Little Arsenic Trail

This Chart Keeps Me Up at Night

A comparison of the monthly average highs and lows betwen Portland and Phoenix

This chart isn’t literally keeping me up at night but of the many unknowns in both starting a new job and moving to a new area it’s what scares me the most. It compares the average monthly high and low temperatures throughout the year, the highs and lows for Portland in blue, Phoenix in red and orange. I can’t wrap my head around how the lows in Phoenix match the highs in Portland.

I think I’ll love the winter in Arizona. I think I’ll hibernate in the summer.

We’ll have air conditioning, and the house we hope to rent has a lovely pool (as does our backup option). I love to swim but have rarely had the chance for decades so that I am very much looking forward to. And that’s not all, as there will be lizards. Oh yes, there will be lizards. I can think of only one lizard I saw in 21 years of hiking in the wet side of the Northwest. I saw them in the dry side to the east, and perhaps I’m forgetting some I saw on my side of the Cascades, but if so they were the exceptions that prove the rule: reptiles are few and far between near Portland. We met this eastern fence lizard (I think) on the Little Arsenic Trail in the high desert of New Mexico, looking forward to seeing lizards in the Sonoran Desert where we will live.

Reptiles and heat, one of them I’m going to love, hopefully I can at least tolerate the other.

Threat Assessment

I grew up thinking tarantulas were deadly assassins that would kill you if you crossed their path, as I lived far from their domain and my impressions were formed based on how I saw them portrayed on television. We love to demonize and vilify certain animals (and worse, people) based on primal fears, and on deliberate lies told to mask the real threats, but in truth tarantulas are not a threat to us. As my wife and I walked down the path and stopped to watch this tarantula in New Mexico, she noticed us (their vision is poor but they are good at sensing vibrations in the ground) and ran over to this rock and tried to hide in a crevice but was slightly too big to fit. I always feel bad when I frighten an animal when I hike but thankfully she decided to trust us and climbed out onto the rock. A lesson my young self did well to learn – I was the threat.

My First Tarantula

My wife and I were hiking up from the Rio Grande on our trip to New Mexico in 2007 when we met this lovely little creature on the trail. It was the first (and so far only) time I had seen a tarantula, a couple of job opportunities I’m pursuing are in areas where we might meet again. This one could still be out there, the females can live up to 20 years (the males only half as long).

Barking Up The Right Tree

While in Taos, my wife and I drove out to the Wild Rivers Recreation Area for a little hiking and sight seeing. My wife wanted to touch the Rio Grande so after waiting for some thunderstorms to pass through, we hiked the Little Arsenic Trail down into the Rio Grande Gorge. Following a long and seemingly endless series of switchbacks down into the canyon, we were tired but happy when we finally reached the riverbank. The trees by the water had a beautiful red color and I loved the patterns in their bark. The hike back up was even more punishing, but I was excited to find a tarantula sharing the trail with us, the first one I’ve seen in the wild.