Quick Goodbye (for the moment)

[Zerbie]

Due to poor communication between me & DH (my fault), we are not leaving for vacay in two hours - we are leaving IN TEN MINUTES!~

To all of ya - I'm thinking of y'all and love ya. I don't know if we'll have internet at the hotels, if we do, I'll be back online tonite or tomorrow, but I can't say for sure.

That is why I'm not responding. Those of ya who just sent private messages, huge hugs, I'm not ignorin' ya. I love ya.
But gotta get out the door pronto.

Ciao for the moment!

Love
:love:
Z

[Rick336]

Have fun!!! :)

[Daniel]

Hope you are having fun whereever you are!

[awediot]

Guess the hotel had a pc? Maybe your a SoulForcist at heart? You have to go away a little longer 'til I can really say glad to see you back;) . Guess I gotta finish my pm to ya, huh...

[Vanessa White]

Zerb: Enjoy your trip with hubby, and HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!!!!!!! Blessings to you both, Vanessa:love: :love: :love: :love:

[Jennifer5]

You're back now... so...

how was your trip?

[Rick336]

I'm going on vacation too....so I'll see you guys soon.

Okay. I'm back now.

Rick

[Jennifer5]

Okay Rick... how was your vacation?

[Zerbie]

You're back now... so...

how was your trip?

Thanks fer askin'. I'll give ya the deets tomorrow - first I am going to lie down and rest, I have a relatively early morning tomorrah.

But the trip was fun - saw some new stuff. . .yeah. :D

[Jennifer5]

Okay, I'll check in for more info tomorrow.:love:

[tdogg]

Zerbie,

Can't wait to hear about your trip! Get some rest and we'll be waiting to hear back from you. :)

Rick,

Wow, short & sweet vacation huh? :lol:

[Zerbie]

Waita minute - I think I just got it - Rick, were you makin' fun o' me?!?!
:(

:D

Well, I didn't KNOW I was going to have internet during the trip, in my defense.

Okay, fa la, here's how the short vacay went:

Hubby and I drove the Zerbie-mobile to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, to wander around the caves and of course, visit the 300,000-400,000 bats that live there. We met my parents at the hotel ('rents drove all the way from Florida!), and the 4 of us toured the caverns together.

For those o' ya who have never been, Carslbad Caverns are LARGE! Not as large as Mammoth, (which I've never seen), but large. You enter either via elevator (blah!:mad: ) OR by walking down the "natural entrance," which is a ridiculously large hole in the ground that descends a very steep quick 800 feet below the earth's surface. The cave was originally found because people saw hundreds of thousands of BATS flying out of an enormous hole in the ground every night. The first guy EVER to try to go climb around inside (it was literally a sheer drop into a dark hole right at the edge, they've since built paths and handrails so you can walk down) - er, the first person ever to climb inside was a teenager at the time. Hubby said, 'Of course it takes a teenager to climb in there, they're IMMORTAL.' :lol: Jim White was 16 years old and fashioned a rope ladder which he climbed down with a hand held coffee-can lantern (it was like 1898 or somethin'.) It took him 15 years to convince anyone to believe him about how huge the cavern was. No one believed him when he described the 800 foot drop and all the enormous figures carved by sulphur, limestone, and water.

It is absolutely gorgeous in there! This was my second trip to the caverns - someday, hubby and I want to do one of the special small tours where you bring a bunch of batteries and hiking boots, and the park system lends you hard hats with the flashlight on top, and then you can CRAWL thru the small tunnels and see parts of the caverns you can't get to any other way. But my parents were soooo not going to want to do that, so we'll have to put that off for a future trip.

The bats are phenomenal. They are really cute creatures, I just love them! They still leave the natural entrance every night just after sunset, and b/c of the angle of the cave entrance (very very steep) they come flying out at 55 mph in an upward counter-clockwise spiral - they literally look like a black funnel cloud emerging from a cave. It's gorgeous!

I "adopted" a bat. You can donate $ to the bat conservancy to help preserve and care for their habitat, and they give you a certificate of adoption and a photo of what is supposed to be "your" bat. :D Naturally, watching the bat flight I had to scour the skies for "my" bat until I found her. So I picked the bat that felt like the one I adopted and pointed it out to hubby and said, "There she is, that one's my baby." :p :love: :love: :love:

After leaving Carlsbad the 4 of us drove our 2 cars back here to the Phoenix area, stopping first at White Sands National Park. That park surprised me - I had no idea it was there and had no expectations when I heard about it. WOW! It's incredible!:eek:

White Sands N.M. is 275 square miles of GYPSUM SAND DUNES!!!! It is sheer white and the finest grain sand on earth (save for other gypsum sand) - it is not coarse and beige like quartz sand that you find on beaches. AND - plant life has found a way to adapt and live in it - the dunes rise 30 to 60 feet high, and the flats between the dunes house all kinds of exquisite flowers that evolved to live in gypsum soil. I cannot describe - it was like visiting another planet! You should see the shapes and colors on these flowers!!!! And furthermore, yucca plants adapted 35 foot spines so that their flower stalks could reach up out of the dunes and breathe - so even many of the sand dunes had flowering plants sticking out of the tops of them.

AND - you are allowed to get out and PLAY in the sand dunes! :D They recommend if you go out of sight range of your vehicle that you bring a gallon of water and a compass, or you would wander lost in the gypsum desert indefinitely - after all, 275 square miles of rolling, blazing, pure white sand and nothing else but desert flowers? You would so die!:eek: But anyway, we stayed right by the cars. :lol: Most places, the gypsum sand was so compact you could RUN on it. I ran up and down the dunes. It has a surface tension reminiscent of high quality dance studio floors. I tried some yoga and cartwheels, testing the solidity of the sand - fantastic! But if you reach down with your fingers and pick it up, the sand is SO soft - it drifts into the air in particles finer than dust. You can hardly even FEEL it!

So, White Sands and Carlsbad definitely get my recommendation as vacation spots!

Anyone else been there?

[Rick336]

Zerbie,

Nah. I wasn't poking fun at ya. I was just making a silly joke.:D

I'm glad to hear that y'all had a fun time. I've been to New Mexico. I love it out there. I visited a town named Eagle's Nest, NM. Beautiful place.

Rick

[Zerbie]

Zerbie,

Nah. I wasn't poking fun at ya. I was just making a silly joke.:D

Rick

:D It's all good. Took me a while to get it though (wake-y wake-y zerbie, duh). :p

:lol:

[Jennifer5]

sounds like a great trip zerbie! ... and now I see what you meant when you said that you adopted a bat..:lol:

[Vanessa White]

Zerb: Your description was so vivid for me, I felt like I was viewing an actual picture of your adventures. It sounds beautiful and like a real communing experience with the earth and the earth's creatures. I hope to visit New Mexico someday- who knows!? Great to have you "back", even though you were not really "gone" I guess! Peace, Vanessa

[tdogg]

Zerbie,

Sounds like an awesome place!!! So cool you got to visit there. Never been there myself, can't do caves (claustrophobic) but LOVE bats! In the Grand Canyon backpacking/camping, pre-dawn sitting on the bench, suddenly thousands of bats were frantically flying around here and there, occasionally would get hit in the hair/head or back by a bat. I just sat still and reveled in the moment, will never forget it.

Like Vanessa said - thanks for the 'postcard'!!

[Dash]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEk!!!:eek:

:eek:

Tdogg, that would have been the end of me!!!:'(

On the other hand, once back in '97...September, I believe...I was on the farm in Oklahoma by myself. I looked out the window into the brilliant afternoon sunshine and saw that is was raining. Absolutely magical!

I took off running south toward the fields and pulled my shirt off to feel the rain on my body. When I got down into the draw, I stripped down to my skin and ran under the sun-dripping trees. I came around to one of the small ponds surrounded by cottonwoods and had what was possibly the single most mystical, ecstatic experience of my life.

The Monarch butterflies were migrating and thousands of them had covered the trees. The canopy was fluttering and breathing bright orange and black. I never stopped...I just walked right into the shifting cloud with my arms outstretched. They lifted from the branches and blew across my body, landing here and there. I could feel their wings brushing my flesh and I felt the presence of the earth as a goddess. The powerful femininity of this presence left me breathless, and I felt as if I had the most beautiful lover caressing me.

If there was one moment in my life that I could revisit, I think it would be that one.

[Zerbie]

Wuuhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????????

That was incredibly erotic, Dash, wow.
And incredibly beautiful.

I've had some moments that felt like that one, too. I totally utterly relate.

But - you don't like bats? :(

[Mia14]

I had such an image in my head of playing in that sand... I'm not a big fan of sand myself, but it sounded nice.:D

[tdogg]

Wow Dash, what an experience.

another one I had - birding alone (not always a good idea) just south of where i live in a wetland area. A northern harrier female - this is a hawk type raptor that is about the most amazing flyer around, and they have owl-like faces (facial disk), the females are a rich brown varied color - anyway, I was standing very quiet watching her swoop in, out and around the levy looking for lunch, and then she flew over to where I was standing, and not more than 5 or 6 feet away, she passed by me. We made eye contact, as two strong independent women - one with nature, and then she turned her head and soared away back to the levy. I was left breathless and amazed.

That is the one moment I could relive every day of my life.

Bats are harmless if you just stand still and let them be. My fear, ants! Not afraid of an ant per se, but the thought of ant trails all over my body makes me quake uncontrollably!!

[Dash]

That is AWESOME tdogg!!! I totally understand that!

(I think this is why I show up as a little "neo-pagan" on Beliefnet.com (http://www.beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html))

[Jennifer5]

You both had great stories! Sounds like fun!:)

[tdogg]

When I take people out birding, often they will look around and talk and walk and say where are all the birds? It's a learned thing, but I find that if I become still, quiet breathing, observing the life around me without being intrusive, after a brief time it's like I meld into nature and become just like the life around me - birds, animals, plants - kinda weird but yes, awesome at the same time! But it takes practice, patience and some alone time! It's like, to relate to nature you have to reach nature at its own level, become the same as the nature around you.

Much like relating to small children, they will trust you more when you bend down, talk soft and relate to them on their level. Animals too.

I'm a total nature freak Dash, maybe I"ll check out the web site, probably a little neo-pagan myself!! (I can totally picture you covered in the soft wonder of Monarch butterflies...)

[Zerbie]

That's exactly right Tdogg!!!

So many people go to "watch" nature from outside. So how exactly is that different from watching TV?

No no. Reach out and feel the nature of the life you are observing.

I always like the end of the bat flight best. At the beginning, the stadium full of people is noisy, hyper, unsettling. Within 10 minutes 75% of those people get bored and head for their cars. By the end of the hour, 90% of them have left. Then it is quiet. You can hear the almost inaudible brush of tiny bat wings against the twilight sky. You can intuit the logic in the pattern of their movement. At this point in the bat flight, I become the bats. Oh, no, not literally. :p But I lie down on the bench looking right up into the sky and allow my imagination to meld me in with the bats. And inside I fly with them, and learn a little bit about what bat-being is.

[Jennifer5]

wow, I didn't realize there was to much to birding... sounds amazing:love:

[tdogg]

You said it exactly Zerbie! If you just wait around, eventually most if not all others will leave and then you can become one with nature in your heart. Fortunately, like you, I have a lot of patience and can wait out the stubbornest loudmouth!

Jennifer, birding is amazing. The comment most people have when birding for the first time is "I never knew there were so many different kinds of birds!"

[Zerbie]

You said it exactly Zerbie! If you just wait around, eventually most if not all others will leave and then you can become one with nature in your heart. Fortunately, like you, I have a lot of patience and can wait out the stubbornest loudmouth!

s!"

:D :D :D :D :D

:lol:

Yep! That's how it is.

:love: