Adventures with Luna: Day 37 - Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness, New Mexico

It was a cold night last night, but I was cozy in my sleeping bags and Luna seemed to do fine as well, with me routinely waking up to check on her and cover her up with the sleeping bag or my jacket if she had moved around. I stayed in my sleeping bag, sleeping on and off until 9:30, not wanting to get out until it was a little warmer. I had just finished up with breakfast and was packing things away, planning on a short walk in view of my vehicle before heading to my next destination. Much to my dismay, a red van turned off the dirt road in to the small parking area. The woman in the car waved enthusiastically to me then parked. When she got out of her car she came over and asked if I was camping in my car too, turns out, she’d been travelling for a year and a half and had not met another person travelling alone and camping in their car, it was quite funny that we’d meet in the middle of nowhere, with no one else around for miles. She came all the way from the Netherlands and has been travelling in Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and the US. We chatted for awhile, then I agreed to go on a short hike, I did not want to get lost and was planning on spending a good long time driving today. We ended up going a fair ways and stopping to chat for awhile. While we sat talking, Luna kept coming up to us and acting strangely, making some of her funny sounds and mouthing at our hands if we went to pet her, “She’s jealous!” Anne laughed, and I knew she was right, Luna has had my undivided attention most of the last 5 weeks and here we’d stopped for a long time on a hike (she hates stopping so long) and I was talking to someone rather than being focused on her, I have seen this behaviour before when I pet other dogs and she comes between us and starts talking and mouthing. Anne commented on how, what takes weeks (at least!) for people to tell new friends at home, it takes minutes on the road and that is so true. On the road, it doesn’t matter if you answer questions with brutal honesty, you’re unlikely to ever see these people again, you’re not trying to appear sane and like you have your life together. It’s quite nice to just tell it as it is and hear it as it is, rather than trying so hard to pretend your the person you think you should be and always failing, because all it does is burn you out and leave the worst side of yourself exposed. Upon returning to the cars several hours later, Anne gave me a bracelet she had received from a company called Lokai, they had sent her several of these bracelets so that she could take photos of them and post them on her Instagram for advertising and other than her own, she had given all of them away but this one. What is very cool and meaningful about these bracelets are that among the clear bead shapes, are a black one and a white one on opposite sides. The black bead holds mud from the Dead Sea, the card on the bracelet reads “Sometimes you’ve hit a low. Stay hopeful”. The white bead holds water from Mount Everest and reads “Sometimes you’re on top of the world. Stay humble.” A couple had just arrived back from the trail when she gave me the bracelet and Anne went over to ask them about some hoodoos we had seen in photos and had not found there. They gave us directions and we ended up driving together in her car to Bisti Wilderness, around 20 miles from De-na-zin Wilderness, where we were. We hiked there until a little after 4 pm, finding the Ostrich Rock and perhaps the Chocolate Hoodoos in a very round-a-bout way. Luna had some trouble with the hike as there were many times she had to make a jump or a drop farther than she felt comfortable, I had to help her out several times, it was almost all obstacles she could have easily done, but overthought it and became too scared and unconfident to do it, yes, Luna is a lot like me. Partway through the hike, Anne realized that we had not actually introduced ourselves, she had no idea of my name, but I had gathered hers from her talking in third person a couple times. She was not a dog person, but took quite a liking to Luna throughout the day. Before Anne left, after dropping me back at the car, she set up the tripod and took photos of us in our cars, parked side by side, to show us both car camping solo on our road trips. Once she had left, I made supper, packed up and settled in to read for the rest of the evening.

Anne dresses in nice clothes when she hikes as she has a popular Instagram account she takes photos for, I on the other hand dressed in baggy hiking pants that Luna had just adorned with mud as she road home on my lap from De-Na-Zin Wilderness.