Just in case you didn't know, or were wondering, or are not in my immediate circle of friends who know my every move, I am on a one year family vacation slash mission type trip with my husband and three children. I know that I should have probably just used a slash rather than writing the word slash, but I like doing things the hard way and it's my blog so I can do what I want to, so there.
So, for the past almost three weeks we have been in Arizona. We are all quite fascinated with the vegetation here. Lemme tell you...it is NOTHING like Saskatchewan. Let me also tell you, it is starkly beautiful. As a family, we are big fans of hiking. At least, we were big fans of hiking until today. I may never get Matthew out on the trails again.
I should clarify that by hiking, I mean nice meandering strolls though the great outdoors. Back home we would just drive around out in the country till I saw a stretch of forest that I was intrigued by, park the vehicle and go get a little lost. This always makes my husband very nervous. He likes to be in sight of the vehicle and be able to hear the sound of the road at all times. I like to be out of sight and hearing of all things except the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees, free to drop trow and pee wherever the mood strikes me. We compromise by me telling him not to be a baby since I have never been seriously lost in the forest before and do not intend to start now and he moans and complains and follows me. I think he is just afraid of being lost alone and would rather be lost with me and the kids.
Since we have been in Tucson, we have all been loving this one cactus. It looks like a beautiful, fuzzy, drapey cactus over top of a really nice tree trunk. It is amazingly pretty and we had to get closer.
The whole area that we are staying in is open range. I had no idea what that meant, so I will enlighten you as well. (See, I am not merely entertaining, I am educational!) Open range means that cattle have the right of way. If you don't want cow pies in your front yard, it is up to you to put up a fence and keep them out. So if you can picture this, we are surrounded by acres and acres of cacti, mesquite, cattle and cowpies. I have no idea how the cattle survive. There is NO grass. How do they graze? The farmers must really be feeding them at home because they could not be surviving from forage alone. Sorry...chased a rabbit there. The point is that there are trails all around us. I am going to go out on a limb and say that they are cow trails. We found ... evidence... to support this theory.
We got out onto the first trail and had gone about five meters before we came on one of the wonder trees. Being a hands on type of gal, I immediately wanted to touch it. Abby and I cautiously stuck out our fingers in a type of "once bitten, twice shy" move, and found that they are almost soft. They did not poke at all.
Let me rephrase. They did not poke at all while they were on the plant. Something happens after they fall off though, that renders them near lethal weapons. As I was gently caressing the pretty pretty tree, Abby suddenly started screaming "Get it off me! Get it off me!"
I looked down and saw that she had three poky balls sticking out of her leg. I went to get them out of her leg and got them stuck into my hand. They seem to go in and then explode a little underneath your skin in such a way that they are stinking hard to get out. The last one that was stuck in her actually pulled her skin out in a little tent about two centimeters away from her leg. After we got all of the foreign objects removed from our skin we went back to the trailer, put on running shoes and set out again. We actually got some of the pokers stuck into the rubber parts of our shoes that we could not pull out and had to just break off.
It was very different to be out hiking in all of these poky, sharp objects when we were used to soft, mossy surfaces and soaring, evergreen trees. We followed several trails until we kind of cactus-ed ourselves into a corner. We were surrounded on every side and I had to admit defeat and say it was time to head home.
Shortly after we turned back Matt caught one of the poky balls hard in his shin. In a classically Matthew, knee jerk reaction, he reached down, slapped it out of his leg, and succeeded in slicing his hand open in several different spots. These cuts on his hand and leg then started pouring out blood. He was shrieking like he had been stabbed, which of course sent Michael and I into fits of poorly disguised laughter. We are, understandably, in the running for parents of the year. Matt is such an overly dramatic person that anyone would have been hard pressed not to laugh.
After all of the tears had been dried and the laughter had subsided, we resumed our trip out of the desert trap. Along the way I had some time to think about life and the things that go on in it. A lot of times, the things that are the most pleasing to our eyes, and that attract us the most are also the things that hurt us the most. All of us go through situations that hurt, but the most pain comes from the things that capture your attention or your heart and then turn around and bite you in the butt.
I guess the moral of the story is to remember that appearances can be deceiving. Be careful. You never know when something, or someone that attracts you in one way or another will cut, and removing the barbs is very painful.
Also, be careful where you step. Cowpie is tough to get out of shoe treads.
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