Up Before Dawn - The Road Calls

Serves me right for going to bed at 8:30 last night. Still, dawn here up in the mountains is spectacular as the light creeps over Escudilla in the east and slowly fills the valley. Right now the light is blue, the pond silver. Watching the pond wake up in the morning is a sight I can never get enough of.

I have to head "down" today.- back into the desert and the heat. I feel as though I've neglected my Tucson house for months now while away in Africa and then, three days after getting back, decamping up here. This early morning, ancy to get on the road feeling reminds me of childhood travels. My father made us practice pack - right down to putting on the clothes we'd be wearing for travel and then lining up outside with our suitcases waiting for a taxi - yes, he was in the military!

My packing for this 254 mile road trip involves throwing a couple of things in the car, making sure nothing will rot in the kitchen whilst I'm gone (editing this now down in the flat land and sad to say - in my haste to get moving, I left a fully packed cooler on the kitchen counter!) and organising the dogs. Dogs are still sleeping. The two big borrowed ones are a breeze but my own dog, Hamish, knows when we are leaving the mountains where he has total freedom and he takes off and hides from me. It's a short road trip with coffee for me stop at Java Blue in Springerville, one "pee" stop before Globe and then the final run "down" through Winkleman, Mamoth and Oracle. Major challenge is to find a place to leave a bag of kitchen garbage. The dump in the vicinity doesn't open until 9 a.m (two brief opportunities a week, Saturday and Tuesday) ; I'm going to trust that the guys at the truck weighing station outside of Springerville will be obliging (they were) and let me use the dumpster there - otherwise it will be a "hold your nose" ride - garbage plus three dogs with a distinct eau de pond aroma.

I've done long road trips with Hamish and quite enjoy his company along the way. In general I find dogs to be excellent travel companions - they don't object to the music you play and make nothing of long silences. No, "why aren't you talking to me - what's wrong- are we there". Oh, and of course no eye rolling and tutting when I ask for directions.

I do have one sticky problem this morning. There's been a bird in the great room for three days now and despite all my efforts - windows open , screens taken out, trout net on the end of an 18ft. extension pole - I've been unable to get it out. I know where the expression bird brain comes from. I'm going to leave a log of bird seed and bowl of water on the rock hearth and hope I don't come back to a rotting corpse! And I also have to fill the hummingbird feeders and leave a re-fill made up in the fridge so a neighboring teenager can come over and re-fill them for me.

First pale pink of dawn showing now. I've just checked that the roll-over to the August issue of Connections for Women went smoothly (well done Genny) and it's time to make a cup of tea , rouse sleeping dogs and head for the hard top. I love driving early morning.

Made it home in under 5 hours and into the blast furnace of a Tucson Summer.