My husband Dan and I have a holiday tradition that came about somewhat unintentionally and has now become known as the Misfit Thanksgiving. It began when we moved to Flagstaff 15 years ago and shared a house with several over-wintering river guides. The Misfit Thanksgiving offers anyone away from family a place to go to share a meal and celebrate our...
Read MorePassion and loss; Living where worlds collide
Oct. 30th 2007 was like any other day for Eric York, a wildlife biologist at Grand Canyon National Park. He rose in the late autumn darkness, gathered his field gear and negotiated the rugged Kaibab limestone cliffs to check his snares and look for fresh mountain lion kill sites. That morning he received a mortality signal indicating that P13 (the 13th...
Read MoreGrand Canyon skies; The comforting simplicity of existence
“Above all he learned from the river how to listen, to listen with a still heart with a waiting, open soul, without passion without desire, without judgment.” –Herman Hesse I’m lying in my silk sheet sack under the big spread of stars on a beautiful sandy beach in the Grand Canyon. The moon is new and the sky is as black as can be. The Milky...
Read MoreKaibab Plateau summer campp; A season of transience
“And what of the light this and every August, different from other months, no way to explain the precision of its shadows, the warmth of its brightly lit edges, the need to show what summer has come to before it ends.” –Wyn Cooper There have been late summer nights that I spent on the North Rim when the air is crisp and damp with the memory of rain...
Read MoreGrand Canyon Ghosts; Clouds of memory
There are some houses that just feel like home, and the trail crew bunkhouse at the Grand Canyon was like that. It was a dilapidated old place that the government wanted to tear down because it created an eyesore on an otherwise historic street. As the renowned flophouse for seasonal trail workers, it resembled a cowboy fraternity house. But housing was...
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