Selected Few

My 44 Year Old Hands

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25 years this blog has weathered space and time and it was offline for a couple years with no backup. Thanks to an older backup XML file and the Wayback Machine, I’ve been able to restore the original journal that spans a quarter century of my life. This poem is a time warp from the poem I wrote, which is in the archives, titled: My 22 Year Old Hands… My 44 Year Old Hands These are my 44-year-old hands. Desert hands. Sun-cured. Split. Salted with years. They don’t move fast anymore, but they move like water in a dry wash …

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Finding The Other Person

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These days, I see other people posting deep things on social networks like Facebook, and I start to think how vain it is to put important content or anything with a more serious personal tone on a place like a corporate social network. Have we become such frail and hollow beings that we no longer find independence? This is why it is important for me to have a journal and a space to pen my more personal and intimate thoughts with a maturity that no social network is worthy of. While stating the obvious above, here’s what’s on my mind… …

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Looking For Answers

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Due to lack of sleep last night, I’m feeling somewhat mixed-up on this fine Friday. We had a string of car burglaries on our street late last night, and luckily my buddies and I happened to be in the right place to call the police and they were busted pretty fast off the cuff. This is not a big deal because I’ve already got enough excitement to exceed my daily dose this whole week. I’ve got a lot of stuff on my mind because I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. Things are all up in the air …

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Yanny Country: Bluff, Utah…BEWARE!

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It’s late at night. The crickets and gas station lights are buzzing into the darkness. There’s hardly any street lights through Bluff. We ate at the Twin Rock Cafe just up the road before sundown and I think the Yannies are out, tonight. Just across the San Juan is the Navajo Rez. I’m staying in the tidy little Kokopelli Inn, writing a few brief thoughts and getting ready to go for a nightly run which feels a little intimidating… There are ghosts roaming the night. Little people move up the arroyos somewhere out on Cedar Mesa, south of Bluff, busy …

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A Few Thoughts On the Wilderness

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Thinking as I watch the sun dew dripping off the naked winter trees. It’s a cold winter night, but the Earth is strong and beautiful. All is beautiful. Wish you were here… …I miss the summer, hiking in the narrows of Zion with my sweetheart, or watching the purple light of evening drape the desert sand… The wintry sun now softly whispers and the candled stars begin to rise in the eternal dome, not yet totally dark but primordial. The frigid wind wails through the branches of an ancient juniper skeleton. Dressed from head to toe like a redneck eskimo, …

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A Bittersweet Experience of Havasupai

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Havasupai, in the Grand Canyon, is not just a canyon and a bunch of pretty waterfalls. It has cultural significance as well as a lot of history surrounding the indigenous people that call it home, mainly the Supai. I’ll include my thoughts on the Supai people at a later time, in a different journal entry. This post is regards my experiences with Havasupai and how it is changing my outlook on life. Or perhaps, it has forced me to introspect about things I would not consider otherwise? Havasupai changed my life three years ago for better or worse in August …

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Decolonizing America?

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It’s not impossible for Uncle Sam to change his outlook & decolonize. In fact, I think he could change his whole opinion & quit seeing the world from the typical ethnocentric, westernized standpoint. Our multi-cultural nation could enter an enlightened renaissance never seen before in the history of civilization!

Owls, Coyotes, Memories and Dreams

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My Amigo, Omar and I traveled out to Milford, Utah. We stopped off at an old abandoned mining mill and smelter out in the boonies. There inside a decrepit torn building with a partially collapsed roof, we saw a Great Horned owl which flew out of the ruins and then returned a few seconds later. It wasn’t very far above our heads, about 15 feet and It landed up in the roof rafters. It looked back down on us with ruffled feathers and a quiet stance. This has been apart of a strange series of events that I’ve noticed over …

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Life Requires Deep Roots

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I’m like the coyote, often careless, reckless, and naive even in my late twenties. Okay, I have to confess something publicly, I acted out on my insecurities. It was very reckless and I may have said some mean things. I didn’t realize they may be taken that way until after I reread the words. Be careful what you say to another human being. Words are like tooth-paste. Once it’s out of the tube, it’s hard to get back in. I am sensitive, irrational, illogical, and dream too much. Empathy is not always my strong point hence why I need to …

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My Strong Heart

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First off, I finally have something to write about and it concerns my earlier life. This is what I call introspection. When I was in grade school I hopelessly teased, ridiculed, and made fun of. In the sixth grade I wore a hat that proclaimed, “I love my Grandpa!” The other school children made fun of me because I dressed like a country boy and was living in Salt Lake City at the time. Basically, I was country when country wasn’t cool and I didn’t jive with city kids. I wasn’t good at sports, neither. So the combination made me …

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Aliens and Country Store Ice Cream

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We drove out to Area 51 in the middle of the night which turned into a big misadventure. Actually, it wasn’t a misadventure at all. Well it was, but it wasn’t. And it wasn’t even my idea. You see, there’s this girl I was studying with at Southern Utah University and after we finished up she suggested that we drive to Area 51 in Southern Nevada in the middle of the night. I don’t think she realized that I would do such a thing. Most guys aren’t crazy. Well, she’s crazy and I realized how much fun it would be. …

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The Adventure and Misadventure Ramble

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The beauty of life cannot be controlled or pushed. There is joy in the indescribable and mysterious. When you journey into unknown places the mystery never fully reveals itself. For many seasons I have explored vast distances and realized how grateful I am for experience. I have loved every adventure and misadventure. Every adventure has its story, definition and teachable moment. Listen to the things that are fading in this world and let’s not forget the beauty around us. Let’s not let apathy and ignorance ruin our spirits or let the mass production of western materialism deteriorate our lives. You …

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The Great Change

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I ponder the precious and rare beauty of this world. The quiet that is. The sun rises in the east igniting the purple twilight while canyon birds join serenading crickets. The arms of orange light touch the tips of canyon rim and I am lost somewhere between eternity and pure love. This is life and we are on this journey of ruggedness called reality. This wilderness feels closer to faraway from all of life’s travails. The sunrise comes and then passes into oblivion never to be repeated. The wind still whispers the ancient past as it travels through pinion. I …

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Flashbacks of Havasupai

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Last night I went hiking down in the Narrows. There were no clouds in the sky. I returned to Cedar City around 7 P.M. and spent that evening reading Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. Sometime in the wee-hours of morning I had a strong dream about the entire Grand Canyon getting inundated with water ripping down every gorge and side canyon. Imagine the destruction to Hoover Dam? At the Bar 10 lodge where I used to work on the North Rim, I dreamed the employees had gone crazy and were gambling and playing poker. When I awakened images of what …

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Four Havasupai Men Saved Us

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It was a beautiful and pristine weekend on the Havasupai Reservation in Grand Canyon. Late on a Thursday night we hiked eight miles into the Grand Canyon to Supai Village and arrived at the tourist office shortly before day-break. After we paid our dues we headed straight for Supai campground two miles away to set up camp for the weekend. That very same day, I wanted to head back into the village while others went swimming in the falls. That afternoon I visited with various Supai villagers and engaged in small talk. This was my first time to Havasupai and …

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The Reality of Freedom

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Okay, I had a wild hair to break out of my shell of conformity and write a few words here on Freedom. I’m talking True Freedom and how it feels. First comes courage and faith to think outside the box and to be different from all the others. Freedom is finding the courage to really let a woman know she is beautiful. Freedom is the wild horse that roams the great basin or is the man that decides to hitch-hike the lonesome highways of America. Freedom is to enter the quiet canyons of the Colorado Plateau and to experience solitude …

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Mysteries, Miracles and Unknown happenings

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A couple years ago I had an amazing experience not easily explained. In fact I was baffled at first and then totally overjoyed. It all started when I received a fix-it ticket from a highway cop about a month before for a dead tail-light on my Suzuki Samurai. I ended up replacing the whole tail light assembly and was able to find it used at the local junk yard. The problem arose when I neglected to get the ticket taken care of. I left town for Spring Break that spring and was attending Dixie State College. When I returned I …

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Thankyou God for Canyon Country

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Thank you Heavenly Father for this blessing of harmony. I am so grateful to be a part of the colorful landscape. Canyon Country runs in my blood. It is a part of my soul. When I become old, I want my carcass dumped in a flash flood gully where coyotes may discover my discarded flesh and laugh with joy. May they fill their empty bellies and be content. That is a powerful and pleasant thought. All around is sand and plateau, the homeland of the Anasazi. Their presence is felt on the ancient wind. Their whispers whistle through pinion and …

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The Lonesome Wasteland

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I am resting by alcove deep in Canyonlands, dreaming of wasteland shadows and the ancient voices from the past. Thank goodness, I am far from town and listening to the sweet sound of crickets and mourning doves in a cottonwood. A dust devil sweeps the arid plain whipping tumble weeds. A dark black raven trails the light azure sky. The sandstone is baked enough to fry and scramble eggs. The desert is an enormous frying pan. The distant elevated plateau dances in a mirage. I’m alone and surrounded in pure isolation. Sure do miss those monsoon thunderheads that appear in …

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The Beautiful Quiet

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In town I feel like a stranger and so I go home to visit the hills. Them rolling mountains have always been my friends. They are always there waiting. My love for the wild is my inner peace. On deep summer nights the thunder rolls over canyon country and I hear the sound of rain when sleeping on these cold winter nights. Oh, how I miss summer’s warmth… In a dream, the cottonwoods sway to and fro on a heavy wind. I look into the sky and see patches of cumulus cloud ships as they journey through turquoise blue. And …

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In the Candled Night

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It is a candled night in dreams they sleep vast distances lay between the firelight dances in their minds with each passing hour the dream fades then grows an empty void fills the interior walls of yesteryear even yesterday a vision of pairs walks carefully down an imagined street the soft candled sky shows fiery hues spiraling galaxies throw colorful intensities all the while in the deepness of the soul the heart rakes the rugged densities of life the feeling of absence grows arduous in dark moonless hours when a beautiful song cannot be sung …i know a place where …

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Wagon of Ashes

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inside the doorway of the traveling sky, there is quiet peace in this world. although there is a lonely wagon filled with ashes it wonders past sea and mountain, and through the valleys. when it gets dark and black. without sight, does it wonder and cannot find peace. the children that knew, are crying, while their parents lay in bed dying. and so the only mother of them all went to her autumn grave, and soon the peaceful snow gathered. the wagon wonders, with it’s ashes. In the dark it wonders. but in dreams, the children are free where burdens …

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About the Great Change

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I believe in the existence of aliens, bigfoot, and most other phenomena. I think it naive to say nothing is there, because we live in a universe where the possibilities are infinite. Just look at the stars on a clear night out in the middle of nowhere! We do not always understand what is happening in our world, but it should be our responsibility to observe nature. Those mysterious entities may be spiritual manifestations, warning us! The earth is teaming with life, but even the power of life is unknown. Can science even begin to tell us about the soul …

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Navajoland and Beyond…

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I have the wanderlust bug. There are so many places that I want visit. My dream is to move around the Southwest, and visit all those desert landscapes between Los Angeles and Santa Fe. I’ve admired those hitch-hikers that travel great American highways, like the famous, but deceased, Chris McCandless… I have become somewhat a transient, myself. Not like those folks that spent so much personal time in isolation. I haven’t always been the best of friends and have fallen short of promises to keep, but I constantly need the human element. I depend on human acquaintances, friendships, and close …

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Shouting to River Runners

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Peace is in the canyon in clouds passing over massive sandstone and limestone ledges. All is quiet, far from city noise. The deep waters of the Rio Colorado fill the inner gorge as ravens plane the blue sky catching thermals of late winter air. Cloud and cliff shadows mix. In the next few hours private river runners will come around the bend and reach mile marker 187. We will shout hello to them and wave frantically. They’ll raise their oars and shout back, then continue their fourteen day journey to the bottom of the canyon to Lake Mead. I love …

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Surviving In a World of Suffering

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I know what hides from most human beings and its realm is the vast wilderness. Humans have been separating themselves from the experiences of their ancestors. Most of them no longer retain even a hint of their original life ways. We have all lost track of why we are on this planet, which is our mother. Now, we have become so entangled by our own culture of mass consumption. We have forgotten our responsibility to the earth, and our relationship with the rest of creation. We have been cutting off this connection for very long time now, for hundreds of …

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Fact is Stranger then Fiction

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I am always reminding myself that fact is stranger then fiction, it gives me the ability to have faith in the unbelievable. It is not hard to feel the power of this world, but the truth isn’t always in reach. There is a strong force running through my veins to seek the unknown. I have the oppurtunity to experience the world, by the grace of God, and seek infinite truth. Life itself is a miracle and a mystery. The quote below is from a movie titled; Second Hand Lions. It carries a lot of weight in my book. Truth is …

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Dreaming of the Afterlife

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A boy sat outside the village looking at the grave yard at the mesa’s edge. “What ever happened to the dead?” he pondered. “Are they living some where else far away?” Skeletons walking around after the day turns to night inspires the boy to dream of the darkness and deepness of rivers. “Are the dead living somewhere else?” Out on the mesa edge he prays every morning. He prays, waiting for the sun to come up; to come over and talk to him. Every night, he dreams of the medicine that will make him dead. He wants to go see …

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My Destiny

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No person will hinder me from venturing into shadow creeping into the deeper wild where the wind sings ageless further ‘n further away from my captors …the wraiths of civilization No individual will persuade me from the call of creation forward, into beauty of earth and sky.

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