It's a Big State

I thought I had thoroughly covered the topic of the Moab area of Southern Utah in my last post. But, looking at it later, there's a lot more I could show you. So I thought I'd share a few more pictures.

Check it out.

Here's a picture looking across Canyonlands National Park. I think those are the La Sal mountains through the clouds. You might need to enlarge this picture (click it if you're on he blog) to really see it. The picture is so small, and it covers such a vast landscape. I think the upright rock formations are at least 5 miles away and the mountains are probably 25 miles away. Isn't it amazing that you're in the sky (on level with the the clouds), and there is snow on the distant mountains, but you're standing in the desert?


Here's a pictures taken at Natural Bridges National Monument. It's a fun park to visit because there's a 8 mile loop road that includes several different bridges and the hikes to them from the road are pretty manageable for us old folks. And the rocks are sort of porous and light and delicate, somehow.


Here's a picture taken at a place called Muley Point. It's down a long dirt road in San Juan County, near Blanding and Bluff and a place Moki(another word for Hopi) Dugway (one of those Utah words that means a road or way sunken below ground level) and Valley of the Gods. This overlooks part of Glenn Canyon. There was no one there but us. A year ago, I couldn't have imagined looking out over vistas where I could see 40 miles ahead without seeing a single person out there. By the way, Liz was holding onto my belt loops as I leaned out to take this picture.


Here's a shot of a place in Arches National Park that shows a little more of the vegetation and just sort of captures the feeling of a lot of the trails there, it seems to me:


Liz, my daughter and travelling companion, took the best picture of the trip. Here it is:


Hope you enjoyed the show --

Another Planet

When I first came to Utah, people often said, "It must be culture shock for you here." I'd usually respond with something like, "Well the people are nicer and the land is more beautiful here. But everything else is about the same." Back then, I was just a tourist. Now I'm experiencing culture shock. It is quite different than St. Anne's Hill in downtown Dayton, and it is the other side of the universe from Oakwood, where I lived just 4 years ago.

I haven't seen a single BMW in Utah. The best vehicles are pickup trucks. My neighbors have mud-encrusted llamas and lambs instead of well-groomed yellow dogs. I observe herds of cows on my way to work instead of the homeless making their way from the night shelter to the day shelter. There is no zoning, and not a thought about doing anything as silly as passing an ordinance about paint colors or the types of fences allowed. There's no real need to hang curtains in my windows. There are more chickens and pheasants than people in this little town. The sky is full of stars and the churches are full of people.

My daughter Liz visited me the week before last. While she was here, we took a trip to southeastern Utah, where all the red rock is, along with vast amounts of empty public land, cattle grazing on the open range, mountain bikers, four-wheelers, and other Utah enthusiasts. It was nice and warm down there, and I was glad to get a break from the cold and snow.

We stayed in a rustic cabin on a little ranch in Blanding, explored Cedar Mesa, where the Indians known as the Anasazi, which means "ancient", lived. We saw lots of natural bridges, went to Moab and hiked in Arches National Park and Canyonlands, and even glimpsed a little corner of Glenn Canyon. The rock and land formations were fabulous -- a geologist's dream. There were giant rock goblins everywhere, mexican hats, temple-like formations, bridges and rock rainbows. More than once, we said, "Wow. It looks like another planet!"

Here's a picture of the little ranch where we stayed, called Abajo Haven in Blanding. It is out of the way (6 miles outside of a tiny town), has fire rings outside the cabins and places to corral your horses if you want to bring them with you.


The rancher cooked some terrific ribs for us and took us on an interpretive hike that covered several epochs of Native American history and a Utah nature lesson too. Did you know that pine nuts come from Pinon trees, which don't produce pine cones and nuts every year? Back when the cliff-dwelling Indians were basket weavers (around 500 AD) and then clay pot makers (by 1000 AD) and living in large colonies in southern Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, a year with pine nuts was a cause for celebration. Pine nuts are very high in protein.

The trip was just one amazing sight after another. Here is a picture of Liz standing at the base of a rock formation in Arches National Park. She looks like one of those little action figures, doesn't she?


Here are some ancient Indian pictographs on rocks. The Anasazi Indians didn't have a written language, even though it is estimated that there were 2,500 native inhabitants of the San Juan valley. The lack of a written language might explain why the pictures look like children's drawings.


This made me start wondering about the development of written languages. Why did civilizations develop them? Why did some cultures get along without any written language? Historians see that the development of written language corresponds to the development of cities. Did people need to write laws as the population density increased? Was it for accounting purposes? Did it reflect a need to record history? Today, it seems as if the main reason we need written language is to communicate with people who are far away. Since I am a writer by trade, I've noticed that our culture used to be more oriented toward the written word, before the invention of film, TV, and now digital cameras. Written communication started out as pictures, evolved to use shorthand symbols (alphabets), and is now evolving back to pictures.

Here is a photo of the famous Delicate Arch in Moab. It really is a beautiful spot. To give you a sense of the scale, those little black dots in the patch of blue sky to the left of the arch are people walking around.


The most amazing place we saw was Dead Horse Point, a state park that overlooks Canyonlands National Park. Here's the view from there:


There was a huge dust storm when we first arrived at Dead Horse Point, and we saw a little rainbow reflecting in the dust in the air over the canyon. The place is called Dead Horse Point because, according to legend, cowboys corralled wild mustangs there on the "neck" of the mesa, which is 2000 feet above the Colorado River. They closed off the only exit route with brush, and left the horses there too long without water.

My friend Rose called from Ohio the other day and told me that the Magnolia tree in my back yard in Dayton is in full bloom. Back here in northern Utah, it has been snowing off and on all week. Spring is still somewhere down the road and around the bend. Liz has gone back to Ohio, which might explain why the sun has disappeared and the sky is still falling (as flakes of snow).



When Spring finally comes to northern Utah, I wonder if there will be something as wonderful as the old magnolia trees of southern Ohio. As I go through the transition from a tourist to an inhabitant of Utah, if this is another planet, I wonder if the native people speak my language. I suppose I'll need to learn theirs. But I think I'll try drawing some simple pictures, first.

Spacious Skies

It's Sunday afternoon and I just finished watching the inaugural concert that took place in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. What a terrific moment in American history! I was watching most of it with the warm sunlight streaming in my picture window and tears streaming down my face. Hope is a wonderful thing.

We've been in need of hope. Looking back over the last 10 years or so, when I think about Washington DC, I see Clinton-Lewinsky, Newt Gingrich, 911 crashes, Abu Ghraib Prison, waterboarding debates, even a Vice-President shooting his friend in a hunting accident. One thing is sure: it has been a long time since we had a government that was responsive to its people. A new government, one with strength and an optimistic vision, is reason to celebrate and to hope.

I haven't read Obama's book, so I don't know exactly what he meant by "The Audacity of Hope." But I don't think hope is audacious. I think it's as necessary as the air we breathe. Without it, we have boredom or fear, and despair, eventually.

Until I watched the concert, I didn't realize how divided, afraid, and alone we've become as a people. The theme of he concert was "We Are One," and the performers said it frequently. Sheryl Crow, Herbie Hancock, Pete Seeger, Beyonce, Shakira, Bono, Stevie Wonder, Garth Brooks, John Mellencamp, ("the voice of ornery America"!), a subdued Tiger Woods, Queen Latifah, James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, and Renee Fleming all appeared. There were quotes from Dwight D Eisenhower, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lincoln, JF Kennedy, pictures of working people all across the country, information about the establishment of our great national parks, a little history about racial discrimination, a tribute to service people, and young choirs were backing it all up. A lot of the singers in the backup choirs were young African Americans, which was another good reason to be moved to tears. They have a chance now. I remember racial discrimination and hatred, the fight over desegregation and school bombings, the march in Selma Alabama, KKK cross burnings. Over the last 40 years, we have overcome.

If you get this message today, and didn't see the concert live, you might want to watch one of the rebroadcasts at 7 and 11:30 tonight, on HBO. It will be available to all cable subscribers, even those who don't normally get HBO.

One of the things that impressed me about the concert was the number of truly inspired songs that have been written over the years. So I thought I'd retitle a little poem (my version of a song, I suppose) that I wrote last week, and offer it here. It's sorta simple and humble, about my little corner of the world. Maybe that's fittin. My country. O Beautiful for...

Spacious Skies

A big white moon walks
the fields between the
eastern Rocky canyons
and the Wellsville mountains
to the west tonight. A January moon,
as big as we'll have all year,
turns its face to the Mormons
who count their fair,
freckled children,
turns a light on the frosted universe,
turns itself into the sea of snow fields,
calls to the lost owls
from its alien bronze halo,
and inches toward its destination:
a dip behind Chocolate Peak
to free the soft blue sky
as pink light
touches frothy clouds
crowded into
creased slopes,
and shines into
my open heart.

After I wrote this, I had to go get an ice cream sundae, which actually looked just like a miniature version of the snow-covered Chocolate Peak, with whipped cream clouds snuggled into it. All that envisioning of snow and mountains led me right to the important stuff -- ice cream. Seriously, I love this place and its snowy mountains and fields, it's spacious sky and moons and vistas, the bright stars so far and the clouds that come so close. Every night when I drive back into the land that is only partially tamed, about 3 or 4 miles from my town, I become sort of baffled by the sea of snow. It hasn't really snowed for more than a week now, although plenty of it has accumulated and there is frosty fog in the mornings. But I'm impatiently waiting for the next real snow.

Let's hope the inauguration and the Obama presidency will clear off the fog that has overtaken this country, and bring inspiration and renewal to the American people and the world. I'm confident that we will have hope again, at least for a little while. I'm even more confident (and almost flabergasted) to realize that we live in a country that really means it when it says it stands for liberty and justice for all.