Playing Catch (Up) Part I

I know, I know, you don't have to say it. I will say it myself! I've been more than negligent concerning this blog as of late and I'm sorry for it. Anyways, in repentance I will do my due diligence to fill you in to my boring life as much as my brittle memory will afford me to recall the last 60+ days.

Where to begin? There was that late summers canoe ride down the narrow Shenandoah River. There was also that extended weekend jaunt to the high and dusty desert plains region of that forgotten state that we call New Mexico. And believe it or not, interspersed in between both of these events there was a new house purchase and a subsequent pending move.

So during the early part of September, Matilida, myself, as well as a few friends packed up some ruck sacks and drove due west down the forever famous route 66. It was about 50 miles or so when we found ourselves conveniently located under the cover of the Shenandoah mountain range and decided to make a weekend of it. We had come in a pseudo-celebration of my thirtieth birthday.

It turned out to be nothing less than a beautiful weekend, and as we canoed down the Shenandoah river that Saturday afternoon in two bright red canoes, I thought to myself how pleasurable it was to be able to afford this luxury on my 30th birthday.

Later that afternoon it was just a few moments after we had cautiously navigated our canoes around an assembly of wading dairy cows where we found a an impromptu formation of flat rocks. It was on these flat rocks where the four of us moored our canoes just a few feet from shore and ate sandwiches in near silence under the unrelenting late summer sun.

That weekend will live forever in my mind as the close of summer 2009.