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.

The Frost is All Over

This is a picture I took on my way into work last week. The tree is rather ghostly, don't you think?

Below is another frosty picture I took the other day.



Going north from my little town, out into the wide open spaces, I ran into the following landscape. You can just barley see the mountain in the distance because there is snow in the air.



So the frost is all over. And I'm humming an Irish traditional jig called "The Frost is All Over." That's a strange name for a song, don't you think?

For quite a few years, I've been intrigued by the titles of Irish tunes. Many of them refer to love, people, and places. And I think the Irish have more than their share of drinking songs. But many tune names are very unusual. Here are a few:

-Merrily Kiss the Quaker
-Bag of Spuds
-Ladies' Pantalettes
-The Rambling Pitchfork
-Come up the Stairs with Me
-Indian Ate the Woodchuck
-Jack Gilder's Beard
-Oh Dear Mother My Toes Are Sore
-The Cat That Ate The Candle
-Pull Out the Knife and Stick it in Again

I think part of the reason the titles are so strange is because there are so many different (but similar) tunes. The Session, a very good Irish music website, has 8231 tunes on it. The classic Irish music reference, O'Neill's Dance Tunes of Ireland, has 1001 tunes in it. With so many tunes to name, I guess you'd eventually run out of ordinary names.

To play Irish music in a session with other people, you need to know lots of tunes. Irish musicians don't use sheet music -- it slows people down when they play, and much of the music is made for dancing. Irish musicians call people who read music "paper trained." Doug, my Irish musician friend and teacher, says that the tune names are designed to be memorable just so that the tunes, themselves, will be easier to remember.

Irish music is rooted in the stories and lives of the people. That's reflected in the titles. After being invaded by England, the Irish were forbidden to speak their own language, so music was used to remember or relay some of the important events. Of course, it was also a way to keep their heritage intact. So that may be why music is such an important part of the Irish culture.

Some people think all Irish tunes sound alike. If you have thousands of tunes, and 8 notes in a scale, and just 8 or 10 different rhythms/structures (jigs, reels, marches, polkas, slipjigs, hornpipes, mazurkas, srathspeys, waltzes), how different can the songs be? Is there a mathematician out there who could offer a solution to that problem? One thing is for sure -- the Irish keep the music interesting by the textures they create when they combine different instruments -- harps, fiddles, flutes, whistles, accordions, pipes, guitars, banjos, bouzoukis, mandolins...

Here are a couple of samples of The Frost is All Over:
http://www.imeem.com/groups/Leem07Ir,boanns_clan//music/sUV8tspH/boanns_clan_the_frost_is_all_over/

http://www.audiosparx.com/sa/archive/Christmas/Christmas-Vocals/The-Frost-is-All-Over/270772

The tune is fast (the way frost comes and goes) and has a cold feeling to it. But other than that, I can't figure where the title came from. Is there something crystalline about its structure? Did it have words at one time that talked about the frost and snow? My guess is that it was probably just the weather report that day.

Now that Christmas is all over, I hope everyone's resting, recovering from the festivities. I made it back to Ohio, where the Frost is NOT all over. It was 70 degrees yesterday!

Part 8 - Snow

It has finally started snowing here. And now it won’t stop. There are about 5 or 6 inches of it on the ground. It has snowed every day since Saturday, just a little bit each day. It’s now Tuesday. And the forecast calls for snow through the weekend.

It’s a white white white world! White sky, white fields, white mountains, and only a few fence posts and tall grasses to break it up.

On my way to work this morning, I saw a horse standing absolutely still next to a frozen tree (looking cold, miserable, almost afraid to move). That was a black and white world. After driving for 7 or 8 miles, I approached a traffic light and saw the little spot of green as the first color of the day, and something of a shock after all that white.

So I thought I’d post a few pictures, which I took at the beginning of this episode of snow, as well as a couple of random thoughts and questions about snow. I hope this will help you warmer climate folks feel Christmas-y (or, more likely, lucky to be warm).



There’s a minor avalanche on my metal roof. Avalanches are real here, not just something in the cartoons or movies that play with the imaginations of children, who are so intrigued by natural dangers. There is an avalanche hotline here. People take helicopters into the back country to ski, which is part of the reason we need the hot line. As soon as it started snowing, I saw snowmobiles on trailers behind SUVs and pickups headed for the canyons, too.

The ski resorts drop explosives into the snow where they think there’s a danger of avalanche, so that it happens before the skiers get there. The snow is beautiful AND dangerous. A woman died in an avalanche at the Snowbird ski resort on Sunday. Her sister was quoted as saying, “We are a skiing family and we’ll still be a skiing family.” They said that the woman who died was “an extremist.” But I don’t know. Is it extreme to hike 20 minutes with your skis in order to see the snow in the real wilderness? That doesn't seem extreme to me.

I’ve been singing with a little community Christmas choir. One of the songs we’re singing is Still, Still, Still (of German origin, something like a lullaby if you don't know it). It says, “You can hear the falling snow.” Have you ever heard the falling snow? I haven't. I guess you hear the snow just because of what you don’t hear. So is that hearing or not hearing?

I'm reminded of one of the first short stories that ever caught my attention – Silent Snow, Secret Snow, by Conrad Aiken. Have you read it? It was in the standard English curriculum when I was in junior high school, and I've seen it in more recently published readers. The critics say the story is about a kid’s descent into schizophrenia. He imagines that snow is getting deeper and deeper when he wakes up and hears the footsteps of the postman getting increasingly muffled each day. I don't know about the schizophrenia thing. I bet there’s not a kid alive (in northern climates, anyway) who hasn’t spent time imagining that it has snowed, as s/he wakes up. I’ve gotten up in the middle of the night as a grownup and gone to window and been fooled by a white street light or the moon shining down on pavement, making it look like it has snowed. I think the Aiken story tries to capture a kid’s interior world, and the natural isolation of being a child. But all this may not mean much to you if you haven't read the story. It's fun to think about kids waking up to new snow, though. Kids and snow go together. Snow still makes me feel like a kid.

"Snow” is a perfect word, isn't it? Soft and slippery and hushed … and it happens right NOW. Under normal circumstances, it might be gone tomorrow. But they say I won’t see the ground here until April.



I spotted snow falling at night against the backdrop of the log section of my cabin and thought it was incredibly beautiful. I’m not sure why. Was it an opening scene from a nice movie I can’t quite remember? Maybe it’s just the contrast of light, random flakes moving against large, solid, dark logs. I think snow on the wood pile is pretty too. But I might change my mind about that when I try to light a fire.

So the snow has fallen, and is falling, and we’re all getting ready for Christmas, and we'll probably hear the familiar story of something coming down from heaven, a transformed world, softness, animals, straw, and difficult journeys. It comes at just the right time.





I hope you get to see or hear something wonderful this Christmas.

Part 7 - Pioneering

Utah Adventure Part 7 - Pioneering



I went all the way to Connecticut for Thanksgiving. It was great to see family, and to be in a place where I had absolutely no work to do. I noticed dramatic differences between New England and the West. One day, I drove from Glastonbury to Cromwell (just 2 towns over), which involved 4 or 5 highways, cloverleafs, wall to wall cars, and 2 or 3 “I’m lost” phone calls before I managed to get there and back. I was surprised by all the roads and cars, since I’m accustomed now to wide open spaces and a life with just a few places to go.

Here in Northern Utah, there are really only 2 places to go – Idaho or Temple Square. People go to Idaho (Preston, where Napoleon Dynamite was filmed, is just 19 miles north of here) probably to buy lottery tickets and full-strength beer. They go to Temple Square in Salt Lake City to see the lights at Christmas time.

Here, at night, I sometimes wonder how long it might be before another motorist would come along if my car broke down on the road. On the way back from the airport at 1 am on the Monday after Thanksgiving, I think I was the only person on the road from Brigham City all the way home (30 miles or so). But, oh, the stars! You can see heart-stopping stillness there. You can see lots of activity and movement in the night sky, too, if you look at it long enough. I'm not sure which is more curious and arresting, really.

Oh. There’s one other place to go from here – Bear Lake, which is a good-sized lake (takes an hour to drive around it), in the far northwest corner of the state, near the Wyoming and Idaho borders. It is about 45 minutes from Logan, on a winding canyon road that follows and cris-crosses the Logan River the whole way. I suppose it is an alpine lake. It is a resort community out there, a mini mini Jackson Hole. There is a little ski resort there that the local people use. I drove there last weekend, talked to one hyperactive guy (too much time alone?) with a strange headband attending to a gas station/market/western store, and noticed that everything seemed shut down for the winter. I didn't see much there, besides this sweet group of big ole turkeys by the side of the road:



Here’s a picture of the lake. It’s hard to see it because of the cloud rising from its surface (due to the change in temperature as the sun dipped behind the mountains, I suppose, which also makes pink light reflect from the lake).


So I’ll include a picture I took of the lake last summer, when I first came here to interview, which seems like a lifetime ago now:


Here’s a view of the canyon just south of Bear Lake. The shadow of the mountains on the land make for nice contrast, I think. And look at how far above the clouds we are:


I saw a ragged red fox making his way down to the lake. And I felt like something of a pioneer, just me, animals, and a dramatic landscape.

They talk about the pioneers alot around here. I already know of 4 cities that have "Pioneer" parks. There’s a Daughters of the Utah Pioneers organization. And the 24th of July is an official state holiday -- it commemorates the day the pioneers arrived in Utah. So I’ve been thinking about what the pioneer spirit really is. New Englanders were pioneers when they landed and built the colonies. There’s still a rugged independence there, but I’m not sure it is the same spirit the western pioneers have.

I guess the pioneer spirit involves taking risks, going to new places, opening up, and being tough enough to survive under harsh, uncivilized conditions. It’s not really about independence and individualism, like the New England spirit. It’s about pitching in, relying on each other, each person offering what they can to the community, which is a necessity if you’re going to survive. I think a big part of the pioneer spirit here is living with Nature, not conquering it.

Here's a somewhat unrefined example of living with Nature. They don't dispose of dead skunks in the road in Utah. It’s a practical issue -- who wants that job? You’d ruin a lot of shovels that way! And if you let a dead skunk sit there in the road, it will eventually dry up and stop stinking. I have to say that someone still needs to prove that to me -- there’s one spot on the way to work that has smelled like fresh skunk, ripe skunk, and now overripe skunk, over the course of the last 5 weeks! Are you having an imaginary unpleasant olifactory experience yet?

There’s also more than a little self-sufficiency mixed into the pioneer spirit. The LDS(Mormon) Church teaches that every family should have a year’s supply of food on hand, just in case hard times come along (not Armageddon – I asked about that). So a food storage area is a big part of every household. In the grocery stores, you can buy huge cans of dried mushrooms, cereal, blueberries, etc. Of course, people do a lot of their own canning – even dried beans!

I never dreamed that I’d ever compare myself to Eva Gabor in her role in the
Green Acres show. But I’ve thought of her several times in the last month – when I spent several hours dealing with a cord of firewood that a guy in bib overalls with a long curly beard dumped in a big pile behind my garage; when I bought mousetraps and considered the possibility of having to dispose of a trapped mouse (and decided not to set them just yet); when the "honey wagon" passes my house, dripping, on its way to fertilize the fields to the west; every time I wonder if the overhead flapping I sense sometimes when I open my front door at night is a bird or a bat. Where is that Eddie Albert when you need him?

I was talking to a group of women after the community choir practice last Sunday night about how to keep warm, about the bread they all make every week, and about canning food, and they said “We’ll make a pioneer out of you yet!” So they must think I have potential. Maybe it's because I left my diamonds at home. Dunno, though. I might have to buy a fur or two before Winter’s over.

Part 6 - Wild Life

Utah Adventure Part 6 - Wild Life

I was sitting in my living room one night last week, minding my own business, when I realized that there was some back-and-forth hooting going on outside. I wondered if it was the sound of dogs barking in the distance. Coyotes? I shut off my noise-maker of a TV, and then realized that it was the voices of owls overhead. There were 2 distinct calls or voices -- one lower than the other. I wasn't sure if they were on my roof or in the big cottonwood tree out front. So I turned off all the lights and went to the upstairs windows to see if I could spot them. No luck. I listened for a while (it was a lively converation), then went outside to see if I could find them, and scared them into silence.

I went straight to my computer to see if I could figure out what type of owls they were. I found out that Utah has Burrowing Owls that migrate in November, and also a variety called the Mexican Spotted Owl. And I listened to the voices of owls around the world and was amazed at the variety of sounds owls make, and the diversity of the species ... from Madagascar to Australia to Brazil to northern Utah ... screeching, hooting, squeaking, whistling, cooing. Fun! But how does a person get to see them, since they're active at night?!

I took a trip to the Bear River Migrating Bird Refuge in Brigham City (about 25 miles South of Logan) on Saturday. The interpretive center was small and specific to water birds. But a volunteer in the gift shop told me that my owls might have been "short-eared" owls (as opposed to "great horned" I suppose). It was a modern little museum building made of local stacked stone, with one park ranger who was on the phone with her babysitter, but motioned for me to sign up for their emailings.

The Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge is managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The Bear River runs through the middle of the refuge, and eventually runs into the Salt Lake just south of there. They say that the Refuge, with its fresh water ponds and canals, is one of the most important resting areas for migrating waterfowl in North America. In spring and summer, it is a nesting place for birds like western grebes, American avocet, Wilson's phalarope, black-necked stilt, snowy egret, and white-faced ibis. Most of it is closed to the public -- it really IS for protecting wildlife, not just a place for us to go see the birds.

From the museum/interpretive center, I drove about 10 miles to get to the beginning of a 12-mile loop road through the Refuge. There were only a handful of cars on that road -- I saw only 3 or 4 in 12 miles. I saw mostly water and mountains reflected in the water, and sky ... and a few duck hunters dressed in camouflage pulling their flat-bottomed boats (one was named "Fowl Play") out of the river. Some of the road was paved, some was gravel, and some was dirt. My van now looks like an off-road vehicle, covered in dust and splattered.

There weren't any bears in the river. And there weren't many birds flying or swimming close by, where I could really see them, either. I suppose most of them have migrated by this time of year.



But the volunteer at the interpretive center had said "I have 14,000 migrating swans in areas A and D. But you probably can't get to them." So I was on the lookout. I did see them from a distance of about a mile, through my binoculars (Ohio binoculars, under-powered for this place where you can see so far). The thousands of swans looked like a plump undulating ribbon of white on the shore of a pond that was far off the road. The path that went in that direction (for hikers or for maintenance, I imagine) was gated too.

If the duck hunters can put their boats in the water, I guess this Ohio "migrating bird" can bring her canoe back in the Spring and have a whole day of being amazed by the light and the reflections of the mountains and sky in the water. I'll look forward to that! Here's a glimpse:



I wonder if a bird refuge isn't something of an Indian reservation for birds. Has the White man taken the good land and given land that they can't easily use to the birds? Maybe so. But I guess that's better than just plundering through and ignoring the needs of all the other creatures.

If anyone is still wondering if I was just storytelling about the seagulls in Utah, here's proof. I spotted these 2 at Bear River:



With the Thanksgiving holiday in sight, I'd just like to say that I'm thankful for lots of things, including of you all who care enough about me to read this. Since I'm a stranger in a strange land, this year, I'm really glad to have nice neighbors:
- like the ones who used their riding mower to mulch my leaves last week
- like the owls who were calling to each other over my head
- like the people (starting with Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir, I suppose) who set aside places for birds, other animals, and plants so that we can see and love them and rest for a little while in the sacred wild places.

What nice parts of life are YOU thinking about this Thanksgiving?

Good night (from the Bear River Migrating Bird Refuge):

Part 5 - Looking for Tony

Utah Adventure Part 5 - Looking for Tony

I'm sitting here on a Sunday night, eating pumpkin soup and avocado. The soup is great, if I do say so myself -- fresh pumpkin carved from my outdoor decorative pumpkin, a little bit of italian sausage, onion, garlic, curry, nutmeg. A touch of coconut milk or cream and rosemary would be good too, if I had it. I'm not sure how to explain the avocado. I've been on an avocado binge since I came out West. They're cheaper and fresher here, like the salmon. They must be California avocados.

Last weekend, the leaves were down from the trees so that I could see the snow on the mountain range as I was sitting at my table, looking out toward the east. So, rather than waiting for snow to find me in the valley, with its 50 degree temperatures last week, I thought I'd go try to find it. I took off for a place about 20 miles into Logan Canyon called Tony Grove. I had heard several people talk about it. I thought I might find snow and maybe even an Italian guy there.

I will include pictures. As always, they don't do justice to the beauty. But they'll give you an idea. Here's a view of the drive up, which was full of aspen trees and tall evergreens. To give you a sense of the scale, the twiggy trees near the bottom of the frame are full grown aspens.



The road to Tony Grove is a groomed snowmobile trail, maintained by the U.S. Forest Service, in Winter. There were lots of signs warning "Know Before You Go" and such. I suppose snowmobilers are a reckless lot, and student snowmobilers from USU even more so. That's the idea, isn't it? If you fall off, you land in poof of powdery stuff. But it looked kinda dangerous to me, with drop offs, and being out pretty far in the wilderness.

I saw 2 adult dear with a baby crossing the road on the way up. My car was scraping bottom (about a foot of snow) by the time I got to the top. There was a beautiful little glacial lake there at the end of the road, one carload of Asian tourists, and a young couple with a 3-year old on skis getting his first lesson.



I wondered why the place wasn't named Tony's Gove, rather than Tony Grove. There was a sign at the top that explained. Apparently "tony" is slang for socialites or jetsetters. A big banking family in Logan used camp there for 6 weeks at a time, back in the 1950's. They must had fun since they stayed way out there for 6 weeks. I suppose it's still something of a tony grove, with all the snowmobiling (jet-skiing rather than jet-setting).

I'll have to find someone to go Winter recereating with. Last week I went to a dinner at a Logan Indian Oven restaurant, put together by a group called the Logan Newcomers. There were lots of different types of people there, all ready for socializing, I think. There's a Winter resort fairly close called Beaver Mountain. So if I can find some "tony" cohorts, we could take a trip to that place, which is just beyond Tony Grove, and maybe a little tamer.

I didn't find the Italian guy named Tony up there. But, as usual, I got to see some beautiful country. And I traveled from Fall to Winter with a 7-mile drive that "took me higher," from the normal altitude of 4775 feet to 8100 feet in just a few minutes.

Part 4 - Paradise

Utah Adventure Part 4

Everybody here in northern Utah is sort of holding their breath, waiting for the cold and snow to hit. I heard that Snowbird, which is one of the big ski resorts, is open already, and everyone's happy about that. The ski resorts are a big part of the economy here.

I'm still trying to get things squared away at home. And I'm diving a little deeper into work, which is good. Last Friday, they had a "demonstration day", which was sort of like a grown up science fair. That was interesting. I learned about people's work on lightweight antennas and camera lenses, metals that can tolerate extreme temperatures, special computer hardware for jpg 2000 compressed images, and some other stuff .

On the home front, last Saturday I cut down a medium-sized dead tree on my lot so that I could use it for firewood, with help from Casey, his chain saw, and his wife. Casey is a local guy (lives around the corner) who works construction, drinks beer, picks up odd jobs, and tells stories about getting buried alive in a construction-induced mudslide and surviving with lots of broken ribs and a big hole in his memory. Now I have to work on splitting the wood. We'll see if my hands and wrists and arms can stand up to that. If not, I'll have to call Casey and his wife back.

Since I was outside most of the day, my animal neighbors came to check me out. Here's a picture of the steer next door, lookin at me lookin at him:



I thought he might be a bull because of the horns. But Casey checked him out and assured me that he had lost his manhood and is harmless. So I went over and patted his head. I'm not sure either one of us really liked that! If you look in the background, you can see the neck of his friend the llama, who is looking away from the camera. He doesn't seem to want to have too much to do with people. I wonder what kind of treat he might like. It's a good idea to make friends with your neighbors.

Here's a closer view of the disinterested llama, who is much better looking than the steer.

Casey and his wife stopped by on Sunday, ran off fairly quickly to go watch NASCAR, and urged me to "Enjoy" while I still could (before the cold weather hits) by taking a drive down to a little town called Paradise, about 45 minutes south and east of here. They go somewhere near there to camp for a "Mountain Man" festival every year. Apparently, people dress up in old leathers and hats and act like trappers and cook on campfires and shoot guns for a couple of days. I asked if there are any single mountain men. They said, "You betcha," which is a favorite phrase around here. And so they have promised to take me with them next Spring.

I remembered that the desk clerk at the hotel where I stayed the first time I was in Logan mentioned that I should go to Paradise. So I went, even though it was a dreary day. So I found Paradise easily enough. But I didn't see anything very notable. I guess I found Paradise, but maybe not paradise.

It feels like ski country there, with lots of rounded mountains stacked together, snow-covered. And it is getting pretty close to the Powder Ridge resort. I did see some wonderful country and a few historical markers about trappers and early settlers. But I think I was the only person out there. It was Sunday in Utah, after all. So in just in case you've ever wondered what Paradise looks like, here it is:

If you're wondering what's on the other side of Paradise, I can tell you -- horses.

These great-looking young horses were looking at me in a little place called Avon on the other side of Paradise.

Speaking of paradise, the LDS (Mormon) missionaries have been visiting me. They are a couple of 20 year-old boys who always bring someone older, established, and from this town with them. They have to have 3 since I'm a single woman. And that's good because it gives me a chance to meet some neighbors.

Their view of a place called paradise is that it's a holding area where people who have died but haven't had the chance to hear/accept the gospel (like people from remote areas of the world, little children, etc) go until the spirit of a believer has the chance to get over there and tell them the story. Come to think of it, their view of paradise fits with what I experienced in Paradise, Utah -- it WAS kinda dead over there. :) Well, it's nice that the innocent aren't automatically condemned.

So I asked the missionaries what heaven is like, if it's not paradise. They believe there are several levels of glory-- true believers get to go be with God in the "celestial kingdom," people who haven't accepted the Gospel but who have lived honorable lives get to go to the "terrestial kingdom" which is a pretty good place, and unrepentent sinners go to the "telestial kingdom" (which they said is sort of like earth ... or maybe it actually IS earth).

Coming back to earth now ... I've been investigating the local ranch stores, which are full of saddles and gloves and hats, long underwear, bags of rag socks, stacks of blue jeans, "country girl" barbies, radio flyers, miniature John Deere tractors, hundreds of styles of boots, beef jerky and sunflower seeds. One of these stores had stuffed game with antlers on the wall and country music playing. Here is a sign I saw on a dressing room door there:

Is there a little man sitting in there with a stack of hats?

So the burning question is, "Why did several people tell me to go to Paradise? What was I supposed to see there?" Did I just miss the hiking trail and the Osmonds' vacation home cuz I was too busy looking up at the mountains? Or do people go there just so they can say they've been the Paradise and back?

Love to you all. I'm gonna go start a fire.