anewmexico

sometimes it only takes a day's travel to get back to where your heart belongs. lately my mind has been in a place of oddity [for me at least], a place where people annoy me, time can't stop for even a few minutes and joy is mostly found when alone or around a 'few'.

do you ever think you find yourself in that the dilemma of desire is too much to live with, and so we abandon and disown our desire?

last weekend i flew down to albuquerque and got the chance to spend some time with my grandmother. i know i have been told more than once and by more than one that i ask A LOT of questions. do i? the majority of conversation with her was no different as i was enamored with her life and the smallest of details that got her to where she is today. her's is such a journey to be appreciated and so amazingly well remembered that i was left pondering past years and realizing that what i could remember did mean the most to me. funny how that works out.

i went for a trail run in the sandia mountains and couldn't have felt better about getting out in the southwest desert heat, jumping over boulders and running up the sand of a trail. i didn't see another person on the trek which was fine by me and i somehow managed to get terribly lost in the thicket of cactus country. awesome.

[sandia mtns.]

intothesun

oh my, montana is one overlooked state! i can't believe how many older people [whatever that means] said that they had never been there. a few drive throughs, even less visits, no live theres and plenty of never beens. i felt privileged. the destination was just shy of the canadian border and the plans were to beat ourselves up with bikes, trails, rivers, rafts, fishing rods, tents or no tents, and the most of which beauty.

Our experience of beauty transcends our ability to speak about it, for its magic lies beyond the power of words. Perhaps that is why it is so healing—beauty is pure gift

there is so much that we adventured i could write a short story on the trip and i'm sure still leave something out. we were mostly flying by the seat of our pants but one sure thing we planned was a bike ride from the west end of glacier national park to the east side. for the most part each national park has a designated road that winds you throughout giving unapologetic views of its pleasing landscape. most who travel this route do so in the comfort of their vehicle and hopefully at least with windows down. we had something else in mind and thought what better way than to experience glacier on bicycles. grand idea, right? well, currently my max mileage has not quite hit the double digits since i so wonderfully live 4 miles from work. needless to say, ready i was not. however, 32 enduring yet beautiful miles later we made it up to the 6,646 ft. pass and luckily oxygen was on our side since we live in the mile high city. it was such a heighten sense of accomplishment that we passed out for two hours right off the foot traffic of so many visitors at logan's pass. once refreshed we began the descent. i can barely explain the rush and feeling that surged though me when i flew down the other side of the pass. definitely a little scared at times but tried my best to not hold the brakes and keep my eyes on the road and off the beauty for fear of the most epic fall of my lifetime. a significant less amount of time it took us to crawl up glacier and 17 close calls later we exited the east side of the park. to my surprise the atmosphere on one end was drastically different than the other; we entered in density and exited on expanse, though both stunning in its own respect. we then proceeded to hitchhike....with our bikes.... but that's another story.