Search and Rescue (or crazy wilderness stuff)

I joined a K9 search and rescue team in March. Vuyo didn't pass his assessment than, but he was just assessed again Saturday and I am waiting for the word on how he did. He is a bit borderline. A dog has to be either motivated to work for food or a toy and so keen for it that he will search for hours to get his reward. Vuyo is motivated, but it is about medium. :(

Saturday night we had an overnight training (a bivy) just to review every one's preparation to survive overnight in the mountains. It is not about comfort, but just making it through the night. So I slept in the bivy sack pictured above without a sleeping bag on the ground. It was pretty much what i expected, cold and very little sleep and I survived. :)

I went on my first search two weeks ago: a young woman became separated from her friend and we went out at 1130 pm to look for her and searched for 3 hours (others were out there longer) and she walked out to the main road at 7 am.

Forming a Redoubt

Feeling like being more meditative and keeping up with my blog a bit more, so hoping to post more often. Some events the past couple weeks have made me think of this opening and closing of our lives in friendships and I went in search of this poem by e.e. cummings.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond by E.E. Cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Backpacking Adventures

My new tent on its first trip.
Around the campfire.
Vuyo in the rain with his pack.
The people that kept hiking in the rain at the end of the trip.

I have started backpacking this summer. There is a group in Albuquerque that plans trips at least once every month during the season. I have been on three trips so far and heading to Colorado Labor day weekend for a 3-day hike. It has been a blast! Certainly interesting going on a trip with people one has never met. The last trip we went to San Pedro Parks and it poured rain. Some people decided to camp where we stopped to formulate a plan about the rain and 5 of us continued to the campsite. We then continued for another 3 miles for a day hike and saw lots of elk.

Finishing the Travels in Central America

Lake Atitlan
Lake Atitlan
Santo Hermano Pedro
A view of Antigua

Ok, I am going to wrap up the travelogue. We traveled to Guatemala City with grandpa and then Nathan and I continued to Panajachel and Lake Atitlan by chicken bus. We stayed with a friend in Pana. Nate and I arrived at the beginning of a long deafening downpour of rain and so we settled into a restaurant with a bottle of wine and way too much food. We spent Friday wandering around Panajachel and hanging out with our friend - Dave. Then on the shuttle to Antigua, where I took Nathan to dinner at the Casa Santo Domingo, a hotel built around an excavated monastery. Dinner was all we could afford there. :) But it was wonderful!

Saturday we wandered around Antigua, it was nice to return to Antigua and show Nathan some of the little spots where I use to spend my time. Saturday evening we headed back to Guatemala City and spent the night with relatives and flew back to the states on Sunday.