You can call me DeSoto

Internet has been unreliable and business is picking up, I have stuff written, but behind in posting, here is one from the other day:

Part of the fun of a new base is playing Columbus/Magellan and finding new things, so my run this evening was exploratory in nature. I heard a rumor you could run along the perimeter, also heard you couldn't, so I decided to go for it. I was richly rewarded. The base itself is bare dirt and void of any low lying vegetation, with the exception of a few trees. But as I turned off the main drag and eased onto the perimeter I saw lush green fields with cattle, sectioned off with chest high earthen walls or brush acting like hedge rows. Some fields were cultivated with rows of crops, not vast fields I’m used to seeing thanks to heavy farm equipment, but small 30X30 yard plots of varying produce. The sweet smell of buds and blossoms were a nice change from the port-a-johns and manly war B.O. and there were even wild flowers along the irrigation ditches and a flowing creek possibly big enough for a tube. As the walls started turning into clay huts and images I've only seen on national geographic I started feeling uneasy but realized I could easily see a guard tower in front and behind. The feeling left just as quickly when a 2 year old waddled out of a doorway, tripped and seemed content just rolling in the dirt, a couple kids working their garden shouted and waved from across the concertina wire (they really don't know how to properly use a shovel). It was as if I had been running so fast I went back in time to another world, there were three story houses all matching the dirt they rose out of with courtyards and connecting houses with more people working more fields. I'll try to go back for pictures, really wish I could just walk out there and show them how to use a shovel...