We went to Ithaca this weekend and stayed with Brad Edmondson and his wife Tania at their house on 106 Short Street. The excuse for going was meeting up with Chris Schaeffer, who is getting divorced after a long effort at keeping a difficult marriage together. It was a fabulous weekend of catching up with friends. As a bonus we got to see Shep Smith, who still remembers a weeklong hike at Deep Springs with Dave as one of the best times of his life. We hope to get our families together one of these years. Here's a picture of the kids throwing rocks at Fall Creek. And one of me and Chris pre-race.

On the road Calvin said some funny things, one of which was "Please may I be excused from the car," a novel way of saying "are we there yet?" ingeniously extrapolated from his previous training in table manners. When the sun was setting he said something else that struck us poetic: "My eyes are in the dark."

It's so much fun listening to the way both Isabel and Calvin express the way they experience the world. It makes me realize how much I take for granted that because we use the same words we understand things in the same way. So often we really don't, even though we think we do because we use a common vocabulary. This "common" language is still full of nuances and shades of meaning that makes true understanding more an art than a science.