night at arches.

it was a beautiful evening.

shraddha and i had cooked a lovely meal of either indian food and parboiled rice, both in bags. or annie's mac and cheese. or another possibility now escaping my early morning mentals that was easy to cook on a butane powered camping stove.

we had entered arches national park and it appeared that the campground had run out of firewood for sale. yet when the campground hosts came by our site a little while later to say what up and we mentioned to them that we were in hot pursuit of dry firewood, the hosts departed only to return some time later with some firewood they scrounged up, old, simple fence posts.

surrounded by a never-ending sky of infinite stars, red rocks creating amphitheatres everywhere and two families' of toasted german tourists unaware that they happened to be toasting with a wall of rock behind them, we started a fire and sipped some simple digestif purchased at one of the few and far removed from the town centre liquor stores in utah to soothe the boxed eats in our tummies.

we started a fire with the fence posts.

"damns! i wish i had a camera that can rock a long exposure of this fire..." i remarked, knowing that navigating the menus of my ancient point and shoot would be a epic journey in patience, small thumbs and ruinous to my pupils, now wide and open to the sky and the stars, to the cool night breeze, yet heavy from a day of desert sun.

"wait! i do have a camera that can rock long exposures!" i suddenly realized. and with that, i got my trusty rollei, waddled over to the germans like a penguin at the edge of an iceberg, made some comment about the light pollution of their r.v. trifing my night photography, giggled about my attempt to be a good campsite neighbour with shraddha, placed my rollei at the end of the picnic table at our campsite and snapped.

this is good living, outside in the world, under the stars at arches national park.

august 2011.

love and health to all...