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Our minor league baseball team here in Charleston — the Riverdogs — has a beautiful stadium not far from the Citadel campus. It’s a terrific little ballpark, full of family-friendly fun. Friday night homegames, for instance, come with a dazzling fireworks display at the end, win or lose. And this is no small fireworks display. I’m talking about a minutes-long sequence of big boomers and flourishing fountains of color that light up the night sky. The whole business is quite extraordinary.

I should know. Our house backs up to a gorgeous expanse of tidal marsh off the Ashley River, and on the other side of that wildlife-filled marsh sits, in all its resplendent glory and firework-launching preparedness, the ballpark. We have one hell of a view when the ‘crackers start going.

The downside? Well, for starters the boomers tend to hit late at night — it’s 11:10 here, and this week’s rendition just finished up — so they tend to wake up wee hobbits trying to sleep hereabouts. The second problem is Sydney the Wondermutt, who is trembling afraid of fireworks, thunder, and — we had to move to The Citadel to find this out — cannons. Poor pup.

My brother, in addition to being a remarkably fine photographer of the old rite, has become rather adept at the new rite of digital photography. Give him a picture and Photoshop and the results can be breathtaking.

Or instructive. Take, for instance, the photo at left, taken of the petroglyph “map” I found on our recent trek into Anasazi lands. You can see the basic form of it here — two meeting squiggles, which I daresay look like joining canyons — but it’s tough to make out.

Lance was able to take this picture and do some enhancing on it, creating the second image at left. What is undoubtedly the petroglyph is marked in yellow; what may or may not be man-made is in blue. What I recall from first-hand viewing was that most of this “blue” stuff is natural, with the possible exception of the horizontal line. I also recall thinking that the yellow splotch looked a bit like a fellow waving, but that may be due to my having recently been staring at the petroglyph below Moon Phase Ruin that was undoubtedly doing that.

So has anyone out there seen anything quite like this before? This is the only Anasazi “map” I’ve ever seen — if indeed it is a map — and I’d love to hear of other examples or even alternative explanations.

My brother, Lance, sent me a link to a video of a fine gentleman, Taylor Mali, ranting about “What Teachers Make.” A few clicks brought me to this, a disturbingly true look at the state of students’ proofing skillz:

I had a chance yesterday to visit for a couple of hours with two young writers: Beth Wodzinski (also editor of Shimmer Magazine) and Sean Markey. Lovely people, both of them. I was still rather tired out from my recent adventures, so I hope I didn’t seem too out of it.

Got back to my email today and discovered that Alethea Kontis, a brilliant lass, also passed through town yesterday. :(

Sad. It would have been lovely to have Beth, Lee, and Sean all together at my house at once!

What follows is a report on three days of exploring in the backcountry of southeastern Utah and northern Arizona. A slideshow of images illustrating the whole can be found halfway through the account.

DAY ONE

Today we hunted Anasazi ruins.

There’s a story behind this, as you would imagine, and it has to do with my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary, as you probably would not imagine.

You see, my family has always been a bit on the, well, adventuring side of things. Growing up, my vacations were only rarely to amusement parks and tourist traps. No, we were more apt to pack full our big four wheel drive rig, hitch up the trailer, and drive up to the mountains where we’d pass the time rattling up old mining roads, hiking over pristine mountainsides, and generally enjoying the outdoors. My parents thus instilled in me a love of adventure.

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