Cans, stripes, luck (Carrara NV)

It was a lovely cloudy day on Sunday. I'm still delighted by stunning blue sky days here, but sometimes a brewing storm can be even more beautiful. It wasn't heavy enough to be raining down to ground level much, but the virga/walking clouds were trailing lightly over the hills, and the sunlight was dappling the land through huge crazy cloud patterns.

Raffle prize - a chunk of halite from California.
Approx 25 cm across. Yes, it's pink.

We started out by driving over the hill to Pahrump, where Simon had won two raffle prizes at last week's rock and gem show. (Our batting average lately is astounding, actually. Last time I entered a raffle was at the rock and gem club meeting a few weeks ago, where I also won two prizes, one of them the grand prize. Hey statistics, you just keep looking the other way, okay? Okay.) The prize pickup was handled in a particularly Nevadan way, by meeting up in a casino car park.

Pumpkin spice everything

Fall color at Bellagio Conservatory

It's definitely autumn - the days are getting shorter very quickly, although the temperature still gets up above 30 C (mid 80s F). By far the strangest thing about autumn here is not the disparity between the cool angled light and the heat of the sun. Nope, it's the pumpkin spice everything that grips the nation, providing a welcome orange change from red, blue, and the presidential election (mind you they even have an orange-frosted candidate this year).

Here, for your delectation, is a list of pumpkin spiced, pumpkin pie, or pumpkin products I have seen this month.

Shooting sheep and scorpions (tracks and traces at Valley of Fire)

At Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada's oldest and one of the loveliest, I've done the White Domes walk several times. It's beautiful, with its deep natural stairs, slot canyon, and pale fine sand underfoot. This time, though, I wanted to see petroglyphs. There are so many petroglyph sites within reach of Vegas that it seemed a shame that the most memorable ones I've seen are at Newspaper Rock 'way over in eastern Utah.

So we stopped at Atlatl Rock, named for the dart throwing tool that appears in the petroglyphs. There's a steel walkway up to the viewing platform, built into the rock beside the petroglyphs. It's amazing to me that people made these representational works about 4000 years ago, and we can still clearly recognise some of the shapes.

Goldengrove unleaving (Autumn aspens on 143)

We took a drive from Panguitch up the hill. The road climbs through farmland and forest, past a lake and alongside creeks, from about 6500 feet to nearly 10,000.


The autumn foliage was at its fleeting loveliest, the sky flawlessly blue ...

So here's some melancholic autumn poetry for you.

(It isn't magic all the time
It's only magic when I rhyme.
- Johnny Fartpants (attr.*))

"That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang."
 - Shakespeare


“At no other time does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost."
- Rilke

"Whoever has no house now will not build one anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing"
 - Rilke again


("Margaret, are you grieving
over goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves like the things of man, you
with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?"
- Hopkins

How things from high school stick with you! Shout out to the girls of De Valon House, Miss McLafferty, pre-photocopier duplicating machines of all kinds - can you smell the spirit? - and autumn nostalgia.)

Itinerary

Highway 143 Panguitch - Brian Head - Parowan

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*So Simon claims. Weirdly, this Viz character was written by Simon Donald. Coincidence? I Don't Think So. I'm onto you, SDM.