Damp ground under your ass; you’ll stain your jeans. The sun just crept over the valley walls, although it’s nearly ten, and it warms your shoulders. You sprawl contentedly in October sunshine, eyes shaded, while the buses and bicyclists pass.

One thousand feet up is a tiny red dot, connected to a blue dot by a rope too thin to be seen at this distance. They are only specks on the grey granite face. El Cap is too big for a monolith: it’s a world, an entire ecosystem, and the climbers dangle, hesitant, stuttering upward, defying gravity.

You’d rather watch.

Woot! 'suela, knowing El Cap, that one knocks me on my ass.

It's the non-static version of the Adams photo.

Aw, thanks, Deb. I love just sitting on the valley floor, watching the nutcases big wall climbers, knowing they're only on day one of three, and they have to carry their poop all the way with them.

t /shadenfreude

Whenever anyone asks me if there's something I haven't done and won't do ever that I regret?

Only one answer, really. Biiiiiig mountain, my favourite, not the usual: K2.

I always wanted to get about halfway up K2. That's a very female mountain.

Shudder, Deb.

You know the proportion of deaths-to-success is much worse for K2 than it is for Everest?

Seriously nasty mountain.

I don't think I love anything enough to carry my poop for days.

That having been said ...

*********

The asphalt itches. I didn't know gravel tasted like metal. Or maybe that's blood.

It could be blood.

It's mostly silent--all the noise is borrowed, leftover music, discarded conversations, and exhaust-laced rattles tumble over each other into the alley. There's more sound than light, though, and a weak moon getting weaker.

I try and flex my fingers against the stiffening cold and consider propping myself up to a sitting position. There's chain link fence at my back, and my skin is torn raw and freshly exposed.

So I lie and wish I had strength enough left to shiver.

Seriously nasty mountain

I know. I always wonder why people thump themselves on the back when they summit Everest; K2 is so much nastier to deal with. But there's something about that damned rock - I just have the feeling she'd have let me partway up, if I'd had the stuff to try.

ita, damn, woman.

Loving this. Steph, if I baked I'd send you cookies.

Second drabble, take two:

We banked the campfire and used the flashlights down to the lake's edge. The boys took the bow of the boat, and H sat at the tiller. I leaned back against him under cover of darkness, the only intimacy we'd managed all day.

Not that dark. The elder son turned and looked back at us, and I could see his features clearly in the starlight.

Starlight. I looked up. No moon, but the sky was crowded with stars, their light bright enough to limn the leaf-edges of trees and the water where it lapped up silver against the rocks.

Place drabble:

An astronaut once came here, your tour guide said, and claimed that this was as similar to the moon’s surface as he’d seen on earth. You need to step carefully over the cracked rock. The familiar salty ocean wind mixes with the startlingly green scent of the grass to create a earthy smell that will stick to your jacket for months.

A harpist has set up shop, collecting coins from tourists. The sound is blown away from her, through the air, reflecting off the water and the cliffs, and the wind swirls it all around you. The waves crash, keeping time.

Place and people, too. I may need to send Teppy the dessert of her choice, or bring it along to DC.