Happy New Year!

I think the new year is a great chance for people to feel that they can start over or better themselves in some way. I always panic a bit as it gets close to being a new year because time seems to go by so quickly. I always make myself feel better though by sitting down and making a list of all the things I have seen and done, all the friends I have made, all that I have learned in only 365 days.

The coming new year provides not just a chance to reflect on everything you have done but also for you to evaluate your life and see if you are where you want to be, if you're pushing yourself too hard or if you're maybe not pushing yourself hard enough. We are all capable of more than we can imagine if we'll only maintain the discipline that greatness requires and be true to ourselves. It sounds simple but it isn't.

I wish you all luck, peace and health for this coming year. I am hoping people, myself included, will give a little more love and compassion to this world, in how they treat others, and hopefully feel that they are receiving more compassion as well. That is my wish for this new year. God bless.

Snowed In

I awoke this past Monday, on Long Island, to a true winter wonderland. I served myself a nice piece of the Cranberry Cake that I had made (it's not so sweet that it couldn't be eaten as a breakfast treat!) and a cup of tea. 

Cranberry Cake from the cookbook, Cooking from Quilt Country by Marcia Adams

I was scheduled to work at Harborside Vet Hospital, the veterinary clinic where I have worked since I was 16 and where I gratefully find employment when I am visiting Huntington. However, since the snow was so deep and the roads so bad (Huntington had declared a "snow emergency!"), they ended up not needing me. I was not too upset at the prospect of being able to stay inside where it was warm for a bit longer! I sat again by the back window and watched the many birds feeding and playing in the backyard. They seemed to be enjoying themselves in the snow; there was tons of activity! I think because people weren't walking around so much and going outside the birds felt safer so more of them came out.

A male cardinal sits on the feeder while a mourning dove, junco and a sparrow forage below.

A female cardinal in flight

A blue jay with full extension in flight

Blue jay on a feeder

By the afternoon the roads had been plowed and traveled upon enough (at least by my house!) that it was not too bad that you could not drive. My dad and I shoveled for a while, ate some lunch and then decided to go see The Fighter with my mom, my aunt Lisa, and my cousin Lucie.

I love Mark Wahlberg so I was expecting to like the film but I underestimated how good it would be! I didn't realize it was based on the true life story welter-weight boxer, Mickey Ward. The fact that it was based on a true story made the film all the better. And Amy Adams is so feisty, I really liked seeing her in a role other than the typical girl in a romantic comedy. I don't want to say too much more about it because I don't want to give anything away. Just go see it! :)

The real Mickey Ward

Day 27: Ancient Ruins, A Plane Crash & 29 Palms

We woke up and lounged for a little bit, enjoying the scenery and then packed everything up and left the campground. Today we planned on going further into the Grand Canyon National Park and either finding another campground that we wanted to stay at with the trailer or moving on towards Ramona, California to visit John and Stephanie at CowHorse Ranch. We are fortunate on this trip to have the flexibility and means to be able to stay in places we like for longer and leave places we don't like as quickly as we want!

Our first stop on our westward path through the park was at the Tusayan Ruins, an 800 year old Pueblo Indian site. The inhabitants of the area were given the Navajo name of Anasazi by early researchers, which mean "ancient enemies," and as you can imagine it is not appreciated by descendants of these people. The ruins site has a short loop trail along which you can walk and read interpretive signs about the Puebloans and their culture while looking at the remains of the structures their built. 

What remains of the Kiva

From the site of these ruins you can see the San Francisco Peaks which include Humphreys Peak, the highest peak in Arizona, which reaches 12,633 feet in elevation. This mountain range was considered sacred to the Hopi (one of many Indian nations within the Pueblo Indian category) because they believed that the spirits (katsinas) that brought rain and other blessings resided there.

Tyler and I enjoyed driving the road that took visitors to overlooks, ruins, trail heads, etc. There were a lot of places where you could pull over and have sweeping views across the canyon and deep looks down into the canyon.

At the furthest point from South to North rim the canyon measures 18 miles wide!

If you read my entry about Avalanche Lake just outside of West Yellowstone in Montana you will already know that in 1959 there was a huge (7.5 magnitude) earthquake that dammed up the Madison River, creating Earthquake Lake and killing almost 30 people (http://fierceasparagus.blogspot.com/2010/09/day-7-part-2-very-exciting-day-indeed.html). 

Evidently the 1950s was just a time in which a lot of things went wrong near National Parks! In 1956 two airliners flying over the Grand Canyon collided in mid-air, killing 128 people. At this time it was the deadliest aviation disaster on record. It was only after this tragic event that black boxes were installed on airplanes. Black boxes (which, despite their name, are orange to make it easier to find them in wreckage) contain audio recording devices that record conversations with the pilot so that if something goes wrong it is easier to analyze the problem and prevent it from happening again.

An article (a link to which is posted below this entry) written for Deseret News after a visit to the site in Juneof 2006 stated that, "In the canyon's vastness, the wreckage of TWA Flight 2 and United Airlines Flight 718 has always been a reminder of how small human endeavors are. But the wreckage endures. You can still see pieces of metal from the United plane hanging on the 800-foot cliff; you can see it from the river, when the sun glints off the metal, says Driskill, who visited the site in April. 'There are probably whole engines still embedded in the crack,' he says."

Photo courtesy of Deseret Morning News Archives.

We drove the rest of the way to Grand Canyon Village and poked around there for a little bit but being turned off by the large amount of tourists in this section of the park we decided against staying another night and instead headed towards Joshua Tree National Park.

When we crossed over the state line into California from Arizona the roads were in pretty bad condition. Since we were once again in the middle of nowhere it was a bit stressful because we did not want to have to deal with getting a flat tire but luckily it did not turn into an issue. We eventually turned on to a fun section of historic Route 66 that felt a bit like a roller coaster. I am not quite sure why the road went up and down so much considering the land around us was flat and straight but it was enjoyable so I am not complaining!

We were driving as the slightest changes occurred indicating the transition from day to night. As dusk approached we were driving in the desert with the open sky surrounding us, uncorrupted by light pollution. We barely saw anyone else on the road in this open expanse of land.

Notice the difference between the way the light hits the hills behind us as opposed to the ones in front of us!

Beautiful Desert Landscape

About an hour and a half from Joshua Tree we found a place to pull over and walk Hanz before it got too dark. I wanted to stop at this particular place because there was a long row of the most peculiar mounds of dirt. I have to try to locate on a map where we were exactly when we came across this strange sight because neither Tyler nor I could figure out how or why they were there!

The line of mysterious mounds... any ideas??

Hanz is investigating the mounds to figure out why they're here. He's a very thorough detective!

For more information:
Jarvik, Elaine. "Vestiges of '56 Collision Still Embedded in Grand Canyon." Deseret News.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/640191166/Vestiges-of-56-collision-still-imbedded-in-Grand-Canyon.html?pg=2


National Park Service brochure on the Tusayan Ruins: 
http://www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/upload/Tusayan.pdf


National Park Service: Grand Canyon Guide
http://www.nps.gov/grca/parknews/upload/SRGwinter20010-11.pdf

White-Out New York (Sunday)

Sunday was a great day for me. I woke up fairly early and went out with my mom to exchange some clothing and accessories that I received for Christmas that either didn't fit or didn't work for me. Going to malls stresses me out because of the artificial light and terrible air circulation but we just went to Ann Taylor Loft in downtown Huntington and I found some great things to get with the store credit! Very exciting! The sky was white and ominous looking and we had heard we were in for a big snow storm so we figured we would also stop at the grocery store to grab a few things in case the weather went all "winter of 1996" on us! We had initially planned on seeing True Grit today but it was lightly flurrying when we went into Waldbaums and positively dumping this heavy, wet snow by the time we were going back to our car. It's okay, don't worry, we had enough ice cream to last us for at least a few days if we ended up getting snowed in!

Since it was only the day after Christmas I had not had much time to simply be able to relax and enjoy being home because everything before the holidays is insane. I was fine, then, with however much snow would fall because I had a warm house, a great book (The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson!) and parents to catch up with.

I made some tea and sat by the window watching the snow fall and the birds frantically eat all the seeds they could in anticipation of the storm and the coming night. It is truly amazing how diverse the bird species are that regularly visit the bird feeders in my backyard. I saw dark-eyed juncos, black-capped chickadees, northern cardinals, tufted titmice, blue jays, a downy woodpecker, several types of sparrows, nuthatches, and mourning doves! And of course there are the squirrels, which feed on the bird seed as well as some peanuts that they happen upon in the yard. I could sit for hours and watch these creatures interact. The squirrels were cracking me up because they would jump up onto the feeders and grab some seeds and then hang upside down while they ate... maybe it's easier for them to eat while being upside down than it is for us!

A cute squirrel munching on some seeds.

My dad and I waited until there was a couple inches of snow and then we went out and shoveled. We didn't realize the wind would later nullify our efforts by blowing the snow around everywhere but it was fun for me so I didn't mind. Some time after dark the gusts of wind picked up and so did the rate of snowfall. I could see now that we were not going to get jipped on the snow end of things!

I went and sat again by the window, watching the birds flying around, taking turns on the feeders and foraging on the ground. As dusk approached it started to get darker outside but I didn't turn any lights on in my room. I wanted to be able to see outside for a bit longer and to tell when the birds would call it good and turn in for the night. Through the worsening storm the dark-eyed juncos won out as the most persistent bird in the backyard. They would scurry across the ground looking for seeds that had blown out of the feeder and when a gust of wind would blow, they would brace themselves against the force. It is amazing to me that they were able to stand without getting blown away considering how little mass they have!

Slate-colored junco

How interesting the world looked to me at that moment. The snow-covered ground was the same color as the snow-filled sky and the juncos matched perfectly with their slate-colored bodies and white breasts and beaks. I think they are beautiful.

This junco is perfectly camouflaged against the background of snow and stone.

Lulu, my crazy cat, also became interested in the life outside the window so she came over and peered outside with me.

Lulu silhouetted in the dark room against the bright snow.

Merry Christmas!

Dear Readers in the Blogosphere,

I hope you all had a wonderful and joy-filled Christmas (or if you don't celebrate Christmas, that you just had a great day)! I am on Long Island until mid-January so I got to be with all of my east coast family for the special occasion.

On Christmas Eve my cousin Lucie came over and we made a delicious Cranberry Cake with Butter Sauce. I got the recipe for it from that amazing Amish cookbook that I love called Cooking from Quilt Country. My parents, Lucie, my aunts, uncle and I went out to dinner at a restaurant in Huntington called Dao and then they all came over to my house and we had the cake for dessert. It was a great hit!

Working hard or hardly working? :)

Today, Christmas Day, after a morning of stockings, presents, pancakes that only my mom can perfect and lots of smiles and well-wishing phone calls, my parents and I headed over to my cousin Aisha's house for dinner. About fifteen of us gathered together and ate a German inspired meal of Sauerbraten, red cabbage and mashed potatoes. We used to have a more traditional American meal of turkey and ham but as of last year we have evidently been on a German kick so we are eating the meal that my uncle's German mother used to make for the holidays. Even though I am not German and I do tend to prefer a more traditional menu it is still interesting to be exposed to a dish that is so popular in another part of the world. After all, Sauerbraten is a national dish of Germany! As long as it is made with beef and not the historically traditional horse meat I am okay with it! The large amount of beef used for the dish is marinated for a few days before it is served which is fascinating to me because I don't think I have ever made anything further in advance than the day before!

My cousin Aisha with her husband, Don in the kitchen getting ready to serve dinner.

I love Christmas. And not just the day. I love the Christmas season. I love the smells of pine trees and sap. I love the crisp air on your face while your body stays warm under a nice sweater. I love Christmas music. NPR plays interesting Christmas music from all over the world; I am partial to that of the Irish.

I love sleeping under layers of blankets so I stay warm except the tip of my nose is a little chilly; it's a great excuse to burrow deeper under the covers or maybe to delay getting out of bed for a few minutes more. I love cups of hot tea that seem to warm your bones and loosen your muscles. I love white Christmas lights and tastefully displayed ones with color. I am not, however, a big fan of the huge inflatable snowmen/ Santas, sorry! To each his own! ;)

Every since I was little I have loved this angel.

I love shopping for presents as long as I start early enough that it doesn't become a chore. You have to look for long enough that you can actually find something that speaks to you for each person on your list. I don't believe in giving presents because you have to; what is the point of that? It's all about sincerity.

I recycled a Vanity Fair magazine to wrap some of my presents!

I love Christmas decorations and seeing mysterious presents of all shapes and sizes with unique wrapping jobs. I love stockings hanging in the living room. My dad still has the stocking that his mother made for him when he was very young!

I love this stocking!

I think the anticipation of Christmas is almost better than the actual day only because when it's actually December 25th I know that soon the decorations will come down. I get so excited when people open presents that I have gotten for them! Luckily we get Christmas every year so I know it's never too far away from being that time again!

My mom always does a great job making the house festive!

I think it is good to reflect a bit about the holiday season and what it means to you as an individual and what you want it to mean to your children, if you have them. Yes, it is about gifts and food and family but it is also a celebration of the birth of Christ. No matter your religious convictions I think it is fair to say that Jesus had an admirable character and I think we could all better ourselves if we applied his principles of compassion and forgiveness and generosity to our every day lives. Ironically the birth of this simple man who gave away all of his worldly possessions has spawned a holiday that has become synonymous with consumption. So even though wish lists have already been made and presents given, I think it is good to reflect on this day and to realize how much each of us already has in our possession. I have a family that loves me. I have a warm bed to sleep  in. I have food in my belly. I am grateful.

Beauty in the details: the considerably large shadows cast by the small white lights.

I will continue the saga of the Fierce Asparagus adventures within the next couple days. Forgive my digital absence this past week and a half, the real world was calling!

Blessings and Peace to each and every one of you.
Over and Out!

Marisol