Camera Mountain Transmission
Really, all work and no play is a very dangerous trap; very easy to fall into when work is play. So October and most of November have slipped by in a fever of doing and being and making, with little time for, well, just sitting with my mouth slack and my eyes slightly closed, lidded. It may not sound like the most attractive way to be, but, frankly, at this point, I could us a few vegetable-like moments.
Yesterday, though, Rome and Bugsy I drove up Mt. Lemmon and hiked Marshall's Gulch to the Aspen Loop Trail. It wasn't a long hike, but a good one. Good ups and downs, a diversity of scapes: rocky creeks beds and rooted inclines, pine trees, ferns, aspen saplings regrowing after the fires, a deep bed of browning needles. We saw a coatamundi crossing the road just before Palisades Ranger Station, and I nearly bought a baseball cap with Smokey the Bear's face embroidered on it, and the words "Only You."
It felt rejuvenating, yet today I was headachy and tired, like a mild case of what I felt when I tore the ligaments in my right arm, except all over the top half of my body. And we discovered that my camera was left behind, which was a weirdly unhappy event. I had given it up for dead a month ago, then it suddenly started working again... just long enough for me to get really fond of having a camera... and now it's gone. I just don't know how I'm supposed to feel since I've slapped myself back and forth about how much I liked it, how great a little camera it was, how it's just a THING, how it must be meant to be that I don't have this camera (since it obviously doesn't like being with me), how I can easily find another on ebay, but how we are broke, and who really needs a digital camera, and it's just all a lesson in letting go.... I think Ron was right in Harry Potter: how can anyone possibly feel so many things at one time? And really, it so doesn't matter.
It's just annoying. I'm annoyed easily these days, because I'm stressed.
I have better thoughts... while I'm driving or showering, or sitting waiting for the light to change... but I seem to forget them before I get to a keyboard. Important thoughts about art and creativity, and life and love and integrity and hope and truth and justice and so on. I get here, and all I can remember is the dang camera.
After classes and practice today, I drove by myself back up the mountain. I had called the Community Ctr. and they had not had a camera turned in, so I decided to re-hike the trail, because I was pretty sure I had clipped it to my pocket after taking Rome's and Busgy's picture at that big, pudding shaped rock, and figured it must have fallen off and was lying on the trail somewhere after that point.
Yeah, a little crazy. To make it more interesting, I played with the cruise control on the way up, trying to see if I could control my speed entirely without using my feet, and what affect it would have on my gas mileage. Similarly, I tried coasting down in 3rd, and not using my brake at all, but that was not quite as successful and experiment.
I got up to Summerhaven again and it was quiet and cold. A few people were out, stragglers looking for a last good picture or a cup of coffee. I called Rome to let her know I was there, and then checked the message I'd recieved on the way up. It had gone directly to voicement and not rung, since it seems there is only enough reception to make and recieve calls in Summerhaven proper. The Community Ctr had called. They had had a camera turned in, but when I turned around and drove up from the Marshall's Gulch trailhead back into the town, the center was closed. I hung around a little, asked some folks how to reach the people who worked there (for, surely, they must live up there). No one could help me. I gazed sadly in the darkened glass of the center's lobby, thinking "my camera must be right there, in one of those drawers."
Very sad. I toyed with the idea of a $5.50 bowl of chili, but just headed back down the mountain, attempting, as I mentioned to coast in 3rd and brake as little as possible. I began really laying out the new song, for autumn. But I stopped at Windy Point to see the sunset, since my timing was unexpectedly perfect for that. I took a bad photo of it on my phone. Maybe just for the irony.
