why i like barack obama

he picks good people. he's had the same campaign staff from the get go. mccain is on his third set of advisers. not to mention what's become painfully obvious--joe biden is much more qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency than sarah palin is. obama picked someone substantive.

given the intricacies of understanding what is going on in the financial sector, i want someone who's smart and finds good people to come up with good plans and solutions.

i also like how obama listens to others. i don't think we need a "maverick" president. we need someone with the temperament and skills to hire and seek counsel from smart people, listen to what they have to say, think his way through it, and make good decisions.

with the $700 billion bailout request for wall street from bush, i keep remembering a pickup i often saw parked on south congress for several years, earlier in the bush administration. it had painted on its tailgate the following:

bush & cheney = pigs at the trough

more to come...

perspective on financial crisis

kathleen writes: It's helpful to me to see our own financial crisis in the light of this one. We are a long way from this, I believe, with far more resources to deal with our problems than these people have. I believe we will recover short of this close to absolute bottom.

click the title of this post to read the story to which she refers.

speaking truth to (and about) power

thanks to keith fail for sending me this link. this is an interview by bill moyers of col. andrew j. bacevich, who has written a book called "the limits of power" about what's wrong in america and who's to blame. it's not just politicians, folks. he also talks about what needs to change.

bacevich is a conservative, yet i found myself agreeing with a lot of what he sees as the root causes of how this country got into the mess we're in now.

click the title of this post to go to the video and transcript.

a british take on the US economic crisis

"a shattering moment in america's fall from power... the end of american dominance is over."

john gray is a british political philosopher. according to wikipedia, he currently sees the left/right divide as unviable, tends toward "green thought," drawing on lovelock's gaia theory.

well worth reading for a learned and global point of view. click the title of this post to read the article.

fall gardening

yesterday i wore a sore into the palm of my left hand, digging with a hand spade in my garden in an effort to reach the "nuts" of nutgrass and eradicate it. alas, i might have gotten a third of the nuts. those nuts are strung together underground like a web connected by thin roots, and it's virtually impossible to get them all.

anyway, i planted green onions, scarlet nantes carrots, chioggia beets (can't wait--cut one open and it has red and white stripes, and they are allegedly so sweet they taste like candy), and red-stemmed chard in the bed where the nutgrass was/will come back.

that bed already had cauliflower, cabbage, sorrel, fennel, tulsi (holy basil), society garlic, and lots of regular garlic.

i still had packages of seeds left to plant, so i extended my original circular plot with a couple of bags of compost and planted spinach and a speckled romaine. need to get another bag and plant the lollorossa lettuce, a red beauty.

planting technique: make a furrow in the compost, dust with bone and feather meal, plant seeds, cover with perlite, water. perlite keeps the seeds damp so that more will sprout sooner, and once they sprout, the fertilizer will give them a running start. that's the presupposition--will report back on results.

the no-dig bed of broccoli, collards, mustard, and kale is doing well. the bed is starting to settle, and one area has developed a tilt to the west as the layers of compost, hay, and straw surrender to gravity and time. the little temporary fence of chicken wire should keep it from collapsing.

made tomato soup last night with basil and oregano from the garden. yum~!

follow-up on kidney stones

my beloved and magical acupuncturist/rolfer/yoga coach/nutritional coach (unnamed because she isn't taking any new clients) recommended taking a supplement called "stone free" after having had a kidney stone.

apparently the chances are, if you have one, you'll have more. i certainly did NOT enjoy the experience! it was very painful. i visualize them dissolving.

you can get stone free at whole foods and other stores with good supplements like people's pharmacy.

patrice also recommended eating kidney, aduki, and black beans, ume paste and vinegar, and lots of greens. shiitake mushrooms, black fungus (wood ear mushrooms), and "all the healing shrooms" (in patrice's words) are also kidney strengtheners. and did i say lots of greens? lots of greens!

review of 12 states presentation

my friend and fellow NLPer katie raver attended the meetup at which i finally gave my presentation on the 12 states of attention on tuesday, september 23, and she blogged about it.

click the title of this post to read what she wrote, or read below:

Thursday, September 25, 2008
Mary Ann Reynolds & The 12 States of Attention
NLP Practitioner Mary Ann Reynolds spoke at last Tuesday’s Austin NLP Meetup. She blogged the exercises and stories for her presentation, and the links below lead to the related entries, or websites for Tom Best and Nelson Zink.

Mary Ann Reynolds managed to succeed at the impossible task of engaging advanced NLP students and beginners, all in the same room – by using a foundation of existing NLP materials, making them her own, and expanding upon them.

And she did that with Nelson Zink’s 12 States of Attention. After hearing Tom Best read from Nelson’s book The Structure of Delight during her NLP Practitioner class, she bought the book and started playing. She took a Nightwalking class. She researched how the eye works. She started practicing peripheral vision on the Austin greenbelt. And she started experimenting with the 12 states.

Mary Ann did several things that new presenters could learn from. First, she did that thing we all know we should do but never actually do: she gave herself plenty of time to prepare – months, in fact. She also got together with an experienced speaker and talked through her ideas. Nice. She copiously wrote out each of her exercises and stories for the night. And she did a practice run, by herself, to work out timing.

Very elegantly, she started out by talking about a recent trip to West Texas, lingering upon each of the 12 states. I do love a good isomorphic story.

One of my favorite exercises was the astonishingly simple Rapidly Moving Through the 12 States. It’s an easy way to practice specific examples of each of the 12 states, and could be done in a minute or two every day.

She also did a brief hypnotic induction about, I assume, the 12 states. I really can’t remember anything except a very clear vision of myself and my friends on the beach in Hana, Maui, under the full moon, brimming with joy. That was certainly worth a little amnesia!

One of the things I adore about Mary Ann is her unapologetic demeanor. The 12 states of Attention and Nightwalking are… a little weird. Really, anything that expands the filters with which you take in the world, that literally expands your ability to perceive – could fit in the category of weird for many people. And Mary Ann simply pays it no mind. She puts on her “peripheral training device” (a baseball cap with a rod attached to the bill, suspending a glow-in-the-dark ball out in front) to show people how it works. She describes the 12 states as if she were describing car mechanics. She has you stare at your thumb nail for a full minute. And she does it all with a twinkle in her eye, knowing that you’ll discover something wonderful, too.

Her confidence and presence are certainly unusual for a first-time presenter. She even had a couple of good belly laughs during her presentation! I don’t know where this petite, poised powerhouse is headed with NLP or presenting, but I sure hope to be there for what’s next.

12 states of attention: multiple states at once

Can you experience more than one state at a time? Wanna try it? We'll start with three states at a time.


VAKEB—see everything in front of you, hear all sounds, feel your skin

VAKEN—see one object, hear one sound, feel one part of your body

VAKIB—imagine a sunset, the sound of crickets, feeling peaceful

VAKIN—imagine threading a needle, hearing a bell, and feeling warmth in your chest


Here’s another way to combine three states:


VEB and VEN—see the room in front of you and notice one thing

AEB and AEN—hear all the sounds in the environment and focus on one particular sound

KEB and KEN—feel all of your skin while feeling your butt on the chair

VIB and VIN—imagine a giant tic-tac-toe board superimposed on the space in front of you and place an O in the middle square

AIB and AIN—imagine the sound of applause while hearing a fanfare

KIB and KIN—imagine feeling excited while taking longer inhalations


Now let’s practice 4 states at a time:


VEB/VEN/VIB/VIN--see this space in front of you and simultaneously notice one thing while imagining a giant tic-tac-toe board superimposed on the space in front of you and placing an O in the middle square

AEB/AEN/AIB/AIN--hear all the sounds in this environment and focus on one particular sound at the same time you imagine the sound of applause and a fanfare

KEB/KEN/KIB/KIN-- feel all of your skin while feeling your butt on the chair and imagine feeling excited while inhaling


How about trying 6 states at once?


VAKEB/VAKEN--see everything in front of you, hear all sounds, feel your skin, see one object, hear one sound, feel your butt on the chair

VAKIB/VAKIN--imagine a sunset, the sound of crickets, feeling excited, while imagining yourself threading a needle, hearing a bell, and feeling warmth inside your chest


for the really brave, here are all 12 states at once (or as close as i could get):


Look externally into the room. Look broadly and at the same time, at one object right in front of you.

Superimpose a giant tic-tac-toe grid in front of you. You’re going to fill this grid with Xs, except for the middle square.

Now imagine an X appearing on the grid. As it appears, make a little sound to yourself (eep) and simultaneously clap your hands.

Now imagine another X appearing, hearing the internal sound and clapping. Hear everyone making claps.

Feel excitement building about being able to do this as you notice your breath.

Continue doing all of this until you’ve filled all but the center square.

Now see the entire grid in front of you. Stand up, raise your arms, and as you put an O in the center square, dance with your whole body, including your index fingers, and say TA DA! at the same time you hear a fanfare.

12 states of attention: suggestions for practice

This is a handout for my 12 States of Attention presentation.


• Practice staying in a single state for a minute at a time. Add time as you gain mastery.
• Practice switching rapidly through all 12 states. Write a brief script and memorize it. Change the order if it gets stale.
• Notice which state(s) you’re in in any given situation.
• Notice which state(s) others are in.
• Practice difficult states to strength neurology.
• Experience an event or situation in as many states as possible.
• Notice the qualities of each state.
• Add submodalities to each state.
• Choose a state and focus on it for an hour or a day.
• Learn to shift states when feeling bored or stuck.
• Notice which state might be most useful in any given situation.
• If you’re feeling pain (KIN), go broad and feel that amount of pain spread through your whole body. Start with minor pains. It will take practice, but it makes pain much more bearable.
• To move out of depression (which is XIN), first go external (XEN), then go broad (XEB), then go internal (XIB). For instance, if you are hearing a narrow internal voice, first focus on single external sounds, then open up and let all sounds come in, and then go back internal (construct or remember a broad experience of sounds).

video of rain

this is lovely. click the title to go to the article and watch the video.

12 states of attention: peripheral vision

We have two types of vision, foveal and peripheral. Foveal vision is focused, sees colors and details well. It works really well for threading needles and pulling out splinters. Peripheral vision sees contrast between light and dark, patterns, and movements really well.

Foveal vision uses the cones in the eyes; peripheral vision uses rods. We have many, many more rods than cones, yet modern life rarely offers us opportunities to use peripheral vision--so we may just be using a fraction of our visual potential. Peripheral vision may be closer to how animals see, and it certainly would have come in handy for survival in nature, especially at night.

There's a trick to getting the most out of your peripheral vision. If you hold your thumb up 12" in front of your face and look at the thumbnail, you will notice that you are slightly cross-eyed. Everything beyond your thumb looks doubled.

Practice this and see if you can hold your eyes on that spot while removing your thumb. If you lose it, put your thumb up again and gaze at the nail.

But peripheral vision is not about gazing at your thumbnail. Notice how much more visual information comes into your field of vision while holding your eyes in the peripheral gaze. Extend your arms out to your sides and wiggle your fingers. Move your arms until you can barely see your fingers. It's close to 180 degrees! Notice the vertical expansion of your vision.

Also notice any shifts in physiological state when you shift between peripheral and foveal vision. Some people feel their center of gravity move down. Some feel chakras open up, especially the third eye.

It's interesting to note that in meditation instruction, the teacher may instruct students to move their eyes as if they are gazing at a point in between their eyebrows while they sit. Some images of the Buddha show him with his eyes slightly crossed and gazing down, eyelids half open. Yoga instructors may advise students to use a soft gaze or soft focus.

These are all pointing at the same experience. Peripheral vision has its own physiological state, and it is calm yet alert and grounded.

Read what Nelson Zink has to say about it on navaching.com. Go to Hawkeen Training and read the page on Nightwalking.

I've done nightwalking with Tom Best, who is offering it again in November 2008. Check it out at www.nlpoptions.com. White light destroys peripheral vision, so it's best to do on a moonless or overcast night. You'd be amazed at how well you can see just using peripheral vision. You can learn to have faith in it, that somehow when in the peripheral state of awareness, your body just knows how to walk and be safe without focusing on the path ahead.

I practice peripheral vision from time to time with a "rodball"--a device Tom and Bobbi Best created. One day I was walking on the greenbelt in a ballcap with my rodball attached. I passed several people, and no one said anything. Then one woman and I crossed paths, and she asked, "What's that on your hat?" Pure curiosity. I told her it was a peripheral vision training device. "Cool," she said.

I also practice it at odd moments without the rodball when I don't need to use foveal vision. Walking down long hallways at work is a good place to practice, and it's especially handy in elevators. I don't feel the lurch.

Unusual phenomena may occur, such as a feeling that even while walking, you are in the same place and everything else is moving past you. It's almost like floating and feels incredibly alive. There's no fatigue. Your timeline may shift from linear time to momentary time.

Also, at night you may be able to see phosphorescence around plants in the lower part of your visual field.

What do you notice using peripheral vision?

12 states of attention: notice what you didn't notice exercise

This exercise implicitly makes use of the broad/narrow distinction of the 12 states. Tom Best used it in evolutionary NLP training. See link to Best Resources.

Have fun!


Sit comfortably and notice what you see externally.

Breathe and return to center. Look again, noticing what you didn’t hear the first time.

Repeat 3 times.

Notice what you hear externally.

Breathe and return to center. Listen again, noticing what you didn’t hear the first time.

Repeat 3 times.

Notice what you are feeling externally.

Breathe and return to center. Notice again what you didn’t feel the first time.

Repeat 3 times.

Now externally see, hear, and feel, all at the same time.

Now notice what images you see internally.

Breathe and return to center. Notice what you didn’t see the first time.

Repeat 3 times.

Notice what you hear internally.

Breathe and return to center. Now notice what you didn’t hear the first time.

Repeat 3 times.

Notice what you feel internally.

Breathe and return to center. Notice what you didn’t feel the first time.

Repeat 3 times.

Then internally, see, hear, and feel, all at the same time.


Credit: Best Resources/Texas Institute of NLP, Evolutionary NLP, 2008.

12 states of attention: rapidly moving through them

12 States of Attention Rapidly.

Spend 5 second in each state. This exercise takes a minute to do and so it’s easy to find time to do it daily—in line at the grocery store, stopped at a red light…

See everything that’s in your visual field.

Notice one small or distant item in front of you.

Let all sounds in your environment come into your ears.

Focus your hearing on one sound.

Feel the skin of your entire body.

Feel just the soles of your feet.

Imagine a beautiful sunset.

Imagine a bird flying by.

Imagine an orchestra tuning up.

Just hear the trumpet.

Notice how relaxed your body is.

Notice the feeling in the center of your chest.


Practice every day. Create a script with one or two words for each state and memorize these 12 words. For instance:

room
light switch
all sounds
one sound
all skin
soles
sunset
bird
orchestra
trumpet
relax
chest

If you get bored, change the content.

When you can move from state to state rapidly, practice them in a different order.

12 states of attention: moving through them randomly

Spend 10 seconds in each state.


Wiggle your left big toe KEN

Look at the whole ceiling VEB

Imagine a roomful of people chanting OM AIB

Imagine feeling peaceful KIB

Hear this bell AEN

Notice an electric outlet VEN

Imagine the view from a mountaintop VIB

Hear the sounds in this environment AEB

Feel the air move through your nostrils KIN

Imagine saying your name AIN

Imagine the tip of a pencil VIN

Feel the temperature in this room KEB

12 states of attention: presentation description

i'm excited! my presentation on the 12 states of attention at the september austin NLP meetup has been announced. here's the description (and you can click the title of this post to go to the austin NLP meetup site with directions):

May I Have Your Attention, Please?

Thanks, and now that I have it, that will be the topic of the September meetup!

If as the Hawaiian shamans say, energy flows where attention goes, we
can polish our energetic pipelines by attending to attention. An NLP
cornerstone is that we pay attention primarily through our visual,
auditory, and kinesthetic (VAK) senses. Additional distinctions refine
each of these senses, giving us 12 states of attention.

Join me for an interactive presentation on the 12 states of attention,
based on the work of NLP practitioner and therapist Nelson Zink, author
of The Structure of Delight and creator of the website navaching.com.

In an engaging and playful way, we will:

• learn what the 12 states of attention are
• practice each state
• practice shifting from state to state
• practice combining states
• notice which states are most powerful for us
• share our experiences using this new framework

We will explore both consensual and individual realities, and we will
learn which states are most likely to accompany happiness. We can learn
ways to get unstuck from unpleasant states and experiment with these
new “mind toys” so that we never need to be bored or depressed again.
Learning the 12 states of attention will increase your choices and
enrich your life.

Mary Ann Reynolds is an Austin NLP practitioner, having studied both
NLP and evolutionary NLP through Best Resources/Texas Institute of NLP.
Her varied education — degrees from the University of Oklahoma, and UT
Austin and certifications in technical writing, InterPlay leadership,
and NLP — contributes to her work as a publisher, editor, and writer
and to her sense of adventure and playfulness. Mary Ann is a long-time
practitioner of yoga, and she counts Spirit, health, and personal
transformation among her abiding interests.

Tuesday September 23, 2008
7 - 9:30PM
The Unity Center
$10 suggested donation

12 states of attention: my trip to west texas

In July, I took my first trip to west Texas. Driving out there, I noticed the landscape gradually change from hills, to mesa, to flat lands with occasional mountains. Sometimes I’d see a car approaching in the distance or a buzzard circling.

I heard the sound of the tires on the road, and then later I put on a CD and listened to poetry.

As I was driving, I noticed it was hot and adjusted the air conditioner. i enjoyed feeling the cool air blow on my face.

We went to a star party at the McDonald Observatory. As I was falling asleep that night, I vividly remembered that sky full of stars, especially the brightness of Jupiter low in the western sky.

Later I remembered the hearing sounds of kids shouting and splashing in the pool at Balmorhea State Park and a mechanical noise that I couldn’t identify.

I like camping, but after 3 nights in a tent, I anticipated crawling under the covers and feeling my whole body relax as my head hitting the pillow. Ah!


as you can infer, i hope, the 12 states of attention are states we already use. this is just a conscious framework for it.

twitter

okay, i'm on twitter! only it keeps crashing safari as soon as i open it.

does anyone know what's up with that?

12 states of attention: overview

i'll be doing a presentation on september 23 at the austin NLP meetup on the topic of the 12 states of attention. these were named, though not invented, by a man named nelson zink, who wrote a delightful book called "the structure of delight." he also has a website, www.navaching.com.

the 12 states come from the 3 major representation systems (i.e., senses), visual (V), auditory (A), and kinesthetic (K).

in addition, zink makes a couple of more refinements. each of these states can be either internal or external (I or E), and they can also be narrow or broad (N or B)--and anywhere in between--a sliding scale.

so we have these 12 states as ways we use our attention:

VEB--visual external broad, like watching a sunset, seeing a landscape, a starry sky

VEN--visual external narrow, foveal vision, focusing on one object--a ship on the horizon, a bird in the sky

AEB--auditory external broad, like walking into a party and hearing many conversations at once, hearing an orchestra tune up, a stadium full of people cheering

AEN--auditory external narrow, like picking up a single word in those many conversations, hearing just the trumpet, hearing one person's clapping

KEB--kinesthetic external broad, like feeling sweaty, feeling your clothing against your skin, feeling wet, feeling the wind on your skin

KEN--kinesthetic external narrow, feeling your butt on the seat of a chair, the soles of your feet in your shoes, a hair tickling your neck, a fly landing on your arm

VIB--visual internal broad, remember seeing a beautiful sunset, view from a mountaintop, remember looking at the ocean's horizon

VIN--visual internal narrow, imagine seeing a bird flying by, seeing a distant car, remember seeing a ship far away

AIB--auditory internal broad, imagine the sound of a stadium full of people applauding, the sound of a motor, remember the sound of rain on a tin roof

AIN--auditory internal narrow, remember the sound of a trumpet, imagine hearing a pin drop, remember a dripping sound

KIB--kinesthetic internal broad, feeling happy, feeling excited, feeling grief, feeling relaxed

KIN--kinesthetic internal narrow, feeling the pain of a paper cut, feeling a rock in your shoe, feeling the air moving in your nostrils


notes:

the internal auditory and visual states are either remembered or constructed. (some say memories are constructed.)

the external states are being present in the here and now.

internal kinesthetic states can be here and now, and remembered or constructed.

the skin is the boundary for internal and external.

zink claims that there are physiological differences between broad and narrow states.


things to notice:

notice the difference between internal and external. do you sense a boundary?

notice the difference between broad and narrow.

notice which states are hard and which are easy.

notice if you take detours. for instance, to imagine the sound of a stadium of people cheering, do you first need to imagine seeing it?

i'm just kidney

got back from west texas saturday evening. sunday morning woke before 7 with a back ache. rolled on my spine aligner, which didn't help. soaked in hot water with epsom salts. didn't help. put arnica on it. didn't help. took low-dose aspirin. didn't help. massaged it. didn't help.

at first i thought i slept funny. then i thought i was having a muscle spasm from driving for 8 hours the day before.

the pain kept worsening, and i had a couple of bouts of nausea. i called the after-hours clinic at 9:30, gave symptoms, they said come in at 10:30, it's most likely a kidney stone.

drove myself there. by then i'm obviously in pain, moving very slowly. they took blood and urine to analyze, came back saying i had blood in my urine, and it was probably a kidney stone.

they said they could give me medication for the pain, but i couldn't drive on it, so i called my daughter to pick me up later. got a big shot in the butt of pain/anti-nausea medicine and felt waves of not caring about the pain wash over me... detailed images like dream scenes. they brought me a blanket and turned out the lights while they waited for the blood test... which finally came back normal.

the doc wrote me a prescription for vicodin and gave me a strainer. the doctor kept telling me things to do, and i kept telling her to write it down because i wasn't lucid enough to be responsible. dear lela picked me up and took me to the pharmacy and then home at 2:30.

and then i slept, took vicodin, slept, drank water, slept, peed a couple of times, and slept more until 10:30 monday morning, when i woke up. forgot to use the strainer before then. still nauseous occasionally. felt slow, sluggish, unbalanced.

finally ate monday evening, had lost 5 pounds in 2 days. vicodin is harsh on the stomach. started lengthening time between doses.

tuesday morning i went to see my regular doctor. i felt better, still some back pain. he had another urine sample analyzed, still blood in it. went for a cat scan. they put contrast liquid into my veins and looked for blockages. doc called later, said no blockages appeared.

so, huh. either i never had a kidney stone and it was something else, or i had one and it passed when i didn't use the strainer, or i had one and it dissolved, which i kept visualizing, after googling kidney stones and seeing that they are sharp-edged crystals--not something you want in your kidney or especially going down your ureter to your bladder. cringe!

i spent some time just breathing white light into the sore place and visualizing kidney stone dissolving. i did pico-pico breathing and then did my meditation using a healing mantra, "dear all healing energies, i love you. please heal my pain. thank you." put an ice pack under back and laid on it for awhile. visualized little pacman type cells eating up whatever didn't belong to my highest health and leaving behind clean glowing tissues.

feeling finally free of pain, i worked on my fall garden tuesday afternoon, creating a 10' x 3' no-dig garden of newspaper, bone and feather meal, alfalfa hay, coastal hay, and compost, fenced with chicken wire, ready to plant this weekend. felt great to do something constructive.

back to work yesterday, wednesday, after a week off and 3 days of being under par to say the least. no longer taking vicodin. felt sluggish and cranky, came home and took aleve and slept a couple of hours, then went out with k j for mexican food at polvo's.

today i felt back to normal, finally. i got my buoyancy and resiliency back, the light at the end of the tunnel of "ordeals". yippee! now i'll just be drinking a lot of water with lemon and also cranberry juice to dissolve any other stones that may be lurking in my kidneys so as not to have to experience that kind of pain again.

west texas rain

linaka joy, my traveling companion to maui last december and january, and i took another trip together, this time out to west texas. it seems that i just can't get enough of that area, once i finally went out there.

we drove out last wednesday, stopping at the caverns of sonora on the way. if you haven't been, i recommend going. these caverns are 95% living, and they ask you not to touch anything, as oil from human skin changes chemistry of rock formations and can kill them.

wow, wow, wow. i felt like prostrating myself several times in respect for mother earth for creating such a wondrous work as these caverns.

we went down to 150 feet below ground. our tour guide, bill, was an experienced caver who could talk about how the caverns formed--something about two elements combining to make sulphuric acid, which ate away stone and left giant holes.

and the formations! stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws, popcorn, bacon, butterfly wings... pretty amazing.

in some places, the rocks were colored darker. bill said it was humic acid from decaying plants on the surface dripping down. it's interesting to know how what happens on the surface trickles down.

we saw where a butterfly wing formation had been broken off by some very unconscious previous visitor. bill said they knew who had done it--and the guy lied and said he didn't do it--to the texas rangers!--after bragging about it to friends. it'll catch up to him sooner or later in some form or another.

on to balmorhea state park, one of the best spring-fed swimming pools of all time. not as cold as barton springs, with many, many more fish, including big black catfish! some i estimated to weigh 4 pounds. had it all to myself for about 15 minutes that evening.

our cabin was nice--CCC built in the depression, adobe structure, kitchenette. (warning: take your own dishes and cooking utensils--they provide none.) two big queen size beds.

we sat outside and watched a storm off to the north that evening and heard coyotes in the distance, and dogs responding. good sleep.

in the morning, we drove to fort davis and into the davis mountains state park. drove up skyline drive and hiked around a couple of high spots. i spotted a natural rock arch from the first spot and received information that i needed to get a rock from that arch. it seemed inaccessible from on high, so we backtracked and i climbed a cliff to find a triangular white rock under the arch.

then through fort davis to alpine, then marfa and on to presidio. went through shafter, quite beautiful and high. presidio is on the border. it was raining most of this drive. we had to take a two-lane road to get to chinati hot springs. a sign warned of low water crossings. we went through a few until we got to one that gave us pause.

i waded out into the water. it was moving fast, maybe 10 inches deep. we waited and realized it was rising. marking the edge with rocks, we got out and went rock hunting in the now very light rain. after a while, a school bus plowed through the water, followed by a large pickup and then a small pickup. we followed and made it through...

and through several more low water crossings...including one with invisible potholes that we watched the small pickup get stuck in and finally find a good path, which we followed...until we reached one that just seemed scary in a honda civic. that was when we turned back.

linaka joy cracked me up. water beads up on my car's windshield, and she was watching little beads of water try to make it to the top of the windshield without being swiped by a wiper. laughing out loud and cheering when they made it. like she says, she comes with her own entertainment!

back to alpine for dinner at penny's diner. made a reservation at the best western in fort davis. called chinati hot springs to cancel. they had a full labor day weekend booked. i hope everyone was able to make it through.

best western did not have the charm of balmorhea but it sufficed.

friday morning we checked out, ate breakfast in fort davis, walked around the gardens of the hotel limpia, and drove to the chihuahua desert research center and botanical gardens on the road to alpine. lovely place. then we drove the gorgeous 75-mile loop west of fort davis. linaka hadn't seen it before; i'd discovered it on my july trip. stopped to eat at a roadside picnic area, made ourselves salads that were delicious.

the rock formations in the davis mountains have a signature--tall columnar rocks of a brown stone with little or no vegetation on them stand like sentinels. i thought of them as rock people, guardians of the land.

on up to the mcdonald observatory. we watched hummingbirds vie for a place at the feeder on their patio. it was so cold (like 60 degrees), i bought a sweatshirt--in august! it has the winter constellations in the northern hemisphere in glow-in-the-dark ink, and upside down so i can look from my shirt to the sky! will come in handy in maui on haleakala in october.

back to balmorhea for our last night. we were able to upgrade to a kitchenette unit. this was on the inside near a waterfall. made friends of the swallows nesting on our porch. more people there since it was now friday night of labor day weekend. in the morning, watched black catfish swim up to the waterfall and be swept away, only to regroup and try again.

we counted how many animals we encountered: coyotes (only heard), black catfish, small silver fish, soft-shell turtle, water snake, deer, road runner, quail, hummingbirds, spotted ground squirrels, butterflies, lizards, flies, buzzards, kingfisher... and so many rocks, and plants, and fresh cool air, and water! water as rain, mist, cloud, pool, canal, arroyo... and cloudscapes, landscapes... so rejuvenating.

we took a longer way back, through menard and mason and llano, to see part of the hill country less traveled. great trip! hope to do it again before too long.