Made It Out of the Canyonlands!

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This is a short update just to let you know that we finally made it out of the canyonlands on Monday. I am on a borrowed sticky keyboard which has knocked my typing words per minute back down to my old high school levels of a negative rating after subtracting for mistakes.

It was a long day for Steve, Vicky, myself and all the fur critters, a VERY long day. They had set off at 4AM from Albuquerque for our last day of moving and were ready to kick butt for one last mission and it was a full-out, non-stop mission. And I was dreading that last long look around so badly; my supply of stress adrenaline depleting rapidly now after three months nonstop. The fur family was the last to be loaded up, followed by Terry's cowboy hats on the headrest and his shoes on the passenger side of my Dakota although barfing Ms. Daisy would ride shotgun with me, too. True to form and despite a dose of Dramamine, she performed one very colorful flash of stomach contents before setting down which I have still not addressed. I would like to vegetate for a full week or so after yesterday's emotional exodus.

They led with Terry's big Ram diesel pulling the red 16 footer across the washes and down the choppy and often deeply sandy roads at a snail's pace since we had packed the last of the Rat's contents hurriedly and much less professionally than Wayne had done. Two hours later, we reached the highway and I had managed to stop long enough along the way to each back and wrestle a number of aspirin from the box beside the yowling cats' crates and the disturbing ailments subsided reasonably by the time we reached pavement. Then the pace picked up considerably. Even so, we were all exhausted by the time we arrived at the new place. Once essential critter comforts were addressed, it was time to quietly sit in a stunned and breathless manner for the rest of the evening with good and jovial company.

Hopefully, I will be back within a week; right now, I just need to sleep a little and then adjust to a reality long postponed.
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Still here ... Part 2

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Sigh, Babzy's right with her last comment; it's been a whole week without an update. I was doing pretty well for a while but the last two weeks have seen a rapid decline in my health and I have been getting very little done as a result. New moving rescue plans have come and gone like the passing of the sun out here. And I just can't write all I wish to when I am this down on all levels.

Mind you, the day started out with a pleasant surprise. Brou and Daisy got me up at dawn to let them out (which is not a pleasant event for a non-morning person) but when I opened the door, we startled two mule deer grazing 30 feet away. The dogs could not have been more pleased and spun themselves into a yapping, yiping torrent of blurred fur which soon disappeared in a fruitless pursuit. I briefly thought about all the hunters out here in the canyons this weekend for the mule deer hunt who just spent the night shivering in tents and I gleefully dove back into the still pleasantly warm bed.

The latest plan calls for moving help tomorrow but I am not really prepared for it in any way. I am just feeling gawd-awful physically sick right now. If we do get the latest kinks worked out, if they do arrive and if we do get the place finally packed up, I will be off-line until probably some time in October unless I make it over to Red's to borrow his computer for an update. We'll just have to play that by ear, I guess. It may take a while but I will be back as soon as I can.
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Still Here .... Sigh

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Yep, I am still here. This weekend was supposed to be "Moving, Part 2" but it didn't happen. I won't say that I wasn't upset when I found out after 5PM on Friday when it was too late to call around for other resources. It was pretty devastating news, in fact, after thinking that this one source of great stress had been covered. And, had I known just a day earlier, I could have stocked up with the bigger bag of dog food, more generator gas and beer at least. As it was, I blew my back out on that supply run so I had little to lose pain-wise by lugging greater quantities of supplies at the time. But Wayne was not in great health to begin with, tried his best for me and will undergo surgery for possible bladder cancer on Tuesday, right as their own plans for a new homestead get underway. I will have to write about his trials after he left here late last Sunday with the big trailer - never a dull moment, I tell you. They are both great people and have their own plate full to overflowing right now - please send them your best thoughts, too.

After a week of threatening thunderstorms, this weekend was as weather-perfect as I could have hoped and prayed for; cool with absolutely cloudless blue skies. It's definitely the beginning of Fall in the high desert here with the temperatures falling into the 30s at night and rising into the comfortable 70s during the day. I am feeling very guilty about prolonging our exodus since the gas field, the road maintainers and the BLM have been so generous and committed to keeping these roads passable for my departure. Please send your thoughts and prayers in keeping the washes and creek dry until I can find new help with the last of the move out.

I will start calling around today in earnest to find suitable work-arounds to complete this move. One part is hopefully already in motion thanks to Virgil. He and Jenny came out yesterday with a buyer for the big welder so that is one less heavy item to find trailer space for or worry about leaving to the inevitable scavengers. He was feeling awfully bad that his own truck is laid up but he has come through for me like the ultra dependable friend he always was to Terry and I. If all is going well today, he has hitched a ride into Albuquerque and will be driving Terry's big Ram and the gooseneck trailer back out here for the next reload. Red will be flying out to a B52/tanker reunion shortly so I can't rely on his calm-under-fire logistical thinking this week but everything will work out according to some big but seemingly nebulous plan for the best ... of that, I have no doubt.

This is just a quick update in the midst of vast uncertainty so no need to leave a comment this time - I know you are all still here with me and it's truly keeping me going. Hopefully the next update will be done from the far end of this new journey.
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Moving Away from Our Dream, Part 1

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Firstly, I want to thank our blog friends who have stuck by me even though I have not been making my rounds of my favorite old blog haunts since 'that day'. Hopefully I will be settled in to a largely different, somewhat daunting new life alone by October. Can I say that I am looking forward to it? No, I will not lie to you; the prospect embraces practical reasons more than anything right now and little more. The best friend I ever had is gone now but I am trying my best to move forward, as much for the well-being of our fur family as anything. I was doing quite well, in fact until a cascade of events on Sunday caught me off guard emotionally. But let's get on with the moving tales since some incredible people had intervened to help get the dreaded move progressed to this point. The number of widely divergent folks who have helped with this move has left me in awe, a needed reinforcement of my faith in humanity. You, our blog friends, have been a crucial part of this transition as well.

Red and Wayne arrived last Thursday in Red's venerable little Jeep. We really didn't get much accomplished that day; it was more a time for exchanging tales and settling in and to eat a good dinner, the first real effort that I had cooked up since Terry left. It was a necessary gentle lead-in to the hectic days to soon follow.

Friday saw the beginning of the packing up even though we all enjoyed stopping to chat far too much. It was still a good and appropriate pace that kept me from stressing out emotionally. I only had one particularity bad moment that day when we had to look for something in the bed of Terry's truck. His truck, his skid steer; those are particularly haunting since I still see him so clearly in both and his big cat-like grin of satisfaction as he commandeered them. I thought Red hadn't noticed that I collapsed into tears before I could jump down from the tall bed of the Ram but he returned shortly. By then, I was standing on the Rat porch and so we both sat down on the steps, his arm around my shoulder, his other hand grasping mine tightly. He had been there before, he remembered the pain and understood how I was feeling all too well. He said "It's okay, you are going to have these times. Don't avoid them, let them happen, it's absolutely normal." I hope you all have a friend like that if the seemingly unbearable happens some day.

On Saturday, our extra help arrived. I was hoping for just a couple of young and brawny lads to help us aging, creaking old farts with the lifting and loading. What we got instead was two full truckloads of help. I only regret that I was too frazzled to remember to take a photo of the second truck with the five young lads.
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Above is a photo of our friends, Dan and Virginia and their family. Like the five young lads, they are from the local Mennonite community. We had met them through ordering the two new buildings for our new Rat Town dream. Dan had not only helped me out with making other plans for the two buildings which they had already built but not delivered but also arranged for the brawn for loading day. We could not have gotten as far as we did without their serene and obliging help. And I have never been more impressed with a religious group than I was with all my dealings with the Mennonites; they walk the talk like none other that I've ever dealt with. If Terry and I had ever decided to commit to a particular sect, it would have been them, no doubt about it. I will hopefully write more about our dealings with these lovely, non-judgmental people some day when I am settled in as well as all the other folks who came to the fore in this unexpected new life drama. They all deserve mention and credit. As promised, even the road out was fixed well enough to accommodate rolling the big 45' trailer out of our canyon. I will take a photo of that effort for you if I can in the next week.
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Sunday morning: Here is the tractor of the kindly neighbor hooked up to the 45' trailer. This was a particularly emotional time for me, seeing this original container of our surviving life's belongings being readied to vacate our dream land. Terry's Ram is jump charging the trailer's lift-gate battery.

Above; Red , Wayne and John are clearing out the debris which had grown in around the 45 footer in the last three years ... there was a lot of it, too. Everything that was settled and comfortable was now being uprooted, much like our dream.

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I will write more about the big move but, for now, I am depleted. Sunday was a draining day emotionally and my immune system predictably collapsed. There were so many things left to be done here but I am not up to it physically now. Yes, I stayed behind with the fur family, awaiting the return of at least one trailer emptied for we ran out of trailer space in deed. And I did not want to leave the Rat in this state of utter mess and chaos. I also wanted time for the fur family and myself to adjust for a few days before the next and final phase. Leaving the dream behind so abruptly, so traumatically, was simply not an option despite the threat of new wet weather. It will work out, we will be fine ... not to worry, okay? A thunderstorm just rolled in - time to shut down the generator and unplug it from the Rat. Daisy just bowled me aside and dove under the desk as is customary. But we will all be fine, I'm not kidding.
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Racing the Rains Home

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I had planned to show you intriguing photos of the ghosts of metal victims of the running washes but this was probably my worst emotional week since Terry died. I had been carefully avoiding anything that might trigger the worst of the sorrow that I knew I could not deal with yet since the stress and the upset of this rapidly approaching move from our canyon will certainly provoke its own lion's share. That didn't work out as planned however. So, instead, I will share photos with you of our access road condition which weighs so heavily on me right now after last night's rains.
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The rain had mostly held off for my three solo trips out of the canyon. And other than seeing this odd bird (above) on Friday which appeared almost double-winged, the trip in went well and without too many excitements other than the usual one or two oncoming vehicles sliding into sudden view from blind corners at impressive speeds. An adrenaline rush trumps coffee any day for waking up fast and fully.

This necessary trip on Friday let me almost beat the storms home. I had made it across the creek and was only a mile away from the Rat when the skies dumped their full load suddenly. I could now see the Rat and picked up the pace, fish-tailing a little here and there on the newly slick dirt. Having picked up Virgil's bed full of moving boxes, I didn't want to dally in the deluge any longer than necessary and heaved a long sigh of relief when the Dakota finally dove under the shelter of the barn's tin roof. Good, only the top layer of boxes had been soaked so I now ran to the Rat in my favorite go-to-town moccasins through the mud slime. I should have brought my tall rubber boots with me, I knew better than to leave them at home, in fact. At least I had remembered to bring a flashlight and a roll of toilet paper just in case. You will only need the items you don't remember to bring - it's another quirky law of the wilderness.

I jettisoned the mud-caked shoes on the porch and all dogs and cats were on deck to witness me blow through the door and collapse breathlessly into my wing chair. They had been very good, not leaving me any 'chocolates' of desperation to deal with. The five of us just sat quietly listening to the thunder and the roar of rain on the Rat's tin roof. Then it subsided unexpectedly within a half hour and the dogs were able to go out to execute their withheld duties with exuberance. I was just thankful that this sudden but short-lived downpour might not force the creek to run that day.
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The creek had been a major, ongoing source of concern for us this year since its meandering course had begun to claw away ruthlessly at two sections of our road in. It had been narrow but sturdy and nicely passable upon our arrival here three years ago although the man who moved the Rat in for us had noted that we lucked out in buying a 14' wide trailer and not a 16' wide one because of those narrow road widths.
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This photo was taken during this last dry spell, well before Sunday night's downpours. I don't have the heart to drive down there to see what's left of the road today. News, good or bad, will reach me soon enough.
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So call me a wimp but I don't like the thought of having a section of road collapse beneath me as I am driving over it, especially when it's a long way down to the creek below. It could ruin your sterling insurance rates in a hurry. I find it even more disconcerting when it involves a heavy vehicle full of your treasured and often irreplaceable belongings piloted by even more irreplaceable friends. The water haulers announced last week that they would no longer let their tanker drivers cross this section of road. This news did not impart a warm and fuzzy feeling to me at all.

We have planned the big move for this coming weekend. This might just be my biggest unofficial heart stress test coming up. Please keep us all in your best thoughts and prayers this week.
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