Today Bob and I started a runaway vacation to celebrate the beginning of Thanksgiving break. This is the last year the Corpus School district expects to close for a whole week at Thanksgiving, and we did not want to waste that opportunity. We followed our long term dream to visit wildlife refuges in New Mexico and west Texas to see the sand hill cranes and snow geese in mass. Bob has seen and heard this spectacle before and has described it to me. I have yearned to experience it. I've seen the plump, noisy heavy geese in their white and blue morphs in fields in Louisiana, but in hundreds, not the thousands present in November in New Mexico. And the tall, long legged, silver blue sand hill cranes, red crowned and stately, natural nobility, I have seen only in groups of eight to twenty. Even so I have loved watching them for long periods of time and have envied Bob his experiences of them in mass.

Its been a busy fall, a successful and happy fall fr both of us, but one in which our work lives have kept us moving on separate pathes. We were more than ready for time to enjoy ith each other and no expectations - away from home, work and kitchen - just us. It's been glorious from the beginning. We found a treasure near El Paso, Hueco Tanks Historic Area, an amazing oasis in the desert, three ponds unexpectedly present because of ancient volcanic activity, a magnet for birds, mammals, and rock climbers. A rock shelter is rich with evocative petroglyphs from ancient times. We must get back there, hopeful with grandchildren who would love to clamber on the rocks.