AUGUST 23, 2007: Here I am having fun with my buddy, Rapido, in the mountains of southwestern, Colorado. Every year for the last three years our friends Ken and Lois Carpenter have generously offered Connie and me use of their cabin (below) on the Los Pinos River for a week or two. Every day both of us jump into the raging rapids and very quickly get carried downstream thirty or forty yards before swimming to the side and getting out. As you can imagine, the experience is both bracing and exhilarating!

Over the course of six years of marriage (and life on the road), Connie and I have playfully named a number of places and things that are special to us, such as Rapido. In so doing, we have entered into more intimate relationship with each of them. For example, as I mentioned in an earlier post, we have chosen a personal name for our home continent of North America: Nora. Jasmine is the name we use to speak of our relationship as a couple—the whole that is more than the sum of the two of us. Naming our marital bond has helped us prevent minor disagreements from morphing into major ones. "I know what you want,"? I may say to Connie, "and I know what I want, but what does Jasmine want"? Just by posing the question, tensions subside; we might even laugh. Now, why it is that Jasmine usually wants to do what Connie wanted to do in the first place, I haven't yet figured out.

Angel is the name we've given to our van (and female voice of our GPS system). Earth's seas we call Oceania. We, of course, know that Rapido, Nora, Jasmine, Angel, and Oceania are personifications. Still, our life is far richer because of them. Surely the ancients would have known this too.