Thelma and Louise

My friend and fellow field guide Peggy came out from Colorado for a visit this past week. It was awesome to see her, and her presence was a welcome breath of wilderness-y air in my tiny Brooklyn apartment. 

I mean that literally, actually. She brought me some wild sage from the Utah desert, but even better than that was her water bottle. It was blackened from who knows how many hours of sitting in a campfire, and I couldn't stop smelling it.

"I half expected to see you spooning it when I woke up this morning," she told me the next day.

She was here almost a week, which is peanuts compared the number of 
nights I spent crashing on her couch over the summer when I was doing the homeless thing. It was nice to repay the favor a little.

It was funny to have someone around who acts, well, kind of like I do. As we were cooking dinner one night, I said something about the lack of counter space. She said, "Eh, whatever," and plopped down on the floor with a cutting board in her lap. This is the kind of thing that tends to cause raised eyebrows around civilized folk but seems perfectly normal to people who scrub pots with sand and use Wag Bags to do their business.

Peggy and I trained at the same time, and I remember the very first day that we arrived at the office in Durango. One of the senior guides who led the training came in, took one look at us, and said, "I can already tell the two of you are going to be just fine."

"How come?"

"Because there are plenty of chairs available, and you're both sitting on the floor."

Playing with Photo Booth. Sitting on the floor.