Move to Casa de Piedras. A word about dust.

1/13/10
We set out this morning after a poor night´s sleep. It is always like that your first night of sleeping on the ground. We will adjust. Our eight mile trek took us still further up the Rio Vacas with much of the trail on broken rock that left our feet feeling beaten up. But our spirits were high and the weather excellent so we passed the hours listening to our I-pods and playing a game I call "Knife Fight." It works like this; I say "Hey Ty, Janis Joplin versus Boy George in a knife fight. Who do you like?" "Janis Joplin," Ty says, and then he has to justify the choice with lyrical references from the two. "Boy George would be too busy asking "Do you really want to hurt me," and Janis would pull a shiv from her dirty red bandanna." We pitted Bob Seger against Bruce Springsteen, Randy Bachman against Elvis Presley (the later years), and Art Garfunkel against Prince.
The heat came on, hitting 102F as we neared Casa de Piedras, an apologetic Ranger Station and camp ground. We were well ahead of the mule trains and thus without our gear so Ty and I soaked our feet in a nearby spring creek. We spoke of dust. It is dusty here. So so dusty. And that would not be so bad, except it is also windy. So so windy. It´s like living in a David Lynch film. As a result, dust is everywhere and in everything. If you leave your mouth open you will not only look like someone in a Pepsi commercial, your teeth will instantly become gritty. So then, because we must live this reality for another two weeks, Ty and I decided to come up with all the reasons dust is good.
1. Without dust, 70`s rock group Kansas could not have written the epic hit "Dust in the Wind." It would have come out as "Dirt in the Wind", as in "...all we are is dirt in the wind." Not the same thing. This in turn would have adversely affected the teenage dating experience for most of us.
2. Dust is really just tiny bits of dirt. Since it is said that dirt is the stuff of life, to embrace dust is to embrace life itself ...in really small portions.
3. We could not come with a third reason. We were too dusty and uncomfortable.