Morongo...top of the canyon...Willie Boy passed through here 100 years ago....riparian beginning of the Mojave Desert...picture taken on Saturday, October 3after a 4 mile roundtrip hike down the canyon (behind the photographer) and back up. Saw no one, on the watch for mountain lions. Morongo Canyon Preserve is located on Highway 62 right in the town of....Morongo Valley. Highway 62 connects the Coachella Valley to the high desert and on to 29 Palms Marine Base and east to the Colorado River. A drive I first enjoyed at the age of 10, dad driving, extreme scenery, en route to see the London Bridge in Lake Havasu. circa 1972 or something like that.
A great hike, this past Saturday, much about the highway unchanged, then up to Pappy and Harriet's in Pioneertown, a music festival and super crowded but had time to down some draft hefenweiser beers (correct spelling) with lime, share a table with a cool cosmic cat from LA who said he's a yoga guru and designs leather clothes for rock stars, then on to thai food in the town of Joshua Tree, then to the Desert Hot Springs spa and resort, spent the night there soaking in various hot mineral pools and listening to an extreme windstorm batter the sliding glass door of my 2nd floor room.
And I'm happy tonight because I'm eating a 100 calorie pack of pretzel sticks and drinking pomegranite/white tea and listening to Chopin and I finally (don't laugh!) got my English 1A and creative writing class calendars of assignments/due dates completed tonight and posted to blackboard! I actually feel like I know what I'm going to focus on when I go to teach tomorrow - "A Modest Proposal" by Swift in English 1A; fiction writing prompts and small group critique in creative writing....we're using the desert as a basis for generating "a storyscape" that is the heart of individual writing projects. Week 6 begins. There are 16 weeks in the semeseter.
And, I'm moving towards getting my writer's web page built. Happy because I got to spend time with a good friend + other friends during the past few days, Brindle is home and walking better than ever though still under strict "don't do too much" supervision, and because the loan modification on my mortgage seems to be going through and because Tarah came and did her laundry tonight and brought chipotle burritos for us and hung out with me and because it's a rare moment when, despite the piles of papers waiting for feedback from...me...the rigors of the semester seem under control for once. And because last Friday night's poetry reading at Barnes & Noble went incredibly well and was very uplifting - three of my students came and read very well - and I am going to get a good night's sleep, and because the desert is much cooled off!
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