Run DMZ

Thought it might be nice to resurrect Wordless Wednesday for the season. This is Eagle Rock, which we accessed yesterday via the Pacific Coast Trail in Warner Springs. The 6.5-mile hike had its challenges, from territorial cows and bulls to a snake in the middle of the trail. It heated up to high 70s, but that was a good thing for me and my heavy backpack.   

The beginning and ending tend to be what gets remembered most. We can recall the excitement and enthusiasm starting a new project, partnership, romance, home, family, or friendship. We also vividly remember how all of these end, whether naturally or suddenly. This robs us of the portion that really matters, where the mundane resides but without which progress comes to a halt. I'm talking about the middle, that part of a plan, relationship, or life where we actually devote the bulk of our time. It tends to muddle together because it doesn't leave quite the impression of the beginning and the end, what is known as the primacy effect .  That's why so much emphasis is placed on first impressions and final departures. But the middle is where we make our imprint, whether living up to a promise or proving people wrong. It's everything in the middle that determines how we are seen and remembered when it's lights out. Right now I'm in the middle of my backpack training ....

  I never considered how Bandelier National Monument got its name until a week after I'd left the abandoned cliff dwellings, the time-defying petroglyphs, the impressively preserved ruins, and one harrowing climb to an ancient housing complex that I wisely sat out. Despite these New Mexico lands serving as home to ancestral Pueblo people for millennia, once the cliffs and canyons joined the U.S. parks system, government officials chose to honor Adolf Bandelier, a Swiss immigrant and self-taught archeologist who studied this region and played a role in its establishment as a national monument to preserve the sites. That was in 1916 after the place had been vacated some 400 years prior by the indigenous populations that made a decent life out of honoring the elements surrounding them. A brochure you receive at the gate includes a message from the Affiliated Pueblo Committee: Spiritually, our ancestors still live here at Bandelier. You see reminders of their presence here--their homes...