What I Did on My Summer Vacation

          I hardly had a thought in my head at all last week. It reminded me of my adolescence.
          The reason my mind was empty was not a second recurrence of the horrors of ages 13-19, fortunately, but rather because there simply wasn't enough oxygen available for thought after my greedy muscles had absorbed it all.
          There wasn't much oxygen available even before my greedy muscles sucked it up, come to think of it. We were in the mountains, at about 12,000 feet, where oxygen is rarer than hen's teeth. I spent most of the week feeling like my head was a toy balloon, filled with giant, glorious nothing, bobbing along about two feet above where it normally sits on top of my neck when there is enough oxygen.
          K and I combined this lack of oxygen with a goodly amount of hiking, which resulted in some nicely stunning visions:

          Also some tired dogs:

          We were all so tired at the end of every day, in fact, that we were almost able to successfully ignore the bed made of rocks and Jell-o in the cabin where we stayed. Judging from the age of the proprietors and from the vintage of the formica in the kitchenette, I'm guessing that bed was well into its fourth decade.

          And I can testify with complete assurance that beds are not meant to last forty-some-odd years.
          Still, I'd brave the bed again just to listen to the big silence of the mountains, just to be able to hike to within shouting distance of a glacier, just to draw a breath at altitude and feel my head float away.