My Arroyo (again)

In the past few weeks, I have spent many, many mornings walking in my special arroyo in a nearby desert park. I call it my special arroyo because I thought for a long time that no one visited it but me, Jeep Girl, and Trouble. I was wrong. It has other visitors who, like me, cover their tracks well. But, they leave wonderful objects, hidden cleverly, among the crags and crannies of unique rock outcroppings.

I discovered these unique treasures as I explored new possibilities for entry and exit to the arroyo from different directions with no paths to give them away. So do at least three others from what I can tell, although, I have yet to encounter another person there except an old cowboy that I have written about in this blog. I don’t think he is one of the three.

Why do I think three people? Each leaves behind different artifacts to indicate their presence.

One person has created a miniature gnome village among the cracks of a rock outcropping. In a large crack adjacent to the village, much lower, is a mermaid village. These are all tiny figures and objects, but they are not too faded by the sun yet, so I know it is recent.

I believe several persons are responsible for painted rounded desert rocks with simple messages of peace and love and greetings like Happy Mother’s Day that have been placed in odd, but not difficult to find places – if you look very carefully.

And finally, I found a geocache object. It is a surplus metal ammo box with a geocache log and a few objects left by geocachers who have located it.

I don’t mind sharing my arroyo with the clever folk who have seemingly been there with me all along. Yet, I have to wonder if they have seen me, secretly, as I have walked there.  Have they seen me sunbathing – sometimes nude -- on my flat table rock?  Has someone watched me and Jeep Girl during our infrequent naughty moments on a unique rock that begs women to use it?

Honestly, I think probably none of the above has happened. But someday, it could. Someday, I may discover who shares my arroyo and, I hope, meet them. I just hope I have clothes on at the time!

Of Festivals and Freedom

This morning, on a walk to our secret arroyo, my dear friend “Jeep Girl” mentioned how much she misses music and arts festivals. We talked about how COVID-19 has robbed us all of these wonderful social events, from the flower child vibe of the Oregon Country Fair to the redneck ramble of Country Thunder. While some events like these are considering re-opening this summer, the danger of these becoming super-spreader venues is still very real.

Angry, we are, that many Americans are resisting the vaccines and still objecting to wearing masks indoors, even, and especially, in areas with high infection rates. We railed at the fact that the majority of vaccine resisters are Republicans. The Washington Post reports that more than half of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, more the 40 percent of Republicans have consistently told reporters they’re not planning to be vaccinated – a group that could threaten the effort to tamp down the virus’s spread. Their selfishness ignores the public good, the public health, and threatens my freedom to "festival!"

So there we are. We’re doing better fighting the virus here in the U.S., but, opening the festivals again is simply too dangerous right now. And that makes me sad. I miss the music, the art, the excitement, and, yes, taking my top off or just going nude with like-minded, happy, peaceful people. “Jeep Girl” does too.

So when we got to our special arroyo early this morning, we slipped off our clothes and enjoyed just being naked together in the early morning sun.