El Guapo

Sorry to fall off the Friday poetry train last week. I had a good excuse:

That's our sandcastle in the foreground, my kids off to the left of it. Those ethereal shapes in the distance are the Great Sand Dunes, and that very wide, very shallow expanse of water is Medano Creek. One of our favorite places ever. We go there every year. We even got married there. Walked out into the sand with a few friends (the illustrious Dancehall presided over the ceremony) and did the deed. I hear about folks who spent $20,000 on their weddings and laugh. Ours set us back a half a tank of gas.

This is a half-frozen waterfall - Zapata Falls. Neither the picture nor my words can do it justice. The waterfall itself is deep in the cleft of granite - the white thing that dominates the picture is a huge overhang of ice, forever in shadow and thus slow to melt. The noise from the falls was deafening. As I took this picture I had a kid balanced on top of my shoulders, and my feet were in ice-cold water (literally; it's run-off from the ice). The mist from the falls hung over us like...well, like mist. I can't come up with an adequate simile. I tried.

Magical place.

At night I told the kids stories about El Guapo, the giant lizard that hides in the dunes, and is responsible for the winds that blow across the rippled sand. Some may call this lying; I prefer to think of it as mythology. No doubt the girls will be telling their therapists all about it in 20 years or so, and coming to their own conclusions.

Came home to witness the Mets complete a two game sweep against those hated Yankees bastards. At Yankee Stadium, no less.

Life is good.