Spooky Hill

It's been getting kind of hot lately, so one day after work I wanted to go on a hike for which I knew how much effort would be involved. And I didn't want to expend too much effort, so I went to Spooky Hill. You won't find that name on any maps except mine, though. I named it that years ago because the first time I hiked there, the sounds seemed very strange. Well, actually, there were no sounds. That's not too unusual, but when you make a noise, you should hear an echo. On that day there were no echos. The air swallowed up every sound I made, even the really loud ones. I whistled. It was loud enough to hurt my ears. Then it was gone. Nothing came back. Reminded me of The Langoliers. I've been back there several times since then and everything seems normal.

I think it's a pretty area out there, especially late in the day.

I took the tripod along because I was planning to make a 360 degree panorama. I put that panorama on my Panoramio page, if you are interested in seeing it. The camera wasn't level, but that was halfway intentional, because the landscape wasn't even. I got the tops of the mountains on one side without getting too much sky on the other side. It isn't obvious that the camera was tilted in the panorama. Since I had the camera on a tripod, though, I decided to get a picture of me. In that picture you can see that the camera is tilted. What's funny is that when I first looked at it, I thought that I couldn't straighten it because there weren't any saguaros nearby that I could use as a reference for vertical. I guess I don't trust myself to be vertical.

Tilted, and kind of fat, too.

I don't know if the heat affects me more these days or if I've just become more aware of its effects. I think that now I realize that when I'm struggling up a hill in the heat, I'm not struggling because I'm out of shape or because I'm hungry or something else like that. It's because it's hot, my body is having a difficult time staying at a healthy temperature, and therefore my legs feel like lead because climbing generates too much heat. Spooky Hill is small, but I stopped often on the way up, for several minutes at a time.

It looks so serene, and it is very quiet at this time of year.

I carry extra water in hot weather, thinking that if I get too hot I will pour it on myself to cool off. A potential problem with that plan is that, when you get too hot, your brain doesn't work correctly, so you may not be able to do anything about it. I think I'm just going to be extra careful the rest of the summer.

Click below for all of the pictures.

2013_06_20