carousel: hiking the desert
I brought out the Big Camera for our spring trip to Mesa. Having given everyone The Heat Exhaustion Talk in the parking lot, I was a little embarrassed and disappointed to be the one to tap out about three-quarters of the way to Wave Cave.1 Had to remind myself that a 3.75mi hike with a gorgeous desert vista at the end is plenty satisfying, even though it was less than we'd set out to do.
Exerting that much in zero humidity is bizarre; I never got sweaty but was coated in a fine, velvety layer of salt at the end. There's nothing like post-hike street tacos and that cool shower where all that dried sweat and sunscreen turns to slime when the water hits it and rinses you clean.
📸
fujifilm x20
film simulation: astia
shutter priority2, 1/640s
⁺✧₊⁺
I'm prone to summit fever so it's probably good I internalized "only go half as far as your limit before you turn back" from reading holes at a formative age. I wound up very hot & thirsty and a bit weak when we got back to the car, but was otherwise okay; if I'd gone any further (especially since we'd just reached the scrambling section of the trail) I probably wouldn't have been.↩
I'm an exposure time maximalist and almost always shoot in shutter priority; correct exposure is a state of mind.↩