Ann has been in Sante Fe a month now. I’ve spent much of that month looking forward to meeting her this weekend in Penitente Canyon. It takes about 3 seconds after I arrive Saturday morning to sink into a blissful reunion. We spend some hiking and climbing in cool but pleasant weather, and the next thing I know it is already Monday, time to go and dream my way through another month.

We found our way onto a few of the short but sweet routes here during our visit:

Mr. Breeze 5.2 Ann breezes up this to get into the mood.

Mr. Wind 5.7 Slab never feels easy to me, but I like it.

The Serpent 5.8 A theme for many routes around here, slabby down low, steep up high.

May-B-Nueve 5.8 I like this the best of all the “easy” slab routes. It’s also the hardest, IMO.

Captain America 5.10a One weird move at the bottom, then pull them steep huecos up up up!

Ordinary People 5.9 - Way too high first bolt, even if the slopey feet are big.

Children of a Lesser Grade 5.10c - Excellent slabbiness.

Yah-Ta-Hei 5.10c - More slab to face. Very fun easier sequences down low.

That’s The Way 5.10b - Similar to Yah-Ta-Hei, but less steep and shorter.

Drugs Are Nice 5.10a - A great move to gain the lower slab, takes me a couple tries.

Razor Hueco Arete 5.10a - All out steep buckets up a nice arete!

Jesus Liquid 5.10d - lots of little holds and a couple of big ones on a big bulge. Good flash for me

Drug Test 5.11a - Excellent steep pockets. I take a couple of good falls, but make it up, and tucker myself all out.

I join Kate, Mark, and Sean at Buttonrock for the mostly blissfully warm and sunny climbing day so far this season. A day out that is warm and sunny all day long. BLISS. My routes:

Green Slab 5.9+ I try to warm up on this, and take a pretty good fall! A reminder that the sequence is very important on this fun route.

The Buick 5.10a I don’t see any reason not to TR this fun, pumpy little route from Green Slab anchors. I lieback, later Mark beautifully jams up it.

Unknown Face 5.10c I’ve been wanting to take a shot at this route since my first trip here. The opening moves take a couple of tries, very delicate. Then it gets quite pumpy, and by the third bolt I’m gassed, and hang. I have to work out the moves just so to make the next clip, and hang again. This would be a good workout route for me.

Civic Duty 5.8 I actually climb the face just right of this on the toprope that Mark left. There are some fun moves here.

Beamer Up Scotty 5.8? This is a nice looking overhanging wide hand crack left the Unknown Face. Mark does a nice onsight lead of it, and I find I can’t even follow it! It feels much harder than 5.8, but quite fun.

Introducing Meteor Dad 5.10d We move to the River Wall, where I encourage Mark to take a shot at this route, because I’m sure he’ll love. He flashes it happily, and I’m more than happy to clean it up. Great route.

Jeffrey Kahane, with Christopher Taylor on piano, delves three generations back into his family history to the holocaust, and brings us music from that time that was nearly lost in the horrors of World War II. Kurt Weill wrote his Symphony No. 2 in exile, Viktor Ullman composed his piano concerto in the concentration camp at Theresienstadt before being killed in the Auschwitz gas chambers. Vladyslaw Szpilman’s miraculous survival story was told in the movie The Pianist, after which he recomposed his Concertino for Piano and Orchestra from memory. None of these works are bleak, as one might fear. It would be closer to say they acknowledge the darkness, but defy it. All of it sounds like music that should be common in concert halls, but is instead just emerging from the fog of war.

Jeffrey Kahane returns to challenge us with some more modern music. The program starts with Haydn Symphony No. 98, which I image was supposed to draw the crowd, but didn’t. Jeffrey looks a little shocked when he sees the empty house. He conducts a tight performance anyway. The Toy Fantasy can’t be an easy piece to put together. Cutler describes the piece himself beforehand as an attempt to push the envelope of harp music a bit by using two harps, but keep it “accessible”. I felt the two objectives battling a bit - it seemed at times to jostle back and forth between them. Still, I’m glad Jeffrey challenges us. He continues to do so after the information with full choral piece by Giya Kancheli called Styx. It also feels a bit disjointed to me, with sudden climaxes and dropoffs. Some of it positively creepy - I like those parts the best. When was the last time a trip to the symphony made your skin crawl? As always, I feel richer for the experience.

Reading these books in the order they were written has been an intriguing peek into the life of the author as well a satisfying plunge into a good story. Having written the series over the entire course of his life, Asimov’s interests and values changed and grew richer, and the books reflect this. The wonderful concept of a mathematical model of collective human behavior is a constant through all of the books, but they explore it from a wonderfully diverse set of perspectives. The early books are largely concerned with political and historical forces. The importance of the emotional component of the human psyche is explored. The cultural background reflects a conservative, male-dominated society. These values change radically in later books. Asimov clearly become more interested in human sexuality, variances and constants among different cultures, computers, robots, the Gaia Principle, and martial arts, just to name a few. It’s joy to accompany him on that journey as well as the journey of the inhabitants of his future galaxy.

Ann leaves today to start her new job in Santa Fe on Wednesday. I’ll have plenty of things to keep me busy: selling Moby Jane, fixing up the camper and cargo trailer, and taking steps toward my dream of true mobile work with a heavy dose of outdoor time. I’ll be here on my own until July. I hope I don’t unravel too much by then!

We make it back to Dad’s house just in time to prepare for a concert. Gabriela Montero will play the 3rd Rachmaninoff piano concerto, and before it even starts we’re trying hard not compare her unfairly to “Olga“. As it turns out, she has a bit of a rocky night! She gets out of time with the orchestra, and seems to struggle. At one point Ann notices some confused looks in the orchestra, and Maron Alsop flipping through pages of the score. I wonder if they didn’t all get through it by the seat of their pants. That said, the drama of the performance actually served to focus my attention on the drama of the composition. This piece of music grabs me like few others I’ve experienced, even in a difficult performance. Any musician who can make it through the whole sweet tempest has my admiration.

The Canyonlands Needles Outpost is not to be missed. Get your solar-powered, off-the-grid milkshakes and hot showers here. Scramble on the rocks by your campsite. Have a cold microbrew. But I probably am wasting my pixels, because every time I try to tell someone how great Tracey and Gary are, they already know!

For our last day we decide to try a few more routes at Potash Road. The most exciting part of the day comes just after parking. We’re between the river and the road, and as I’m leaving the camper, T-Rex darts out. I panic, yell at Ann to grab him, she panics, dives, skins her knee, and T-Rex moves easily to safety in the bushes, surely wondering what our problem is. He’s perfectly traffic savvy, and waits until all is clear to come out again. After that we get to a few climbs in the wonderfully hot sun:

Seibernetics 5.8 - Another pretty dihedral, but boils down to slab climbing, a bit sparsely protected. The anchors make a perfect toprope for the 5.10 slab face away from the corner. The friction on this rock is amazing.

Top 40 5.8 - A group from the University of Wyoming has a toprope on this, but they let us use it. I’m just as happy not to have to lead it - the liebacks are beautiful, but the bottom half would involve strenuous, blind gear placements.

Lacto Mangulation 5.10b - A sport climb with a section of thin dihedral. I’m happy I brought one cam to add to the 4 bolts, and come down with a big smile.

We decide it’s worth ten bucks to spend our last night in the park at Willow Flat Campground inside the park. It’s a small, pleasant campground within walking distance of the mind-blowing Green River Overlook. At dawn I wander down there and just catch this moonset before setting up the camera for a time lapse: