added first mancos post and 3rd durango post

2 files changed, 23 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/durango2.txt b/durango2.txt
index 6642ca8..e9a8937 100644
--- a/durango2.txt
+++ b/durango2.txt
@@ -1,8 +1,10 @@
-Every evening around 5 the thunder start in. You could set your watch by it. Except that there's no need for a watch up here. 
+Every evening around 5 the thunder starts in. You could set your watch by it. Except that there's no need for a watch up here. 
 
-s evening the thunder gods have conspired to produce something a little extra. Thor is pounding a little harder, Zeus throwing a little more than usual, flash and the rolling peel of sound dying off to the east, down the mountain side.
+This evening the thunder gods have conspired to produce something a little extra. Thor is pounding a little harder, Zeus throwing a little more than usual, flash and the rolling peel of sound dying off to the east, down the mountain side. 
 
-The rain is soft and steady, the kind that leaves no puddles here in the forest, much to my children's disappointment. Here all the water is captured, held in a bed of rotting needles, leaves, and the roots of rice grass, false oats and mountain parsley, then lower the roots of gambel oak and snow willows, and finally somewhere deeper still the pine roots get what is left. No water is wasted. Nothing remains on the surface of things. 
+Around here they call this the start of the monsoon season. The rain comes soft and steady, the kind that leaves no puddles here in the forest, much to my children's disappointment. Here all the water is captured by something, held in a bed of rotting needles, leaves, and the roots of rice grass, false oats and mountain parsley. Then lower down the roots of gambel oak and snow willows grab what they can, and finally somewhere deeper still, up to 12 meters down, the Ponderosa pine roots and their atendant webs of fungi get what's left. 
+
+Nothing remains on the surface of things. 
 
 It is easy here to sink into the soil and disappear for a while, everything here is doing it, you are too. 
 
@@ -26,3 +28,4 @@ You can feel that vastness of existence and the minute intimacy of existence at
 
 I think this is one of the principle realizations travel unfolds for you -- that there is no other. You are a part of a whole, interconnected and joined far more intimately to everything around you than you could ever hope to understand, though sometimes when you travel you feel it. You feel it when you are still somewhere for a while and start to sink into the soil. At the same time all is alien, your own 
 
+[^1]: I can only assume no one around here has ever been in a real monsoon, because while it does rain a little more, it's hardly what most of the world would call a monsoon.
diff --git a/mancos-mesa.txt b/mancos-mesa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d6c124
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mancos-mesa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+Stay anywhere to long and things start to settle in too much. The bus was made to move, it's fluids pool, metal rusts, wood decays, everything, as AKe put it, is falling apart. Everything, all the time. Stay too long and the world will settle down on you. The chipmunks will come for your avocados. I'm from California, messing with my avocados is messing with my emotions, I don't care if you're cute and striped.
+
+So we pulled out of Junction Creeks for a few days, headed up over the pass to the west, to Mancos and points beyond. We found a nice enough campground, nearly deserted and only wanting for a little quiet -- it was up on a hill above the highway and the sound of the road was at times annoying. Aside from that though it was much better than Junction Creek. Fewer people and Mancos was much more my speed than Durango.
+
+Mancos consists of one stop light and two paved roads. Or partly paved roads. The rest is dirt and hardly even a stop sign to be found. Still, there's a decent grocery store, a pretty good sandwich shop and a coffee roaster with the best double espresso I've had since we left Athens. There's also a Library with passable internet speeds that I could work at.
+
+Mancos is also only about 20 minutes from the entrance to Mesa Verde National Park. 
+
+I knew that after Chaco Canyon Mesa Verde was going to be a let down. You just can't have crowds and retain the stillness and mystery that Chaco has. I feel strange criticizing a place for it's crowds because on the one hand if no one is going to our National Parks no one is going to fight for them to continue existing. Still, I did not enjoy Mesa Verde. I am glad that it draws crowds, glad that people are out there visiting natinal parks and I'm glad they aren't going to Chaco.
+
+If you know me you know I'd sooner chew my leg off than go on a guided tour. And Mesa Verde is all guided tours, you don't go into the big ruins by yourself anymore. You get a nanny. That's not for us really so we skipped that part and went to the one smaller ruin you can still explore (somewhat) on your own. It was a nice stroll. It was funny to hear the rangers questioning whether our kids could do it, it was less than a mile and only 300 feet elevation change. The trail was paved. It's sad that we've created a world where it's considered amazing for five year olds to walk a mile on asphalt.
+
+We left after lunch.
+
+Camp was more to our liking, the kids built obstacle courses, made bees out of pine cones and looked up whenever the thunder rumbled up above, somewhere high in the San Juans because after a month here they've learned that the storms come out of the high country.
+
+In the evenings we sat around the fire and listened to the nighthawks darting after food between the pines overhead. This is the Western slope of the Rockies, less water, fewer pines, more oak, more stars to backlight the silhouettes of Ponderosa needles scratching at the wind.