A buttload more lizards. We saw two coyotes yesterday trotting along on opposite sides of Route 64 by the Grand Canyon. Also saw a buck with a full head of antlers with velvet on the same road.
A word on ravens: ravens are unbeautiful, common, scavengers with a substantial vocabulary of loud & obnoxious calls. Why do I find myself so charmed by them? They have an air of rumpled dignity that pleases me, and a quality of not-exactly-indifference to all the works and days of mankind. "'Bout time you built this fence," one of them will seem to say, "- was getting tired of sitting on the fuckin' ground. Still, not a bad job, kids. Not bad at all." I'm even prepared to forgive them for stealing the avocado I had out to ripen yesterday.
Monday night, we stayed at the Goosenecks of the San Juan State Park at the southern extreme of Utah. It was a remote and barren spot with an utterly stunning view of an undulating series of thousand-foot-deep canyons and a badly designed potty that occasionally wafted septic odors to our campsite. I stayed up late to read, and while I sat with my headlamp pointed at John McPhee's Basin and Range an unidentified rodent scuttled near my feet, and bats swooped near enough for me to hear their faint chittering and the frantic beating of their wings.
This morning, at the Grand Canyon's Desert View campground, we were awakened arounf 6 AM by an unearthly chaotic yipping, shrieking, and howling. We're fairly confident that what we heard was a pack of coyotes passing--indiscreetly--right through the campground. Lotte decided to put off her yoga for a little while.
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