It was supposed to be a dream vacation. They had planned it over a year in advance so that it would be perfect in every way. It had been what they had been looking forward to through all the turmoil and negativity around them. It had been the light at the end of both their tunnels. Now that the dream vacation was only a week away, the virus had stopped all air travel.

The water rush down the wash and into the slot canyon below. Two hikers had started the day to sunny weather without a cloud in the sky, but they hadn’t thought to check the weather north of the canyon. Huge thunderstorms had brought a deluge o rain and produced flash floods heading their way. The two hikers had no idea what was coming.

What were they eating? It didn’t taste like anything she had ever eaten before and although she was famished, she didn’t dare ask. She knew the answer would be one she didn’t want to hear.

Her breath exited her mouth in big puffs as if she were smoking a cigarette. The morning dew had made her clothes damp and she shivered from the chill in the air. There was only one thing that could get her up and out this early in the morning.

Sometimes it’s simply better to ignore the haters. That’s the lesson that Tom’s dad had been trying to teach him, but Tom still couldn’t let it go. He latched onto them and their hate and couldn’t let it go, but he also realized that this wasn’t healthy. That’s when he came up with his devious plan.

He was an expert but not in a discipline that anyone could fully appreciate. He knew how to hold the cone just right so that the soft server ice-cream fell into it at the precise angle to form a perfect cone each and every time. It had taken years to perfect and he could now do it without even putting any thought behind it. Nobody seemed to fully understand the beauty of this accomplishment except for the new worker who watched in amazement.

She didn’t like the food. She never did. She made the usual complaints and started the tantrum he knew was coming. But this time was different. Instead of trying to placate her and her unreasonable demands, he just stared at her and watched her meltdown without saying a word.

April seriously wondered about her sleeping partner choices. She looked at her bed and what a mess it had become. How did she get to the point in her life where she had two dogs, three cats, and a raccoon sleeping with her every night?

Since they are still preserved in the rocks for us to see, they must have been formed quite recently, that is, geologically speaking. What can explain these striations and their common orientation? Did you ever hear about the Great Ice Age or the Pleistocene Epoch? Less than one million years ago, in fact, some 12,000 years ago, an ice sheet many thousands of feet thick rode over Burke Mountain in a southeastward direction.

Trees. It was something about the trees. The way they swayed with the wind in unison. The way they shaded the area around them. The sounds of their leaves in the wind and the creaks from the branches as they sway, The trees were making a statement that I just couldn’t understand. Sleep deprivation causes all sorts of challenges and problems. When one doesn’t get enough sleep one’s mind doesn’t work clearly.