Twas the Night Before Christmas---Phoenix Wildflower Style

The company Elisha works for, Wildflower Bread Co, is doing a a Christmas competition for employees where they could either do a short video or a short story. I decided I'd write the Night Before Christmas poem for her to enter into the competition. We'll have to see how that goes! She did make a few edits to this poem as she obviously knows her work better than I do, but I don't have that version, so this is the one you'll get, and you'll have to ask her how she changed it.

A few bits of info:

Jimmy Johns is the sandwich shop right next door. That chain has the tagline "So fast you'll freak". Elisha worked for them in Gainesville and really disliked the company

Eat, Sip, and Enjoy is the tagline for Wildflower

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' Wildflower,

No creature was stirring, not at this hour!

The tables were cleaned with the greatest of care,

Because smiling customers soon would be there;

Sandwich lovers tossed and turned in their bed

Due to growling stomachs anxious for bread

And Mama in her seat, and I driving the car,

Had just tuned the radio to soothing guitar.

When out by the mall there arose such a clatter,

I unbuckled my seatbelt to see what was the matter.

Away from the car, I sprinted with speed,

Reaching the sidewalk like a galloping steed. 

City lights twinkling across the valley that night

Silhouetted the mountains like the dawn of firstlight 

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a van full of flowers and wheat for a year.

With a little ole baker, and shoes that did jingle

I knew in a moment it must be Kris Kringle

Faster than jimmy johns, the sandwiches he made

Calling them out as if on parade

“Now! Rueben, now! ham, now! turkey and brie

On! Triple Club, on! Tuna, on! yummy BLT”

“From the back of the oven to the top of the plate

Get them while they’re hot, they’re more than first rate”

As I peered in the store, and was hiding my face,

Out the kitchen came Kringle with elegance and grace

He was dress'd in an apron, clean from a shower

And his clothes were all covered in spices and flour;

A garden of fresh vegetables he held tight in his hand

And he looked like a farmer giving thanks to the land

His eyes - how they smiled! his humming how sweet,

I knew right that instant, he was making a treat.

His droll little mouth was smiling with glee,

From tasting his creation, Would he share it with me? 

A baker’s hat he placed back on his head

And excitement filled me as I thought of the bread

The stem of a wildflower he held tight in his teeth,

An accessory he had surely plucked from our wreath

He had a cute face, but was verging on plump

And he shook as a he danced, especially his rump

His baking was magic, a right jolly old elf,

And my mouth began to water in spite of myself

A wink of his eye and a last taste of the bread

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He whistled a Christmas tune and continued his job,

Adding frosting to carrot cake without being a slob

Leaving cheer in the tip jar, he gave a slight wave

And left whence he’d entered, a move rather brave

He sprung to his van, high-fiving each wildflower

And drove towards the city, soon obscured by a tower

But I heard him exclaim to the sleeping hoi palloi

[or But I heard him exclaim, in a voice rather coy]

Happy Christmas to all; Eat, sip and enjoy.

Twas the Night Before Christmas, Arizona Game and Fish Style

 

Seems like every year I made an adaptation of Clement Clarke Moore's "About the Night Before Christmas" poem. This year was no different. I wrote it based on field work with Arizona Game and Fish and modeled the St. Nick character off of my colleague, and friend, Chad.

A few things to help out the understanding:

-the holes are caused by collapsed burrows from burrowing animals. Real ankle breakers
-Teddy Bear Cholla is a cactus, that is most certainly not cuddly
-Haboob is a crazy dust storm that AZ sometimes gets. Google image search it. It's pretty wild
-We do a lot of work on military installations as they own lots of property and are required to protect a certain amount. Thus we are privy to a lot of crazy military training, including jets flying fast and low over us
-we use flashlights to search for tortoises and snakes in burrows and caves
-blue gloves references nitrile gloves. We use them while handling tortoises. A nasty respiratory disease is affecting tortoises that can be passed by handling, so we take careful precautions
-garmin is a GPS brand
-a snake stick is a tool we use to both capture snakes and pull tortoises out of deep burrows.
-Gopherus morafkaii is the latin nomenclature (scientific name) for the endangered Sonoran Desert Tortoise
-Scutes are the enlarged scales that are on the tortoise shell.
-We put "license plates" on the back of tortoises to ID them later in order to do population modeling. It's basically a small square of white-out on the back scute, with a sharpie number. Then we add epoxy to it to make it last.
-Chad drinks this V8 drink with caffeine like it was candy.
-Conserve and Protect is the AZGFD motto and is written on the side of our trucks

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' A-Z,

Nothing was stirring, save for quail by a tree.

Funnel traps were set by the river with care

In hopes that gartersnakes soon would be there;

Kit foxes were nestled all snug in their burrow,

Undiscovered by elves, except the most thorough,

And Sky with his sunshirt, and I a camelback,

Returned from the field after a scratchy bushwhack.

When out on the sand there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my cot to see what was the matter.

Away to a wash I scurried in a sweat

Tripping on holes that posed quite a threat.

The moon on the spines of teddy bear cholla

Glowed like Christmas lights on a giant Sequoia.

When, what to my sunburned eyes should appear,

But a giant Ford truck, and eight techs full o’ cheer,

With a seasoned leader, so smart and so rad,

I knew in a moment it must be Sir Chad.

He measured the air temp and humidity too;

Then lined up his transect, whispering “I’ll find you.”

Gazing ahead, he prepared for the trek

And he whistled and hollered, to each bright-eyed tech:

"Now! Hailey, now! Trent, now! T-rod, and Jed,

"On! Julie, on! Alexa, on! Samuel and Deb;”

“Check the deepest cave! Climb the steepest slope!”

“Check every inch, don’t be a dope!’

As dry dust before the wild haboob does fly,

And temperatures climb up higher than high;

So up to the ridge-line the techs did climb, 

Checking nook and cranny and taking their time.

Despite sonic booms from the zooming air force

I heard the techs crunching through a field of quartz.

As I switched off my light, and was turning around,

Down a scree field slid Chad barely touching the ground:

He was dress'd in UPF, from his head to his toe,

His clothes were all faded; but no skin did it show;

A tortoise processing kit was buried deep in his pack,

And he reached for blue gloves stored next to his snack.

His eyes - how they squinted! his beard how grizzly,

Sweat dripping off his forehead could be described as drizzly;

His brimmed hat was secured tight to his chin,

But the shadow it cast couldn’t hide his wide grin;

The bite valve of his cameblack he held tight in his lips,

Staying hydrated, a battle, you can’t win with sips.

He had a small garmin and a sturdy snake stick

That clanked on rocks like a shiny ore pick.

He was fit and athletic, a right jolly r’searcher,

And I laugh'd when I saw him-- a true deserty creature;

A wink of his eye and a quick lil wave

Told me Gopherus morafkai had been found in a cave.

Reaching into the burrow, he proceeded with quickness,

Counting the scutes; and checking the fitness.

As he blew the last bit of epoxy paint dry

He cursed the damn drought as he looked at the sky.

A large cactus spine he removed from his rear,

Tortured by thoughts of an icy cold beer.

Slowly he rose from the hot, dusty ground,

And headed to the truck with a leap and a bound.

He chugged a V8, as he sat in AC

The dust from the trucks obscuring his glee;

But I heard him exclaim, ere he rounded a curve,

“Happy Christmas to all, protect and conserve.”

Arizona Fall Trips

 Week of Oct 18th

I helped Lindsay out at the Florence Military Reserve for the week doing invasive plant surveys. Mostly pretty boring, but the camping was beautiful with the sunsets and full moon

10/29-10/31

We did a camping trip up to Sedona.

Day1: We picked out our campsite and drove up to take a tour of the Sinagua cliff dwellings and pictographs/petroglyphs at Palatki. We then hiked up Cathedral Rock to watch the sunset over the red rocks. It was very beautiful!

Day 2: We hiked up the West Fork of Oak Creek Canyon. It was a beautiful meandering trail through the golden fall colors amongst the red rocks. It crossed the creek many times and at times resembled the famous "Subway" from Zion NP. At the "end" of the trail, you can continue by walking up the creek. Most people turn around but we had brought our water shoes. The water was super cold and definitely made our feet numb, but we continued, all alone, for another 1.25 miles or so through the subwayesque canyon.

We went into Sedona and grabbed some ice cream, then we hiked to Devil's Bridge. It's a natural arch that is strong enough for people to stand on. With its social media popularity, there is a long line you wait at in order to get your picture taken on the arch. This made Elisha very nervous because lots of people get really close to the edge and seemingly put themselves at risk

Day 3: 

We did the Soldier Pass and Brins Mesa loop. It was a cool and diverse hike, which included a giant sinkhole (Devil's Kitchen), the 7 sacred pools, and the soldier cave all amongst the red rock beauty. The cave was really cool b/c it had several little arches and an "upstairs" that we climbed up to. We also hiked to the top of Brins mountain which had amazing 360 views of the area.

Week of Nov 1.

I helped Sky out with all the Tortoise techs to do a tortoise survey at Imperial Wildlife Refuge along the Colorado River in California (near to Yuma).  It was a ton of hiking (18ish miles per day) and super beautiful. It was like walking on the moon or mars. It was so desolate and rocky. The mountains in the area were incredibly jagged and we found some cool slot canyons and even a badger. We camped along the Colorado, which was nice. The sunsets and sunrises were incredible, and I wrote a little poem about it.

The Colorado. So distant from her home in the mountain heavens where moose calves dance in the cool waters and where the wildflowers emerge from the fading snow that brings forth her annual vernal pulse. While the swift water and cascades of youth are but a faded memory, the river is wiser, gentler. Old age has failed to diminish her spirit. The fox and javelina that find respite from the desert heat along her cool banks and the cottonwood that sip from her tranquil flow bring her much contentment. But it is her old friend the sun--the one who makes her shimmer and glimmer, the one who warms her banks in the morning and kisses them with red gold in the evening, the one who has never left her side--that brings her true joy.

In a busy and chaotic world this joy can be elusive, but you will find it there. You will find it along her banks, especially at such a time when the sun greets her with warming rays or when she whispers goodnight with her pellucid but ephemeral paintings of the crepuscular sky.

11/6-11/7

Trip to Flagstaff and Meteor Crater.

Saturday: We drove up to Camp Verde where we visited the Montezuma Castle National Monument cliff dwellings, which were super impressive. We enjoyed some Indian Fry Bread at a local stand. We then drove up to the Montezuma well, which is this large sinkhole with hundreds of thousands of gallons welling up to it each day. It also had some cliff dwellings around it.

Next we drove up to Flagstaff where we visited Walnut Canyon National Monument and hiked down to the bottom of the canyon. The canyon has hundreds of cliff dwellings and on the trail you can walk through several of them. We camped up on the rim in the pine forest and had a really nice campfire.

Sunday: We drove to Meteor Crater, which is where a large meteorite came crashing into the desert between Flagstaff and Winslow Arizona. They have a really cool space science museum, a 4D theater, and you can even touch one of the large meteorite fragments. We took the tour of the rim with a guide as well. We had Phó for lunch in Flagstaff on our way home.

I had written, for a facebook, a little thing about the meteor and how it is related to the currently relatively clean air we breath and IQ that I thought might be interesting to share here as well.

This meteorite fragment is part of a much larger meteorite that caused mass destruction on the Colorado Plateau near the Painted Desert around 50,000 years ago. Interestingly, despite the destruction it caused at the time, the meteorite played a large role in improving both human health and intelligence (at least as measured by IQ).

While radiometric dating the meteorite to try to determine the age of the Earth, the scientist involved discovered that all his samples were highly contaminated with lead. In doing so he learned that all humans (and much of the planet) were highly contaminated with lead, with a huge source being leaded gasoline. Additional research following the lead contamination discovered while dating the meteorite eventually led the EPA (via the Clean Air Act) to begin phasing out lead in the 1970's and to ban leaded gasoline entirely in 1996. Since then the amount of lead on the average freeway has dropped 97% and the average amount of lead in the blood of Americans has dropped 94%. In separate studies lead in the blood has been shown to decrease human IQ, especially if the exposure occurs while one is a child.

So not only did this meteorite help us determine the age of the earth (4.5 billion years old), but it helped us learn we had a major lead contamination problem within humans, which led to rules that helped to clean the air we breath. For a much more thorough and interesting story about all of this, check out RadioLab's "Heavy Metal" episode.

11/12-11/14

We took a trip to Quartzsite. The first evening we hiked up the small Q mountain to watch the sunset. The next day we hiked into the Palm Canyon in Kofa wildlife refuge. The Canyon is home to some of the last remaining native palm trees in Arizona. We continued hiking high up into the canyon to get a nice view. We then drove on a rough road towards the King of Arizona mine, where we hiked to Polaris mine. You could still peer into the different mine shafts. As usual, Quartzsite provided a beautiful sunset on the drive home. On our last day there we hiked up Cunningham Mountain for nice views of the mountain ranges around as well as the Colorado River in the far distance. We also did a little exploring of Quartzsite's tent city.

The week of Thanksgiving my brother flew in, and we did some mountain biking in the Scottsdale area as well as played TopGolf with my work buddy Chad.

We all drove to Tucson for Thanksgiving where we celebrated the holiday with my parents, grandma, Gerry and Connie, and Aunt M. Johnny also came over for some spikeball. Elisha and I went to the U of A basketball game with Grandma and Mary. I also did plenty of mountain biking in the area

12/3-12/5

We again went to Tucson to help take care of my grandma as well as to see the musical Hamilton at the Centennial Theater on the U of A campus. As part of the date, we went to a restaurant along University Ave to see all that was going on at the happening night life part of Tucson