Friday, April 10, 2009 - Elephant Butte Lake State Park, Elephant Butte NM
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Vultures at Roost, Percha Dam State Park, Arrey NM, March 26, 2009
After seeing Jane off at the Albuquerque Sunport this morning for her ride home to Fairbanks I headed back to Elephant Butte to hang out here for a few more days before I begin the long trek east to Red Rock for the summer.
Night camp
Site 32, South Monticello Point - Elephant Butte Lake State Park, Elephant Butte NM
- Verizon cell phone service - very good
- Verizon EVDO service - very good
- Find other references to Elephant Butte on this website
- List the nights I've camped here
- Go to the Elephant Butte Lake State Park website
- Get a Google map of this area
- Check the weather here
It was the Crickets
Now then: it isn't so much that one way of dying beats another, though that certainly is the case, but rather that when you KNOW the jig could be up any second or any decade -- it's the awareness that's important -- that just might make a difference. I'm like everybody else, I have these moments and then forget, lapsing back into "immortality." But there was a thing that happened in my back yard maybe 18 months before we split from Maryland that hit me as hard as seeing their president drop dead on stage must have hit those graduating seniors.
It was the crickets. I'd gone outside one warm fall evening to shut the garage door and suddenly realized I couldn't hear the crickets! No wait, I could, but only if I turned my head a certain way. Oh God, oh no: I had almost no high-frequency hearing in my right ear, or was it my left? That doesn't matter. The point is, a part of me had shut down permanently. No, it hadn't happened suddenly, but I had finally noticed, and that was hard to take. I'd never again hear crickets like I once had. Never! I walked back to the house in tears. All right, I'm sensitive. But I understood at once what all this meant.