Vegas

Shout out to my Friends, Chris and Lori Taplett, owners of Zocalos Steel Fabrication and Design, in the Great Mojave Desert, Las Vegas, Nevada.  What they do with STEEL is amazing.  Chances are, if you've dined out, gambled, or slept in Sin City, you've sat in one of their hand-crafted chairs, run your hand on a rail from their shop, or enjoyed about town one of their creations.  Recently, imposing Steel Cut Charm on the Tapletts, I managed to bolt the Pacific Northwest, hang with them for two weeks, and stave off the maudlin "Post-Super Bowl" Blues.  After my STEELers marched to Triumph, you see, I looked upon the rain, sensed mildew's stranglehold on the calendar, and left P-town for Jack-rabbit Country.  February (remember when the Super Bowl was a first-month affair?), mind you, in Vegas isn't warm, though neither is the sky, as it is in northern latitudes, a dungeon-esque gray.  In fact, after breaking through the region-wide storm, and leveling off at 30,000 feet, the plane made visible stratospheric color eminently wondrous for the persistency of its absence.  A sense of joy centered around the possibility of bounding rock unencumbered by cloud filled Steel Cut Oats. Blue, the color, made blue, the emotion, less blue....

Fortunately, after a day of hanging with a three-legged Chihuahua, while learning the wonders of Wi-Fi (the blame for this blog can be placed on their shoulders), Chris and Lori offered to car-pool and loan me their truck.  Vegas - my Vegas - is different from that of Madison Avenue, different from the "what happens there stays there" moral monstrosity that appeals to man's low mental base.  My Vegas is a boulder-splattered tableau.  A quick leap to a space trip of humming red rock.  Of what do I speak?  Of the National Monument west of downtown, a Garden of Stone, where, quite in contrast to the artificial cacophony of greed-driven games, Geology erupts in grandiose patterns and ravens play "pit boss" to gamblers who climb.

Yes, Open Country….  BOULDERS in every size shape and color, a Seussian version of tectonic upheaval, whose active inter-face challenges every muscle---the lats as they pull, the quads as they push, the feet in a thousand protean planes--and here one needn't stick to a trail.  I enjoy trails, but hikers yearn to roam unrestricted.  Trails are akin to lines in a coloring book: they guide, direct but kill spontaneity.  Creativity suffers.  And so it was that I went after stone, rising in spirit above the vast basin

Finish: walk-friendly, no….  Palms,  Red Rock N.M.