Saturday hiking

I visited my Geocache today and did some overdue maintenance. The grass was higher than I've ever seen it, and the hillside was lush with Arizona Poppies. We've had a record monsoon season, and it shows.

The cache had sustained major damage from the storms, which meant digging out, replacing the leaking container, drying things off and restoring everything to its original position. If I hadn't followed my GPS, I would never have found it. The area is so overgrown I didn't recognize it.

When I'd finished, I hiked for a few hours. I have a new pair of boots from REI that I need to break in. They're pretty stiff, but comfortable in the right places.

I walked slowly, alert for rattlesnakes in the tall grass. I didn't see any snakes, but I did manage to find about 20 small meteorites to add to my collection.

Meteorites are fairly easy to spot in the desert because the ground is hard and (usually) there isn't much grass for them to hide in. Most of them are small, about the size of your little fingernail to golf ball size. There are lots of dark rocks around, but meteorites are always quite heavy for their size, and they generally attract a magnet — the core of a meteor is what survives entry into our atmosphere, and it's made of a mixture of nickel and iron.

I like looking up at the stars and wondering how far these little bits of space debris traveled before they were captured by the earth's gravity. A long way, I imagine.

It was a beautiful day to be out in the fields of the Lord.

Biosphere 2

Poppies and ocotillo

Arizona Poppies

Meteorites