Wednesday, February 4, 2009 - Rockhound State Park, Deming NM
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Convergence, Rockhound State Park, Deming, New Mexico, February 4, 2009
A day trip to Deming
I took a ride into Deming this morning knowing full well I'd never secure a site with hook-ups when I got back, but that's ok. I needed to find a mechanic to replace a vibrating driveshaft universal joint (done) and make an appointment for a long overdue eye exam (done).
The mechanic I found this morning, JT's Auto on Country Club Road, had an opening this afternoon to replace the u-joint so I filled out the morning wandering about the Deming Luna Mimbres Museum for a couple of hours - not nearly enough time to do this wonderful museum justice.
Night camp
Site 4 - Rockhound State Park, Deming NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - good signal
- Find other references to Rockhound on this website
- List the nights I've camped here
- Go to the Rockhound State Park website
- Get a Google map of this area
- Check the weather here
It was the Crickets
Now then: it isn't so much that one way of dying beats another, though that certainly is the case, but rather that when you KNOW the jig could be up any second or any decade -- it's the awareness that's important -- that just might make a difference. I'm like everybody else, I have these moments and then forget, lapsing back into "immortality." But there was a thing that happened in my back yard maybe 18 months before we split from Maryland that hit me as hard as seeing their president drop dead on stage must have hit those graduating seniors.
It was the crickets. I'd gone outside one warm fall evening to shut the garage door and suddenly realized I couldn't hear the crickets! No wait, I could, but only if I turned my head a certain way. Oh God, oh no: I had almost no high-frequency hearing in my right ear, or was it my left? That doesn't matter. The point is, a part of me had shut down permanently. No, it hadn't happened suddenly, but I had finally noticed, and that was hard to take. I'd never again hear crickets like I once had. Never! I walked back to the house in tears. All right, I'm sensitive. But I understood at once what all this meant.