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 Items to fit into your overhead compartment |
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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| Well, this isn't going to be my usual sort of thing. It's personal and might even border on offensive. A lived experience related by CBC: My outlook on aging changed when my friend died. Here’s the clarity I found as I enter my 60s  Facing loss helped me welcome this new decade, not dread it What's this got to do with anything? Well, I'm about the same age. Of course, she's female and Canadian, so we couldn't possibly be more different. Still. The writer is only a few months older than I am, still the leading edge of Gen-X, if you have to believe in marketing age categories. I’ve just passed another milestone birthday, and yet the familiar dread of reluctantly skidding into a new decade seems to have softened somewhat. I'm almost there, and I don't feel dread. Just a profound resignation. The quiet realization that my yesterdays outnumber my tomorrows feels less like a threat and more like a gift. Oh, lucky you. I've had that realization for twenty years now. Aging, I’ve come to see, is a privilege. I suppose that's a nice, healthy way to look at it. Naturally, I don't agree. My dear friend Natalie died after a brief illness almost a year ago at the age of 57. That sucks. Truly. I'm not trying to diminish anyone's grief here, or play who-had-it-worse. All I want to do is try to understand someone else's perspective, and share my own, which is neither better nor worse, just different. See, my own experiences with loss lead me to a different conclusion. First, I spent 20 years watching one parent, then the other, decline into profound dementia, then die frightened and bewildered. Losing one's parents is, I know, the natural order of things. But the dementia thing is spit in the face. The second thing isn't a direct experience, but something I found out about later. It was about a girl I dated in high school, but later fell out of touch with—not too serious, not too casual, but somewhere in the middle. I asked a mutual friend about her, years later, after a chance encounter on the internet. Not to stalk or anything, but just out of curiosity about an old friend. Turned out that this woman had gotten married, went on her honeymoon, came back and was walking around excited about her new life when she dropped dead on the street. One moment alive; next moment, corpse. So, reading the article in the link up there reminded me that, if I had the choice between a slow decline into brainless senility, or just getting switched off like a lightbulb, I know which one I'd pick. Of course, we don't get to pick. No, I'm not suicidal. I'm just not afraid of being dead. Maybe I am, at least a little, of dying. But I cannot and will not consider aging to be a privilege. It's just something that happens to most of us, like it or not, until it stops. |
| If you like the *shudder* outdoors, here's a secret from SFGate: Arizona's secret slot canyon offers all of the scenery, none of the crowds A visit to Antelope Canyon's lesser-known sibling Except I guess it isn't a secret anymore, is it? Now that you've told the entire world with a webpage. Way to go, assholes. Way to ruin it. The article does, of course, include pictures, and they're cool. Though some of them are suggestive enough that you might not want to view them at work or around kids. The slot canyon’s sandstone layers were so flawless they looked as though they’d been thrown on a pottery wheel. Careful, there. Wouldn't want to give the creationists any ammunition. This sculpted maze could easily have been mistaken for Arizona’s wildly popular Upper or Lower Antelope Canyon. You'll have to forgive me for never having heard of the Antelopes. I live on the other side of the country, and I'm an indoorsman. Pretty sure I've seen pictures of them, but without attribution. While smaller in size, this secluded fissure is just as extraordinary, with the same curving walls and an ever-changing orbit of gold and purple shades, occasionally transformed by light rays into vibrant reds and oranges, adorning its narrow passageways — but far fewer crowds. This is the sort of description that makes travel writing work, incidentally. And like its more famous counterpart, it’s only accessible through a Navajo tour. Well, then, maybe it'll just have to be on them to keep the crowds manageable. Reaching the canyon entrance is an adventure in itself: It requires a 20-minute off-road ride in one of the company’s modified, open-air (bring layers!) Ford F-350s. Oh, did Ford pay you for the product placement? For the benefit of anyone unfamiliar with Arizona, the "layers" thing is because, though you might have heard how scorchingly hot Phoenix can get, that state can also get finger-numbingly cold. Upon arrival, McCabe began walking our group of 12 through millions of years of geological history. “It’s volume and velocity that forms a slot canyon,” he said, referring to the many flash floods that carved the formation through repeated erosion of its soft rock, which was then further shaped by wind. SCIENCE! McCabe pointed out sandstone formations that resembled an elephant, some woolly mammoths and even an Egyptian queen as we went. Somehow, I don't think any of those are Navajo things. Well, maybe the Egyptian queen. As Steve Martin related in his musical documentary, speaking of Tutankhamen, "Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia." McCabe explained that to the Navajo people, slot canyons are symbols of creation — linking the physical and spiritual worlds — and are often associated with guardian spirits. So we come to the main reason I saved this article at all: the combination of science and spirituality. Apparently, not everyone sees a need to choose between the two. While I haven't done canyon hikes (I haven't even been to the Grand one), I have spent time in Navajo country, and I can attest that it's pretty damn awesome. I try to swing through every time I go out west, sometimes staying in Page or Kayenta. Maybe next time, if there is a next time, I'll go look at some rocks. |
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). It's the loss of mental acuity that worries me. I really can't grasp that I'm in my 80th year. 
I've decided that my choice of demise is to be shot by a jealous husband when I hit 90. 
