Shasta is home!

Shasta is home from the vet, and the kidney stone is removed. She is undoubtedly a little sore but the big stone they removed was awe-inspiring - it sort of looks like one of those flat, oval lake skipping stones you'd pick up - just a little fatter. The size of two quarters, but fat ones. I feel terrible now knowing that thing was inside of her - poor pup!

Thank you, spirits, for taking good care of loving, sweet Shasta-ji.

It's been a tough week - I finally got the intros + bios for the desert anthology together and sent off. I've been glued glued glued to the laptop for weeks working on that - plus permissions that are outstanding for some of the pieces we want to use. Also a number of crunch things above and beyond teaching, at work - SLO's and course updates and sabbatical resolution issues - it's looking really good, by the way, and a tremendous relief for me to finally be getting there, with union rep and college v.p and p. guiding the way - tense situation. But it's clearing up. Also a tenure review to write - I'm on someone's committee - sheazhzhz! No wonder I feel isolated and buried right now - it's an odd fall, not the same sense of parties and outdoors touring I was doing last year at thist ime. This year it's about hard work and taking care of business, checklist things off one at a time. Achieve a goal, put it behind me.

Now if I can only slide off this anxiety - part of it's from not being outdoors enough, bonding with the earth, part of it's the same things that are affecting everyone right now - the economy - and part of it's my inevitable desire to change my life and be a full time writer - I'm already working as a writer, but doing my FT teaching job, an entirely different direction, on top of that. I also feel a sense of pulling out of, uprooting from the desert in a major way, so I feel out of sorts and synch with a place I've made home for almost 10 years. But, I'm through. I feel that to do any hikes here now is to be saying goodbye.

It's the time of year to get out there! My scant spare time since September has been utilized going on weekend trips - ZZYZX, always my mid-October and April visits - Tecopa, the Rodman Mountain petroglyphs, Joshua Tree to teach the CA desert Indian class - tired!

I should do the rounds - Pushwalla Palms - Bump N'Grind new side loop - the Hopalong Cassidy, from the Art Smith trailhead down to my parents' condo - Phil and I did that last year at this time; it was a long sucker but fun - maybe Cat Canyon up to the high country - get the heart pumping and breathing accelerated - what I've done for years, every year from October through April - just that this year I've been focused on the desert lit anthology, on Phantom Seed promotions, on trips back and forth to Riverside and I.E. for poetry things -

Tomorrow, I have to write a tenure report - shouldn't take too much time. I think that I deserve a break, and I think I'll take a bit of a hike. Then, an acupuncture session with my friend Armi.
A hike, perhaps the bump n' grind with Brindle - Shasta must recuperate yet - I need to reclaim my hiking heart and voice. I can hike alone. I've done it for many years, and don't have to feel sad. I can call these mountains and hills my own, but only for awhile, because - I'm moving on. Into my literary heart, into the world of friends and people and poetry studies and away from the sere and silent land that used to absorb me, and now, a place I only want to visit and enjoy with friends from now on.

Oh yes, and the Salton Sea must be visited. That is a must. Ideally with my canoe. A winter mecca. Inevitable. I need to vision outdoors.