Too stupid to die…

As in Patience the hummingbird’s chicks. Below are the first shots she’s permitted me to take and an update.

More happening in the garden, but the biggest news is,  I found out Tuesday: a) there are in fact two chicks, and b) I have two pics! Here’s the first.

In this picture, the two chicks are at the back of the nest, beaks pointed up waiting for mom to come back with food. As tiny as they are – the nest is just larger than a golf ball – they are huge compared to my first peek right after the first one hatched.

Here’s an update, some of it written before I got the pictures yesterday.

Sunday.

In the morning the sun is out and the winds have stopped, a relief for hummingbirds and dogs and humans. Patience is busy back and forth feeding her chick. Or chicks: I still don’t know how many. Otto and I are away most of the day, but when we get back I hear from my neighbors that we’ve had another visitor in the yard – a red-tailed hawk who apparently decided to try his/her luck with the doves. This is a real surprise; the yard’s only 10 or 12 feet wide, the trees in the next yard that lean in are well over 40 feet tall and a red-tail is not a small bird that prefers open spaces.

The aviary continues to grow. Besides the doves, the starlings and the robins (and of course omnipresent sparrows) we’ve had a small red bird drop by a few times – a house finch it turns out (I had to look it up) and a raven or a crow is apparently nesting nearby. I think it’s a raven though I haven’t got a good look at its tail or beak yet, as ravens are regular San Franciscans and crows only visit.

Monday.

Otto now knows exactly where the nest is but neither he nor Patience seem to care much. It was quiet when I took him out early this morning. Patience wasn’t in her nest at the time. Otto did his business and while he was doing a sniff check of the yard, Patience returned. As usual, she hovered and buzzed and made her way zig-zagging back to her nest. Otto heard her and managed to keep track as she moved about. He followed her path back to her nest and when she settled down, he went to the base of her small tree and looked up.

Since then, Otto’s paid no special attention to the spot and she’s paid none to him. He continues to chase the other birds out of the yard and that seems to suit her just fine.

Tuesday.

The winds have died down to just the normal leading and trailing edges of the fog moving in and out from the ocean. It’s cool out but anything’s better than the windstorms of the last couple weeks. Especially for hummingbirds.

I’ve found that the best time to look into the nest is mid-day when Patience is off feeding and taking a break – mom’s time off, I guess you can say.  Today was the jackpot: two pictures of two chicks. One’s above, the other here.

You can just make out the second chick’s beak between Patience and the one feeding.

Wednesday.

Patience definitely prefers her water sprayed on a plant. She lets me know by hovering near me when I’m using the hose. This isn’t the first time she’s done it. I spray the plants near her nest and a bit later she makes her way to the wet leaves and drinks. I got another look into the nest; the chicks were sleeping but appeared fine. and definitely bigger. Feather roots (what’s the correct word?) are visible on both.Patience sits higher and higher on her nest as the days go by.  Soon they won’t be able to duck below the edge and hide.

[By popular demand, here's an update on Patience the hummingbird nesting in my back yard. It's in the form of notes from the last four days. Nice to have something to write about besides health stuff - mine or the world's.]

Wednesday
I take Otto downstairs for his morning pee. When I open the door to the yard the first place I look – as always these days – is Patience’s nest. She’s standing on the edge, her long beak buried below the nest’s edge, feeding something. The eggs have hatched! Seeing me and Otto she hops back to sitting position, settling in carefully.

Afternoon: I get a peek inside the nest! The weather is calm and warm, and Patience is going back and forth catching bugs and hunting nectar. She stays near the nest but once she leaves the yard and my curiosity gets the better of me and I look inside the nest. Next to an unhatched egg is a small bit of motionless gray the size of a Jelly Belly. It doesn’t move or make a sound, but I’ve been around enough newborn chickens and pigeons to know a hatchling isn’t a finished work.

I have my camera in hand – I always do when I’m downstairs these days – but the baby and egg are too deep inside to get a shot and I don’t dare stay long. I hear Patience’s distinctive buzz and back away. Otto lies in the sun, oblivious.

Thursday
The temperature is down 30F/18C from Tuesday. Very San Francisco: when the fog returns after a heatwave we say the air conditioner’s back on. I check Patience several times. She’s always very busy, in and out, flitting everywhere. Once I try to look in nest again but she comes rushing back, disproving. She’s not so calm about my presence now – or Otto’s.

During one of her forages she pays attention to Otto for the first time, hovering above his head and then in front of him and at his side. He seems to have a hard time seeing her because of her size and ability to teleport to different spots but he has no trouble hearing her so he gives one of his famous head tilts and follows her buzz closely. A moment later Patience flies off, curiosity apparently satisfied.

I change the syrup in the old hummingbird feeder I resurrected. I’m not sure she uses it but I know another hummingbird has: it did so while Patience was in her nest and I in the chair nearby. I also saw her displeasure at another hummer being so close to her nest. “Territorial,” the guides describe the genus.

In the evening the winds that hit before the heatwave return as do the starlings. From upstairs I clap my hands once sharply and they fly away.

Friday
Wind, wind, wind. The temperature is down almost 40F/22C over Tuesday. The conditions outside are horrible; even Otto doesn’t want to go out. Patience’s tree whips back and forth and she rides her nest like a barely-in-control boat in a storm. I think she’s in the state of torpor hummers go into in lieu of sleep but it’s hard to tell.

The winds pound the city all day. I worry that Patience or her chicks won’t survive. I can’t imagine really how she could.

I return about 5pm expecting the worst. Yet I open the door to the yard and in the cherry sapling still bending in the wind Patience clings to the edge of her nest, feeding the invisible contents. Seeing me she settles back in, but higher up than she used to sit. I spray the nearby plants with water and leave her be. She’s struggled enough for one day.

Saturday
The winds died down last night and the day is cool but pleasant. Patience is sitting on her nest when I check in the morning. I can’t stick around but I do a bit of watering before I go. The dry winds dehydrate plants in a flash and several are wilting. Also, waterdrops on plants are a hummer’s preferred way of getting moisture as far as I can tell.

I return with Otto in the afternoon and we spend some time in the yard. He sits in the sun, I putter with plants, my camera nearby. Patience is on her nest per usual. She stays put while I move about but eventually I hear her leave. I don’t approach the nest too closely. Instead I try a few test shots. The tree’s in deep shade at this point, and even setting the ISO to 1600 it’s hard to get a blur-free shot. I set it as best I can and wait for her to return.

She’s all over the place. I sit next to Otto in the sun and she puts on quite a show. Up and down and all over the yard, she pulls bugs out of mid-air, dips into flowers, goes after water sprayed on plants. At one point she stops on an old trellis and cleans herself. Otto sees her, gives a head-tilt and watches. I tell him to stay still – he’s been given free run to chase the starlings out of the yard for her benefit and I don’t want him going after her too. He doesn’t need to be held back; he seems as curious about her as she was about him yesterday.

She returns to her nest and this time rather than settling in, she settles on the rim and feeds the still invisible chicks. I use plural, but I don’t know if both have hatched or just the one; I’ve not gotten a peek in since that first day. Slowly I approach with the camera. She looks at me, but keeps on feeding. I snap a couple of shots before she gets nervous and settles back over her brood.

Evening, the winds are back and the trees are whipping about in the yard. Otto doesn’t want to stay out long. Patience is in for another tough night.

[A hummingbird, who I've named Patience for reasons that would be obvious if you saw the effort she is spending, has built a nest in my small city back yard. I haven't posted much about it here, but you can catch up on my Flickr page here and here and here. The following is the latest news.]

The drama in my back yard gets more intense as the hatching of Patience’s eggs gets closer.

It’s very hot here in San Francisco right now. Temps hit 93F/35C yesterday and 90+ so far today, something that only happens once or twice a year when a mass of high pressure air presses down hard on the west coast. (And oh! do we San Franciscans suffer! This is a town that calls 75F/23C a heatwave!)

The critters feel the heat too. Otto (my dog) mopes about as if his destiny is a barbecue spit and refuses to walk more than a block. Birds of all kinds flock to my yard to get water from the old planter saucer I keep filled for them. Otto and I are spending a lot of time outside because my apartment is too hot: it has huge windows, which are wonderful most of the time but on hot days turns the place into a microwave oven.

So we’re out back, Otto and I, and I watch Patience the hummingbird get off her nest periodically to cool herself and probably her eggs, since optimum temperature for hummingbird eggs is 96F/36C and she doesn’t have to use much body heat to get there right now. The eggs are due to hatch any time, though they’re still eggs and not chicks as of this writing: I peeked when she took her last break.

Patience’s alert level has definitely moved up a notch to orange; she’s become very picky about who is allowed in the yard and who isn’t. To my continuing amazement, Otto and I pass muster. I think she gives Otto a pass because he often runs off the other birds who linger too long around the water dish which is very much to her liking (more on that in a moment). That he doesn’t seem to even be aware of her – she moves too fast, has no scent to sniff, never goes down to his level – probably helps.

And me? Well, this will doubtless draw charges of anthropomorphizing or being off my meds or just plain old-fashioned California kookiness, but it is my strong sense that she considers me a sort of ally in her efforts. She won’t leave her nest for long and never leaves sight of it – unless I’m sitting in the red chair a few feet away. Seriously: I just returned outside after an absence of a few hours and I no sooner sat down than she zoomed off into the next yard, first letting me know she’s going as she always does by hovering above me for a few seconds and making her little clicks.

She was gone about five minutes this time (that’s when I did the egg check), again hovered where I could hear her and then made the five-point maneuver around the tree and into her nest she does every time she returns. If I’m somewhere else in the yard or going in and out her behavior’s different: she doesn’t come near me and she doesn’t leave sight of the nest.

Yesterday Otto and I watched transfixed as she chased a dove out of the yard – thus the picture and the title of this post. She was very aggressive about it, chasing the dove to the roof of our four story building. The pair of doves have been around much longer than Patience, but she doesn’t care: she just wants them gone. She repeated her chase later in the afternoon with both of the pair and again succeeded. I’m surprised by this. I knew she distrusted the starlings – she gets very agitated when they dig for bugs below her tree. (Otto runs the starlings out of the yard which may be why she gives him a pass.) But doves? It’s hard to see doves as a threat, but what do I know about life’s dangers from a hummingbird’s perspective (cats excepted)?

So we all, critters and me, await the Event. This “wild kingdom” saga transpiring in my small back yard in one of the densest neighborhoods of San Francisco is a thrill to watch. And to be a part of, whether I really am or not.

More, as hatchings occur.

Yesterday I listened to three-fourths of a lecture by Dmitry Orlov titled Social Collapse Best Practices. Three-fourths? Well, as fans of Russia’s great writers know, nobody does gloom like the Russians. Consider Dostoyevsky. Or Solzhenitsyn, who makes Dostoyevsky read like Steve Martin. Orlov channels that famous Russian gloom into our new century and aims it square at the heart of our current socioeconomic madness. I ran out of mental room for the apocalypse so I had to put the last bits aside.

Mr Orlov is a hybrid: born and early raised in Russia, he moved to the U.S. at age twelve. Now he is a writer and lecturer specializing in such happy topics as Peak Oil and the collapse of societies. Serious collapse, as in Post-Soviet the-world-we-knew-is-gone-OMG! collapse.

Both bits of his background come through. He is relentlessly, apocalyptically depressing, forecasting nothing less than… oh, let him say it:

I am one of the very few people who several years ago unequivocally predicted the demise of the United States as a global superpower.

(more…)

I have this image stuck in my head:

It’s a few months from now. Everyone who can possibly be foreclosed upon has lost their house and been booted out. The banks have repossessed apartment buildings from the landlords and every tenant has been evicted. And all of us, home owners and renters side by side, are parked on the street, right in front of our former homes, worldly goods stacked around us.

We cook on barbecue grills, sleep on mattresses spread along the asphalt, wash our dishes and ourselves with hoses hooked up to fire hydrants. We queue for the block’s portapotty, all the while staring at our boarded up, crumbling former homes, wondering, “how did we get here?” No answers come forth; we shrug and go about our days.

This scenario is of course delusional. Oh, not the part of all of us living on the streets; that seems all too possible. The delusional part is the idea that everybody will shrug and go quietly about their business. We’re just not that kind of species. Paraphrasing our national court jester: burn, baby burn.

(more…)

Funny thing about confidence: you don’t really know you’ve lost it until you start getting it back. Without an inner voice constantly whispering a “you can do it” nag, a hypercautious agony aunt takes over and plunges you into a fog of jitters. Auntie has excuses for everything. “No, no, no!” she hisses. “Be careful!” “Oh, you really shouldn’t go out tonight. You’re not quite recovered you know!” “Of course you shouldn’t feel guilty about not taking that bike ride! Look at what you’ve been through!” Eventually this irritating scold owns you so completely you cringe at the risks involved with everything. “Be careful of that tea now, it’s hot!” “Don’t trip on that step!”

Unless you had the misfortune to be raised wary (or had a very difficult childhood, the same thing), auntie’s isn’t the default human condition. (more…)

I don’t send out political screeds. This is my first and hopefully my last. But I feel strongly about this election, so strongly I’m risking alienating a lot of people here. Please, consider what I’ve written. Send it out to the world. Link to this page. Send it to friends and relatives and strangers. Cut it, edit it, reword it. Post it on blogs, squeeze it into comments. Send it back to those rumor-mongering eMails. Whatever you can do. Thanks. –Ed

No free passes this election

Recently a friend told me he’s voting “none of the above” for President. My blood boiled. I’ve heard others planning to do the same, write in somebody irrelevant or just skip voting altogether. My blood boils and my head spins. What are they thinking?

Does anyone really think this country would be the disaster it is today if the election had been different in 2000? That we’d be in the same financial, military, and moral mess? (more…)

I know, I know… Post anything about religion or politics and I’m likely to lose half of my 50 or so readers. Oh, well. Life’s tough, it’s getting tougher for everybody, and I’m heading into surgery again (more tomorrow), so what the hell? I need a diversion. Read or not, your choice. There’ll likely be something political here sooner or later, then I’ll lose the other half of you. Que sera sera, as Doris used to sing.

Dear God, Can We Talk?

Actually, can I talk and you just listen? I know it’s not your usual M.O. – truth is, that’s what I want to chat about, all this talking you’re doing – so maybe you could just channel your Good-Cop side and grant an indulgence?

… … ??? …

I’ll take that as a yes. Thanks, God. I’ll be quick. (more…)

[Apologies to BARk Magazine for riffing on their slogan.]

I’m not one to play the disability card. To the scoldings of many, I’ve refused for years to get a “handicapped” placard for my car though I’m eligible. My attitude towards those things is: if I can’t walk, I can’t drive. (Yes, yes, I know: one size does not fit all.) The only exception I’ve allowed myself – until now – has been my transit discount card. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and though we grouse incessantly about it we are blessed with good transit. I think everybody should have a transit discount card, at least until transit reaches funding parity with our over-subsidized automobiles. You’ll pry mine, as the saying goes, from my cold rigored fingers.

Anyway, I pulled another benefit from the disability stack last week: I got my dog, Otto, declared an assistance dog. I’m both embarrassed and relieved to have him so marked. Otto is 20 lbs and fiercely intelligent but trust me: his brain is the only fierce tissue in his body. He arrived in my life just a few months before the premiere of my liver cancer / transplant drama and If I’d known what was coming I’d never have gotten him. Now I look upon his arrival as divine intervention, likely instigated by my late mother. (Mom survived by tackling the tough ones, but was not above a bit of consoling along the way). It is understatement to say I wouldn’t have made it through these past two years without Otto.

Declaring a dog as an assistant – or service animal in government-speak – is made possible by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) first enacted in 1990. Some who don’t know anyone with a disability know the ADA only from its excesses: sensational news reports of a half-million dollars spent on a ramp to a government trailer worth $50,000 and that sort of thing. But the act does a lot of good for those who need it; for many it changed the world. Among its statutes it establishes the right to service animals. Here’s the government’s non-legalese description:

Service animals are animals that are individually trained to perform tasks for people with disabilities – such as guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling wheelchairs, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, or performing other special tasks. Service animals are working animals, not pets.

Reading that description you can guess where my embarrassment comes from. Otto as guide? Only if he’s guiding someone to a gopher. Pulling wheelchairs? He’s strong for his size but… no. And I haven’t had any seizures lately (read: ever) so he doesn’t qualify there. No, Otto falls in the “other special tasks” category. In his case his task is emotional support. Now before you laugh – or after you stop – remember this is California and more specifically San Francisco and we do such things here. It helps that the ADA leaves it up to localities to define “service.” For me the “other special tasks” Otto performs are crucial.

Over the last two years I’ve learned a lot about myself and I’ve also learned things about Otto and dogs in general, some of them downright amazing. His sense of my relative health is unerring. One amusing example (to me anyway): being male and living alone, I don’t close the door to the bathroom. Well, periodically Otto follows me in and stands next to the toilet, nose ready, waiting for me to begin. When I pee, he does what I’ve come to call the sniff test. If he’s satisfied with how things come out he just walks away, but if he’s disturbed by what he’s smelling he hangs around, rubs my legs, even lets out a little bark. During a few really bad periods he’s stormed out the bathroom as if angry. Sound far fetched? Well, consider what researchers are doing in teaching dogs to smell cancer cells in our breath and in our urine.

Otto often knows how I’m doing better than I do. If it’s walk time and I’m on the couch and and feeling achy or down, I don’t get a pass. Walk time is walk time, get off yer butt. Invariably I feel better after, even if we only manage a few blocks. But if I’m really sick he doesn’t even ask and even resists if I try, snuggling down with me for a nap instead. And he just refuses to play tuggy with me after surgery. Tugging on a rope is his favorite game, but he won’t even to bring me the rope if he judges I’m not fit for it.

My most amazing experience with Otto-as-caregiver happened in January when I descended into medical hell. After each of three hospitalizations, Jeff brought Otto along when picking me up. The first two times – when I was getting worse though I didn’t yet know it – Otto’s initial ecstatic greeting immediately morphed into horror as he got a smell of me. Both times he backed away into a corner of the car, staring at me with an awful “what is WRONG with you???” look. The third time they busted me out – by then I was quite nervous about passing this particular “Otto test” – he sniffed, made his judgment, then showered me in kisses and settled happily on my lap. I passed. And I got better.

How does a little 20 lb half-Dachshund, half-Jack Russell-with-a-dash-of-Beagle know all this? He’s grown up watching me go through this stuff; he was only seven weeks old when he arrived and three months when Dr Cassandra called. Is he just used to my struggles? Is it only our particular history together that created this awareness and sensitivity in him? Or is it more?

I have become obsessed with dogs, reading every book and watching every documentary on the beasts I can find. Dogs continue to amaze the scientists and certainly me. I think they would amaze everyone but we don’t notice how unique they are because they’re such a regular part of our lives. No species on earth comes in as many varieties as they do. And it seems the “which animal is smarter” debate is a canard. Chimps are smarter than dogs, no question. Yet when it comes to reading and responding to humans, knowing what we’re doing often before we do – researchers call it recognizing social cues – dogs win paws down.

So how is Otto “assisting” me? Why did I cave and grab this particular disability benefit? I can say it’s because now I have the right to bring him with me on transit – important when I’m too addled to drive – or because it guarantees that he can’t be evicted should my landlord decide dogs are no longer welcome. True, both. But it’s more than that.

Laugh if you like, but the bond between a dog and someone “disabled” is downright transcendent. When I’m feeling bad Otto’s there commiserating. But when I’m better all that nasty stuff – the hospital, the pain, the hard times – never happened.

Do you understand what I’m saying? Even though Otto clearly retains some memory of my situation, when the bad stuff ends it is gone. Gone. No person – no matter how close, no matter how caring – can hope to achieve what a dog can when it comes to treating those of us living with a chronic condition or illness as undamaged goods. This is indescribably liberating, a gift if there ever was one. And right now I so much need to keep tight hold of this gift.

With Otto, when I’m feeling good all that matters is, it’s tuggy time!

___

Well, maybe there’s a little truth to the idea.
Want to see more Otto pics?
Here are his three calendars. No, really: Otto has his own calendars.

Otto’s calendars 2006-2009

So I’m in the desert east of San Diego stalking wildflowers and staring down bighorn sheep and wondering, to slightly misquote one of our more interesting pop bards, “My God! How did I get here?” Which leads of course to a tale.

—

A doctor recently pointed out my sense of denial is missing. You know, that state of bliss we wander in most of the time? The bliss that says: I’ll exercise tomorrow. Supersized French fries and a double burger don’t bother me. I am NOT getting old! Breathing hard climbing a flight of stairs doesn’t mean anything. Yeah, granddad died of heart failure, grandma died of cancer, mom has diabetes and pop can’t remember where he is half the time. So? None of that stuff’s going to happen to me! Die? I’m not going to die!

You know, that sense of denial.

Alas, mine must’ve been located between my liver and gallbladder because I just don’t have it anymore and it didn’t take a doc telling me to figure it out either. Meet for lunch? Sure, if I’m not in the hospital. A movie? Great, if I’m not wacko from this week’s injections. Take a trip – like this week’s to San Diego? With my track record??? You nuts.

But I did get here, not that I believed it until the plane touched ground at Lindbergh Field. Yes, I planned the flight. But the ticket was paid for with funds left over from the same trip scheduled and canceled twice (guess why) in the last year. The suitcase didn’t even come out of the closet until 9pm the night before I left. Something would happen. Something always happens. Yet despite late commuter trains, two flight delays (including one of those lovely sit-on-the-tarmac experiences) I made it to SoCal. Not even the airport security rambos stopped me. Amazing.

Absence of denial isn’t the same as being a pessimist. I’ve been a disciple of Candide (“The best of all possible worlds!”) most of my life – at least the good parts. Life with denial is comfortable; you get to take each other for granted. As with most relationships you’ll usually survive a single infidelity: a body-bending car accident say, or a bout of pneumonia or Lymes. Sometimes denial even sticks with you after a hard-won battle with cancer.

But for the chronic among us, different rules. Two years of cirrhosis, hepatitis, cancer, chemo, liver transplant, injections, another surgery etcetera dumped a truckload of reality all over me and now I can’t help but see denial for what it really is: a preposterous wish. I still don’t run around expecting the worst but I’m not surprised at all when it comes.

One of my more impossible fantasies for this trip was to drive to the desert 150 kilometers east of San Diego known as Anza Borrego. During late February and March Anza Borrego presents one of the most formidable wildflower blooms around, and with California’s generous rainfall this year it looked to be a great time to go. But if the prospect of getting on a plane was doubtful, the prospect of driving to wildflowers… well!

I’ll skip the details but I did make it to AB, for two days and a night. I managed a sunset walk of a kilometer or two, and wonder of wonders, an early morning hike up a palm canyon, six kilometers of climbing rocks and dodging thorns hunting down a grove of wild palms. No one is more amazed than I am that I pulled this off.

—

So there I am, hiking around Anza Borrego’s foothills and the “denial issue” keeps popping into my head and I can’t figure out why. I’m here to escape all things medical. Denial left long ago; I know this. “Old news, Ed! Now look at the pretty ocotillo!” Yet I keep obsessing.

As anyone who lives in one knows, there are reasons revelations happen to people who wander deserts. Relentless sun, mirages, austere beauty, heat and cold, often at the same moment… deserts disorient. They banish endings and beginnings, strip away time and reason. When you’re in a desert you are alone with the here, the now. Wander in one long enough and revelations ooze out the scenery. And so I have mine, and I understand my obsession and the real reason I came to Anza Borrego.

I miss denial. I want it back.

I want to fret about the errands I have to do, about next month’s plans, what to make for dinner. I want to complain about minor aches and getting old and having too many responsibilities and yes, even a job, something I haven’t been able to do for too too long because I haven’t been able to work. I want… I want…

I want to obsess about living again, not about staying alive.

This trip is my fantasy reunion with denial. Here in Anza Borrego I take pictures of flowers and bighorn sheep and cactus green from rain. I watch the sun rise orange and set in an annihilation of color. To get here I drove the winding hills as I did in my sports car days: free, fast, exhilarated. I explore and plan and have conversations with strangers about where to go and what to do filled with phrases like “yes, isn’t it beautiful?” and “you have to see…?” conversations that do not once touch on anything medical.

Oh, denial does visit from time to time. I don’t think I could survive if it didn’t. Sometimes it drops by during a walk with Otto along San Francisco’s waterfront by the Golden Gate, or for a few minutes while I’m working in the garden. Sometimes, oddly, denial comes around while I’m writing these words, bringing hope that I can write more and without a medical theme. But these visits are always brief and porous. My visit to Anza Borrego is no exception.

Right now, my energy flags from all these heady adventures and from the euphoria of having pulled them off. Soon I’ll get on a plane home. Monday I’ll have a blood draw, in a week my next visit to the docs. There are prescriptions to fill and important medical decisions coming…

Denial and I parted two years ago; there’s no way I can pretend we’re still intimate. Our separation is permanent.

—

[Click on this link for more pictures of Anza Borrego.]