I had a great four mile or so walk with Hal and Charlie at Newport's Back Bay hiking/biking/kayaking area.  We took about and hour and a half to meander, photograph and chat.  Next time, we will add a bit of jogging to our exercise/bird watching (which I am quite looking forward to.)

The photo above is of Hal and Charlie.  Charlie saw something in the underbrush...can you spot it?

I also got some great photos of a snowy white egret, just missing him as he had a fish in his mouth and swallowed it down.  We could actually see the fish wiggling on its way down the bird's gullet.

If you have never been to Newport Back Bay, I'd highly recommend it.  And Hal said it wasn't even a good birding day.  But we saw Great White Herons, some sorts of Godwits or similar shorebirds, mallards (including two gorgeous ones that flew right at us) and several hummingbirds.  A real treat to which I intend to return.

That was pretty much it for my day...did some reading and journaling today.  Wrote the beginning of a poem based on Psalm 139's quote, "How precious are your thoughts, O God...if I were to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand."

Seeing the beauty today of even a "blah" day at the bird preserve, I have to agree with the psalmist.  Each bird, each moment, each breath, each individual...a thought of God's.  How precious indeed.

For those interested, a few more photos below.  One of what Hal and Charlie were scoping out.  The other, a snowy egret.  The last, progress of my burn.  Looks kind of like a rorschach test, eh?

Tomorrow I'm going to start research on the Propositions coming up in California's May election...(I think it's May).  So maybe some politics over the weekend but it was awful nice to have a day just to be.

I had an excellent walk with Hal and Charlie this morning at the Laguna Niguel Regional park.  We walked for an hour, sighting multiple California White Pelicans, some cormorants, a grackle or three, lots of mating pairs of ducks, some Canadian geese (and others with a nobbly nose whose name escapes me).

To my great delight, I also saw some early lupine in bloom along the trailside of the lake.  I will have to walk there next week, chemo or no chemo, to see them bloom.  And the week after should be just perfect timing for the full glory of their once a year appearance.

About the time we hit the lupine patch, Hal said that one thing he promised never to do to me was give me the "cancer face."  And I knew exactly what he meant...think I even grabbed his arm for emphasis.  It's something that everyone who's ever received a cancer diagnosis has seen on the face of someone (loved ones, strangers, doctors, nurses...or in yesterday's case for me, dental hygienists).

I described it to Hal as the "Oh, the poor dear is dying of cancer" look.  For those who haven't been on the receiving end of such a look, it's a rueful mixture of pity, awkwardness, a "thank God it's not me" sort of lurking guilt/glee, and the look your great aunt Nelda gave you when you spilled your milk all over the table at her fancy Thanksgiving dinner.

Bad enough having your teeth cleaned but when you get the cancer face to boot, it's downright not fun.

I'd much prefer people give me the lupine face.  It's the face that sees me as I am in the photo below.  Alive.  Connected.  Enjoying the beauties of nature and the love of friends, family and the world's best husband.  And pretty damn healthy for a woman fighting cancer.

I slept in this morning for the first time since the diagnosis.  THAT was heaven, indeed.  Dan and I passed a lazy Saturday morning filled with yummy food, email and facebook catching up on my part, and then we took a nice long walk at the local Aliso and Wood Canyons Park.  There were tons of families out, a couple of Girl Scout troops as well, so we had plenty of company on the four-mile, fairly flat hike.

I read an article in the LA Times this morning about the Chino Hills State Park, which recently burned over during the wildfires of the past few weeks.  I remember being devastated when a similar thing happened to Towsley Canyon in Santa Clarita where I hiked so often with my friends Lynne, Theresa and Connie. 

The first few times we went for a hike after the fire, I was overcome by sadness at the burned hills, the dead oaks, the blackened sticks thrusting from barren ground.  But as time went by, nature reasserted herself and the first evidence of that was the greening of the ground and then a miraculous profusion of leaves bursting from absolutely black oak tree branches. 

Ever since I took the photo above, the rebirth of Towsley Canyon has been a symbol to me of what is possible, how even the most hopeless situation can be redeemed.  I am sure that the folks who are currently mourning Chino Hills State Park will be overwhelmed with the beauty that blooms there this Spring.

After we finished our hike, Dan and I grabbed a quick bit to eat and then headed to Verizon where we outfitted me with a new Blackberry phone.  The idea is that I'll be spending a lot of time in offices and chemo rooms and this will be a much better option for texting and emailing than my beautiful, impractical Razor.

So now, in addition to figuring out Facebook, I'll have to figure out my new phone.  I suspect these will be nice distractions though in the coming days.  Lynne, Ken, Jessi and Erik Secrest are on their way here for a quick, just passing through, visit.  Looking forward to that and then a bit of feet up time.

There's the bell!

I had an amazing visit with my friend, Lynne, in Santa Clarita.  I paired the visit with a haircut (yaay Farida at EFX Salon in Canyon Country...she fixed the haircut errors of my OC stylist) and shopping for the upcoming cruise.  Interestingly, I was well provisioned with formal and semi-formal wear but my casual wardrobe looks a little...well, bedraggled.  So I spend most of Wednesday afternoon shopping.

Without much luck until Lynne arrived.  Before she got there, I had 1 shirt and 1 pair of pants.  After she arrived, I had four additional shirts, two pairs of pants and skirt and a knit top.  We enjoyed dinner at Salt Creek along with a long, catch-up chat.  There's nothing like hanging out with a true friend of the heart.

The next morning we went to our old hiking grounds, Towsley Canyon, and impressed ourselved by completing the nearly six-mile hike.  We took a bit longer than we used to, but we stopped along the way to enjoy the flowers (read, catch our breath) and once to help someone with their geocache search.

At the end of the hike, there's a tar pit and as we approached it, we saw a young man poking sticks into the tar pit.  I was about to comment that he was just like a little boy when he looked up with panic on his face and announced that there was a bird stuck in the tar.  He prized the bird free and it turned out to be a very frightened hummingbird, wings, legs and lower body covered in tar.

I tore the packaging from my emergency blanket and he deposited the bird into my hands.  We promised to let him know the status of the bird and he went off to complete his hike.  (He was going the opposite direction of us on the loop trail.)  I held the bird in my hand for the rest of the hike, about 1/2 mile.  The bird, which we took to calling "Tweeters" was alert and struggling to free its feet from the tar periodically. 

We debated what to do--take Tweeters to Lynne's house and use dish soap to remove the tar?  (That's what they use for wildlife mired in oil spills.)  Take Tweeters to a vet?  We had decided to take the bird to the ranger's office and were headed to the car when the ranger drove up. 

As an aside, he looked exactly like my brother, Darrell, except for the ZZ Top goatee he was sporting.  Lynne and I both remarked on the eerie resemblance.

Darrell's doppelganger didn't hold out a lot of hope but took Tweeters literally off my hands, saying he'd wash him with dish soap and see what he could do. 

It's the second time in a month that I've held a hummingbird in my hands.  The first came when a blue-throated bird got stuck in our house.  Dan and I blocked it against the window and I picked it up in my hands, carrying it outside and setting it free.  No worse for wear, I've seen it flying around my flowerbeds in recent days.

I hope that Tweeters recovered at the hands of the man who looks like my brother.  If the resemblance goes beyond the skin and into the heart, I know that the Ranger devoted his heart and soul to rescuing the bird.

Cindy arrived safely last night and we've already been out for coffee and chatted about how we are going to display her art in the house.  The crates (3 of them at over 100 pounds each!) should arrive in the next two days so we will be busy, busy, busy!

With Cindy here, I am in a partial vacation mode and also feeling the need to get several tasks done...so it's an interesting balancing act.  As ever though, Cindy is a very undemanding companion.  And it helps that we have history behind us in terms of a looooong road trip (Santa Clarita, CA to Prince Rupert, Canada) and a backpacking trip (the amazing Chilkoot Trail).  We determined last night that the trip was 3 years ago.

Time does indeed take wing.  My next big planned backpacking trip is a jaunt up the Inca Trail to Macchu Pichu for my 50th (gulp!) birthday.  So I have 3 years to get this bod back into backpacking shape.  I don't plan to take quite that long.  I'll want to get some shorter trips in over the next few years so, perhaps, my brother Dennis and I can hit the trail again early next year.

I'll need the extra practice.  The Chilkoot Trail was a 33 mile backpack with a relatively low elevations (3,500 feet although it seemed like we gained most of that in one day).  See the trail profile on this link.

The Inca Trail, by comparison, covers about the same distance but starts at a significantly higher altitude and goes to 13,775 feet.  (Gulp again!)  Check out the profile on this one.

So you can see it will be quite a challenge.  Requiring its own sort of prep work.  We will have to get acclimated for several days and then just make sure we're fit and attuned to our bodies as we hike.  The good news is that on this trip, there are porters.  So we will just be carrying day packs instead of 45 pound backpacks.  (We were travelling "light" for the Chilkoot.)  The porters are required in order to preserve the ancient trail and to provide employment opportunities for the local guides.  I think it's the only way I'd make it!

So far, my tentative companions on the trail are Lynne Secrest and Cindy Morefield.  Dan's about 90% committed.  Any other takers? 

In the meantime, it's back to measuring walls, taking down art and hanging out with my excellent friend, Cindy.