Human Interest Photos, with excerpts from Cabeza

Cactus “decorated” by the “undocumented” “migrants.” The latest is that Phoenix, which thanks to its burgeoning population — I wonder why — is out of water, so the powers that be are planning a desalinization plant in Mexico on the Gulf of California. A huge array of solar panels will be constructed somewhere and a wide corridor with power lines and pipeline will be constructed — straight through Organ Pipe National Monument — to take the electricity down to power the plant and pipeline pumps, and bring the water back.

See Chapter 2 of Cabeza:"In retrospect, that was just the beginning. In 2003 I learned it was a whole brave new world out there: Two million [now 5,000,000] UDAs (undocumented aliens) a year crossing along the entire U.S./Mexican border. Local hospitals going bankrupt because they’re required to administer free emergency medical care to the indigent, including illegal aliens. More ominously a ranger advised me that the previous year one of his brethren had been shot by drug smugglers in the adjacent Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Beneath his bulletproof vest. With an AK-47. Dead. I learned that drug and immigrant smugglers had stopped drivers in remote parts of the Monument demanding money, food and water, rides, or tires. I was warned that if we see people seemingly in need, well, they might be in need . . . but might not be quite the type we’d want to help. Arizona just happens to be number one in the nation in stolen vehicles per capita. Because the need is so great. A four-wheel-drive pickup camper? How perfect! Almost as an afterthought the ranger said there’d been a lot of resource damage.

. . . So be it. No finer place to die. Who wants to end up in a nursing home, anyway?. . .

After the trip we got more details from a Backpacker article, “The Wildest Park in America,” by Annette McGivney (April 2003), “The Wildest” meaning wild in more ways than one. Organ Pipe has 3000 backpackers a year. And 300,000 illegal immigrants. Across a forty-mile east-west line there are 665 (and, I presume, counting) footpaths north. All well marked. Very well marked. With garbage. Garbage. GARBAGE. Cans: bean cans, tuna cans, beer cans, soda cans. Sports drink bottles. Bikes, phone cards, socks. Bibles. Omnipresent gallon water jugs. Not to mention underwear. Dirty underwear. Intentionally draped on the saguaros. Carefully draped, in one instance captured by a photo, encircling the entire trunk. . . . McGivney calls the draping of intimate apparel a “right of passage,” but personally, I just cannot fathom minds that find it necessary to desecrate the desert in this particularly offensive manner. The rangers find it similarly offensive. While they tell the author, “We don’t pick up [the trash] anymore [because] we can’t make a dent,” McGivney also writes of their “bottom line. They can’t tolerate clothing draped on desert plants. With a stick, [the ranger] picks socks off a cholla, Jockeys off a creosote bush, a white lace bra off a barrel cactus, and the matching panties off a saguaro.” Later in the article she quotes Tucson desert rat Bill Broyles, who would hike for weeks at a time in Organ Pipe and Cabeza, finding them a “reservoir of silence.” But now he says, “The place I love is being trampled and trashed.” To conclude the piece McGivney exhorts us backpackers to vote with our boots and “take back the desert.” But “only you can decide whether a place like this is worth [the risk].”

Chapter 12, GUMBO!

In actuality our most frightening trip experiences have come when we were in our vehicle. And this brings to mind the time we really, really, really . . . thought we were . . . goners in the gumbo!

But first: For seventeen years I rode my bike to work twice a day, twenty minutes each way, every school day, all year round. I don’t consider this a big deal, even through Rochester’s snow-white winters. Lots of people did it: Anne, my first wife, “Jane,” a columnist with the local paper, and many more. You learn to sense precisely the traction, or rather lack thereof, under your tires, the exact amount of pressure you can apply to the brakes without going into a slide, and the potential utter stupidity of drivers. In addition it’s great exercise, a benign way to exorcise one’s inner frustrations, and a lot more fun than being stuck in traffic jams: You just speed by on the right. Quite a number of times I left home in the predawn darkness to ride through whirling white powder, over the deep virgin snow of unplowed streets, only to be greeted at the bus barn with, “You’re kidding! You rode your bike in this? You must be freezing!”

“Actually, I’m hot.”

“Don’t you listen to the radio?”

“No.”

“Schools closed.”

“Oh. It didn’t seem that bad.”

Photo, Rochester Democrat and Chronical, 3//12/76

Photo showing I had successfully completed my PhD on extracting two wheel drive pickups from Utah mud holes.

Cabeza, Chapter 12:"I drove up an unmaintained gravel road to about 7000 feet, then pulled off and parked in a hunters’ or ranchers’ campsite. The next day it poured so I stayed in the cabin, sitting and going for a few short walks. The following morning seemed more promising so I drove out toward the road and. . . .

“How strange; the truck’s not moving, the engine’s revving, the new mud and snow tires are spinning like crazy . . . and the rear end is sinking. I wonder what could be wrong?” Nothing really, only an extended, unscheduled encounter with Mother Earth in her semi-liquid form, that’s all. I worked with my folding shovel for a time but other than the shaft breaking and the broken end gouging a later-to-become-infected hole in my right palm, little was accomplished. With the mud up to and over the axles, now was the perfect time to work on that Ph.D. thesis I’d never gotten around to: “Dissertation on the efficacy of various extraction techniques for freeing two-wheel-drive pickups from Utah mud holes,” and with no traffic whatsoever on this road and it being a twelve-mile hike back to the highway, I was provided with unique inspiration. After much trial and error I eventually learned to jack up one side at a time (not that simple since the jack tended to go down rather than the truck up), search the area far and wide for appropriate flat rocks, and lay down a mini-highway to liberty. After not more than four hours I gingerly stepped on the gas and . . . “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God—.” Well, you get the idea. I celebrated, now that this “learning experience” was safely in the past, taking a picture of the truck just out of the mud hole.*

Poor human beings. So proud of their own meager accomplishments when waiting just down the road (up in this case) is. . . . There’s a Jewish epigram—at least it looks Jewish—“How do you make God laugh? Tell Him your plans.” Well, my plan was to relax, enjoy the pleasures of the open road as there should be some great views ahead, and drive over into Colorado if the way wasn’t blocked by snow.

The road climbed quite sharply and after a half hour or so the trees began to thin and a stupendous view opened up on the left: the whole Colorado and Dolores River valleys with the Book Cliffs beyond. But sure enough, there was a huge snowdrift barring my way. The mini-pickup had a nice tight turning radius so I just pulled to the right, mountain side of the road, made it big sweeping U-turn to the left and. . . .

No . . . no . . . please . . . no! No!! It can’t be!!! But of course . . . it was. Déjà vu all over again. Or rather, all over the axles again. But with a new slant: tilted axles. Sharply tilted axles. Tilted towards that stupendous view . . . just forty feet down a steep incline and, say, not more than a 2000-foot vertical drop away. And there wasn’t even a sign warning soft shoulder!

It was now getting late and clearing off nicely, and I had had enough! I just spread my sleeping pad out on the road, cooked my dinner, and watched a stupendously spectacular sunset of slowly dissipating pink and orange clouds, followed by a stupendously clear black sky full of stupendously bright, shimmering stars. But amidst all that what absolutely impressed me the most . . . was my own stupendous stupidity.

In the morning the situation looked hopeless so I walked down the road a mile and spelled out H E L P and an arrow with rocks; I had at least brought a towrope so someone could pull me out if necessary. Or rather, when necessary. But since I hadn’t seen a vehicle in four days I trudged back and dug in. I was by now, if not yet a virtuoso, at least a proficient amateur at this . . . so it only took me three hours. Ten minutes after I was free (no celebration this time) a guy hunting bear drove up. Good timing!

This is my first four-wheel-drive pickup, a gift from my father. I made the photo into a card and mailed it to him with the words “Thanks!” This is on the way to the Maze on the most rugged four-wheel-drive stretch I’ve seen. Two times coming off a rock ledge the front wheel bearings were damaged — but fortunately we made it home. Always check your wheel bearings for play after driving over such a road. If damaged they could actually overheat and the whole axle fall off.

I WAS NOT LOST (More photos after this story)

I was not lost. I am never lost. I always know where I am (more or less, that is). I have an excellent sense of direction: that’s why my compass was safely stashed in the top of my pack … and no way I was going to go through the big hassle of taking it off and digging it out, especially at a time like this.

It was just that … well … it wasn’t precisely clear which way I should go. But then, Yes! Aha! A track! Exactly what I was looking for. The trail must be nearby.

But … strange. Very strange. I hadn’t seen anyone all day, but there was a snowshoe print through the ice of a small stream — just like I had made about 20 minutes earlier. And the print was exactly the size and shape of my snowshoes. And not only that, but there were marks from trekking poles in the snow exactly like mine. Weird.

Somehow I had gotten off the trail and had been following along the depression formed by a small stream that seemed to be, to my eyes, the trail … until I had crashed through the thin ice. Water had seeped up under my rain pants and over my boot tops to soak not only my socks but the lower 6 inches of my fleece pants. I decided to ignore it. For the time being.

But someone else had done exactly the same thing. And I hadn’t seen anyone. How could that be? Slowly, slowly, slowly the realization seeped into my mind. I had done what all the books say you do when you are lost. I’d made a complete circle back to where I myself had crashed through that ice!

This was my third winter trip to the Adirondacks in as many years. There had been two around 1980, the first carrying cheap plastic snowshoes, camping the first night in a lean-to. I learned that lesson well: woke up from a nightmare screaming, “The spirits of the earth are worse than the spirits of the sky!” only to realize mice were crawling all over me. Never again. Pitched my tent the next night and then circled back over Avalanche Lake (photo) in bitter cold and high winds.

The second I’d attempted Dix Mountain but the steep trail had inflicted a mortal wound on my cheap snowshoe, truncating my visit.

The first two trips of recent years, with top-of-the-line snowshoes, I had climbed the highest peak, Mount Marcy. On the first, the night before had been -15° F, but thanks to Anne not being thrilled with midwinter backpacking for some reason, I had her sleeping bag to throw over my own … and was nice and toasty. High winds, light snow, and cloud scudded across the rocky summit but I was dressed for the occasion.

Returned to where I’d pitched my tent for the second night. No need for the bug screen so the door stayed unzipped. Woke up to find … a pine martin dragging off my Ziploc-bag-enclosed first aid kit! I quick grabbed it … but to my greatest dismay discovered it had already dragged off my bag of tea! Later it dawned on me I was vulnerable due to being only ½ mile from a lean-to, and lean-to means people means food for everybody. Or, rather, tea for everybody. Not to mention first-aid kits. On the drive home I heard an NPR report on how people working at the Washington zoo felt closer to the animals they tended than their human acquaintances. Maybe they have tea with them, too. Reporter didn’t say.

The second recent had been relatively balmy weather but deep snow, so, the biggest problem with winter trips was how to avoid lean-tos and pitch my tent in 4-foot-deep snow (other hikers packed down the trails). Thus, I had the bright idea of using a bivy sack, which we’d used in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. In clear weather.

Here, now, in the Adirondacks, the forecast had been for the skies to clear. But. Mountain weather. It was in the teens and still snowing. I eventually found the trail and then saved myself much trouble by cutting straight across solidly frozen Lake Colden. Then up the trail to Mt. Colden and a spot to plant the bivy. But. The snow, the snow, the snow. 2 inches, 4 inches, 6 inches. More, and more, and more. Had to stay inside the bivy. WITH my soaking wet socks and fleece pants, which steamed up the whole place. Tried to sit, tried to sleep, tried … but gave up.

Packed everything up and headed back. No moon, but enough starlight filtered through the thin clouds and snow to guide my way. My main concern, finding the trail at the far end of Lake Colden turned out to be no problem. Even a meadow with drifts obscuring the trail was just barely negotiable.

But that was yet to come. At the halfway point, in the middle of the frozen lake I settled down into a sizable drift, made myself comfortable, munched on some nuts and raisins, and gazed contentedly at the sparkling snowflakes gently drifting down from above and all around, seeing if I could just let it all in.

Not what I’d planned, to say the least. But overall … perhaps … not that bad a trip.

Myself on Giant Mountain, New York’s Adirondacks

(More photos after this story)

The mountain on the right is called Fremont Peak, named after the explorer — nicknamed The Pathfinder — John C Frémont who climbed it, the literal high point of his expedition, in 1842. That was hardly its purpose, though. Rather he and his men were to chart the route that eventually became known as the Oregon Trail to encourage settlement of the West; the book he and his wife Jesse wrote —Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains — did indeed inspire countless thousands. It has been written that “It was both a keenly observed description of a Western journey by a trained scientist and a dramatic adventure story buffed to a high literarily polish.” The ultimate wilderness book, when all the West was wild.

It’s hard to imagine that anyone could be more attuned to the wonders of Nature than Frémont. His son Frank wrote many years later, “Out-of-doors was life to him. . . . Stormy weather appealed to him as well as fair. Trees were to him sacred . . . flowers especially appealed to him . . . he would guide his horse so as to avoid crushing a flower or anthill; all life had a significance for him. Once we were climbing in the mountains . . . and I came across a snake. Boylike, I started to kill it, but he would not permit it. ‘No, let it go! It has not harmed you and probably enjoys life,’ he said.” But Frémont, most assuredly an adventurer in its finest sense, was not content just to chart the route — just for “fun” they had to go off trail and climb the peak. But then they had to return to civilization… since they were out of coffee.

Frémont later became senator from the new state of California and then first Republican candidate for president in 1856, running under the slogan: “Free Soil, Free Men, Fremont.” Though he lost, his run paved the way for Abraham Lincoln’s victory four years later which led to the secession of southern states and the Civil War. This led Lincoln to appoint Frémont Commander of the Department of the West, where his enduring legacy was to recognize the battlefield genius of Ulysses S Grant, raising him to a command position, from which Grant (a distant relative, in the sense all of us life forms are related) turned the tide of the Civil War.

From the Frémonts’ book, describing the summit of Fremont Peak: “Here, on the summit, where the stillness was absolute, unbroken by any sound, and solitude complete, we thought ourselves beyond the region of animated life; but while we were sitting on the rock, a solitary bee came winging his flight from the eastern valley, and lit on the knee of one of the men. “It was a strange place, the icy rock and the highest peak [so he thought] of the Rocky Mountains, for a lover of warm sunshine and flowers; and we pleased ourselves with the idea that he was the first of his species to cross the mountain barrier—a solitary pioneer to foretell the advance of civilization.

I believe that a moment’s thought would have made us let him continue his way unharmed; but we carried out the law of this country, where all animated nature seems at war; and, seizing him immediately, put him in at least a fit place—in the leaves of a large book, among the flowers we had collected on our way. The barometer stood at 18.293, the attached thermometer at 44°; giving for the elevation of the summit 13,570 feet above the Gulf of Mexico, which may be called the highest flight of the bee. It is certainly the highest known flight of that insect.”

[I suggest Frémont would have been content to marvel at the bee, then let it continue on its journey but that one of the men, without “a moment’s thought,” swatted it. Upon his return Frémont presented his wife Jessie with the flowers and the bee. She kept them until her death.]

Anne and I have climbed several of the neighboring mountains. Perhaps we’ll do Fremont sometime. Today Fremont’s name happens to dot the landscape of America—and most fittingly our current vehicle was manufactured in Fremont, California. It’s 17 years old but this means we will have to keep it … until our deaths… (Photo, Phil Grant: “Before the Storm.” More photos of Fremont Peak and the Wind Rivers can be found in my videos on YouTube, especially The Art of the Fugue 1-7, Contrapunctus 2.)

Fremont Peak

Myself, on Downs Mountain, Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. Photo taken by my first wife "Jane."

Anne (lower right), Gannett Peak in the background and the Grand Teton in the far distance.

This is Anne and me, around 1995 — photo taken by her mother.

The latest version of our truck at Panorama Point, looking over the Maze. Our "Mobile Mansion."

Anne in proper desert attire — except for the hiking stick which we later retired in favor of trekking poles — with their killer wrist straps.

Chapter 6: "Maybe it’s my waning cold, maybe it’s my new, fraction-in-the-toe-longer boots, maybe it’s plain old inattention, but my left boot catches on a rock and I stumble. I lurch forward with the right to regain my balance as I have done hundreds of times in the past, but now the right toe also catches and I’m going down. I raise my arms to protect my face, but in what is fast becoming a classic “If it can go wrong, it will” situation, both trekking poles—so essential for this type of travel—betray me. Each pole tip lodges in a crevice between rocks and throws my arms, wrists trapped in the poles’ straps, high over my head. So it’s one 165 pound human male, lightly pulled by eight pounds of camera bag, most vehemently pushed by fifty-five pounds of backpack, headed down, face straight into one of those one-foot rocks.

WHAM!

The pain . . . is . . . intense.

The pain . . .

Is . . .

Very, very, very, very, very, very, very . . .

Intense.

I yell.

“Anne, help!” But she is still carefully (in contrast to someone else we know?) negotiating the “downshift.”

I raise my head and looked cross-eyed at a blood-soaked, green-winged ant crawling away from ground zero.

“Help, help,” I cry again, but Anne, knowing that my shrill vocalizations imply I’m not quite dead yet, wisely determines not to kill herself in the process of rescuing her stumblebum mate.

Finally she arrives. She tries to help me get my pack off but I resist (it’s such a hassle getting it on again). Solicitously she inquires, “What you want me to do?”

Kiss it and make it well. No, I don’t say that, but where is she, the perfect mother, wife or lover, who can take all the human misery of all the ages and kiss it and make it well? The Catholics have their Virgin Mary, the Buddhists their Bodhisattva of Compassion. And for the rest of us unbelievers, there is, of course, good old Mother Earth. But the cold hard truth is, beneath her thin veneer of makeup, she’s really Mother Rock.

I do some checking. No, shards of my expensive prescription sunglasses have not been driven deep into my eyeballs. No, my even more expensive crowns, not to mention my real teeth, are not rolling around loose inside my mouth. And yes, my brain does, in fact, seem to be functioning normally (for me, that is).

“Is my nose straight?”

“Yes.”

“Is there much blood?”

“Just a little between your upper lip and your nose.”

She gets the first aid kit from the back of my pack, wipes the bit of blood, and applies an antibiotic cream. My lip, crushed against my upper jawbone, hurts badly and later will swell to a grand magnitude, making my four cups of tea daily an exercise in masochism. But that’s yet to come. Otherwise I’m fine. Even the camera survived.

Anne gives me a hand to help me up and in ten minutes, after my worst accident ever in the wilderness, we are on our way again. . .

Chapter 7: . . ."Now the reader is probably thinking that we are real dummies to hike using trekking poles with killer wrist straps, and perhaps the reader is right. When I started backpacking I had to have a hiking stick just like Colin Fletcher. And it served me well for many years, one advantage being you can slide your hand up and down as the terrain changes. Then about eight years ago, a month after limping out of the Adirondacks on hobbled knees, there was an article in Backpacker: “Save Your Knees with Trekking Poles.” And they did, making it possible for us to continue these trips. Since then we have done very careful, ever more intensive strength training of all parts of our bodies and my knees are better than new, but we still wouldn’t dream of a trip like this without poles.

For one thing, they are light. Two, there are two. When you’re balancing on one foot, crossing a stream or a boulder field, they provide three-point support. Three, they telescope: short for uphill, long for down. Four, the pointed carbide tips are very secure even on wet rock. And five, the wrist straps. With a stick, you’re clutching it in your grip, so your forearm muscles may be all that’s holding you. With poles, all the weight goes on the strap around your wrist—your fingers only guide the pole in the right direction. My accident? Well, I was unlucky . . . and lucky. Anything can kill you in the wilderness, especially off trail in a waterless desert. According to Backpacker though, most accidents are of people cutting themselves with their own knives! Which I’ve done! But what really really scares me the most about our trips . . . are those trucks on Interstate 80.

Maybe the reader is also thinking, “What a jerk, crying out like that when he’s hardly even injured.” Well . . . I mean. . . . Actually, I have reflected on this and I am sure if I’d been with a man I would not have . . . been that way. I would have toughed it out, suffered in silence, and proved my masculinity. But being with a woman is different (though if it’d been earlier in our relationship and I been wanting to impress Anne . . .). . .

Anne in some canyon in Utah.

Black Rock Desert prior to Burning Man festivals. Too bad/so glad we missed them. This is the Nissan that made it to 212,000 miles before I totaled it in an ice storm — but it got me out of jury duty.

We had stopped feeding the birds a long time ago because of the bears, which the New York State Department of environmental conservation advises (for people living in densely wooded rural areas like us). But our neighbors to the west and the east still feed the bears — I mean the birds. I regularly see their scat in the yard and every few months I see them crossing the clearing to the northwest of our house. So last month I saw a baby, possibly a yearling, and presumably the mother crossing. But when the mother got halfway across she looked up at our house, and thought to herself, "Hey, maybe they've got a birdfeeder up there, too." So she changed direction and made straight for our front door. From there she went around to the garage, but then she came back to the living room window where I snapped this photo. It was fun up until now, but then she went up on the porch, climbed up on the bench on the right side of the porch and tried to get in the window — which was fully open! — right next to it! She even put her paw marks on the window. See below. At this point I started yelling at her, "Go away. Go away!" and banging two pieces of wood together… and she did at that point depart from the scene. I have since installed iron bars across that window — since I like to keep it open all summer — and the same with two basement windows. Haven't seen them since… and the neighbors keep feeding the bears — I mean the birds.

I sent this photo to the neighbor to the east (called Jack Jones in Cabeza). He replied: "Nice photo. Did you ask her to smile?" Me: "No. She looked like she was in a bad mood."

This was perhaps the last time I saw Steve (at my parents house), who introduced me to Bach’s Art of the Fugue. He moved on to Coltrane. I tried Coltrane. I returned to Bach. — July 1, 1970. We had bumped into each other in Grand Central Station on our way home to visit our parents. I had had my flunk out sesshin at the Zen Center the previous January after which I stopped going to the center. But I never stopped sitting. I always continued to sit. But I had thought that by shaving my head I would simplify my life and it would somehow inspire my practice. Fat chance. I probably only shaved it once.

Steve meanwhile was working on his PhD in nuclear physics, and this is what he was likely explaining to me at that moment of the photos. I think the expression on my face shows how dubious I was that this would lead to a complete understanding of… Everything. A significant amount of daily sitting meditation — by means of my non-method involving “free won’t” (just being with one’s own mind; see Cabeza, especially The Unfree Will chapter) — is utterly necessary for such, in my view. But the greatest works of music, especially those of Bach and Beethoven, can help provide direction.

Note "Starry Night" on the wall.

After six days of backpacking at higher elevations, carrying all our water (good exercise and builds moral fiber, too!) we were now goofing off, relatively speaking, on the seemingly flat — but rocky roller coaster when driving! — White Rim sandstone formation in the Maze district of Canyonlands National Park.

Directly across the Green River was the more widely known, not to mention widely traveled, White Rim Jeep Trail. Here there was nobody. Which was why we were here. Not there. The truck was parked at the edge of a sharp drop-off, and very sharply undercut — the harder sandstone providing a cap over the underlying softer shales — so a hundred feet down . . . there was naught but air. The numerous white slabs 500 feet below us made us hope the forces of molecular attraction would keep doing their job, preventing the slab—and us!— from falling into the abyss, at least for the next day or so.

Actually, here the white was getting tinged with a gorgeous gold —see

www.meaningofwilderness.com/maze-musical-offering for photos — enhancing its allure, and inspiring us for the upcoming modest hike, mostly following its rim. When we’d checked in, a Ranger had admonished us, when hiking off trail, to stay either on slick rock or in washes so as not to leave a permanent imprint of our sojourn. Following the rim this was no problem but returning I’d planned a shortcut over a spur of Ekker Butte. And sure enough, there was a cute little wash leading right up. And there, in the wash itself, was, despite there having been only a couple inches rain this year, a copious quantity of cute miniature wildflowers to delight our eyes. But before that, following the sandstone rim, there hadn’t been much. Until . . .

A huge pothole, 10-15 feet across, adopted by . . . a huge claret cup cactus. With a huge display of flowers . . . all in bloom.

Photo time. But. There’s always a but.

Our mini-weather radio had advised us to prepare for a big storm the following day. No concern for now, but its precursors of wondrous cirrus and cumulus clouds were beginning to fly across the sky and sun to the South. A most delightful backdrop for the cactus. But. Here comes the but: all the glorious blooms of the cactus were — most logically — facing the sun. While it was easy enough to capture them on film, the sky behind was a bland and boring blue. And the northern side with the spectacular sky behind was, you got it, also boring! No blooms at all.

What to do? Simple. Cheat. Which photographers have been doing, by any and all means possible, since the inception of their art. It’s just that with Photoshop it’s a whole ‘nother ballgame. I still shoot film, using the top-of-the-line Nikon circa 1972 passed down from my father, scanning the slides into my computer with a top-notch Nikon scanner— giving them the resolution of a 24 megapixel digital camera. I.e., not bad at all. I took six or eight exposures, crawling close on my belly for three or four of the cactus and then turning the other way, taking another three or four of the sky. My version of Photoshop allows one to select any part of the image in various ways, so . . . once home, after selecting the best exposures of each and making adjustments, I selected the boring sky, clicked delete, then the exciting one, clicked copy, then paste, did a little more fiddling (actually a lot more fiddling) and . . . voilà! One of my favorite photos.

“But that’s not the way it really was,” you say? Well, when we get home and I look at the photos in the computer I always tell Anne how bad they all are. Because they don’t seem nearly as nice as the way it really was. Theoretical physicist Brian Greene writes in The Fabric of the Cosmos, “The reality we experience is but a glimmer of the reality that is.” So maybe Photoshop helps make these pictures . . . a glimmer plus.

I should also note that I used my extreme wide angle lens in this photo, which even in vertical shots takes in much more sky than human vision is capable of. So you get the Big picture. Maybe a glimmer squared. But still just a glimmer.

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