Category Archives: Places

The Wedding Quilt

To me, the title of this post sounds like these words should be in an anthology of sentimental pioneer stories written in the late 1800s. This is the title I want, however, so I am wondering where these words will lead me.

Looking Backward: Forty years ago next June, my sister-in-law, Betsy, made my husband, Tom, and me a quilt as our wedding gift. It took many months for the whole project to come together. Tom drew Hopi designs (or at least what Frank Waters thought were Hopi designs) on squares of cloth and Betsy embroidered them. She patched these squares together with squares of cloth she had taken from old shirts, skirts, and jeans. The skeleton around the patches was dark blue broadcloth (I think that’s what you call it). The quilt warmed our beds in our dumpy Salt Lake City apartments. The quilt was bright, bold, and strong, just as we all felt back then.

quilt detail: turtle

I gather now that I wasn’t supposed to wash the quilt as much as I did. However, there were the two of us and two babies (mewling and puking), and I like things clean. Please keep this in mind for a few paragraphs.

quilt detail: Hopi figure

Way Back: I never could sew and I can’t sew now. I mean, I can sew on buttons and fix little rips and that is it. Because I wanted to make Christmas gifts by hand for my kids and because I was poor, I did piece together a few flannel nightgowns, some stuffed animals, and, I believe, a Superman cape for Robert, and sleeping bags for Martha the doll and Railroad Dog the stuffed animal. Way Way Back: I’m so old, I was required to take Home Ec when I was in 7^th grade. I made the worst, the ugliest, the craziest-pleated kilt in Milford (MI) Junior High history. I kept it for years, although I do not know why. Please keep this mind, too.

quilt detail: sun figure

Fifteen Years Ago: Some of the patches on the wedding quilt were falling apart. Maybe I had washed it too much. A few patches almost disappeared along with some of the embroidery. We bought bright—but not as bright—quilts and coverlets at L.L. Bean and packed the wedding quilt away.

Not Too Many Years Ago: Tom and I started thinking about what we might do when we retired. We planned to travel back to Utah and explore the places we’d missed, like Capitol Reef and Escalante. We told Betsy we’d pick her up from her little Utah town and go adventuring together again.

Capitol Reef

Five Years Ago: Betsy just up and died and we miss her.

2013: A) Tom and I went adventuring on the Colorado Plateau. We saw Black Dragon Canyon with Blaine and Bonnie, but Betsy, their dear friend, wasn’t there. We camped in Capitol Reef and it was even better than we had imagined. B) We got back to our house in Charlottesville, Virginia. We took some paintings out of storage. The wedding quilt was protecting one of the paintings. We lay the quilt on the lawn and saw that, really, only a handful of patches needed to be repaired.

quilt on lawn

Two Weeks Ago: I can’t sew worth anything, but I finished repairing the wedding quilt. It lies now on our bed and we will put it in the camper to go back to Utah when the new year comes. Although the quilt, and we ourselves, are not as bright, bold, and strong as when we were young, it’s alright, and, this time, Betsy will come along with us.

quilt, repaired

Here’s the song that always reminded us of Betsy:

Oh, had I a golden thread
And a needle so fine
I’ve weave a magic strand
Of rainbow design
Of rainbow design.

In it I’d weave the bravery
Of women giving birth,
In it I would weave the innocence
Of children over all the earth,
Children of all earth.

Show my brothers and sisters
My rainbow design,
Bind up this sorry world
With hand and heart and mind,
Hand and heart and mind.

(The Judy Collins version (from Whales and Nightingales, 1970) of “Oh, Had I a Golden Thread” by Pete Seeger, 1959)

Flowers and Butterflies Near Charlottesville, Virginia

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swallowtail butterfly and thistle

silver-spotted skipper on agastache

crape myrtle and oakleaf hydrangea

my porch

cabbage white on agastache

red-spotted purple with crape myrtle blossoms

torenia

caterpillar on black and blue salvia with black-eyed Susan

butterfly with black-eyed Susans and verbena bonariensis

black-eyed Susans and spider web

The crickets sang in the grasses. They sang the song of summer’s ending, a sad, monotonous song. “Summer is over and gone,” they sang. “Over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying.”

The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year — the days when summer is changing into fall the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

Minidoka Plus Flexibility, Part 1

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Forgive me, it has been 57 days since my last post. I see by the notes in my day planner that on that day, April 14, Tom and I visited Minidoka National Historical Site (http://www.nps.gov/miin/index.htm) in south central Idaho. I don’t need notes to remember that the winds hit heavy there through the ruins and the winter grasses. Tom and I were alone there on the edge of some road, where the same single pickup truck drove past us two or three times, but there was no other traffic. Even with our REI/L.L. Bean/whatever fancy brand jackets, hats, and gloves, the cold and sadness blew right through us. It makes me wonder how that Idaho wind must have felt to the Japanese and Japanese Americans who were relocated to Minidoka in 1942. Afterwards we were going to camp at Lake Walcott State Park, but, as my notes have it, “no dice.” The state park website had claimed a campground was open, but, it turned out that the bathrooms were not unlocked yet, so we headed back to civilization. Tom and I ended up at the Best Western Plus Inn and Convention Center in Burley.

We hadn’t passed through Burley since December 1974. We’d always remembered Burley as the (not historical) site of one of the worst dining experiences of our lives. Tom, our friend Sally, and I were heading back from the Northwest (Colville, Washington and Moscow, Idaho). It felt like we were in some, I don’t know, early Altman film. No one in the restaurant would acknowledge our presence—even though the dump was mostly empty. I guess we finally got some food. One thing was for sure—we were going to get out of town before sundown. This time around, our server was friendly, and only mildly patronizing. Plus, our meals were merely bad, not extraordinarily so. The food wasn’t poisonous—American cheese grilled cheese and salad that could have come from any school lunch (before Michelle Obama got to it).

Note: It looks like I favor writing about inconsequential personal memories instead an abiding national shame relevant to our current times. I hope the photographs below can explain a little bit about how I felt.

Minidoka #1

Minidoka #2

Minidoka #3

Minidoka #4

Minidoka #5

Minidoka #6

Enough of that detour: In April, I told you I was going to write about flexibility, so, please see below.

Flexibility, Part 1: About an hour ago on my way out of my yard to the coffee shop to write, I almost tripped on my own Birkenstocks. I grabbed onto a handy tomato cage and all was well. Still, perhaps that little non-incident sums up the current state of my physical flexibility.

I’m thinking back to March in Canyonlands. I’m afraid I was a sight (not historical). I was inching up (I originally wrote the word “clambering” but that makes the rate of movement sound more energetic than it was) a small, but steep, patch of snowy, icy slickrock. Generally, I am pretty good on slickrock—I really do clamber on it. However, I notice that when more variables are added to a task (e.g., steep plus ice, melting snow, mud), I seem to be less flexible now than in the old days. Anyhow, we put on our Yaktrax*, Tom clambered up and then tossed down kindly words of encouragement and the offer of a hand, which I refused with what bit of dignity I had left. Really, I’m not talking about a cliff here, just four or five vertical feet. It’s like if items are not organized—first slickrock, then snow, then a scramble on a narrow trail, etc.—I’m not as comfortable multi-tasking as I used to be. I don’t know if this is true. I’m just trying the idea on to see if it fits.

I tell you, with my soggy fingers gripping the wet ice, Yaktrax digging for purchase on the rocks below and my not insubstantial butt in the air—and I was wearing my bright blue hiking pants—I was living very close to the ground.

* A couple of weeks ago, I was regaling our daughter Sarah with tales of our hiking and camping adventure, but instead of saying Yaktrax, I think I was calling them Moose Tracks (as in the flavor of ice cream). Makes me wonder about the flexibility (and reliability) of my cognitive functioning. See Flexibility, Part 2, coming to this space sometime before another 57 days.

Yaktrax

Observations, Photos

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Hello again: For three weeks I’ve been trying unsuccessfully (until today) to write a new post for this blog. I could blame my lack of production on limited access to Internet or (sometimes) even electricity, but that is not where blame lies. No, the blame lies in my wanting to condense my recent travels and experiences into aphorisms. I have wanted to tell you that I have been living close to the ground, that I am being here now, and that I would rather be a forest than a street. (see, in order, Lao Tzu, Baba Ram Dass, and Paul Simon). I am beginning to think that it is a bit ironic, not to say pompous, to try to distill into handy phrases my attempts to live more within the present. Instead, today, I am going to write down a few observations from the last several weeks and share some photos.

Observations:

About identifying flora, fauna, and geologic formations: I am less strict with myself now than in previous times. That is, if I see some kind of aster, say, I will allow myself to check it off in my flower guide even if I am not 100% sure of the species or sub-species name. Or, if we thought we saw a western meadowlark, I allow myself to mark it off in the Peterson’s A Field Guide to Western Birds. My copy is over forty years old, falling apart, and now there’s even an app for identifying birds on your smart device—I might as well mark up the guide now. When I am dead and gone, I don’t think anyone will be inspecting my book to see whether I made any inaccurate identifications. Re the geologic formations: if I think a layer of rock is likely Moenkopi Formation, I say to Tom and myself, “I think that layer is likely Moenkopi Formation.”

Asters, Kirk Creek, Los Padres National Forest, March 28, 2013

Capitol Reef National Park, March 6, 2013

A Field Guide to Western Birds

On tolerance for risk: While I have always been quite risk averse (read: overly cautious, chicken, etc.), this tendency seems to be intensifying. My husband and I love traveling where no one else is around. On this trip, we’ve spent days on empty roads and deserted campgrounds. We love being by ourselves with the beauty and the silence and the maybe meadowlarks…but. Get us on a muddy hill in the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and we turn tail (slowly, carefully, in 4-wheel drive mode) and go back to a more civilized campsite.

Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, March 11, 2013

About our vehicle: We drive a Ford F-150 EcoBoost with a Hallmark (Ft. Lupton, Colorado) Guanella camper. So far, our truck camper has proven to be a yare craft.

Lava Beds National Monument, April 8, 2013

About bodies of water: About camping at Big Sur—I don’t have the words. Still, it’s clear to me that I love lakes and rivers more than the ocean. I grew up on a Michigan lake and the voices of the frogs, the calls of the red-winged blackbirds, and the low sounds by the shore are music for my soul.

Big Sur, March 29, 2013

Regarding the tastiness of food while hiking: For decades my friends and I have laughed about how good the Vienna sausages tasted below the rim in the Grand Canyon and how toothsome the Gerber’s blueberry buckle was in the Kolob backcountry of Zion. At least this one aphorism stands: just about anything tastes delicious when you’re hiking. Nothing tastes better than whole wheat bread, peanut butter and (Art’s homemade) jelly sandwiches, accompanied by some carrots, chips, hummus, and clementines, washed down with water.

Lunch, almost finished, Chesler Park, The Needles, Canyonlands, March 3, 2013

Concerning flexibility: Lately, I’ve been thinking a great deal about my physical and mental flexibility (or lack thereof). However, I think these are enough observations for today. More on flexibility next time, but now, here are some photos.

Photos:

Pinyon Pine

Flowers, Arroyo Seco, Ventana Wilderness

Gull along Big Sur

Virgin River beach

Presidio, San Francisco

Lava Beds Overview

Snake River Bluffs near The Oregon Trail

Eel River Campground, Mendocino National Forest

Places and Names

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One of the happy memories of my intensive child-rearing days is watching PBS’s Reading Rainbow with our children, Sarah and Robert. In those hot and humid Virginia summers, the three of us looked forward to piling on the bed, cooling off with the faint air of the window unit, and enjoying LeVar Burton’s light, upbeat delivery of the good news about books (or the news about good books). My favorite episode, from 1983, featured Paul Goble’s Gift of the Sacred Dog.* In this episode, Phoebe Snow sang a song written for the show by Steve Horelick, “Ancient Places, Sacred Lands,” which evokes the power of American names. I cry whenever I hear the song, including twice this morning. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odd53Y3d2GM):

Come sit beside me, and hear a story
Of long ago when the people lived free
And named the waters, and all the places
High and low
Refrain:
Ancient Places, Sacred Lands
Names we know so well
But no one understands

I guess it is either the English teacher in me or my somewhat obsessive nature that makes me love lists. Furthermore, I particularly love American lists. Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Maya Angelou, Stephen Vincent Benét, Edward Abbey, heck, even Vachel Lindsay please me with their incantations of American experiences, people, and places.

Why I am telling you this now: For the last seven weeks my husband Tom and I have been traveling by car in the intermountain west in fulfillment of a long-held dream. I’ve tried to post some insights (or, at least, experiences) of this trip, but that has proven difficult. I don’t have words to describe the places we’ve seen. I have some photographs (below), but even the best of them are only crude likenesses of what we have seen. Likewise, I can’t describe my emotions accurately either. Tom and I have been happy and sad, giddy and pensive, and satisfied or not. We have visited some of our dear friends from the old days and found them to be as dear as ever. That is, we have not arrived on a different plane; life has gone along with us on the journey. So, I have turned to the names of the places we’ve visited, hoping, as with the poets, that some of the power of the places can be transferred to this page:

Colorado, Denver, Glenwood Springs, Grand Junction, Book Cliffs, Utah, Uinta National Forest, Price Canyon, Soldier Summit, Salt Lake City,Quince Street, Marmalade District, Little America, Goshen, Kolob, Zion, Rockville, Springdale, Refrigerator Canyon, Walters Wiggles (a few), Pa’rus Trail, Angel’s Landing, Oscar’s Café, St. George, Ivins, Santa Clara River Reserve, Arizona, Arizona Strip, Kaibab Plateau, Jacob Lake, Vermillion Cliffs, Flagstaff, Coconino Plateau, Mogollon Rim, Sedona, Sally’s house, Teacup Trail, Jim Thompson Trail, Chapel of the Holy Cross, Jerome, Prescott, Thumb Butte, Nevada, Boulder City, El Cortez Hotel, Las Vegas, California, Needles, Mojave National Preserve, Barber Peak Loop Trail, Opalite Cliffs, Banshee Canyon, Colorado River, Cattail Cove State Park, Virgin River Gorge, Springdale (again), Zion (again), Great White Throne, Pioneer Lodge, Watchman Trail, Coalpits Wash, Scoggins Wash, Weeping Rock, Hidden Canyon, Temple of Sinawava, Page, Big Water, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Wahweap Hoodoos Trail, Kanab, Sq**w Trail, Coral Pink Sand Dunes, Moccasin Mountain Dinosaur Track site, Mt. Carmel Junction, Elkhart Cliffs, Long Valley, Sevier River, Panguitch, Panguitch diner, Panguitch in the snowstorm, I-70 to I-15 in the blizzard, I-15 to Payson in the whiteout, Art and Skip’s Mardi Gras, Spanish Fork Canyon, Price Canyon again, Soldier Summit again, Glenwood Springs, Vail Pass, Eisenhower Tunnel, Denver.

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*In the last three years I have divested myself thousands of books and papers, but I still have all of our Paul Goble books safe and sound in storage. I highly recommend Goble’s retellings of Native American stories, but you don’t have to take my word for it…. I’ll see you next time.

Artifacts

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San Rafael

Sometime in 1974, my husband Tom and I and our friends, Art and Dave, decided to explore the San Rafael Swell area of Southeastern Utah. This area wasn’t too far from Carbon County, Utah where Tom and Art had grown up. If you’ve driven on I-70 through eastern Utah, you’ve seen how remote this area is. Even now, the 110 miles between Green River and Salina, Utah is the longest stretch of the Interstate Highway System with no services for motorists. Back in 1974, the freeway wasn’t even built, so we were really in the middle of nowhere. That’s not the accurate thing to say, though. We were alone in the middle of thousands of acres of beauty and silence.

That’s not what I have been thinking about all these years, though. I have been thinking about two things. First, I think about how we—not scampered, not trudged— more like just persevered up and around the swells and valleys in the blue Volkswagen Squareback. I always pretended the car had 4-wheel drive capabilities, and it generally rewarded my high expectations. This day, we were on a sandy, rocky track toiling up to a rise. There was a large rock ahead on the side of the track. When we got almost next to the rock, it shape-shifted into a golden eagle. The eagle unfurled his wings—almost close enough to touch—and flew from the brown sand into the blue sky. Was it magic or some kind of benediction or just nothing out of the ordinary? I’m reserving judgment.

But I mostly think about how I almost killed our friend Art, all around good man and best man at our wedding. With all the hundreds of canyons of the San Rafael surrounding us, it just seemed natural to start climbing up and that’s what we did. I was young then. My bones didn’t creak and I did not step gingerly. We started scaling a cliff—mostly straight up—and I was first. I don’t remember why I was first, but I suspect it was because I was the non-Utahn in the group, by far the shortest, the woman, and so they wanted to let me set the pace. After me, came Art, then Dave, and then Tom—one straight below the next.

I don’t remember now whether it was sandstone (probably) or limestone, but I felt indigenous to this place. My hands felt at home on the rocks. I knew how to carefully search out footholds and handholds, and soon we were high above the canyon floor. I grabbed a large—and, I thought, secure—rock. It dislodged and fell down on Art’s shoulder. He fell straight backwards towards the canyon floor 50 or more feet below. Probably before I could even scream, Dave caught Art and stopped his fall. That’s about when we finished that climb. I don’t remember anything else about that time. We all resumed our lives. Some things changed; some things stayed the same.

Last week I saw Art for the first time in thirty years. Tom, Art, and I were having dim sum at the Café Anh Hong in Salt Lake City. Art said he sometimes thought of that incident in the San Rafael. He thought maybe that throughout our lives we don’t always know when or how often we just miss death or calamity. I am glad that Art missed that San Rafael exit point and that his good will has stayed in the world all these years. Art’s favorite old rock CD is Love, Forever Changes. It does, but it stays the same.

Artifacts: