Writing from the far edges of the American desert.
All postings that deal with introspection which may include poetry and prose
Thunder rolls across the sky in winter time. How strange that the lightning would spark on the last part of November, while snow is falling. Oh, that powerful thunder echoed across the dark valley as I was heading home tonight, with snow flakes smashing into my windshield. Beauty is everywhere in this world. The desert is so beautiful, with the deep sparkling snow covering the valley, and covering the mountains above.
An aged river slithers through the yellow sandstone canyon. For millions of years it has. The clouds are passing through the sky, like there is no human existence. This world continues without the presence of humans. We should be grateful to be here, we should try harder to protect it. I am sitting out here, with everything washed in a soft glow. The blue sky is gentle, not rough. The clouds are majestic, old looking, yet they constantly shape shift. The water in them is ancient. The water flowing in the river, carrying the canyon’s sediments, is ancient. The Earth …
If I had to walk away, and never look back, Here are five things I’d take with me: A piece of Turquoise, My grandpa’s old cowboy buckle, A small pocket book of family history, A Jar of my grandma’s peaches, And the first quilt my mom ever made me.
Something isn’t right, it’s never right! I don’t know whether I’m depressed or just restless? However, I am enjoying school very much. Finally, I have classes that I can relate to, and people I can discuss political issues with. But the begging landscape keeps pulling me away from civilization, into the shadowy wilderness of Juniper hills, and deep filled canyons of silence. As I am walking home through the campus, after classes, I’m enjoying the blue sky filled with small white clouds. It’s hot outside, but there isn’t any desert wind. Walking under campus ponderosa, the sun sifts through pine …
I treasure your advice. You were the wisest of humans. No matter how things evolved, you knew faith and endurance worked. You were the toughest of the brave with those swollen hands of arthritis. I’ll always remember your soft-spoken eyes, surrounded by wrinkles, hidden behind thick grandma glasses. I would hitch-hike from my town to yours, just to come and stay. That highway would stretch for miles, and I walked for hours, waiting for a diesel to stop. Our surreal conversations would start in the early afternoon and head clear into the night. During summer the mocking birds impersonated every …
My latest excursion was a trip to Lake Powell, with my uncle. We spent the weekend there, and I was amazed how much the water level has dropped, leaving behind a thick white bathtub ring from the previous water level. The skeletons of dead cottonwoods, crumbling sandstone cliffs, and bleached cliff dwellings are all that remain from the original beauty of Glen Canyon. The landscape looks like a cemetery of all things drowned by Lake Powell. I feel sad and angry; I feel a few rednecks robbed Glen Canyon of its beauty when deciding to construct the artificial Glen Canyon …
In the heart of the mountains, I hear pines singing and admire waves of grass pushing and pulling in meadows. Heavy clouds wield themselves against blue space. At meadow edges, forest gates stand dark where slender pines grow side by side. I enter a quiet thicket where sunshine sifts through dense branches to touch an organic floor. The woods go on for miles, creeping. There’s something very queer about high mountainous areas, or plateaus where aspen rattle; where young pines grow among dead ones. I can barely sort out their rotten, crumbling shapes. It is a cemetary. Laying down on …
This cold desert drowns in rain. The heat wave vanished, as clouds come strolling in over the Paria desert, just northwest of Page, Arizona. Water pelts the ground, breaking up the hard dirt. Thunder gallops across the vista, and the wind wails. Lightning flings its arms. In a pinion tree, sits a raven waiting with his head bobbed down. He’s dangling like a Christmas ornament. Water droplets fall from his folded wings, and from his dark tail feathers. Under an alcove, I wait out the storm. Long ago, ancient Puebloans were hunting and gathering beneath these skies. I could just …
I drive out of this small town early on a spring morning, and off into the wilderness. Heading down dirt roads on tires worn thin, they stir dust into clouds. Going 50 miles per hour across purple sage valleys, I’m headed for a mountain range of low rising foothills. The road itself doesn’t intrude much. Southern Utah is a piece of the old west, where the brown foothills contrast sharply with blue sky. It is quiet, except for the distant rumbling of commercial jet airplanes, or a few cawing ravens. Living in silence, I have an old-fashioned heart that yearns …
There are several stories about lost gold mines and Spanish treasure in Southern Utah. After all, this land was once occupied by old Mexico. My grandpa warned me to stay away from the stories. They could drive anybody crazy who listened to them. I was in a bakery in Cedar City and overheard two bearded guys talking about a possible gold mine that one of them found. Then one individual started telling a story about a crazy hermit that spent an entire lifetime searching for lost gold. He became desperate and found a cave in the mountains near Cedar City …
Today, My brother, my cousin and I were coming back across a very remote area on the Arizona Strip on our way back from Toroweap, of the Grand Canyon. That is where we had been camping. You have to traverse 64 miles of Primitive dirt road to reach this part of the canyon, and we had some bad luck while heading home. My cousin took his truck because it offered 4-wheel drive, but his tire went flat because of a tear. We had some help from a stranger, and that was a lucky thing. We thanked him. After an hour …
I picture myself somewhere in a sandstone canyon on the Colorado Plateau; a deep gully in the belly of Mother Earth. Rock walls tower hundreds of feet above my head. Looking up into a narrow sky, I see clouds drift slowly in the heavens. But really, I’m actually typing a message on the internet. There is tremendous pressure to disappear into the boonies, beyond the reaches of my home town. A reckless wisdom taunts my footsteps, speaking to me in windy whispers. The trees have eyes looking at me. Listen to the forests howling in distant mountains. Giant Ponderosas filter …
The morning light peered through that dirty window. The dawn was dark blue. The gusts of night were settling down. Robins nestled in trees and sung in choruses. My feelings were bewildered. My brain was recovering from yesterdays unsettling world of chaos: News flashing, history popping, and radios screaming. They all had the unique affect of creating a rambunctious fury. Where the mountain sits waiting, the white painted aspens rattle their leaves; something grows uneasy? Here in a dark bedroom, unsettled thoughts march down the main-streets of my subconscious, into halls of my conscious. They refuse to leave, and are …
The redrock sea still simmers shortly after dusk. During daytime hours, it was a frying pan sizzling beneath traveling blue clouds. Even green shady trees couldn’t yield to that massive fireball in heaven! This world of crimson light hums with desert heat. Secrets shroud themselves in realms of deep starry night, after father sun drifts beyond western horizons. Listen to those humble hoots of a wasteland owl that sings from cottonwoods. Many creatures hunt skillfully in darkness. To all furry little rodents, beware! That great winged beast haunts the midnight air.
He raises his arms to the black sky untamed knowing of an endless escape, of making voyages to limitless places, where the clouds form dark castles. The gentle rains touch the weary land with a sparkling shimmer, like stars at night. These vistas weave a web in his mind, entrenching themselves permanently. Forever, let him travel where eagles beat their wings upon air and plane the sky so free. This Journey tonight is a different world beyond the Sun’s horizon, where heaven and Earth meet. Oh how this heart sings!
There are strange feelings in my bosom, singing in my cranium. They roar like thunder in summer. These dreams love beauty. They stand defiant against those that harm Mother Earth. For the land never stops calling my spirit. Those Pinion foothills call my name, and even spacious landscapes of isolation. Those mountains laugh and sing like coyotes, but they protect this loneliness. I am free from the cage of society, free from chains. I throw away those consumerist woes. I can feel Earth Mother once again, and feel her beautiful dream, even on darkened nights. The spring season draws nearer. …
Every now and then, there is a strange silence on that mountain that finds its own way into our little town. Mysterious animals shroud themselves in the forests up there, beneath the cloud scraped skies. Alone and dirty on quiet afternoons, I like to leave the town on foot entering into those trees on the mountain’s edge. The great forest always knows when I am coming. I climb to a hill just below the mountain and sit down on top of it to take a break, letting a little sunshine bathe me. Ever since I was a kid, I’m used …
Summer is near. Hopefully the clouds will come and bring rain upon the Colorado Plateau and Great Basin. These two enormous and uncanny deserts are my church, where untouched secrets still lurk; where wild creatures roam unscathed. There is good and evil in this little conundrum of life, but everything serves a purpose. Our reality cannot be understood with any theory. Humans can try, but I don’t think they will ever succeed in defining our infinite existence. Science and math cannot describe the beauty of a thunderstorm roaring across the land, becuase it can’t describe how I feel inside. For …
When I photograph the landscape, the trees are the most profound models. Their twisted shapes tease my spiritual universe, manifesting great feelings to my heart. When I see the shapes of trees, and stand in their shadows, and touch the bark of slithering branches, I respect the intelligence and kindness that whispers softly from those fleshy-wooden centers. They seem to communicate with compassion. They love life in unconditional ways; great peacemakers in a hardened, troubled world; patient creatures, with the greatest definition of understanding. I?ve wanted to emulate their calmness, but I envy their beauty. Cemented in one place, they …
The thunder and wind are acting strange this evening. The crickets are serenading. I’m standing there are the mesa edge watching the sun scatter its rays through gaps in the clouds. The desert becomes glowing red, and the rain sparkles through the sun’s rays, soaking the monstrous cottonwoods below, bathing them in a deep yellow light. All is quiet, except the wind, thunder, birds, and crickets. I watch the lightning strike the desert back and forth in the mystery of the moment, randomly hurling itself out of dark thunderheads that engulf the desert in shadow. These canyons are my home, …
Our family went south of Cedar City and almost made it to Arizona. There was a new area that we had never been before, and it was awesome. Big red rock cliffs came jutting out of the ground like backbones. Creosote bushes and various cacti decked the landscape clear to the horizon. We left Cedar about 6:00 A.M. before the sun even came up, just right before dawn. The Pine Valley Mountains, located south of Cedar City began glowing in a soft purple hue and then turned pink, red, and orange. The sky was burning red. The whole vista was …
The wind pushes through the forest like a wild stallion, roaring in a thousand rivers. In the mountains around my home, Bristlecone Pines stand high on the edges of cliffs and mountain peaks; catching and shredding the wind in their twisted branches, making it whistle and wail! I’ve been up there on those mountains, in places where no other man has ever been. I’ve befriended those ancient monsters of peace. They have chosen to grow in the most barren places. They are wise for their perseverance, and for their stubborn lives. They were on my mind tonight. I was day-dreaming. …
It’s constantly agitating; something keeps bothering me, but I can’t identify the source? I’m dubious? There is this constant impulse to wander off somewhere? But school is an anchor. Why do I feel distraught? This city is surrounded by desert on all sides, and I’m pondering on deep beauty. We all dream. We all feel cut off. We are lonely, and need a freedom that is hard to reach. So continue to survive, because the mysteries are still singing. I can see the clouds as they travel the sky, and they are restless. There’s a quote I’ve heard, and have …
My heart is humble in the face of endless landscapes and places where the modern world hasn’t invaded. Beautiful places are safe. I sometimes fear the world that we all live in. I fear those human beings that can crash airplanes into tall buildings killing thousands of people. At the same time, I fear leaders who use war and try to justify their killings. How can a war justify dead woman and children lying on the ground? Where does someone escape an ignorant worthless existence? Animals kill, but Animals never instituted a holocaust like humans are capable of doing. It’s …
After watching the western movie titled; Unforgiven, it reminded me of a trip my brother and I made out to Nevada, to a place called Pioche. During the late 1800’s, They say Pioche was one of the most ruthless towns in the West. It was a busy mining town and a war zone. If you visited, you ran the chance of being harassed or even killed. Murder wasn’t uncommon in Pioche, Nevada. It was also common in many other colonial frontier settlements at the time. In my opinion, this was the true history of America’s expansion into the West while …
Today’s high temperature was 25 degrees. Tonight’s low will be 6 Degrees. My family left town yesterday for the weekend, and I decided to stay behind. So it’s just me and the dogs, and I took them west of Cedar on a hike. This town is right on the borderline of the Colorado Plateau, and there are mountains. So it seems like this place gets more snow than the desert. I journeyed out there today and there wasn’t much snow. But had an enjoyable time, and made it back safely. The other day I almost got stranded. My vehicle is …
I wrote this a few years ago, and was reading it tonight from a past journal. I am reposting it here to share. I hope that anyone who is feeling lonely tonight will read these words and feel comforted by deeper feelings. When I am sad, that is when I write my best thoughts and it’s when I dream my best dreams. Life is too short to take for granted. We all need beauty and love and we all need a friend that is willing to listen. ________________________________ Out There on the Desert When I go into the desert on …
Winter is drawing nearer to the desert. Leaves have fallen from the trees. The mountains are no longer green. It’s time for a change in beauty, white snow covered valleys ready for silent dreams.
To My Dad in Salt Lake – If your reading this; I just want you to know that I am grateful for everything you’ve done for Joe and me. You’ll always be my Number One Father! Nothing will transcend that either. Actions always speak louder then words! ======================= Journal Entry – I nearly drowned in classes today. I’m taking a Middle Eastern Politics class, Sociology, and another class titled Social Problems. They all seem connected. More and more, the education is challenging my beliefs and opinions. Wow!! Three wake-up calls today on the path towards awareness. I want to weed …
I have the day off. There’s twenty dollars in my wallet and a car waiting for the desert’s wiry dirt roads. The desert is calling. Mental images of the land are dancing in my head. When we journeyed across Parowan Valley, past the alfalfa fields, and ranches; large numbers of ravens were everywhere. They were gathering in different locations. But they were bunched in large groups. Some looking like they numbered in the hundreds. What were they up to? Were they getting ready to travel somewhere? Even in the dead of winter, the ravens are always at home on the …