This is what happens when I get loaded.....

When I get loaded I tend to move a lot slower.....I wander a bit more.....and I forget what time it is.....

....I also get a bit salty....especially with my language.......

Like a lush, I ambulate around the random things; poking at the unique and oggling the olfactory hues which occupy my fancy.....

With each cattle gate closing, I wonder why someone would stack cobbles of granite upon such remote markers....and then I realize, it's because the Lizard King told them to do so.......

17 miles in from my start, I find the spring fed cattle tank in the middle of the desert I was looking for.....it was occupied by a swarm of bees and wasps......

Sneaking up to the tank slowly, I tested the patience of the occupancy as I filtered water....and observed a fine demonstration of surface tension.....

The low angled syntectonic deposits were my first reminder that I was entering a land of topographic changes.......

To my north, I spy the canyons I will sleep in this night.......

...that craggy stuff on the horizon.......

.....and that tiny, inconsequential nipple of a feature rising imperceptibly from the flat horizon in the center of the picture; well, that's where I came from.  The landscape here always blows me away....so far I've traveled, and yet so far I must go.  Distances are deceiving, because you can never trust the horizontal truth at the expense of a topographic reality....the later, reigns supreme in this land.

As I look forward, I am drawn to my immediate challenge.....the nipple with the switchbacks.....or Ripsey as it's called.....

There is not much to be said about Ripsey.....the Ocotillo reach skyward, as does Ripsey.....

I purposely did not take a picture of the Ripsey ridgeline because I'm riding solo....the ridgeline needs a rider to add perspective.....so my experience on Ripsey was one of a solo rider....and what I capture here is what I see....and more importantly, what I feel.  If you want to get an idea of Ripsey without riding it.....which is to say, not experience Ripsey....then lamely click on the following spectacular links, here and here ...... otherwise, grab a bike and go ride it and see for yourself....you'll not be the same ever again.

As I descend off of Ripsey, I see the canyon of the Gila below me.....and realize that I have to go down there to get water....and then climb back out that night....and go back down the next day.....and climb back out yet again.  I suddenly feel weak....feel stupid....feel foolish........and then I force myself to get present.....this is why I am here, this is the beauty I seek, the silence I hold golden and the views I gush about......this is it....this.....IS!

I get punch drunk with the smell of water in the Sonoran desert......the sight of cottonwood shedding cotton looked like snow gently falling from a blue sky.

After filtering water out of the Gila, I move on against the increasing angles of the sun; boulders casting shadows on the narrow strip of cottonwoods glowing in springtime glory.

Riding on until my stomach growls and the sun gets low, I finally find a wash where I can set my body down and I stop to capture the melt.

The last light of day hits the tendrils of atmospheric humidity before a high-pressure system moves in.....

During the night, I sleep to the sound of crickets.....the absence of any breeze or wind is slightly unnerving rendering any twig snap an alarm that the dogs of the desert are upon me.....but they never come....and I awake to another beautiful day.  I ride away from camp and capture the morning glow on a barrel cactus against the ranch house just east of Cochoran.

The railroad trestle above the Gila stands stoic above the precocious and lush nature of a perennial desert river.

Hours go by....not flowing, but slow painful miles as I climb away from the Gila in the still and hot hours of the young day.  I stop and wonder what I'm doing and why I'm here.....training for a ride where I will be alone, yet again....I've come to resent the tedium of being alone these past months.  But before I can have enough time to throw a pity party, I realize that this is a far better place to be than the alternative....you fill in the blank....

....this is where I feel at home.....a home found in the solitude that haunts and comforts me at the same time, a place that keeps me awake at night with fright and holds my attention with anticipation whenever I'm away from it..  A place I abhor and honor in the same sentence.  It is here where my Wordsworth comes in handy in realizing that "Thanks to the human heart by which we live, thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.