Synchronocity

Runners are well aware of the special bond that running buddies have. Today, the power of this bond was on full, mind-blowing display. 

I had awakened at 2:30 a.m. and could not get back to sleep so I got up and read for about four hours then nodded off, reawakening well into the morning. My Sunday run for, perhaps, the first time in my life, did not start until around 10 a.m.

Running buddy Connie has been under the weather for the past week, unable to run at all. 

Connie and I have been running buddies for over 40 years. Our opportunities to run together once our schedules were consumed with kids and careers became few and far between - but when I retired in 2006 our friendship and running partnership flourished once again.  We almost always run together at least twice a week, often three times a week and occasionally throw in additional days of running just for the heck of it. 

For my run today, I decided to do a big loop, starting with a southbound direction to the South Boulder Creek trail to see how the cows and prairie dogs were doing. As I approached the trailhead gate, I see a blue car turn onto the road, make a very Connie-like maneuver to a very Connie-traditional parking spot. And as I reach the gate, close enough to actually see into this blue car, I see a widely grinning Connie enthusiastically waving. 

So you tell me: how is it possible that I, starting my Sunday run 3 hours later than usual and picking a random route out of my many possible running routes, and Connie who has been too sick to run until this very day and who decided to give a run a try after grocery shopping - shopping that is always done after running not before, end up for our runs at the very same spot at the very same instant.  

Synchronicity!

New Mexico Extravaganza - our final N.M. chapter!

70/70 Quest #38: El Morro National Monument

The National Parks brochure does a fine job of describing this monument:

“On a main east-west trail, dating from antiquity, rises a great sandstone promontory with a pool of water at its base. The Zuni (A:shiwi), whose Puebloan ancestors lived here, call it Atsinna – ‘place of writings on the rock.’ Spaniards called it El Morro – The Headland. Anglo-Americans called it Inscription Rock. Over the centuries those who traveled this trail stopped to camp at the shaded oasis beneath these cliffs. They left the carved evidence of their passage – symbols, names, dates, and fragments of their stories – that registers the cultures and history intermingled on the rock.”  

Carvings in the sandstone date from several centuries ago to 1906 when federal law prohibited further carving.

 

Magnificent Sandstone formations:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...with a shaded water source:

The sentiment repeated throughout the inscriptions: "...pasamosporaqui" ~passed by here (inscription from 1636?)

 

 

1200s: Puebloans. The Atsinna village site on top of El Morrow was built in the late 1200s. Atsinna and nearby sites continue to be sacred places for the Zuni.

 

 

 

1600s: Spaniards, pursuing the myth of golden cities. The first known European inscription dates to 1605.

 

Mid 1800s: Immigrants to California, US Army exploration, and railroad-survey expeditions. Lt. James H. Simpson, an Army Topographical Engineer, and Richard Kern, artist, took a side trip to El Morro in 1849. Simpson wrote up the first English description of what he named Inscription Rock; Kern created the first drawings of the inscriptions.

 

2022: Vaughan & Miller on a 70-new-things-in-their-70^th-year quest:

 

 

 

 

 

 Hasta luego New Mexico!