Saturday, May 1, 2010 - Clayton Lake State Park, Clayton NM
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Dawn at Clayton Lake, Clayton Lake State Park, Clayton NM, May 2, 2010
I like this park - a lot. Even if there is no Verizon cell or internet service. Even in the light of the internet withdrawal I'm suffering. This is a very attractive, quiet park. There is some good walks - over the dam or at the other extreme way down through the rocks and pastures to the upstream inlet end of the lake. There's even a bunch of huge fossil dinosaur footprints to muse over.
I'll be back. Indeed I think I'll stay tomorrow and extend my just-passing-through a bit. Yeah. This sure beats run-down Tucumcari or a Walmart somewhere.
Night camp
Site ?? - Clayton Lake State Park, Clayton NM
- Verizon cell phone service - none
- Verizon EVDO service - none
- Go to Clayton Lake State Park website
- Locate Clayton Lake State Park on my Night Camps map
- 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.