A bit of visual journaling in chronological order here:
Here's Tony sitting at our turn-around rest stop a couple miles hike up the Colorado Trail following Junction Creek from the west side of Durango. It's a pretty hike and an easy trail, easily accessible from town. Just out of the frame of this photo and on the blue horizon to the right we could see the mesa area above town where Kate spends her nights (or at least where she tells us she does). 5.8 miles distance as the bee flies, said my smart phone's Google app.
Below is a link to another video I took while sitting out by Lemon Lake for about an hour before coming into Durango to meet up with Kate. What an incredible late morning full of September light, wind in aspens, and cool grasses.
So, we had an hour or two to visit between a shift at the Palace and a rehearsal with the orchestra. The Steaming Bean on Main street was a wonderful choice.
And here is a short video clip of Hope and me driving down off the sandstone high mesa country just north of Abiquiu, New Mexico.
Below is a view from the 5th floor of the Mays Clinic building, part of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. At this time, Hope was undergoing some imaging tests. I was reading my new favorite book: Why We Get Sick. I know that none of you have time for such leisurely activity now, but when you get the opportunity, please check it out. The basic idea in each of the discussions of various diseases is that the disease is (most often) the cost associated with a particular genetic benefit. Take anxiety, for instance. Imagine how unfortunate we would be without a genetic propensity for at least some anxiety. We'd carelessly speed down highways and venture off into dangerous situations we should avoid. The cost, though, is that sometimes some of us manifest a bit too much care and concern. Or consider the costs of being born as a large-brained animal: difficult or fatal delivery. As long as the benefit is greater than the cost and as long as the benefit means improved odds of being able to pass one's DNA to subsequent generations, then nature will select for that genetic component. (And then some genes are pleiotropic, meaning that they have more than one effect.) It's the by far the best book I've ever read on the subject of human evolution.
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