.

Besides the splendor of mountainy goodness, some itty bit of perspective on surburban living and some semblance of a tan (gasp!), I'm not sure I can verbalize just yet what I got out of the trip. While immersed in the beauty I was also engaged by Chomsky's discussions of power -- so my time was spent swinging pendulously between blissfully listening to the wind in the trees and then wondering how much time humans have left before the environment is destroyed.

Tonight will be the last cheerleader performance of the concert series -- I think after "halftime" I will have to scoot my butt out to LA and catch the highly anticipated Warp show. I am anticipating shitty parking and a long line -- but just having yanked my consciousness out of the woods I'm not sure I can fret too hard about that just now...

Tomorrow I will have images to go with the story, stay tuned.