I’m not alone. There are others out there, but we’re a formless group with no T-shirts, no password, no secret handshake. We don’t have a 12-step program, a 10k run to fund research for our cause or celebrity endorsements. We live among you, as unseen by others as we can be to ourselves. We’re misunderstood, often misidentified,...
Read MoreHeading north with a plan; Feasting there, on “nothing”
Do you enjoy details of Arizona land and lore? Here is a quiz for you: where is Doyle’s Saddle? Why is there a Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott? If you are sitting on the porch at Kane Ranch, what cliffs glow with end–of-day light? Ok, so you have walked up the Weatherford Trail, and been down to play or listen to folk music in Prescott, and if you’ve...
Read MoreThrough fresh eyes; Renewing the Map of my Heart
Sap oozes from a sweet vanilla pine. Its scent rides the morning current. Nectar of hummingbird plant, (Da’yii t,ii Daa’) still on my tongue and cliff roses fragrance in my senses. We ride the morning roads upon this land of many incredible moods, many fascinating plays of light and the space. It has its own vocabulary. The land of my ancestors once spoke...
Read MoreKinaalda; Where are the old ways?
On the wall of my sunroom hang two portraits. In one a small girl leans forward and raven hair cascades forward in heavy ropes to frame her face. She is about 6 years old. She clutches a circular disk of beadwork to her breast and her eyes are closed as though she were praying. The coarse woven blanket that forms the background is patterned with bold...
Read MoreNew land; Finding center and inspiration
It’s morning. Dense fog rises off the river in the valley below, though the sky is clear. Drops of moisture diffuse the sunlight; the traffic sounds are muffled. The daylight burns off the fog, but sometimes not until noon. Everything seems to take longer, moving through the dampness. The trees are ghostly and unfamiliar. The wall heater kicks on just...
Read MoreThe lessons of Scrabble; Good, better, best
I must have been in my late 20s when my mom and I started playing Scrabble together. Even though I fancied myself a wordsmith and trafficked in language for a living, I was a listless and half-hearted player, intimidated by my mom’s skill. To distance myself from the possibility I might not do well, I mocked the game. Goofy little tiles and point scoring:...
Read MoreA day in the life of a B.I.A. child; Government school revisited from the late 1960s
The morning alarm goes off early, blaring harshly as we stumble out of our bunk beds at the boarding school. Another morning. The overseer swaggers in with his switch tapping his calves. He yells down the hallway echoing the unkind sound of the bell. We line up in our pajamas for inspection and a head count; 60 young boys in a wing of the massive...
Read MoreLearning to frolic with change; Fall leaves and leave taking
As certainly as yellow creeps down the sides of the mountain where groves of aspens change daily, I feel my thoughts creeping away from the duty hours of looking for fires. Now I imagine distant adventures. For five years I’ve started winter by spending October in Maine in the small house my mother was born in. It belongs to me now and little old houses...
Read MoreLooking for Tom Joad; Everybody’s going on the road
Route 66 has a million stories to tell, some funny some poignant. My first real road trip was hitchhiking from Baltimore to L.A. in 1969. Most of those miles I logged on Route 66, the Mother Road. It was an education of the first order. I just walked out to the highway with an army surplus pack on my back and stuck my thumb in the air. For years after, in...
Read MoreLost and gained; the power of resilience
What if bridges – your only connection with the outside world – washed away in a torrential rainstorm and the ensuing floodwaters? What if the Colorado River ran muddy as the Mississippi from the Glen Canyon Dam down to the Little Colorado River? How resilient could you be? The river did just that this past week, as the sands picked up by Wahweap Creek...
Read MoreCity of Diaries; I give you my word
My first diary was a shared one; I must have been 8 or 9. My best friend, Andrea, and I had one of those palm-sized starter diaries for girls with a pink cover, a cheap lock and a faint impression of Tinkerbell in the bottom corner of every page. We made only one entry: the Webster’s Dictionary definition of penis. With my unmoored handwriting, I copied...
Read MoreBaa’ ol taa ,a’; Key to my new world knowledge
It is often said that it takes a village to raise a child. I know that it takes an army of teachers to make that child a productive and giving member of society. I am such a child still. I can never say enough of my traditional Dineh elders who taught me before I stepped into a classroom. The elders still hold that position in our lives as we also take on...
Read MoreOn first responders everywhere; You and me and a stranger make three
As a fire lookout on a local peak, I am thanked many times each season for doing what I know how to do: sit quietly, look, notice detail, pay attention, respond effectively. That’s the work. I appreciate you all paying your income taxes that support my federal job to turn in smokes and read books. I appreciate the miracle of years of such employment in my...
Read MoreHiggamus hoggamus; My kingdom for a scribe
This may look easy, but it’s not. It’s hard. Coming up with a fresh new subject for the old “Letter from Home” column … I start writing and I get a few paragraphs into it and it’s looking really promising then a small voice says, “You wrote about that in 2008.” Or, I start with a flourish and then fade quickly with nary a point or conclusion in sight. The...
Read MoreLeave-takings; the endless circle of accepting and letting go
The road construction crews at Lee’s Ferry have signs posted along the road indicating where it’s safe for them to pull out with their heavy construction equipment: TURN AROUND. Lacking the hyphen to make it a noun, I read it as an imperative: GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN. The message was clearly meant for me that particular day.
Read MoreMy funny friend; Elmo the clown
I was indentured at the University of Florida when I saw an ad in our campus newspaper looking for marketing managers for some unspecified “family focused” entertainment business. The ad promised the trifecta: travel, independence and big bucks. Well, big to me. I was a breakfast waitress in a restaurant lined with aquariums that smelled like dead fish....
Read MoreHow did I get here? You can get there from here
“How did you get to where you are now, and How can I get there?” I am often posed this question from young artists. Some days I do look about me and pose the same question. It seems like it was not that long ago that I was listening intently for sheep bells and nestled inside big sagebrushes with comic books. It seems only days ago I felt the hot wind on...
Read MoreTattooed by lightning; From pulsing cloud to spiral scar
A bolt sizzles between the fire tower and my truck 100 yards away. A thick lump of smoke wafts across the steep road. My eyes widen at sound and shape exploding in the woods. Though I’ve seen hundreds of bolts in 20 seasons, I am astonished. From my wooden chair I peer out the west window trying to see into the draw where lightning has once again not hit...
Read MoreComing through the rye; Adapting to changing times
Look! There along the shoulder of Silver Saddle Road, growing in golden abundance between the brome grass and rabbit brush, are feral fingers of rye, reaching from Doney Park’s past into today’s drier reality. It’s been 50 years since rye was planted as a cover crop for dry-farmed corn, bean and potato fields to keep the soil from blowing away in the...
Read MoreTropical Ireland: Tripping over the weather
I packed for Ireland with my mind on my last two trips: I could never quite get warm here. This time, even though it was July, I brought a warm jacket and clothes I could layer, plus a brand-new, purchased-just-for-this-trip rain jacket. Boy, was I surprised. Since I arrived it hasn’t rained a single drop. More remarkably, for over a week a heat wave has...
Read MorePleasing Anna; Grandmother is hedgehog
It started with Zana and the Albanian lessons. When I turned 40, I moved to Albania for a year to teach journalism. Once there, I immediately hired a language teacher. Language is a decoder ring; three times a week I sat with Zana parroting the goofy, stilted dialogue that is the Albanian equivalent of Look Jane look! See Spot run! Zana stood no higher...
Read MoreThe project of slaying monsters; Tapping into our private messiah
In the great story of Navajo Creation, the Hero twins are a constant presence of adventure in warring against the Monsters of the Fourth World. It is through the conquest of this world, this dimension, that we are allowed peace and prosperity in the present world. The “people” were forced to move from one world level to another for their own misdeeds and...
Read MoreHey Zephyr! Hello Notus; Living with windy pals
A summer camped out in a fire lookout on a peak gives me breezy company. On this plateau that means mostly the daily presence of winds named after the Greek gods of the south and west: Notus and Zephyr. These changeable companions amuse me when I step onto the catwalk to blow bubbles, startle me when a 40 mph burst charges past my door, and lure me in to...
Read MoreOpen Heart; Dream a little pub for me
At the end of my day it’s the little stories that collect and twist into the shawl of sleep. They replay sometimes at a more appreciative pace. Time slows down a little and the focal area widens and suddenly takes into view the cacophony, color, caresses and odors of the day I just dashed through. I catch the significance of a sideward glance or a...
Read MoreLife edit; clearing out the clutter
At the conference I attended last week, one of the presenters recommended editing as a technique for achieving focus in one’s artwork. While I know the value of reviewing and culling my activities, I often forget that doing too much – and the requisite switches in attention – takes enormous amounts of brainpower. Even a tiny task, like making a phone call,...
Read MoreOrdinaria; Exalting in the everyday
“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.” –George Eliot I visited New York City recently; my birthday coincided with an arts workshop I had flown there to attend. A longtime...
Read MoreHitchhikers on life’s journey; Picking up stories of the road
These days I pick up a hitchhiker alongside the roadways of the Navajo Rez. I find that familiar and safe as a former traveler of such. The onset of the spring in all its glory brings to mind such longings. Out there was another world awaiting. The deep turquoise sky, a background of towering cumulous clouds promising rain and more. Freedom was my horizon,...
Read MoreThe day-off town; Where miles meet merry
Your day-off town is not the place where you wake up most mornings. If you have a day-off town, you work elsewhere: on the road, on the river or at a duty station for the park, the forest or for science. You guide or you fight fires or record artifacts, educate on the rez, or service trains east and west. After you’ve spent nine days on a cot, or weeks...
Read MoreCrop cycles; A tale of two gardens
Dear Sam, I hope this finds you well, tucked away there in West Virginia’s sheltering hollers. I confess, I keep picturing you in your old trailer, although I’ve visited you twice since you’ve been in your new handmade house. I loved the closeness of the trailer to the creek. I’m sure you don’t take the creek for granted, but streams of water out...
Read MoreMeditation in walking: reconnecting with the self
Eight miles. That’s how far I walked along the south rim of Grand Canyon today. My hands are puffed up like little Vienna sausages, and my feet felt for a while like they would burst out of my shoes, but for the moment I’m sitting on the porch at El Tovar with my shoes unlaced, drinking a tumbler of club soda and a glass of Irony, a lovely Cabernet...
Read MoreThe tides of grief; Swimming through oatmeal
“The deeper the sorrow that carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” –Kahlil Gibran My father’s death in my mid-20s introduced me to grief and its idiosyncrasies. The sorrow I felt—and we all feel when we lose someone we love—had a language and texture all its own, one I’d never been versed in. Take a culture that is death averse, mix...
Read MoreHighway memories; Going west again … and again
I have traveled this road many times. Too many to recount. I measure them by my adventures and misadventures upon this stretch of life line. The route is from the foot of the Sacred Mountain of the West to the California coast. I am once again riding the rhythms of the road west into the San Francisco Bay. I have no flower in my hair, just the West Coast...
Read MoreHow to draw; Sharing one line at a time
Standing in front of a whiteboard in front of a class of wide-eyed second graders or a group of squirming teachers in a faculty meeting I wouldn’t say anything, but instead pick up a blue marker and draw a line that approximated a desk in the front row. Then I would pick up a red marker and create the shape of a head with a line of bangs and a graceful...
Read MoreLocal color; Ancestral corn
My older brother Homer told me about our Cherokee grandma walking with her people from Missouri alongside an oxcart that carried a few household goods and precious seeds into Texas about 1900. Our grandpa was a one-armed schoolteacher who saw the raven-haired beauty pass and declared he would “marry that woman.” Homer explored the prairies around Aledo,...
Read MoreAlto; Taking it slow to sort it all out
Listen to the author read this essay. Thanks to John Grahame and Radio Sunnyside for this recording. It began like this: our family made an epic journey through the colonias of northern Mexico, past irrigated fields and wood-and-metal shacks, surrounded by burros and horses, goats and chickens. These homesteads were nestled against earthen berms,...
Read MoreIt Takes a Poem; Living with poetry’s power
I went to grade school at St. Francis of Assisi, a Pepto Bismol-colored concrete building in the humid flatlands of South Florida. When I was in third grade, Sister Margaret Anina announced a poetry contest. I don’t remember that we were studying poetry or had learned much about it. Poetry back then was another unknown enterprise, and I had not learned to...
Read MoreDreamscape with hawk; Journey in dreams/between realities
In my life creating art, I am asked where my inspirations and images come from. My world of unconventional reality. Much of it does come from dreams dreamt at night. Dreams I can still recall from decades ago. Dreamscapes I walked among and participated in. Dreams that are coming to reality now. On canvas and in our shared reality. Dreams are the drivers...
Read MoreWhere is my novelist? The eager reader seeks down south
It was an impulse. I couldn’t predict I’d suddenly need to read the first paragraphs of the novels written by old friends, but once it felt necessary I found myself at Bookmans pulling hardbacks from shelves and standing on a stool in an aisle muttering words aloud. And then, satisfied I hadn’t forgotten my wonder at their words, I spent the day imagining...
Read MoreRoad songs; Have lyrics will travel
“Why do you bob your hair, girls?/It’s not the thing to do/Just wear it, always wear it/And to the Lord be true/And when before the judgment/You meet the Lord up there/He’ll say, ‘Well done, for one thing/You never bobbed your hair.’” –Blind Alfred Reed, 1927 The pickup truck carves the ranch road like a broken beer bottle through scattered mesquite...
Read MoreWafting smoke; old habits wandering back
A few weeks ago, I started doing something I thought I’d left behind many years ago: I took up smoking again. (Before you jump to conclusions, let me say I’ve quit already.) Since I quit all those years ago, I’ve smoked about one cigarette a year. But the brain is a funny thing: for years after, I had dreams that included finding cigarettes in my purse,...
Read MoreThat teacher; A love letter to Mrs. Permenter
It’s a Thursday afternoon, halfway through the school year. My 11th and 12th graders file in for English class. “Are we reading today, Ms. Kelly?” Tyler asks as he holds up his copy of “The Lovely Bones.” We are, I tell him. The room hushes. The students open their books and lower their heads. One by one, we circle the room; each reads a few paragraphs...
Read MoreFebruary storm; Hearts blowing in the wind
Our classroom was cramped; tiny and not designed for 30 students. It actually was an apartment for the overseer attached to the girls’ dormitory. We were the overflow at another government boarding school that ran out of space for us. While the new school was being constructed at Shonto for us, we were guests at Leupp School. That was a hard year. This was...
Read MoreHow to draw; Sharing one line at a time
Standing in front of a whiteboard in front of a class of wide-eyed second graders or a group of squirming teachers in a faculty meeting I wouldn’t say anything but instead pick up a blue marker and draw a line that approximated a desk in the front row. Then I would pick up a red marker and create the shape of a head with a line of bangs and a graceful...
Read MoreQuerencia; At rest off the grid
I’m headed north to the Grand Canyon to interview Eric Guisse, who began carving a homestead on the parks border more than 40 years ago. Greg Hales, my pardner in crime and videographer extraordinaire pilots his truck north through ponderosa and piñon scrub. As we pass through a clearing in the forest I glimpse a large white owl perched on a branch beside...
Read MoreThe path of passion; creating a life full of meaning
Coming home from the Calexico concert the other night, the moon was a grinning Cheshire cat, mocking me with his over-large smile from a perch in the sky-soup of stars and darkness. That blackness resonates with me, especially on these short winter days, but music soothes my dark inner beast. A few days later, I headed south for a warm respite in Blythe,...
Read MoreThe Christmas spirit; Rapid City, South Dakota, December 1974
I think I may have briefly found the Christmas spirit in South Dakota in 1974. I had just talked myself into the first real job of my life. And about time, too: at the age of 24, I had a wife and two boys. We’d spent the previous years living in Appalachia’s backwoods trying our hand at homesteading. My job duties had included ploughing with a team of...
Read MoreFailing in order to succeed: Infatuation with the new and nebulous
I’m trying to learn to be better at making mistakes, and more willing to fail. On the face of it, that seems like a bad idea. But I’ve been reading about how failure can ultimately lead to success. I’m not convinced that’s the only requirement; success probably grows out of a combination of persistence, opportunity and a whole host of other qualities and...
Read MoreWaiting for snow; Momentarily quieting all the noise
I spent the first 18 years of my life living in South Florida where I spoke the language of sand, intuited the rhythms of the ocean, and trafficked in seashells. All this worked just fine for the wallpaper of my young life until this time of year rolled around. I wanted snow. Christmas television shows featured well-groomed people in coats delighted by...
Read MoreHa goneii” Shi’Ke’ii; Goodbyes in the closing year
In these waning days of 2012, we have lost more than a few people who have touched us all collectively in the entertainment, political and sports worlds. With that consciousness, the past couple of months also found me saying goodbye to several close relatives as they journeyed into the Spirit world. Sadly, it is an all-too-common event these days,...
Read MoreGraced by silence; Words and the river flowing
I’ve never been called a motor mouth. Except for the occasional morning when compelling insight from overnight dreaming must be described in intricate detail upon waking, people I’ve lived with report they want me to say more, not less. I presume I inherited this reticence from my grandparents. All four came over on the boat from Finland. Perhaps you’ve...
Read MoreSacred groves; Global warming and pee trees
A few yards from my front door stands my favorite tree to pee under. It has ever been so. I imagine a delta rich in potash and nitrogen beneath the pine needles feeding the coyote gourd that twists and spreads downhill in a luxuriant profusion. From this sheltered vantage point I’ve surveyed many a sunrise and moonrise over the ragged edge of the forest a...
Read MorePrint immersion: Becoming the very books we read
Last week, I stopped by Starrlight Books in downtown Flagstaff to visit with the owner, Evan Midling. I’ve been curious to know how he learned the book business and came to own the place. I wondered how he manages to stay afloat in these seemingly tough times for independent booksellers. Between bookshelves, kachinas and framed art decorate the walls. Evan...
Read MoreTipping my hat to mystery; The odyssey of our headwear
The wind, in the form of a dust devil, took my hat many years ago. I was 5 years old. I stepped out into the calm and warming day crowned by my new straw cowboy hat. I beamed beneath its brims as I showed it off to the daily gods. The mysteries. It took many days of piñon picking covered in tree pitch and aching knees to afford that fine hat from the local...
Read MoreSoul train; Lighting the path
November 2, 1999. It is late afternoon when I board the train from Bratislava to Budapest. I’ve taken this three-hour train ride down the spine of Eastern Europe every Wednesday for the past two months, as I commute from my home in the Slovak capital city to the Hungarian capital city to teach. My coat stays on as I slide into an empty car. The seats are...
Read MoreUseful nothing; What I am doing in Maine
The silence before the collapse: that’s what made us laugh. Three kids stack playing cards to make little rooms on the living room floor and then the colorful rectangles barely whisper when they fall down, turning our long minutes of focused concentration into one shared gasp. Dismay and delight mixed together. That’s what I think of when I stand back to...
Read MoreOne man’s treasure; Reaping where you didn’t sow
“Somebody said, ‘That’s a strange tattoo you have on the side of your head.’ I said, ‘That’s the blueprint left by the coal. A little more and I’d been dead.’” –“Coal Tattoo” by Billy Ed Wheeler I’m driving north along Highway 89 in the shadow of the San Francisco Peaks. The October sun threads the air with amber. It picks out the new straw color of...
Read MoreYou may say I’m a dreamer
A few weeks ago, I dreamed of flying, not in an airplane, but mysteriously under my own steam. In my dream, I pedaled a winged contraption quickly enough to get and stay aloft as I soared over Wheeler Park and the roof of Federated Church. I used to have flying dreams when I was young, as late as my high school years. They were rare enough that I looked...
Read MoreAll the way home; Signs of life from across the world
It’s 2001, and I live in Slovakia, an overlookable country with a language light on vowels. I’ve been here in Bratislava, the capital city, long enough to decode the essentials and enjoy the superficial mastery that bleeds into a muted smugness peculiar to ex-pats. But I’ve not been here long enough for social fluency. Instead I know just enough to be...
Read MoreLegacy of brutality; Surviving bullies and reclaiming a life
As another season of harvest and preparation for colder weather begins, my mind cannot help but wander back to the days of innocence lost, courtesy of my Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school experience. School resumed for another year and with it came the pained expectation of family separations and abuses at the hands of the B.I.A. officials and my...
Read MoreQuittin’ time; A fire lookout meets winter
When great pools of standing water shine day-break orange out along the Little Colorado, and I see spray from Grand Falls without my binoculars, I begin to think, “Outta here.” When a lightning-struck dead snag burns like a chimney but doesn’t start wet pine needles on fire, my mission shifts. This morning before sunrise, there I was bent over the beam of...
Read MoreWhat I’ll give you since you asked; Is 10,000 hours enough?
My father’s legacy to me was complex. It didn’t include land and investments or stocks and vehicles. He was a skilled craftsman with wood and iron but there was almost no material evidence of his life passed on to me. A story his older brother, my Uncle Hattler, told me more than 50 years ago helped me to understand his endowment to me of a love of music...
Read MoreShielded from the world: Polarized times and personal decisions
I have two sisters. Between the three of us, we’ve had a range of reproductive experiences: miscarriages, near-misses with miscarriages, false positives, and the birth of live healthy babies. During her second pregnancy, one sister was told that her child would likely be born with Down Syndrome. In spite of that possibility, there was never any question...
Read MoreRain now and then; Memories of furious water
Late August in Flagstaff. Outside it rains cold, fat and purposeful drops. I’m inside, and reminded by NPR about the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew. In a shimmering flash I am back in Miami Beach, back in Florida, back enfolded in the landscape that forged me. The water and salt. The crippling humidity and hot weather mania. A tribe of beloveds...
Read MoreRendezvous with amigos; Musings on the edge of the dusty world, 1974
A colorfully dressed young cowboy with a slight limp shuffled past me. I stood with one hand on the railings of the rodeo corral. I had come to see a friend I haven’t seen since my boarding school days. Seven years? The drone of the announcer’s amplified voice wore on: “Now out of chute four, we have a cowboy from Red Lake, Arizona, ‘Ba ahii da’ had’. Clap...
Read MoreThe aesthetics of guns; Reframing the old west outlook
My father’s double-barrel 12-gauge shotgun hung above the mantle of our fireplace. He told me about the summer he was 12 and worked with a wheat threshing crew and earned 50 cents a day. The two purchases he made with his summer’s wages were a winter coat for his mother and a shotgun. I grew up in the gun culture. My early memories include a single-shot...
Read MoreService is the adventure; On daring to go far in a life
Nurse Nina Poore has singlehandedly inspired me to dare to be great in my 80s some day. “Nina won’t tell you” I heard repeated about Nina around town. She won’t tell you about being Arizona Daily Sun Citizen of the Year in 1990 or that Governor Rose Mofford awarded her a clock for her work with preventing substance abuse among children. That might be...
Read MoreRollng thunder: many opportunities for misadventure
In an effort to entice myself back into the studio, I’ve been preparing scraps of fabric for collage, willing myself to do anything, as long as I’m in the studio. And it works: even these mundane tasks awaken a new appreciation for the fabrics, and remind me why this medium has always felt like home. These days I’m especially drawn to the fabrics with some...
Read MoreBeing the nanny; Lessons in love
I lived with the Wadsworth family for two summers while I was in college. I was their nanny: the babysitter, the live-in help, and a full-time diversion for three young children. I lived a double life as a hippie on the frontier of the country club. Their tennis whites only enhanced my tomboy-beatnik style. I wore torn, ill-fitting jeans, red converse...
Read MoreHalf a world away; Communicating with the outer reaches
My father died unexpectedly when I was 26 years old. My parents divorced when I was in high school; my mother remarried and moved to New Zealand. On the day of my father’s death, my brothers and sister and I tearfully converged at his two-bedroom home to divvy up his meager worldly possessions: thousands of tools, books and some dour artwork that used to...
Read MoreGlimpses from the fire lookout; (Not quite of this world)
“Dispatcher, I have a small glowing red and purple disc at 174 degrees, 31 miles, hovering over Mormon Lake.” “I copy, 174 degrees, 31 miles. We’ll call this Incident #4.” In 18 seasons at a handful of fire lookouts in central Arizona I’ve seen flares dropped from Air Force craft, I’ve seen dust from the Painted Desert roll down the Little Colorado like a...
Read MoreCircles; You can’t go home
“Where the bluebonnets roll/And the white clouds sail slowly by/Where the little grey hawk/Pauses and hangs in the sky/I’m the lone shooting star/The sweet whip-poor-will’s cry/And the summer’s full moon/Where the bluebonnets roll.” –“Where Bluebonnets Roll By,” by Tony Norris Abilene is close. We glide through the short grass prairie of the...
Read MoreThe nomad gene; And the allure of the Northland
This guest post is by Tyler Williams, a local writer, photographer and adventurer with several published works under his belt. Check out more of Williams’ work at www.funhogpress.com. Cresting the pass, we squinted, eyes searching for the blue dome of Navajo Mountain. That unmistakable hump hovering beyond the vastness provides me with predictable elation...
Read MoreThe father I remember; Our father who art in heaven …
Sunday past was Father’s Day, a day set aside to honor the adult man in our lives—the constant source of strength and wrath. Our fathers. Growing up on the Dineh’ land of the 1960s, I do not recall any celebration for these ties. Summer set in and the dry and dusty days multiplied as my father’s voice echoed throughout the sheep camp. He sang loudly as he...
Read MoreNot the same river twice; Exploring the Rio de Flag
On windy June days with the monsoons a distant dream, I long for moisture. I find my way to the dry riverbed of the Rio de Flag. The rustling of coyote willow leaves is the closest water-like sound for miles. Twists and turns in the Rio reveal surprises—a morning cloak butterfly, a red fox behind a shock of bulrushes and an overturned shopping cart. This...
Read MoreIn a dream state: Allowing oneself to be carried away
After Maurice Sendak died last month, I was reminiscing about his books, and then about all the children’s books that made an impression on our family. Found in the stacks at Bookman’s, Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen, so quirky and fantastic, was one of our favorites: “Milk in the batter! Milk in the batter! We bake cake! And nothing’s the matter!” Our...
Read MoreI love it local; Tips from my tip jar habit
It’s not that I wouldn’t enjoy seeing Mary Chapin Carpenter and Shawn Colvin at the Lensic in Santa Fe, or Gillian Welch at the Orpheum, or Taj Mahal, or Melissa Etheridge at Fort Tuthill—worthy performers all—but in the big balancing act of my wallet and the world, I want always to keep a 20 dollar bill ready for a tip jar. If I too often buy the...
Read MoreWays of seeing; Potential waiting to be revealed
A couple of weekends ago, I drove south to meet my youngest sister, Kristin, at the Phoenix airport. We’d hatched a plan a few weeks prior for her to fly from St. Louis to surprise Dana, our middle sister on her 50th birthday and our mom for Mother’s Day. We haven’t all been together for Mother’s Day since I left home in 1976. It felt momentous. We had to...
Read MoreTime is a river; Where will we be in 50 years?
“Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.” –Marcus Aurelius Last week I sat by the San Juan River for two days with my colleagues at the Grand Canyon Trust. We gathered to consider the future of...
Read MoreMoon of the earth’s stirring; Planting thoughts on spring
Gazing across the vast and dusty Klethla Valley, my young eyes saw the boundaries of my world where the looming Black Mesa meets the sky, blue and eternal. The last stubborn remnant of snow patches hid away beneath the thick junipers. The sun traveled ever so slightly back towards the north; warming days reminded us that planting time was upon us soon. I...
Read MoreEmpty that pack! Lighten up and move on
Recently I had dinner with a woman who arrived in Flagstaff on foot from Mexico. Passersby on Aspen who peered into the window of Mountain Oasis could hardly guess that gal savoring forkfuls of Greek salad had been hungering for feta cheese for more than 30 miles as she goosed herself along the Arizona Trail to get to Flagstaff ahead of a snowfall. We’d...
Read MoreMrs. Abernathy’s pies; The art of presentation
Spring is firmly fixed in the bungee pattern I like to call bipolar. Whiteout conditions on Saturday bring a foot of serious snow to town and Monday sees short-sleeved skateboarders dodging the rosy crab apple trees in the parks. These very conditions make it hard for fruit trees to fulfill their duty in our little mountain town. Just about the time the...
Read MoreFour wheels of freedom; Learning to let go of control
Unlike most American teens, I didn’t learn to drive when I was 16. We lived in Belgium where the legal driving age was 18, so when I returned to the states I was uninitiated to certain Midwestern rituals. My first summer back, in central Indiana, I had one date with a guy who drove a Ford pickup with a bench seat. He thought it was weird that I didn’t sit...
Read MoreThe call of spring; Annual reinvention on the Colorado Plateau
The Russian poet, Vera Pavlova wrote in her notebook: “There are moments when I feel the universe expand.” I too feel these moments of expansion, barely audible at times. I am lying on my cot at Lees Ferry reading poetry under a canopy of new, green leaves. They shimmer in the thin blade of moonlight while stars dazzle in the negative space of dark sky....
Read MoreDry Farming in cinders; Making the wilderness bloom
“You betcha grandma, sure as you’re born. I’ll have some more potatoes and a thunderstorm.” –“Canned Goods” by Greg Brown The Russian olive branches are whipping the hillside to a brisk fandango beat. A delicate pink froth of blossom on the Nanking cherry hedge dips and bobs in the dance celebrating the return of spring to Doney Park. Tender...
Read MoreWherever I am, I can be somewhere else
I used to pull picture books off library shelves to decide what vistas I longed to inhale, what routes I’d take through foreign lands, what hotel lobby would be just right for making a phone call to get a room at a youth hostel. Like me, perhaps you have furtively rifled through expensive guidebooks in the bookstore trying to memorize the 800 number for a...
Read MoreIn the air; The complex tapestry of human life
“It’s easy to focus on the sky on days when you are flying through the air from your home to a distant place.” That’s how I started my journal the day I left for Ireland a few weeks ago. I left Flagstaff on a Saturday, flying through clear blue skies, the airplane wing angled in contrast against a line of haze at the horizon. I bought a brand new Moleskine...
Read MoreThe view I have from here; A prayer for the desecrators
I have a view from here, “y’aa.” What a view. My three sisters, they shine in the distance. “Sis na Jinni’” (Mt. Blanco to the east), “So Dzil’ (Mt. Taylor to the south), “Di be’ N’tsaa” (Hesperus peak to the north). My view has clouds today, like cataracts outside of my eyes. Like clouds bearing no rain. It is hard to hold onto ice, onto “Ke’sh je’”...
Read MoreLate night woodstove meditations; Sisters across the divide
The end of winter is near and the woodpile is dwindling. The nights aren’t as long or as cold as they were a month ago, but I still take comfort in the fire. I dial my sister’s number and it rings in an old farmhouse across the country in another time zone. Her voice sounds so much like my own but on the other side of the receiver she lives an entirely...
Read MoreVisions within bound; Painting with consciousness
At the young age of 8, I sat in awe as my elders hunched over a smooth bed of sand as the holy deities once again were given form. There on the hogan floor, to the low drone of an ancient chant, deft fingers gnarled by years of labor, drew fine lines of colored sand from their fingertips. As the son of a very important medicine man, I knew the significance...
Read MoreThe light that leads; Ashes from old campfires
“You’re travelin’ through a world that you can use, though you shall never own. Your little fire makes it seem like home.” –“Little Fires” by K. W. Boyd A winter storm washed the sandy fields and black oak thickets along the Brazos. I watched the clouds thin and stretch and give way to glorious sweeps of amber colored light. I headed out to the...
Read More“Love u 4ever” revisited; When ‘our song’ is long gone
Dear Reader, the sweet nothings have been murmured, the roses delivered, the valentines calculated and expensive dinners put on plastic. Now that the yearly ritual created to warm up winter with romantic gushing is behind us, let’s spend a little imagination on creating a new holiday; let’s have one to honor ex’s. How might we celebrate keeping connection...
Read MoreArt of the superhero; Being oneself is the ultimate power
The other day I spent a couple of hours with Jean Rukkila, who is one of my personal superheroes. We sit at the bar at the Monte Vista, looking across Aspen Street to West of the Moon. She confesses, “I used to fantasize having my little press in one window and massage table in the other window and a little sign, like those private eyes have, written on...
Read MoreCommunity Clan; Flag’s original jovial troubadour
I am sitting across the booth from Tony Norris at Brandy’s restaurant. It is still early for breakfast, but late enough so we can talk without disturbing the patrons. Except for the clinkings of dishes and utensils, it is a good place for our hushed conversation. This is new for me. Usually I am the one being interviewed. This is also Tony’s brainstorm. He...
Read MoreThe Deep Listening Tour: Why I Am Not at Home
What if you didn’t owe any money, and all your stuff was in a 10 by 15 foot storage locker, and you were single and not desperately lonely—in fact, it feels like you might never be desperately lonely ever again—and your truck runs good enough, and your body works well, too. No prescription drugs necessary, no surgery pending. A little work on the...
Read MoreDoubt and reinvention; An artist’s winding path
Darcy Falk is in her studio painting a 10-by-10-inch canvas. The background is awash with shimmering lilac, overlaid with a grid of silver dots. She adds another layer of red and orange acrylic to a pair of glowing poppies. A thin, white halo around the blossoms lifts them from the two-dimensional surface. She reveals how scary it is to be making these...
Read MoreA fiercely creative life; Where stone steps lead to song
Being creative like Kate Watters is creative causes me to see one of those fierce short swirls down a desert canyon, the kind of wind that causes sand, willow leaves and bird song to brush against your deepest thoughts. The image occurs to me as I wait in her studio while she finishes a detail at a computer for the Grand Canyon Trust where she is the...
Read MoreColor and economy; Sunlight reflected on water
I’m in Shonto Begay’s studio above the Downtown Diner. The floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the town square and flood the narrow room with bright illumination. Much of the time I’m speaking to a backlit silhouette surrounded by flares of light—a traveler in time. He is seated before a canvas the size of a sports bar flat screen. A series of figures are...
Read MoreDeer Creek Patio; Worshiping at the Church of Desert Creeks
All this talk about the Rapture, Judgment Day and the End of the World has me thinking about my own religion: I belong to the Church of Desert Creeks. Deer Creek in Grand Canyon is home to the greatest patio in the world. It is part of sweeping bedrock shelf of Tapeats Sandstone that perches next to the creek as it enters the twisting narrows and finally...
Read MoreProtecting paradise islands; National and state parks start may soon be the last of the pristine
In the early morning mist, we wake to an unfamiliar orchestra: the melodies of gibbons, stork-billed kingfishers, rhino hornbills, and countless insects and frogs shrouded in a mysterious curtain of jungle. We sleep on a 30-foot klotok (a traditional river boat) on a tributary deep in the heart of the last remaining rainforest of Tanjung Puting National...
Read MoreRedeeming Santa; My First BIA Boarding School Christmas
“Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright …” The chorus rang off the canyon walls of my childhood at this time of the year. Beaming, hopeful and confused brown little faces sang heartily into the night so many years ago. There in the sandstone buildings, sitting on our knees, we were told about the reason for the season. Beneath an old grove of...
Read MoreFriends bearing gifts; Talking turkey
Our Royal Palm turkey tom and his hen were intended for the Thanksgiving table. Each afternoon as they were released with the chickens to free-range and eat bugs and weed seeds, they didn’t miss an opportunity to display their magnificent crisp formal white plumage tipped in fretted inky black. The tom jumped up on chair or bench to be at eye level with...
Read MoreStop the war; Stories from the front lines of resistance
David lives in west Oakland, Calif., just across from the BART station. On the night of Nov. 2, he was one of 92 people arrested in protests in downtown Oakland. When he called the next night, he said, “Mom, I just wanted to let you know I’m OK.” Clueless, I wondered aloud, “Why wouldn’t you be alright?” I was kind of glad not to have known that he’d spent...
Read MoreMariachi state of mind; Soundtrack to La Vida
A quick glance at my colorful mariachi hat collection can lift me from a gloomy November Sunday afternoon funk and into a mariachi state of mind. Mariachi and norteño music travels that thin divide between melancholy and fist-pumping elation. The staccato notes of trumpets go straight to the empty places while the accordion notes cajole you to live in full...
Read MoreShelly in the spring of 1976; Musing from the breeze of northern New Mexico
“April gave us springtime, and the promise of the flowers … We knew no time for sadness, that’s the road we each had crossed. We were living a time meant for us, and even when it would rain, we would laugh it off. I’ve got pieces of April, I keep them in a memory bouquet. I’ve got pieces of April, it’s a morning in May.” –Dave Loggins’ “Pieces of April,”...
Read MoreThe warming center; You will want one someday
One hopes not to have bad things happen, but bad things do eventually and that’s when you’re lucky if you “live in a good place to have bad things happen.” My path to and from Maine takes me through my sister’s house in northwestern Connecticut. There I have plucked eggs from under the chickens, tapped maple trees to boil sap to syrup, pressed apples for...
Read MorePass the fear; Ever been scared?
“In Apache Pass, Prince Rupert, Indian Jack puts a pistol to my head says, ‘How do you like your blue-eyed boy Mr. Dead?’” –“Criminology” by Tom Russell Ever been scared? I mean really scared—not scared that the eighth grade boys are gonna beat the crap out of you after World History. Not scared that your husband caught you checking out the hunky...
Read MoreLife and times; Carefully crafting the right narrative
A dream: I’m in the middle of an open field. In the distance is a swarm of bees, flying 30 feet off the ground, a humming, pulsing river of insects. In the middle of the field is an old swing set. I’m hanging off it, like I did when I was 10 years old, upside down with my knees locked over the bar. A few bees land on me, but don’t sting me. I drop to the...
Read MoreFrom the bottom; Redrawing the map of creative life
Last summer we suffered a large water leak that went unsuspected until a catastrophically expensive water bill showed up in our mailbox. Much later we discovered dampness in our crawlspace, where I stored my old art portfolios. The “greatest hits” of my entire artistic life were in various states of moldy ruin. As I sifted through the devastation, I saw...
Read MoreFace the truth; Give peaks a chance
With messages against snow making written upon our faces, we stare out from alleys and street corners of Flagstaff. Like Maori warriors, we speak our ancestors’ prayers across our skin. When audible words no longer carry weight and pleas cast into the coming storm dissipate, we volunteered our faces to carry our messages. You have seen us, our mugs...
Read MoreOn building a box; My fall in Maine
The AAA TripTik said it is 2,737 miles from Flagstaff to my house in Maine, which is close to true in my truck even with getting lost outside Indianapolis. Now here I am, and today I’m building a box to dampen the noise of the sump pump in the basement. I don’t like launching off the bed when the pump kicks in at odd moments: mid good dream at 3 a.m., for...
Read MoreBitter truths; Friends in low places
I came to the Arizona deserts from the generously watered coves and hollers of the Kentucky hills where songbirds flew across dewy, fern-clad hillsides. A single square mile of forest there might yield a 125 varieties of trees. My first job in my new home required me to crisscross the state. I drove over a thousand miles a week from the New Mexico...
Read MorePainting the invisible; Abstraction and cuing memory
What do you see when you turn out the light? When I was younger, I thought this was a nonsense line, but as an adult I suddenly realized that John and Paul used this line as shorthand to ask all the questions about what delights and motivates us, what fills us up, what empty places and sorrows there are in our lives. It’s key to self-knowledge, this...
Read MoreChoosing your battles; The smoking mushroom of hope
As our mountain summer dances with autumn, I cling to the fleeting glory of the rain-soaked San Francisco Peaks. I revel in the details—of lichen, flower petals and recently, the taxonomy of fungi. One day spent crawling around the forest studying mushrooms opens a fantasy world not unlike the one Alice found in Wonderland. Smoking cup mushrooms command...
Read MoreBetween pain and sanctuary; Putting the past to rest to understand the present
In 1862, my people were rounded up and forced to walk over 450 miles to Bosque Redondo, near Ft. Sumner, N.M. This was Manifest Destiny in its glorious and ugly expansion with no regard to the preceding culture. There were four different routes that brought 9,000 prisoners eventually. Hundreds died along the trail. In 1865, the Bosque was the most...
Read MoreMy sitting practice; Coffee in the Bird Cafe
As I steered toward being first in line at Macys one morning en route to the fire tower, I made a good stop at a Beaver Street yard sale: I scored three snap-button cowboy shirts, a serviceable fanny pack, and a $3 wooden chair from IKEA. That chair has made me the monk of impulsive outdoor meditating. Meditation practice courses through my life as...
Read MoreCounting crows; Back to Eden
This week’s guest columnist is Sue Ellen Norris. Author’s note: Tony Norris is off tracking a song in the Blue River wilderness about the Crooked Trail to Holbrook, so Sue Ellen Norris is keeping the Home fires burning. Sue is a master gardener and works with the Youth Garden Project for Flagstaff Foodlink. She tills the cinder soil at the foot of...
Read MoreQuiet observation; Taking notes for the moment of creation
In the beginning, in 1998, we held Flagstaff Open Studios to make art more accessible to the general public and the art-making process less mysterious. People came to our studios, and we did it again the next year. Fourteen years later, we’re still making our art and telling our stories. I’ve missed a couple of years, once because I had a brutal bronchial...
Read MoreMaps to place; Stories bring landscapes alive
“It is not down on any map; true places never are.” –Herman Melville, “Moby-Dick” I have always been drawn to maps. The swirling topographic lines over miles of the Earth’s surface grant me the rare insight of a soaring hawk. I have a habit of collecting maps of places I would like to go. I study the folds of ridges and the names of distant mountain...
Read MoreAt home on earth; Meditations on returning to one’s source
Now that I have seen 57 winters, I know I have fewer winters to feel. I feel more connected than ever before to that ground that holds my umbilical cord, as well as my childrens’. I can never sever my tether there … and here. Every week I see my mother’s face, and upon her face, all will read clearly, “I am happy, my son, I am light of grief seeing you...
Read MoreFlights of fancy; In town and out
Laced into Flagstaff neighborhoods, cinched into local lore, if you’ve lived here long enough you know local old timers who offer a feast of stories. I lived awhile on Dale Street across from the late Mrs. Black, the Boston-educated cowboy-savoring widow of Sheriff Black. If I saw the pink smear of her favorite dress catching sun in a window, I’d stop by...
Read MoreLocation location location; Restrooms and feng shui at Bookmans
“The goal of feng shui as practiced today is to situate the human built environment on spots with good qi. The ‘perfect spot’ is a location and an axis in time.” –Wikipedia The new Bookmans may have lost something in the translation. When five feet of snow claimed its roof, it took a full year for the doors to reopen. I had played in the...
Read MoreGood sleeping weather; The dreaminess of midnight in the summer
When the days turn steamy, there’s nothing better for sleep than the cool night air humming over you. Before the rains started, my parents visited to escape the Tucson heat. We gave them our bedroom and slept outside on cots and sleeping pads. The night air was cool, almost cold, and I slept with my down bag zipped up and relished the chilled air that...
Read MoreA Song For Chihuahua; Familia on the side
My sister and I climbed into the Quezada and Sons shuttle headed to Casas Grandes, Chihuahua. The 15-passenger van was full of people heading home, and we were the last to board. Nobody flinched as we clambered into the back seat and wedged ourselves between the big shopping bags and a strapping older Mexican man. We were the only gringos on the van and at...
Read MoreBreaking Through My Horizon; A hitchhiker’s lost diary
On that very hot and dusty summers day in 1972, I held out my thumb an willed and old Chevy truck to a stop. “Haa nizaa goh?” (How far?) “A’ayiddi ji’, Cowsprings Ji.” (A short way, just to Cowsprings.) It was a brief ride but it was progress nonetheless. I had walked out that morning from my sheepcamp four and a half miles off U.S. 160 that courses...
Read MoreInspired utterance; Did you get my message?
Downhill dirt roads do focus one’s attention, so as I rounded a curve on a switchback from the lookout this week I easily spotted branches across a narrow stretch ahead. I cinched the parking brake and got out of my truck to clear the way wondering which wind event had broken branches. As I bent to the chunks of pine I saw a message scratched in the dirt....
Read MoreYou’ll blind yourself; The free-range child
“How much for the whetstone and the old pocket knife?” I was indulging in my Saturday morning yard-sale therapy. I was only interested in the worn gray sharpening stone but I could see that the blades of the cheap jackknife had been carefully whetted until they would shave hair from your forearm. “They were my granddad’s. How does 2 dollars for the stone...
Read MoreTime travel; Walking through the centuries
Far from the fires around Flagstaff, we’ve been in chilly Ogden, Utah, this past weekend. It was green almost beyond belief—the only gaps in the lushness are where snow still covers the mountainsides and peaks. The reservoirs are brimming, and the rivers are running at full tilt: falling over cliffs of quartzite and granite and crashing down mountainsides....
Read MoreDeer Creek patio; Worshiping at the Church of Desert Creeks
All this talk about the rapture, Judgment Day and the end of the world has me thinking about my own religion: I belong to the Church of Desert Creeks. Deer Creek in Grand Canyon is home to the greatest patio in the world. It is part of a sweeping bedrock shelf of Tapeats Sandstone that perches next to the creek as it enters the twisting narrows and finally...
Read MoreFear no art; Icon and controversy
It has been over 10 years since I created a stir in my community with my art. I want to revisit this tempest not out of any residual angst, but to further educate the viewing public. Fortunately for me, most of my viewing public is made up of sophisticated consumers. But for those not familiar with this event, here it is … again. Three months into an...
Read MoreRemind me I’m in love; Dog walkers and disc flingers
Operatic trilling? Amplified gargle? That bird’s intention is to be flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal keeping up with Claude Bolling’s jazz on piano. My dreaming melts into the pillow and soon I’m upright wondering at this bird voice steering me away from tea and e-mail, shower and chore. That bird insists I put footsteps on the planet, until I match its burst of...
Read MoreA bird in flight; Pickin’ tunes and hitching rides in a simpler time
“In the dead of the night/In the still and the quiet/I slip away like a bird in flight/Back to those hills/A place that I call home.” –“West Virginia,” Hazel Dickens The battered convertible hurtled between cut rock walls covered with matted honeysuckle vines whose sweetness covered me like a benediction. Barn swallows scissored the sky above me as...
Read MoreAn ill wind; Always-shifting seasonal disturbances
At the front window, the dogs stand with their tails in the air and a ridge of hair raised along their backs. They are on alert, poised to protect us from the dangers posed by blowing bits of paper and leaves, and whatever else might happen along on this windy day. They pace the floor. They follow me around the house and never quite settle into their usual...
Read MoreIn transit; Daydreams and culture of the bus
My bus commute takes twice as long as it does to drive to work in my car, but that time is not wasted. I put those extra minutes to good use daydreaming, or reading a poem. I listen to music, write notes to myself, watch people and stare out the window. Riding the bus creates a suspended state of dreamy traveling in your daily schedule, unlike being behind...
Read MoreSpring messenger; Connections though contact
Spring is finally here again. The long winter’s slumber once again is awakened by squawking pinyon jays. The red earth once again dominates as winter’s lace of ice recedes. Sheepcamps are alive with bleatings of newborn lambs and kids. The moon of “the stirring of the seedlings” is steeped in Mother Earth. Cornfields are ready to receive this year’s crop....
Read MoreTo wander free; You can’t get there from here
Though one can leave an hour margin to get to missions in Phoenix on time—and you can avoid the rush hours with wise planning—still you don’t know when the system of pavement, exits and speed limits will seize up and there you are behind an idling semi truck, two lanes halted, with no escaping at Cordes Junction because you’re south of that already; you...
Read MoreDream catchers; Dusty dunes in a broken utopia
“Pancho Villa crossed the border in the year of ought 16/The people of Columbus still hear him riding through their dreams/He killed 17 civilians you could hear the women scream/Blackjack Pershing on a dancing horse was waiting in the wings/Tonight we ride, tonight we ride/We’ll skin ol’ Pancho Villa, make chaps out of his hide/Shoot his horse,...
Read MoreCreative work; The art of every day
After the Viola Awards a few weeks ago, a bunch of us traipsed over to Uptown Billiards in search of closure and whiskey. Poet and owner of Uptown, James Jay, had just won the Viola Award for Literature. Upon receiving the award he recited a beautiful poem (not even his own) that brought me to tears. Several of the acceptance speeches that night were...
Read MoreThe last sacred place; Protecting the treasures of Grand Canyon
What I love about the Grand Canyon is … all of it. But what I absolutely treasure are its springs that form lush biodiversity strongholds. These springs could be depleted or contaminated by a renewed interest in uranium mining. Two weeks ago I joined more than 100 Flagstaff residents at a public meeting to learn about the proposed withdrawal of 1,010,776...
Read MoreAccepting acceptance; At home in a community of artists
As some of you may know by now, I was the featured artist at the Heard Museum a couple of weekends ago and therefore was not able to attend the third annual Viola Awards gala. I would like to congratulate all the recipients of the Viola awards. It truly is a blessing to be part of such a vibrant community of artists, to be part of a community that...
Read MoreThe allure of being invisible, 8,000 copies at a time
I see you. You’ve pulled Flag Live out of your book bag and so it is wrinkled where your nursing text, that enormous tome, has crushed both your newspaper and your container of yogurt. And you there: you’ve set the paper down on a ring of leftover latte at your favorite wooden-tabled, street-peeking, or peak-viewing home to seekers of the morning buzz. Or...
Read MoreLike father like son; Those who don’t remember the past
Daddy was a connoisseur of objects. Some might say junk. Some came from the salvage yard on the old White Settlement Road. He would take a load of rusty iron, copper wire salvaged from electric motors and brass plumbing fittings to sell by the pound, and then spend hours going through wooden boxes filled with dusty tools, screws, bolts and nails. He would...
Read MoreCreative types; Fostering art in all abilities
In “Finding Flow,” Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi writes, “The quality of experience [is] a function of the relationship between challenges and skills. Optimal experience, or flow, occurs when both variables are high.” When you address big challenges with high skill levels, feats of creative genius are possible. This is true for any field. Even within the rigid...
Read MoreVisited by song; Nurturing the muse among friends
If you have ever wanted to write your own song and sing it to someone, it is good to know that you are not alone in this crazy undertaking. On a recent Monday evening I joined a group of people who congregate monthly on the second floor mezzanine at the Hotel Weatherford for this very reason. This truly inspired location—180 degrees of windows that consume...
Read MoreWinona me over; It will be heard
In spite of the extreme cold weather, I was glad to see many people out to hear Winona LaDuke at the Audrey Auditorium last Tuesday evening. It was good to see and hear her again. As a native woman, she holds a very sacred position as a messenger of humanity and Mother Earth. I believe it is always appropriate to begin in one’s own language. It is the...
Read MoreSavoring Silko, shifting shape; A report from my winter reading
During the stillness of 3 to 5 a.m. I might be dreaming, I might be whistling through my nose or I might be noting the Big Dipper balanced on its handle outside my bedroom window, followed by nodding at the half moon grinning over the kitchen sink when I get up to make tea. Lately, a recently published memoir by Leslie Marmon Silko keeps me company until...
Read MoreThe Highwayman; Learning in kitchen literature sessions
The therapist works her elbow along my breastbone and with an audible pop my rib moves back to its proper place. I had tripped over a space heater’s power cord that morning and wind-milled across the room catching myself on the door jam and painfully tweaking my back and ribs. I hobbled to Nicci, possibly the world’s best massage therapist for healing....
Read MoreLiving with resolve; New words for a new year
It feels to me that things are falling apart, like the poem: “the centre will not hold.” We’re trapped in a socio-political centrifugal machine, where the heaviest mettle gets spun to the outer edges of society and separates into its most irrational component parts. Last Sunday I drove into spring: down I-17, first past dun-colored hills and...
Read MoreExploring a big world; The enhanced perspective of travel
I spent my last day on a month-long trip to Southeast Asia in Bangkok’s Chinatown. I floated on a river through narrow alleyways in an urban wilderness of determined shoppers. About half of the food items for sale I would not regard as edible: dried squids, brains, livers and pig’s hooves. As I observed this spectacle of commerce, I considered the...
Read MoreMay we all; A prayer for the new decade
May we all move forward into the New Year and decade with courage. This is written as a petition to God, to the Great Spirit and many more power names. Yet in the end it is into the great mystery, however we view it, whatever name we gave it. Our appeals for mercy and validation of our being remains always the truth. A common cry from a humble From the...
Read MoreWhen tending these many thresholds; Leaf it to me to get goofy
I live in a house where an apple tree keeps sending leaf messengers to the doorstep. Beginning in October and continuing as snow falls at the year’s end, I’ve arrived home to feel the crunch of leaf matter under my feet while I look through my pockets for my keys. For weeks and weeks I’ve been sweeping them up from the front yard to put in the back yard...
Read MoreAttack poultry Happy to see you
“I had an old hen she had a wooden foot/She made her nest by a mulberry root/Laid more eggs than any hen around the farm/A whole wooden leg wouldn’t do her any harm.” —“Cluck Ol’ Hen” The pounding autumn rains that followed this summer’s fires scoured the topsoil of centuries from the sides of the peaks. The bare bedrock gleaming bone white between...
Read MoreSweet times; Baking cookies with the family
After my grandmother died, my mom and my Aunt Nina took up her holiday cookie-baking gauntlet. This was not an undertaking for the faint of heart. Grandmére was a prodigious baker of cookies; around the winter holidays she spent hundreds of hours filling tins with sweets to pass along to her family, friends and neighbors. I’ll go out on a limb of...
Read MoreWhat gift do you want? Angels might want to know
As we munched turkey leftovers spread on toast with gravy the question went around the table, “What do you want for Christmas this year?” Everyone else wanted experiences or edibles: no stuff! I, however, wanted a big thing: that white baby-face Fiat 500 I rented for a day to do a quick trip to Phoenix. I loved the Bose speakers, the moon roof, the...
Read MoreA Christmas memory; The making of traditions
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 MoreMusing on a sound quest; Education and inspiration through music
I was recently asked what I enjoy listening to as an inspiration or background in my studio. Like most artists, I do not have a particular favorite in music makers nor genre. I take what I can synchronize my movements with, in body and spirit—sounds that amplify the depth of the colors and the sensuality of forms. I listen to music that creates for me an...
Read MoreGood driving surfaces; Bumpy roads to the past
I confess, the natural disasters Flagstaff has experienced in the last year have honed my survival instincts. With Nov. 2 looming on the horizon I interpreted the low tea-colored clouds as an impending landslide of poor judgment and I headed toward the Mexican border before they closed it. Desperate to breathe air untainted by negative campaign adds I...
Read MoreCapturing wonder; Flagstaff through fresh eyes
Last weekend my 18-year-old niece, Taylor, came to visit. She’s graduating next spring and looking at colleges. Though I’ve known her all her life, I didn’t feel like I really knew her. I was afraid it would be awkward, but instead, her visit became a sweet opportunity to get to know her. Taylor is a photographer. Her high school offers photography...
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 MoreLightness in paradise; National park perks
Among the many journeys I’ve taken, I have to say that being in the ranks of the National Park Service as a naturalist/ranger tops the list. In all, I spent 10 years in various parks in the American west. A stint in the Tetons in northwestern Wyoming was glorious and adventurous, as was my time on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in the late 1970s and...
Read MoreShut up and go to sleep; A conversation about lullabies
Tony: I’m in the planning stages for a new CD of lullabies, those songs intended to calm the fretful child and persuade him to fall fast asleep. It seems all my younger friends have babies and toddlers. Having raised five of my own and boasting eight grandchildren, I want to record a collection of soothing tunes that might make bedtime a little easier for...
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 MoreAwaiting winter; Reflections on faith and generosity
Roberta and I motored out Highway 89 today to visit Judy, who lives with Pete on a sizable spread in the pinyon-juniper forest north of Flagstaff. We drove out to see the remnants of her garden, but Judy gave us the home tour, too. I’ve decided: the expansive greenhouse is my dream home, lack of toilet facilities notwithstanding. Near sunset, we reveled in...
Read MorePlum jam; Making light of the depression
The stems of the amaranth in my yard have turned a deep embarrassed purple in just the last week. They were just part of the background of an unusually lush tangle of knee-high greens, but the shortening hours of sunlight and almost freezing temps have triggered a chemical color shout-out that makes them tremble and vibrate. It hasn’t been cold enough to...
Read MoreA name, a prayer; Welcoming new lives
She was born on the 10th of September at 4:30 a.m. PST in Fairbanks, Alaska. She is my newest granddaughter and the third blessed daughter of my eldest daughter, Enei and her husband, Evon. She joins a beautiful young family of four kids, the eldest being my grandson, Olav and his sisters Na NI eezh and Cheii lil. I have yet to greet her personally. With...
Read MoreLightning meets candle; When waking overtakes the still small flame
On a local mountain peak where a metal fire tower begins to shiver with the approach of fall, distant lightning arrives with sunrise one morning. To the creep of yellow and the spread of turquoise on the eastern horizon an insertion of orange meets the flashes of lightning over Winslow. Briefly bright cumulus clouds pulse for a hundred miles along the...
Read MoreThe unintended performance; Broken strings and opportunities
Sometimes the real show is not the one we showed up for. I’m always delighted when the hidden and serendipitous performance unfolds and I am there—the accidental audience looking on at the unscheduled dance. It was an evening some 20 years ago at the Coconino Center for the Arts. The Bluegrass Cardinals were playing! It was one of the first shows Dick...
Read MoreReal life ‘Mad Men’; Lessons in flaws and brilliance
I’ve been missing the steady tone of a good novel, so when my book club decided to read Barbara Kingsolver’s newest, “The Lacuna,” I felt relieved to be given the assignment even though the book is long and time is short. Plus it gives me something to do in the middle of the night. One of the best lines I’ve read so far is this: “Mother is a museum of bad...
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 MoreSummer’s end; From sheepskins to bunk beds
As the summer comes to an end again, I feel that slight tint of autumn waiting upon the late summer air, waiting to gather up the sounds and colors of the season’s excitement. There is a bit of residual sadness that I have learned to associate with this changing of season. For me, it has always been the time when you put away your carefree days and begin...
Read MoreSleeping inside a cloud; It’s all a dream
Whenever you lie anywhere on a cot in a sleeping bag with a delicious red plaid flannel lining, your very dreaming might feel cozy like floating upon a gentle cloud. If that cot and red sleeping bag is inside a fire lookout at eight or nine thousand feet, and it is an August day with monsoon moisture lowered down around your ears, then you might actually...
Read MoreRainy day chicken; Time traveling in the henhouse
“Like our travels, our workdays burned upon the world/lifting its inwards up in fire. Veiled in that power/our minds gave up the endless cycle of growth and decay/and took the unreturning way, the breathless distance of iron.” –Wendell Berry, “Horses” The lightning has been pitchforking across the eastern sky for 45 minutes. I breathe deeply of the moist,...
Read MoreThe fame allure; Lessons from the ‘cowboy lifestyle’
“After four decades devoted to informing fans about the cowboy life style of Roy Rogers and his wife, Dale (Queen of the West) Evans, the family museum in Branson, Missouri, has shut its doors … Christie’s (Auction House) will be selling off most of the collection July 14-15 … (including) … Rogers’ trusty costar Trigger, in the flesh.” –The New...
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...
Read MoreGracing the wall; Dancing with art
There is now a brand new piece of public art in Williams, Ariz., on the exterior wall of Native America gift store in the heart of downtown in this small town that I have come to enjoy. The image commands attention a block away in a gentle way, and I am proud to say that this latest piece is my creation—a gift I chose to give. On a chance lunch months ago...
Read MoreFire on our mountain; Meet Sam McGee in the oven
Lately at the lookout I’ve been reading verses by Robert Service. (In a busy fire season, one finds balance where one can.) Sometimes called “The Canadian Jack London,” Service liked his people and places to have a bit of grit. It’s not hard to imagine him feasting on the details of a fire camp, so as I watched rain sprinkle the dark swath of the Schultz...
Read MoreIn the shadow of the smoke cloud; The mountain just keeps blowing up
The plume of smoke is robust. Deep white—like God’s own puffball mushroom—twisting and alive with the effort of rising from behind Mt. Elden. My home lies over there. It’s Father’s Day Sunday and we’re having a BBQ at my daughter’s house on Cherry Hill. Our first fire of the season started at the edge of town just three days ago. The radio confirms that...
Read MoreBuried treasure; Digging in the garden, in the past
This morning I took the dog for a walk up the urban trail. Gilia, milkvetch and dalmation toadflax were all in bloom. I pulled up a few of the invasive toadflax plants, making a tiny action toward weeding the forest. In my own wild yard, the iris blossoms are spent. Columbine, sage and lavender are flowering now, and beneath the thick mulch, the soil is...
Read MoreDigging in; Responsibility to place
Ten summers ago I worked as a gardener for the Arboretum at Flagstaff. I dug in deep, learning the names of native plants and how to cultivate them. I weeded to the sound of the summer breeze and the racket of hummingbirds sparring over penstemon blossoms. The San Francisco Peaks rose like an indigo ship from the distant horizon. I helped build a water...
Read MoreThe promise of possibility; Learning to find a path
Along with welcoming in the heat of summer after a very long and dramatic winter, we have much to hope for and celebrate. An event that holds the greatest hope for us is the graduation of our youths. I wish you all the best as you enter the “real” world, the world where you are the captain of your own ship. As you venture forth, just know whatever the...
Read MoreOn being selective; More musings on not talking
In a classroom at a middle school the effervescent students wanted me to know one among them “doesn’t talk.” Every day we’d all draw and add words to our drawings: I was the honored guest there for a two week arts in education gig. The teacher was a genius with seventh graders. And one among us they called “selectively mute.” I liked her doodles of Ren and...
Read MoreRobin Hood in Texas; Mixed heroic metaphors
The morning sun backlit the new leaves of the elm and oak trees along the stream, and they glowed with an emerald fire to rival that of some fat bishop’s jewels. The church’s marble spire stood against the skyline. A skinny boy in ragged overalls belly crawled through a tangle of fox grape and cat briar to the edge of a sandy cut bank and surveyed the...
Read MoreLove letter; Understanding the great unconformity
Through a fortunate set of circumstances, I recently spent 10 days living at the south rim of Grand Canyon hiking, making art, writing and then, on the last two days, sitting on the jury panel for the park’s Artist in Residence program. Though I feel I barely know the canyon, I am enthralled. Also, intimidated, curious and profoundly impressed. Each...
Read MoreLooking lower; Exploring the secret lives of plants
“It is certain in any case that life is quite disarmed by the gift to live so entirely in the present, to treasure with such eager care every flower by the wayside and the light that plays on every passing moment.” –Hermann Hesse Nothing grounds me in the moment or in a place more effectively than when I am immersed deeply in the world of botany. It...
Read MoreShi’ma; Revisiting the maternal energy
Ya’ateeh’ Shi Ya azh, a’we’. “My beautiful baby, my child”—a loving greeting of a mother to her son. Blessedly, this is the line I know well. My mother and all mothers draped their child in these tender words of affection. Unconditionally. I glow in the knowledge that I have a mother that gently releases this truth. I was always told that we need to be...
Read MoreDid you hear that bird’s wings? A non-talker’s manifesto
I tore the label off of a pint bottle of water to write down the title for this column. On a recent hike I had a pen in my pocket but no paper, and I wanted to keep the sentences that seemed to bob up from the current of my thoughts like a cork that won’t sink. I like to take the cork from dinner’s wine bottle along when I walk by the rivulet at Schultz...
Read MoreBless these seeds; Ghost of birthdays past
“Inch by inch/Row by row/Gonna make this garden grow/All it takes is a rake and a hoe/And a piece of fertile ground/Inch by inch/Row by row/Someone bless these seeds I sow/Someone keep them safe below/Till the rains come a-tumblin’ down.” –”The Garden Song,” by David Mallett Shanti and Corey Rade Whipstone Farm, Paulden, Ariz. Dear Shanti and Corey,...
Read MoreBrevity and back story; All that you need to know
“If you do not intend to stipulate that marks of punctuation be transmitted, write your message without punctuation and read it carefully to make sure that it is not ambiguous.” –Instructions from a 1928 pamphlet intended to help people write more effective telegrams. I’ve been thinking about texting and telegrams lately, and wondering what we might learn...
Read MoreViola; Community spirit sustained
Last month I was given the honor of receiving the 2010 Viola Award for individual artist contributing to the aesthetic health and wealth of our community. I am truly humbled and grateful for the recognition. The capacity crowd filled the hall of the Radisson to celebrate the organizations and individuals picked for this year’s award ceremony. Familiar...
Read MoreTransforming thought; Living between abundance and scarcity
Spring has finally arrived in Flagstaff, and as the heavy blanket of winter snow thaws I experience a sense of abundance. The Rio de Flag offers the rare and shimmering promise of water as it twists and turns through our neighborhood on its way to join Diablo Creek and the Little Colorado River as they flow into the mother Colorado. The water coaxes great...
Read MoreI learn to delight in thrift: When Warrior Mouse does the math
I want Warrior Mouse. As soon as I saw him in the window at Puchteca Indian Art I started putting the occasional extra five-dollar bill into a tea tin savings bank: For weeks I’ve walked San Francisco Street to the post office so I can admire the feather on his head and the white spots on his delicate but fierce mouse body. I make up stories about where he...
Read MoreThe impulse to connect; When mortal, but not lonely
One recent night I e-mailed a photo of my bookshelf to a writer at The New Yorker. It’s hard to recall quite what seized my shy person’s soul to cause me to upload a rectangle of my private life into a stranger’s computer across the continent. I do know I felt wonder to read in a national forum—The Book Bench—an article about analyzing a person by...
Read MoreTrajectory: In the path of the earth
There’s snow falling—again—but I’m starting to get my annual urge to dig in the dirt. This is a dangerous impulse in Flagstaff in early March, but considering the possibility raises some hope in me. Years ago as newlyweds, we lived for two years in an Iowa farmhouse. All things seemed fertile there, including me. That summer I was pregnant with our older...
Read MoreAmaze your friends; A man and his axe
A musician’s life is a shared life, sometimes with an audience but always with his instrument. Performers often develop an intimate love-hate relationship with their guitar—naming them after sweethearts and mythic champions—and sacrificing to be with them. In 1949 BB King was playing a dance hall in Twist, Arkansas. Two drunks got in a fight over a women...
Read MoreLandscapes of redemption; A commitment to place
The Grand Canyon swallowed me whole. It was as if one day I descended beneath the rim and emerged more myself. Being outside for me has always been like buying back the unhappy moments in my life, minute by minute. As a child I sought refuge exploring the wilderness of my Vermont back yard. Today even the smallest escape to the forest or canyons can...
Read MorePromises a-bloomin’; Campaign musings between City Hall and the Chapter House
With the storm behind us and another birthday behind me, I feel the tinge of spring in the air. Soon the ice-sculpted curbs and alleyways of our town will be but a memory. Ahead is the lush carpet of wildflowers of spring, where a field of campaign signs are blooming. It’s late winter, a city council and mayoral campaign is under way, and a fresh crop of...
Read MoreTrusting the tracks; Living with trains
Falling out of orbit in the Friendship 7 space capsule: as a girl I wanted to do it! Maybe that’s when I became eager to spend company with large chunks of fast moving metal. Hence, I can sometimes be found on the platform of the train station when Amtrak arrives in the evening. This Sunday I counted 11 people getting on and 23 getting off. The two engines...
Read MoreAwake; Visiting the early morning moon
A few weeks ago I was in Mexico, and slept nine nights in my sleeping bag on my friends’ front porch. My sleep was not without middle-of-the-night wakings, but I easily released back into sleep after each one. The rhythm of a life lived mostly outside, and mostly without a timepiece, agrees with me. While there, and against the odds, I got some of the best...
Read MoreSnowbound; In the mountains of lore
In my youth I was a humble working cowboy riding for the CO Bar—that’s the Babbit Ranch. One day the Old Man came to me and said, “My prize broodmare has run off. Track her down and bring her back.” He was boss so I saddled up my pony and set out to find that runaway horse. All day I rode through the golden aspens under a bright blue sky and it was a...
Read MoreSnowstorm of 1967; Embracing the newness
By the time you read this piece, we should know if all the hype of this week’s back-to-back snowstorms lived up to the expectation. Two to three feet we are told, and anything less will be a letdown. With natural emergency what it is today, we have to be extra careful and prepare for such ominous predictions. This elevated sense of danger and adventure...
Read MoreThe certainty of change; A clean slate in 2010
On this long, bright eve of a new year, the blue moonlight casts a neon glow on the snow and I am restless for a new beginning. The media’s incessant cataloging of the triumphs and misfortunes of not just the past year but the entire decade has sparked me to reference my own. But I cannot summon the thoughts hiding in the shadows of my mind to become words...
Read MoreMountain life: Winter walking and Phoenix napping
Because I still have family and friends in the city where I was born, it’s easy for me to be a winter connoisseur of Phoenix back yards. In this back yard, my head rests on a pillow in the shade of a grapefruit tree while my belly and legs and feet bake in afternoon sunshine. Birds squeak, a girl behind a block wall beyond the alley squeals while her daddy...
Read MoreLiving with Less: Keep the home fires burning
Have you noticed that more people are shopping for second-hand goods these days? With lots more people shopping at Goodwill, St. Vinnies and Savers these days, seems like the pickings are getting a little slim. That’s why I’m starting a campaign to get people to clean out their closets and garages and donate stuff they’re not using. Around this time of...
Read MoreWake up to beauty
I’m sitting in my studio today stitching on a project that has no intent. It doesn’t need one: it’s simply beautiful. And that makes me happy. My needle moves in and out of a sandwich of rayon challis and silk chiffon, a repetitive meditation on color. There’s no other point to it, which is a nice break from my usual, content-driven artistic pursuits. The...
Read MoreRemodeling my life: Starting from scratch in a space
Fall makes me greedy. I want to capture the light and the colors and the smells for safekeeping, so I can enjoy them in the dead of winter, when the light is too low, the days are too short and the colors are not so vivid. The sun streams into my studio this fall morning, at that rare angle perfectly designed to show off the yellows and reds of the leaves...
Read MoreRoad of clouds: Traveling an ever-changing path
Audria is a massage therapist and a painter. She’s well-known for her lovely cloudscapes, having studied clouds closely and painted them for years. She’s painted clouds on the ceiling of her massage room in greys, yellows, browns and blues. It’s one of the favorite moments of my month: to be on her massage table, and roll over onto my back and study her...
Read MoreContra dancing with chaos
A couple of Saturdays ago, I unintentionally went contra dancing. And though I’ve been before, I never understood the appeal of it. This time, though, I really enjoyed myself. I needed to get out of my head for a while, and while I’m not sure why this time was different, it worked. At one point, the caller said something that made my ears perk up: “It’s...
Read MoreBorn on the Fourth of July; A 5 by 9 1/2 foot remembrance
When I worked for the government as a fire lookout, I would watch the distant dandelions of fireworks on the Fourth of July and toast my father’s birthday. Standing in that dark capsule on a mountain top I’d think of him in Europe with the 94th Infantry and wonder how his experience compared to the episodes of the television show, COMBAT, we watched as...
Read MoreGet Dirty: Doing the hardest thing
In our family of girls in the early ‘60s, my two sisters’ and my primary jobs appeared to be staying clean and staying safe, not necessarily in that order. In my mother’s defense, these two principles – cleanliness and safety – were deeply embedded in the culture of that time. The edge of that generation of women raised to be housewives and mothers barely...
Read MoreFinding Contentment: When less is more
“The true antidote for greed is contentment.” The Dalai Lama The yard demands my attention. A neighbor walked by as I was gardening last weekend and said, “You’re doing the meditation of one thousand dandelions.” In my case, it’s more like one hundred thousand dandelions, and soon to be more, since every one is going to seed at this exact moment. In Rush...
Read MoreGrief and grace
A vague sadness seems to be endemic in my circle of friends these days. No one’s really talking about it, but there it is, just under the fabric of our daily lives. It’s not suffering we want to make public. At its worst, tears stream down your face, mascara runs, and your features contort, making you look like Tim Curry’s character at the end of The Rocky...
Read MoreIndian Flat; The silence of the storm
This week’s column is by Scott Thybony. Late at night a snowstorm moved across Indian Flat north of the San Francisco Peaks. It was gone by morning, leaving behind a stillness so tangible it woke me up. Looking outside, I saw the pinyon trees buried in white with a foot of new snow filling the cut of the road. Soon I had the fire going and a column...
Read MoreChanging my mind
I believe that – if we’re lucky – we’re always in the process of becoming our true selves. Sometimes it happens slowly, with baby steps, then, suddenly, by giant leaps, like some weird game of psychic “Simon Says”. This is the story of how a red leather purse could effect one tiny transformation. My friend Laura brought this incredibly beautiful,...
Read MoreWandering in the dark; (when ho-ho-ho gets old)
I know a woman who celebrated Winter Solstice at the South Pole by inviting fellow workers at the station there to join her with wine to watch a DVD of the Peter, Paul, and Mary Christmas Concert. When I pictured it, I imagined them as far from Christmas as possible, almost as if they celebrated on a space ship. Indeed I read a blog where a worker who...
Read MoreFinding the tribe: Traveling the unknown path
In my album of baby photos, there is a photograph of my granddaddy taken sometime in the 1950s. He’s standing inside a rustic cabin, holding up a fish that’s about two feet long, and wearing a plaid flannel shirt underneath a canvas jacket. The jacket was probably lined with more flannel. Flannel played a leading role in Granddaddy’s wardrobe. Granddaddy...
Read MoreSine Wave
The noise from my roof sounds as if it’s either hailing or a herd of small rodents is running across it. Neither is true: A single yellow aspen leaf has landed on the skylight above my head, backlit by the mid-morning light. The next second, it’s gone. The wind is blowing the leaves off the aspen tree in back. These fall days feel so aimless. Lifeless...
Read MoreMeltdown: Do you feel lucky?
This week’s post is by Peter Friederici Investment banks and other financial giants have been acting like panicked polar bears drifting too far out on a warming sea, jostling and occasionally cannibalizing one another as they compete for the dwindling space available on their melting ice floe. The carnage is of Biblical proportions: Then, lo!, did...
Read MoreLife on the edge
I am living on the edge. No, not that edge. My edge has a chain-link fence along it, so I won’t walk over the cliff in the middle of the night, I guess, and sue the State of California. We are at a state beach in southern California, living both the paradise and the nightmare that is urban camping. Our neighbor’s radio is blasting Ryan Seacrest, counting...
Read MoreHell of a Bind
This week’s column is by Scott Thybony. No matter how hard things get, most of us know someone who has it even harder. As a writer, I’ve found myself listening to the stories of people who have suffered in ways most of us can’t imagine. Some have been friends and others strangers, people who have survived torture and starvation, slave...
Read MoreHoping for sleep on the Coatimundi Highway
A few years ago, I spent the month of March strolling around Santa Fe, camping on the beach in Baja California, then trekking through Araviapa Creek on my first-ever backpacking trip. In Mexico, I slept on the beach. The night sky was at once astonishing and consoling, and I spent hours stargazing, trying to memorize the arrangements, reconnecting with the...
Read MoreRooted
This week’s column is by Scott Thybony. Before heading up the mountain to help brand cattle, I stop at a café on the edge of Flagstaff. Some ranchers are having their morning confab, and the cowboy next to me stares into a cup of coffee nursing a hangover. “What’s that?” asks a man watching something move across the floor. Turning,...
Read MoreA note from Prescott: A former one-woman-show plans her wedding
This week’s column is by Megan Buchanan-Cherry. After having lived very happily in Flagstaff for a number of years, I recently reluctantly moved down tot Prescott when I got engaged. I am no reluctantly engaged, just sad to not be living in Flagstaff anymore. Actually, it was just over one year ago; I’m still in denial, plus I still come...
Read MoreAbout my hands
Here is what I think about while I’m working with my hands: everything. For that fact alone, I love working with my hands. While I peel carrots, drive long distances, wash dishes, I also woolgather. Those sorts of tasks make a connection to my brain that doesn’t require the involvement of my conscious self. That state — a sensation of simultaneous...
Read MoreElvis on the Road to Flagstaff
This week’s column is by Scott Thybony. A scrawled note sat in my files for years: “Elvis has vision while crossing Arizona desert,” it stated. No date, no source. But after reading it again I couldn’t shake the idea of Elvis Presley wandering through the desert in a pair of blue suede shoes, searching for God. It didn’t exactly fit...
Read MoreSacred is; As sacred does
The San Francisco Peaks practically whisper through the bedroom window of my upstairs apartment near downtown. Along with the tribes that consider the mountain sacred, I believe the rest of us should more frequently name how that mountain touches our lives. I know I count on the peaceful presence of the highest peak in Arizona. Many times a week I look...
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