Don't Shake Hands With The Cactus

McPhee Reservoir, Colorado

I like it here so much that I tried to sign up for another full week this morning. Can't do it. They're hooked into a national reservation system, and you can only do 4 days at a time from the hut at the entrance. Which I did. I guess I could go phone in a reservation for the place I'm in, but they want 9 dollars for that, and it takes 10 days to process. Welcome to the Bureaucracy of the Outdoors.

Best to take it one day at a time, like the AA: "Hello there. My name is Bob G, and I'm a camper. And I ain't giving it up."

Apart from that small disappointment, it's been a wonderful day already. And hey, it's only noon. I've been sitting in the wind-stirred shade of a pinon tree, pretending to read. I'm sucking on a slow beer in lieu of lunch, and studying all these animals that are ignoring me.

There's a lizard on a flat rock over there. Gray, with little brown hatch marks down his back. Every now and then his tail sweeps back and forth across the stone. Woo-hoo. Party Time in Lizard Land.

Me and the Liz, I think we've come to an understanding. There's a couple of tiny black flies that keep trying to fly down the neck of my beer. First they parade around the rim, and then want to dive right in. I wave them over in his direction. He's got a lightning tongue, if they ever get close enough.

Meanwhile I'll just have to drink faster than they do. Competition is a wonderful thing, they say. I'm not sure if these guys are thieves or entrepreneurs, though. Guess it depends on your point of view.

So far flies are the only wildlife around here that show much interest in me. And charming as they are, they just love me for my beer. Hummingbirds have discovered the feeder I hung up in the Juniper. They flash off to tell their friends. There's a fat mountain bluebird up there too, keeping an eye on things. Out over the canyon some sort of brown eagle rises and falls, sometimes showing the white under his wings as he veers off.

None of them pay me much mind. They have their own lives, about which, amazingly, they seem quite serious.

The cicadas, which rule the night with what I am told is a rhythmic frenzy of loud bug lust, are all worn out this morning. They lie on the ground like little brown sticks, and only move if you attempt to walk on them. Then they barely get out of your way.

I've had mornings like that, and for the same reason. It's been a while.

The only other thing that seems to have noticed me out here was a black-eared jackrabbit investigating camp when I came out this morning. Those are some serious ears. Maybe a foot long, sticking straight up. Dark, mild, attentive eyes. And unlike the chubby cottontails, this guy is built for speed. All legs, and lean. Nature's own Olympic Champion in the broken field run. Awkward looking, but this guy can move.

What was that saying from Watership Down? "If you catch me, you can eat me. But first you must catch me."

Good luck.

Speaking of eating, I nearly swallowed a fly just then. Gack. That's almost enough to make me give up beer in the morning. Almost.

All in all, the animals I have met here are relatively benign to humans. Plants are another matter. There's a lot of deadfall wood on this site, and downhill toward the dropoff. I went about collecting some for the evening campfire a few minutes ago, and was viciously attacked by an ear of cactus. Not the whole plant, thank goodness, or we wouldn't be having this conversation. Just this little round loose ear lying on the ground, maybe 4 inches across. The needles themselves were at least two inches long. I reached down to pick up a pile of dead branches, and got more than I bargained for.

It imbedded lightly, as if it merely intended to walk on stilts across the back my hand. Darn near made it too. But there's this tiny barb at the end of each needle that limits it's overall mobility, not to mention yours . Sharp as a woman's wit. Once it goes in, it doesn't come out.

I tried to just shake it off, and three more spines rotated around and stuck in, as though to thank me for my trouble. Don't ask me what a cactus gets out of this sort of intimate acquaintance. I assure you that it's unrequited love.

I had to drop the wood and carefully pull this thing off from the other side. Pop, pop, pop, pop. Tenacious devil.

I'm now reading, or at least holding, John Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces". My second time through, if I make it through.

Ooops, there goes the Liz. That's what I mean about this place. However good the book is, and it is, there's too much stuff going on to concentrate. The wind gets in your ears, and blows all those words away.

Hmmm. Echoes in there.

Time for a walk along the rim. If there happens to be one or two of you stuck in the clammy false comfort of air conditioning somewhere, I encourage you to cut loose and come on up. Bring beer and drop by. I'm somewhere downslope of the red Ford pickup. Campfire starts around 7, give or take an hour or two. Music provided by the Colorado Cicada Orchestra.

Don't shake hands with the cactus.

Unproductively yours,


Bob

Warnig! Doan Dri Dith Ad Home!

I was up bright and early this Sunday morning, loading up the leftover firewood, packing the uneasy chair, pissing off the hummingbirds by pouring out their breakfast, etc. Getting ready to leave. Almost finished.

The guy in the next site was doing the same thing. He saw me and hollered over to say I could have his firewood too, since he was going home to Albuquerque and he didn't have any use for it.

That's how it always starts. An offer too good to be true. I get them all the time.

So there I was, loading up a pile of wood onto my left arm while he was bent over under the overhang of his fifth wheel, putting something away.

"AUGH! UNH! OH! OW! DAMMID!" I dropped the wood and turned around, and here he comes holding his hand under his nose, blood dripping all down his shirt.

"Man! What happened to you?"

"Mmmf!" He was staggering around in circles.

"Sit down here. I'll get your wife."

"NO! Doan."

"What? You're bleeding!"

"Juh gif me a mimit..."

He did seem to be recovering, and I saw the blood was mostly all over his hand. "Geeze! What happened?"

"You wudn't beleef id."

"Try me."

He sighed, obviously collecting himself.

"Jud doan tell ma wife, ogay?"

"Ogay. I mean okay. What happened?"

"I puhld ob da combardmint door, see? An I balanthed id on mah head. Oh Jethus. I cain belief dis."

"Okay. Take it easy. You balanced it on your head?"

"Yeth. An den ah backed off and id fell down and hid my tid."

"Your tid?"

"Mah TID! Mah lef tid, if you haf to know!" He rubbed his chest tenderly with his clean hand. "Damiddamiddamid....."

"You hit your left tit?"

"Yeth! It HURDTH!"

I waited a beat, but I couldn't help myself.

"How did that make your nose bleed?"

"Cauth ah pushed tha door off mah tid."

"You did what?"

"Ah pushed up. Ah hid tha door up an id hid me in da nodse. Ith not funny. Jethuth, doan tell ma wife."

"Uh, okay. You all right now?"

"Yeth. Thangth."

"You sound funny. Can you breathe okay?"

"Yeth, yeth. Ah bid ma tongue. Ahm okay, ahm okay."

I am proud to say that I made it back to the trailer before the tears came. I forgot all about the firewood, and I didn't want to go back over there. I didn't know the guy that well. I was afraid he might... who knows? The last thing I saw as I drove away was him heading down to the river. I guess to clean up.

Call me overcautious. But I just didn't want to be there when he discovered the fine line between washing and drowning.

O yeah. The required warning label. No, it's not about the 'balancing the door on your head and mashing your tit" trick. Nor "busting your own nose and biting your tongue, all in a split second" bit. I doubt there are many of you out there coordinated enough to accomplish all that anyway.

Certainly I'm not. And I'm not going to go on about keeping dangerous things like compartment doors out of the hands of children.

Here's the warning: If by any chance one among you is able to injure yourself in a similar manner, just keep your mouth shut. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT TELL ANYONE ABOUT IT.

'Cause if you do, sure as hell some asshole is going to put it on the internet.


Bob

Hummingbird Wars

Near Dolores, Colorado

I am camped this morning right next to the endless rumbling roar of the west Dolores river. It is around 70 degrees. Sun sparkles on the foaming, cold, fast-moving water. Along the bank to the right, fat bees drone lovingly above the stubby golden stamina of the sunflowers. Omnipresent gnats tower lightly in their multitudes, dawdling in clouds above river and bank in the warm honeyed air, stirred slightly by an occasional cool breeze sneaking out from under the pines. All seems idyllic.

And it would be, if it weren't for the hummingbird war.

When I put the feeder out yesterday, I noticed there were lots of these guys around. Maybe a dozen, different colors. Mostly a light shimmering green, a few black with a whitish chest and throat. One had brownish-orange tail feathers you could only see as he dipped and spread them to slow for a landing.

I say landing. I never see them on the ground. Mostly they perch on nothing at all, in the middle of the air. Sometimes they rest on tiny twigs in the trees. But not for long.

My Audubon Field Guide says they never feed while perching, but these fellows never got around to reading the Guide. They are perfectly happy to perch and drink from the bright red feeder I found at the hardware store in Lake City. They seem to be attracted to red. I caught one of them trying to extract nectar from the screw holes in the lenses of my rear running lights. And he wasn't quickly discouraged.

Maybe I put too much sugar in the water, but I think these guys were hyper long before I met them.

Mostly they are tiny things, perhaps a couple of inches long. Fearless little bits of fluff. Insubstantial animate darts. Were you to snatch them out of the air, they'd vaporize into featherdust and a smear of phosphorescence on your fingers. Like lightning bugs.

If you could snatch them.

It is uncanny how quick they are. In flight they are a kind of whisper in the air, more heard than seen. Prrrrrrrt. A blur, more memory than sense.

Compared to hummingbirds, you and I are about as mobile as an adolescent redwood.

They seem to like to buzz me from behind, tickling my ears in passing, making me duck, counting coup. They are curious. One came right in the open door of the trailer, no doubt shopping for something nice in red to take home to the wife.

Often I can only catch them out of the corner of my eye, a spark of iridescence in the empty air. Maybe I saw something. Maybe not.

And then - prrrrt - there he is, a foot from my gawping face. Prrrrt. There he is again, a couple of feet to the left. Prrt. He moves in closer, and for some reason I remember the bottle of wine I had after dinner last night, and wonder just how red my eyes are this morning.

Prrrrrt. It backs off to the right. As though triangulating. The torso is perfectly still, upright between the invisible whir of wings. Suddenly there is a chill in the air. The Angel of Death might look like that, hovering immobile above the hospital bed, ready to carry off my fluttering soul like a bug in his beak.

Only bigger. Surely bigger.

I find myself blinking and swallowing, mentally murmuring a short involuntary prayer of gratitude for glasses. If it weren't for presbyopia, there wouldn't be a thing between my watery eyes and that needle-like bill but avian forebearance. And study as I might in the long moment given me, I could find no pity in those blank, black, beady little eyes. Not a bit.

Prrrrrrrt.

Gone. Just not my day, I guess.

There were lots more of them at the feeder yesterday. Then, as the evening wore on, there were fewer, and they seemed to come in pairs. One would approach, then another would swoop down beside him. Then a sharp chirp and a tangle of wings, and off they'd go. Nobody got a drink.

After a while, I noticed that the one doing the swooping was the same little bird every time. Black wings, white chest, a nappy little triangular brown mark beneath the beak. Like a goatee. Fierce. He'd stand guard up there in the tree, giving the feeder, and occasionally me, that alternate unblinking one-eyed glare that birds specialize in. He didn't drink himself. I guess he'd had all he could hold. But nobody else was getting any if he could help it. He'd chase'em off and circle back to stand guard again.

I took him for a Republican.

Over and over again. Dive, chirp, flutter, chase, turn, perch, and watch. After a bit I went over and moved the feeder to the other end of the awning. This pissed him off, and he swooped me. Held me. Interrogated me. Let me off with a warning.

Proprietary little pest.

Then I got to reading, and eventually it got dark. I started a small fire and mostly forgot about him.

Until morning. Sitting outside over breakfast, I saw him again. Same guy, I think. Same beady eyes. Same goatee. Still in the same place, still keeping watch. Was he there all night?

Another bird approached the feeder. I waited for the swoop. Nothing. He eyed the intruder. It left, and another approached. Green back. Pretty. No swoop. What the hell? While the new one was drinking, he fluttered down, hovered a bit, and took a drink out of the opposite side. Hover and peek. Hover and peek.

Then the two of them flew off together, but it didn't look like a chase.

Did somebody declare a truce and not inform me? Did he justly get his ass whipped? Did he find an amazing unsought Grace, somewhere in the night?

It's a mystery to me. Beyond my poor power to add or detract. Honest Abe. So if there are ornithologists among you, perhaps one will help me out here.

All I can say is that there definitely was a war. And I was briefly held for observation as an enemy combatant. I never got to see a lawyer. Just a judge.

Eventually I was summarily released, and now the war appears to be over. I'm just trying to get my life back together.

In hummingbird years, decades may have gone by while I slept. Arrogant empires rose and fell. Who knows what secret negotiations may have taken place, while I dreamed of tiny drumsticks?

But I definitely must have missed something, because there's an unaccountable peace in the pines again today. The river runs right by it.


Bob