Cedar Mesa Cicadas

Wending our way northward on highway 261, we camped a short distance down Snow Flat Road. In the morning Roxanne noticed a number of cicadas had crawled up the sides of the tires and were emerging from their shells.

In my early childhood in Japan, a lifeguard at the nearby pool used to fish them out and save them for me. I kept them a few days before letting them go. They are one of my spirit animals.

Mounds of Comb (Wash, that is)

The Abajo Mountains (with snow)

 Looking North

The Naked and the Nude
  by Robert Graves (24, July 1985 - 7, December 1985)

For me, the naked and the nude
(By lexicographers construed
As synonyms that should express
The same deficiency of dress
Or shelter) stand as wide apart
As love from lies, or truth from art.

Lovers without reproach will gaze
On bodies naked and ablaze;
The Hippocratic eye will see
In nakedness, anatomy;
And naked shines the Goddess when
She mounts her lion among men.

The nude are bold, the nude are sly
To hold each treasonable eye.
While draping by a showman's trick
Their dishabille in rhetoric,
They grin a mock-religious grin
Of scorn at those of naked skin.

The naked, therefore, who compete
Against the nude may know defeat;
Yet when they both together tread
The briary pastures of the dead,
By Gorgons with long whips pursued,
How naked go the sometimes nude!

And I would add: 

As they laugh amongst the whips and briars they delightedly giggle, "Bring it on!" and "More!"