Goddesses

I've had two hot showers in luxurious conditions in the last four days.

Can a human being ask for greater pleasures?
Yes.
(But I'm very grateful for hot showers.)

I got to spend the last four days with Amanda and Tara, dear heart-fellows I met during my time in Santa Cruz. We went to Ten Thousand Waves together (a traditional Japanese Bath House in Santa Fe, NM) after camping at the lovely Black Canyon Campground (which felt like a capital city in Fly Kingdom--a very shared habitat). We later had an inspiring and thought provoking lunch with Tara's godmother and her boyfriend, and then sauntered over to Kakawa, a chocolate-only wonderland of a cafe. The owner, Peter, has studied chocolate for about 30 years, and has hot chocolate recipes that date back to the mid-1600's from the Mayans, the Spanish and French, as well as truffles like peach pink peppercorn, rosemary, vanilla black pepper and gorgonzola. And they were each absolutely incredible.

Before this beautiful time with the Goddesses, I took the trip from Ouray through Telluride back to Pagosa Springs, via highway 145--which is where all of the photos in this post came from. Surreal beauty. Colorado has been so generous with its magnificence to me.
A little story: I was driving along and was struck by the beauty of the range of mountains to my left, so I pulled over, left the truck running and ran out to the other side of the road to take a shot of them.
My Little Truck, as dear as she is, has a few irregularities, one of them being that the locking mechanism in the driver's side door on my truck has some alignment issues. When it is unlocked and you pull the handle, it locks itself. I had left the door open as I was taking my picture, and a gust of wind rose up and blew it happily shut...locking me out of my truck, as she sat there idling, amicably playing my Jaga Jazzist CD, waiting for me to get back on in.
I had nothing on me; only my camera. So help was needed.
A very sweet couple pulled over, lending me their cell phone, a jacket, water and good company. We all actually had a lot of fun, and when the AAA guy came out, it felt funny to just say goodbye and that be that--it had been one of those moments of connection where we didn't need a lot of introduction time; we sort of just became family. I've got their info and they've got mine...we'll stay in touch.

This trip has been quite full of moments like this one. Its been a rich reminder that we are all family, ultimately.
I've decided that I'm going to create world peace within and work out from there.