Im getting that old familiar itch again, right behind my eyeballs and on the soles of my feet. Like the world is moving at light speed, and the only thing I can do is try to keep pace, which I naturally cannot. Bandelier is over, really. 8 more days and I'm out of here. All these squirming feelings inside, like have I done everything I should, have I made a footprint of even the most personal kind here? Did I cut the cord enough to fully saturate myself with the weight of my oneness, did I give it all a fighting chance?
I always tend to have the same unbalanced internals during these times of transition; I am already saddened by this inevitable change, and yet I want nothing more than to fly burning across the night sky, put on a slim black suit, and walk the streets of Rome or New York, glowing in anonymity, dripping with newness.

In the meantime tho, these are pictures of a hike entering at the Pumice mines (shades of Siberia), down into a beautiful glen with a high cataract spreading out in front of a looming cave. Above the trail to the left, closer to Turkey Springs, is a jagged face of rock covered in petroglyphs, again visible best in the waning sun of the afternoon. Further west than those closer to the Visitors Center, these represent a mid-point in the local population's migration slowly southwestwards, a stopover en route to the present locations of Cochiti Mesa and the Pajarito Plateau.

And a small cave --

Some lazy day not long ago, I spent the afternoon snoozing and reading as the sunlight moved across the ceiling. At one point I woke and was basking half-asleep, when I was startled by what sounded like a giant flying beetle. And it was, almost; a tiny hummingbird -- the non-whistling variety, we have both -- buzzed into my cave and was flabbergasted by my orange backpack. I think he thought he had died and gone to heaven; the world's largest flower, and no-one to have to share it with.

But how to tackle such a flower? He hovered here and there, surveying his treasure from different angles, all not three feet from my delighted self. He tapped, he probed, he pooped the most delicate, elegant little hummingbird poop into the open mouth of my backpack (so dainty I did not even clean it out; it must have been sugar-water) and finally, from a top-most vantage point, he took an experimental sip from the yellow emblem in the middle of a sea of orange, the center of his flower.

But what was this!? What kind of flower does not taste of nectar, especially one so big and beautiful, and most importantly, all mine? He regarded it, puzzled and motionless in the air, uncomprehending and already the slightest bist sad. Another poke, another angle. . . . Then he buzzed away, but not too far; I saw him sitting on a branch nearbye, staring at my cave and thinking hard. I could almost hears his tiny thoughts : "But it has to be a flower! It can't not be a flower!"

And then, almost as if he couldn't believe it, wouldn't believe it, and had just willed it otherwise, he flew back. He repeated his angles, tasted nothing, and the lowness in his soul and his realization that things are not what they seem, was obvious in miniature, and he spun away among the junipers.

Wonderingly, feeling like the luckiest person on earth, I thought about this: it had taken maybe a minute and a half in total -- 30 seconds for the initial discovery. And yet, in hummingbird time, measured in heartbeats, this had been a long, agonizing saga. The hummingbird had really had a relationship with my backpack.

And so these final days, which should be laden with the sweet savor of fullness, a week of daisey-chained days with no cut, rub or demarcation of units, a gently rocking seacradle of thoughts and clouds, instead grind and jump, chafe and bind me like an ill fitting shirt. I am trussed in my own local irrelevance; get me gone!