Day 2: Sunday, 5 August 2007, Mimbres River, Aldo Leopold Wilderness, New Mexico

I slept reasonably well, and awoke contented on Sunday morning. I lingered in the sleeping bag a bit, but was still up and moving around before the sun touched the surrounding mountaintops. I re-hung my clothes out to dry and milled around camp, enjoying a tranquil morning. After a while Steve got up and put his wet clothes out to dry as well. I spent the next couple of hours moving clothes into sunnier areas or sitting down to write a little poetry, never straying far from camp. I also started packing up to leave, a little bit here, a little bit there, stretching the process out.

Here are the poems I wrote:

Sun Down

All morning I have watched
the sun down-climb the canyon
from my shade shrouded camp
on the Mimbres were south meets north.

The waters confluence continually
but the sun here wakes late,
eagerly awaited as my clothes
hang to dry from yesterdays rain.

A minor disaster has reduced me
to my underwear and a fleece.
So I watch the sun come down the canyon,
A good friend bearing glad tidings, coming home.

Mimbres

I.
The Mimbres murmurs passed,
gently twitching a stick
somehow up-ended in the flow.
The only thing but water that moves.

Even the aspens are stilled
as they look down, awe-struck,
at the tall Cutleaf coneflowers
lining the northern bank in stately ranks.

Atop each tall and verdant stem
a golden brown beehive
surrounded by yellow petals
so laden with gold they droop from the weight.

II.
Nearer now to the up-ended stick
pulsating in the turbulent waters,
the how is now less clear,
little seen below the frothing foam.

The boulder on which I sit
is matched by another opposite
the flow, a mere jump away,
forming a near symmetric pair.

Together they force the flow into a flume
speeding so that to stare
at one point makes me motionlessly dizzy.

Bubbles at the leading edge
of a standing wave form a fish
tumbling down the wave
testing the current left and right for a way,
struggling to swim upstream

III.
And the aspens still are still,
the coneflowers shed their gold,
the stick dances in the Mimbres,
and for it's part, the Mimbres flows sprightly on.

A little before nine o'clock, my clothes seemed little drier than when I hung them out, so I just threw them in my pack wet. Not long after that, we hit the trail and started hiking back to the car. I was quickly freshly soaked from the waist down from walking through the wet trailside vegetation, so at the myriad stream crossings I didn't even try to keep my feet dry. I just plowed through the stream and walked with a loud squishing that slowly got quieter until the next stream crossing.

Knowing the trail a little better and making fewer stops allowed us to make better time and we were back at Steve's car in about 2 1/2 hours. We ate lunch at the car then loaded our gear and drove back up to my car. We chatted briefly there, then after changing into dry clothes we each started our drive home, both hoping to make it home for dinner with our significant others.