Tag Archives: North Rim

Salad Days, Salad Years: Reverie

Right now, my weather app claims that it is 29 degrees* here this afternoon in Arlington, Virginia. So far this winter we’ve had some cold spells, some cold rains, but only a couple of snow flurries. Still, it is winter enough to keep me inside today in reverie.

I’m old now and I do spend some time thinking about times long past. Shakespeare gives us the phrase “salad days” (Antony and Cleopatra, Act I, Scene 5). For me, though, the phrase is literal: I am thinking about the salads I’ve made and the salad ingredients I’ve grown.

Early salads Sometime in my early teens, I started making salads for the family dinners. This was an easy task, but I felt proud to do it. If you are from the Midwest of my childhood (or perhaps from another time or place, also), you may know this salad. I tore up iceberg lettuce, cut up tomatoes, and–if we had them–also put in cucumbers and scallions. I made the thousand island salad dressing by mixing Hellman’s mayonnaise and ketchup to which I might add a little pickle relish and/or chopped hard-boiled egg to make the islands. I think we all liked the salad well enough and it paired well with the meatloaf or pork chops or pot roast meals we often ate.

Around this same era, my mom taught me to make her potato salad. She was a careful cook and I can see her now–telling me how one needs to boil the potatoes with their “jackets” on, and then showing me how to cut them and the other vegetables in precise pieces before mixing in the few seasonings and dressing. I have been thinking about this potato salad for a couple of years now. I keep thinking I want to make a batch, even though our lives left the cold chicken and potato salad era decades ago. Tom and I both remember picnics up Mill Creek Canyon near Salt Lake City with our very young children and our friends-maybe cold chicken with potato salad in the summer and roasted hot dogs over a fire and potato salad when September came. The last time I made potato salad regularly was in the early 1990s in Washington, D.C. when I taught adult learners from the Food and Beverage Workers Union, Local 32. Most of the classes were on Saturdays and the students and I decided to have potluck lunches. Some students brought D.C. half-smokes, some brought macaroni and cheese, other brought chips, drinks, and other tasty foods. I brought the potato salad. I added more onion, cumin seed, and liquid from jarred jalapenos to my mom’s recipe and it was a hit. Watch for updates: When spring comes for real, I am going to make a batch of potato salad and go on a picnic with Tom and whomever else wants to come. I just can’t decide whether to bring the cold fried chicken or grill the hot dogs.

Middle salads As I’ve mentioned before, I spent the summer of 1970 working for the Utah Parks Company at Zion Inn in Zion National Park as a pantry worker (AKA “salad girl”). I worked the summers of 1971-1973 at Grand Canyon Lodge at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, also as a pantry worker. These are some of the happiest times of my life so I have years worth of reverie about this era. I learned a great deal from my bosses and coworkers about making salads, cooking, and life in general. In the national parks, I learned to make big trays of desserts and tubs of salads. One of the first lessons in Zion was that what worked in Michigan might not work in the desert southwest. Mary, my pantry boss, instructed me to prepare a large tray of cheese sandwiches. Being the organized person (I thought) I was, I lay out a full tray of bread slices in preparation for adding, in turn, the cheese slices and then the top slice of bread. There, in the desert, that first layer of bread dried out instantly and was unusable. Never would have happened like that in Michigan. Adapt to your circumstances was the lesson. I am still working on that.

In the Grand Canyon Lodge kitchen, I had other lessons to learn. Our dear bosses/mentors/friends-for-life were pantry supervisor Bertha Fitzwater and chef Floyd Winder. Bertha, born in 1897, was hard of hearing. Her hearing seemed selective, though: She could hear what she wanted and needed to hear and then ignore the rest. Early on that summer Bertha told me to “clean as you go” in the kitchen. I have done so ever since then, and it has served me and my kitchen well. More important than cleanliness is kindness and I learned some of that from Bertha. 1971 was so long ago, maybe you can hardly imagine it. We women in the kitchen wore horrible white uniform dresses (they deserve their own whole cranky reverie). Most of the hipp(i)er young men that headed to the North Rim cut their hair before they got there. Not so, Pat Malone. He showed up in the kitchen sporting his long golden locks and scraggly goatee. Utah Parks was a conservative company and many of the workers were traditionally minded Latter-Day Saints. So, as I watched, Pat was getting a quiet and cold shoulder from the workers in the kitchen. Maybe Bertha couldn’t hear, but she could see and feel. She got a bowl of ice cream and went right up to Pat and pushed the bowl near his face and said, smell this, I think it is going bad. Pat put his face down to smell and Bertha shoved the ice cream into his face. Haha, a good laugh all around and the ice was broken. Golden, elf-like Pat (gone these ten years) became a favorite of many. I still see and feel your kindness, Bertha, and I try sometimes to follow your path. Linda, Richard, and Gordon, we are still pantry friends together.

Chef Floyd Winder was a large middle-aged man with a military buzz cut, a Utah twang, a piercing intellect, and a wit as dry as the desert. I met Floyd (and Bertha) in May, 1971, just weeks after I had graduated from college. After all of those high octane professors (and yes, many of them were exemplary and I learned a great deal from their classes), all the papers I wrote, all the hours I had spent throwing around words like etiology, polity, and structural-functionalism, I was full of myself and my fancy education. Well, as I watched and listened to Bertha and Floyd I saw that they knew just as much about their own fields of endeavor as the professors did about theirs. More importantly, Bertha and Floyd seemed to understand human nature, but still decided to look at people with humor and kindness. Floyd knew his workers well, and if they were smart and conscientious, he just left them to their jobs—no micromanaging from him. Here are three short Floyd stories:

North Rim was about 80 miles from the closest town. So, when we ran out of ingredients, we were out until the next truck made its way up to our kitchen at the end of the road. The pantry staff made seafood cocktail appetizers, using crab, shrimp, lettuce, cocktail sauce–the usual ingredients. They were popular menu items, so we often ran out of the canned crab. What to do? Floyd said put canned tuna on the salad instead. To our alarmed looks Floyd simply noted that tuna comes from the sea.

Grand Lodge kitchen served excellent ice cream and sherbet, but we made ho-hum puddings, cobblers, cakes, and frozen pies baked in house. One time a customer was oohing and aahing to the server about her slice of pie. The guest asked for the recipe, so Floyd cut off the recipe panel from the frozen pie box for the woman. In neither of this or the above instance did Floyd smile.

The kitchen ran well under Floyd’s firm, but (somehow) laid-back rule. The menu was on a set schedule and the food was rolled out mostly the same week after week under his supervision. The only time I ever saw Floyd personally cook any food was when Utah Parks Company hosted a party for the staff. It turned out that not only could Floyd cook delicious food, but, by god, he created an ice sculpture for us.

I have other, more serious, stories about Floyd. When I felt lonely that year in Page, Arizona, I would visit Floyd and his kids at his home in Springdale, Utah right outside of Zion. A kind face and a homey meal meant a great deal to me back in those days when I was so green. A few years later, Floyd would visit Tom and me and our little children when he was up in Salt Lake City for cancer treatments at the VA Hospital.

Growing salads As I’ve mentioned before, I took up growing my own salads many years ago–49 years ago to be precise. Every garden space (from window sills to large gardens with grape vines and raspberries and corn) is different. Different, but always satisfying. Sometimes plants grow for me and sometimes they don’t, but I am always learning something new from them. Here is a partial list of the salad stuff I’ve grown: many types of lettuce, thyme, basil (five kinds), rosemary, spinach, Swiss chard, cilantro, sugar snap peas, shallots, onions, tomatoes (probably at least 25 varieties), peppers (probably more than 15 varieties), chives, lemon balm, sage, dill, borage, anise hyssop, artichokes, scallions, mint, radicchio, arugula, kale (at least three types), Italian oregano, cucumbers, broccoli, epazote, field cress, mizuna, parsley, lemon grass, and more that I can’t remember right this minute. However, the memories of my mother and the rest of my family, Bertha, Floyd, and all the others remain green.

*green leaf black seeded simpson lettuce seedlings, 2/15/23*

*I started this article about two weeks ago, I have avoided working on it. Today, I feel spring in the air (and in my bones) and hear it in the birdsong.

August 2022: Both Sides Now

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*Clouds at Point Imperial, North Rim of the Grand Canyon, September 2018*

Like some others, I have been thinking about Joni Mitchell this past week. Mitchell* performed at the Newport Folk Festival on July 24, 2022 after not performing an entire set for many years. Unlike some of my friends, I haven’t listened to her much this last week. Not sure why that is, but I think it might be because Joni Mitchell is already in my blood like holy wine.

Some of you have heard this story before (and some of you lived it with me), but I want to write about it again. I am writing this article sitting in my chair. No music now, but there are clouds off to the right through the balcony window.

*my chair below the Joni Mitchell drawing***

I think I first listened to Joni Mitchell’s music in the fall of 1968 when I was not quite 19 years old. It is possible that I heard Judy Collin’s version of “Both Sides Now” before I heard Mitchell’s own version. I liked both versions–then and now. Soon after, I heard Mitchell’s albums, probably on one of my college roommate’s record player. Then and now, when I hear those words and that voice–or just think of them as I am doing now–I am transported to another place. There is pain in that place, but the words and the voice I hear sing a strong and healing magic.

For several years when I was young, I would sing Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, and Joan Baez songs. This was quite a feat because I can’t–and never could–sing well, so I sang when I was alone. I sang Mitchell’s “Michael from Mountains,” “Tin Angel,” and “Blue” thinking of Tom. Sometimes I would sing as I walked at Lone Rock beach at Lake Powell near where I taught or while I drove the back roads of the Intermountain West, where I often didn’t have radio reception.

In 1973, I received a teaching fellowship for a Master’s degree in English at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. That was great (except for the stipend, of course, which was a meager $2,000 per year). Many of my Grand Canyon friends were in Salt Lake at the time and I met another lifelong friend there, my fellow teacher, Laura. I was still bewitched by the songs of Joni Mitchell and, because I wanted to study the English words that meant a great deal to me, I decided to write a thesis on the lyrics in Mitchell’s songs.

Many things happened: I taught freshman composition classes including reviewing hundreds of essays, I got married and shortly Tom and I were expecting a child. My plan on the thesis was to finish it before our first child was to be born in May of 1975. With one thing and another, I finally finished the thesis not long before our second child was born in May of 1977. Our friends from back in the day may remember me listening, writing, rewriting, stalling, obsessing, and worrying about the paper. I had elements of the thesis in various states of readiness for months, but the final version came together when I was able to spend a week working alone at our friend Sally’s apartment. My thesis was accepted and I remember the kind words of Professor Phil Sullivan–an aging hippie among the more standard issue faculty I had at Utah. Phil agreed with me that music lyrics could indeed be poetry. Rest in peace, Phil.

Note: You can tell how long ago all of this was because my thesis only covers Mitchell through Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975). It was also so long ago that I needed to hire a typist to type/format my paper into a form that the university would accept. That cost some money. What I remember most, though is how much it cost to copy the thesis. I wanted to make a copy of the thesis to send to Joni Mitchell. Each page back then would cost about one dollar to make a good copy. At a little over 100 pages, I didn’t feel I could afford to copy the thesis to send. I didn’t really know where I might send it anyhow. A Grecian Isle, a red dirt road in Spain, or California? Years passed. Mitchell kept writing, composing, and painting. I kept parenting, gardening, working (mostly in education), and listening to music.

Mitchell sang “Both Sides Now” at the Newport Folk Festival on July 24. I did listen to it and I loved the rendition. Both Joni Mitchell and I are old now, so we have had ample opportunity to look at both sides of our lives with all those illusions and that winning and losing. I don’t really know life at all, but I am okay with that. I remember and still believe what Mitchell said in “Woodstock”: “I don’t know who I am but life is for learning.”

With all the years of loving, winning, losing, and learning in my life, I was happy this morning to see that I still agree with the final sentence of my thesis: “Joni Mitchell, for her part, writes song poetry the way Dylan Thomas would have it, as ‘the rhythmic, inevitably narrative movement from overclothed blindness to a naked vision.'”

*When I started writing this piece, I automatically started writing “Joni” instead of “Joni Mitchell” or “Mitchell.” I don’t write “Will” for William Butler Yeats and I realize I want to equally acknowledge Mitchell’s gravitas, so I have written about her here formally.

**Artist and friend Howard Brough drew this portrait as a wedding gift for Tom and me in 1974. Howard also drew illustrations for Mitchell songs and two more portraits, which were included in the thesis. Thank you, Howard.

Happy New Year, 2022

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When I first considered writing this article, I briefly thought about calling it just “New Year, 2022.” This would be my snarky comment about the state of the continuing pandemic, our national politics, climate disasters, and just about everything else. My terse title would say: nope, not expecting happy things this year either. Almost immediately, though, I remembered that snarky and cynical don’t look well on me. More importantly, I see that all jumbled up with my weariness and anxiety are bits of happiness (or contentment or, at least, acceptance).*

January 31 As it is, I have put off finishing this post until the last day of the month. Luckily, Lunar New Year is beginning, so I am coming in just under the wire. Here is a list of things that make me feel better about going into a new year. I need this list to remind myself of all the good parts of my life.

The people abide. I walk by playgrounds and I see children playing as they always do. Parents are keeping an eye on the kids as parents do. Every time we go to the National Mall, Tom and I see people enjoying the museums, gardens, the ice rink, and food trucks. Despite the continual dose of disturbing news–let alone the wars and rumors of wars–I see helpers and kind people around me every day. I see the workers at my condo and my local grocery store, and those who seek out and help all the lost and lonely ones.

My county still has heart. Tom and I first moved to Arlington County, Virginia in June 1978 and have lived here on an off since. Our children went to school here. In the 1980s we lived a couple blocks from Arlington CentraI Library where I worked part-time. Later I taught immigrants and refugees in Arlington. We were here on September 11, 2001 and saw the Pentagon burning. Again, three decades later, we live a couple blocks from Central Library. Now, in Covid times, Central Library has free WiFi for all in the parking lot, a food pantry, a vegetable patch, and is surrounded by a native plant garden. Most importantly, perhaps, is the library’s strong stand as a safe place for everyone in the community.

*Arlington Central Library, Arlington, Virginia*

Nature comforts me. I find both wonder and solace in the plants, animals, rocks, and sky that I encounter.

Dawn comes. Every day we see the morning light. We follow that light through the day until it is evening. All the light warms us.

We have family, friends, music, and food. I remember the many good parts of my life. I also remember those who have gone. I have listened to Tom play Mozart sonatas almost every day of the pandemic and I feel lucky. It’s the time of year when I remember “Auld Lang Syne.” I shiver or cry or both when I hear the song. I want and need that cup.

For old acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind
Should old acquaintance be forgot
In the days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet
For the sake of auld lang syne

Hope is still around here somewhere. So many words from the wise ones exhort people to live for the day, be in the present, etc. I am on board with that-not that I can do it all that much. I still spend plenty of emotional time in the past and the future, and I am not sure that is all bad. Just a couple of weeks ago, I made camping reservations for early June in Arizona and Utah. Tom and I don’t know how we will feel or how things will be shaping up with the pandemic. We don’t know much of anything. However, we remember the places and people we love from the old days. Maybe we can get to the North Rim another time. Maybe we can visit Capitol Reef and camp on the Aquarius Plateau. Maybe we can go back to Fishlake National Forest and be near Pando (a clonal colony of quaking aspen considered by some to be the largest single living organism on earth) one more time. Maybe we will drink a cup of kindness again with the friends of our youth (now of our age). I am hoping.

I recently bought a new head lamp. I am hoping it will lead me through dark nights to bright dawns.

*If I were grading this essay, I would comment on the need for more specific language than “happiness” or “contentment.” I hope the examples and the photos add some heft to the words. Happy New Year! (Added 1/31/2022: Chúc mừng năm mới).

Summer 2021

Winter 2021

Page, AZ

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I’ve been thinking about Page, Arizona quite a bit lately. That’s because I read about the closing of the Navajo Generating Station, located on the Navajo Nation near Page. In 1972, Page was booming as the generating station with its three 775 ft. stacks was being built. The school population was also booming and I was hired to teach eighth grade literature. Through the years, I’ve told you a few stories about Page and there are more.

My parents took this photo at 4:45 A.M., August 12, 1972 as I headed west–Milford, Mi to Page, AZ–in Pippin the VW

I’ve been reminiscing about Page lately, but I think about education pretty much all the time. That comes from being the daughter, sister, cousin, aunt, and friend of teachers. Tomorrow many students and teachers are returning to school after the winter holiday, so I am thinking about them. I’m not sure what the students in my classes learned, but my year in Page was a goldmine of life lessons for me.

What I learned*

Consider how you label people. I was reading aloud one of the stupid memos from the office (see Up the Down Staircase, Bel Kaufman, 1965), which said something like “all the Indian children should go to the office.” E_________ , a Navajo, or perhaps more correctly, Dine, said, “I am not from India.” Got it.
Keep your own counsel. I was so enthusiastic and idealistic that I didn’t realize that it’s generally best to keep one’s cards close to one’s chest. I still have a little trouble with this one, but I am savvier than I used to be. Now you wouldn’t find me (without support from others, at least) asking the principal to let me have someone come in to talk to the kids about drugs. No matter that a number of the kids likely were more familiar with drugs than I was and that I despised drugs then, as I do now. It just made me look like a druggie/hippie, and it didn’t help the kids.
There is a place for decorousness. There is a uniform. Speaking of chests: I needed to work on a bulletin board one Sunday after I had been away somewhere in the country. On such journeys and under my camping outfit I did not usually wear a bra. I remember I was just wearing my trusty flowered thermal long-underwear shirt. As I was working on the bulletin board, one of my male students showed up. He was a nice kid—I forget his name, but I can almost see him. “Hi, Mrs. Schmedlen,” but his eyes were on the shirt. I had thought no one would be around, but I am still embarrassed about the encounter. Even now, contrariness makes me not want to wear the uniform. Still, I was raised right and I do know what uniforms go with which cultural encounters.
Beware of shopping baskets full of wine. Because school started in August and the North Rim (see Cookies on the North Rim and Ain’t No Reason to Go in a Wagon to Town) stayed opened until mid-October when the snows came, I occasionally still got up to see my Grand Canyon friends. In fact—shades of the Zeitgeist—twice that fall semester, Friday classes were called off early because of bomb threats. I never knew who called in the threats—student, teacher, administrator, or outside agitator. There were no bombs, no one was in danger, but I was able to head up to the rim early. I am mentioning this because I had become a traveler between the isolation of the rim and the fairly poor excuse for civilization Page was back then. My North Rim friend—everyone’s friend—Paula happened to be in a cheap wine phase. So, she asked me to stock up on Annie Green Springs to bring to her the next time I went up to the rim. Being an agreeable person, I went to Babbitts and picked up many bottles of cheap wine. I was just completing that one errand, so I don’t think I had anything else in the basket. Since Babbitts was the main grocery store in town then, it was not surprising that I met a student with parent in tow. I don’t think they failed to notice my shopping basket half full of wine. Maybe that’s why, some months later, after I took a day off to get Pippin the Volkswagen worked on in Flagstaff, a rumor surfaced. One of the kids told me that some kids thought I was home drinking to “celebrate the end of the war in Vietnam.”
Mental health days are occasionally appropriate. Like serious teachers everywhere, I got up early, worked hard all day, bought extra supplies, made materials, prepared for classes, and corrected papers. I used to correct papers and prepare lessons on the bed in my bedroom in the school system owned apartment I shared with the school librarian. As long as I owned those sheets, they carried the pen marks where I had done my school prep. Another thing I did with those sheets was get eight hours of sleep every night. I think if I hadn’t enough sleep, I wouldn’t have been strong enough to carry on. Maybe you are laughing a little bit now and maybe I am, too. I have by now done many more difficult things in my life than teach eighth grade literature. However, in my defense, it was the hardest thing I had had to do so far in my life and I think I acquitted myself well enough. I remember that when my mother was teaching she would on rare occasions take what she called a “mental health day.” Teaching is emotionally and physically demanding, and, yes, we teachers owe it to ourselves and our students to be up to the challenge. I think I took one mental health day that year in Page. No, it was not to get drunk to celebrate the end of the war in Vietnam. I don’t even remember the day specifically, but it was good to be able to follow my mother’s example.
Arm-wrestling was useful then, but is not currently advised. Because of my tom-boy (as we called it then) childhood tagging along with my four brothers, I had spent my share of time arm wrestling. It turned out I could usually out arm-wrestle the boys in class who challenged me. I don’t know how it started, but I do remember that almost all of the boys were taller than me and my arm-wrestling prowess seemed to give me a smidgeon of credibility. One day a likeable, talkative boy was goofing around too much. Holding on to his shirt, I picked him up out of his seat, told him to stop and put him back in the chair. He calmed down after that and was even friendlier to me than before. Another time, another charming, lively kid was goofing off around by my desk. I gave him a friendly poke with my pencil, but I was holding the pencil backwards, so I gave myself a little puncture wound and I still have the mark on my right palm to remember the incident. What am I saying–that violence is good? No, I was the only teacher there who wouldn’t use a paddle on the kids. I am saying that engagement on some non-academic level can break down barriers and build trust for both teachers and learners. I don’t disagree with rules that have been put in place to protect children. I think those rules need to be in place, but adults need to know what is reasonable, appropriate conduct for teachers, not ban them from putting a friendly hand on an arm or having a friendly arm-wrestle. This looks like a slippery slope that can be argued longer than I care to think about it.
I almost didn’t tell you this story, but I was encouraged to put it back in the narrative. The kids used to come up around my desk sometimes to ask and tell me things. Looking back, I think there was a certain amount of low-pitched pandemonium in my classes, but the desk routine plays pretty well in my memory, except for this episode. One time, S____, a Navajo with cowboy boots and bowed legs, was one of the kids around the desk. I gave him what I meant to be a jocular and affectionate mild little push on his arm and he fell down on the floor. What—from all my years of watching TV westerns—I had imagined were bowed legs from riding horses (maybe like Gabby Hayes) were something else. I now believe the child had rickets and I knocked him down as if he were a feather. I am so sorry. Sorry that I was so stupid and sorry that any child in the 1970s (a much better economic time than we have now, BTW) could be suffering from such a malady. I wonder if I have learned anything except that remorse is a stubborn emotion. Be careful and be tender, but I’ve found that a little difficult to keep in mind all the time.
Children need to learn how to control themselves. In the years before and after Page, I have seen many kinds of discipline. Discipline is still not my strong suit, and I have been glad that I have hardly ever had to apply overt discipline to an adult ESL student. Plus, I’ve seen strong disciplinarians who were kind, effective, and who always had the learners’ best interests at heart. I still believe what my dad once told me: that children need to learn how to control themselves and overly hard discipline by the teacher won’t help them to get there. Someone recently asked me, what does help children learn self-control? I think I have learned to be a quite self-controlled person, but I don’t have an answer for this question. I think maybe our experiences teach us things (e.g. stoves are hot), but I don’t think that gives teachers the right to be preemptively and overly strict to try to teach children life lessons. I don’t know; I just don’t like bullies. We all have to learn to control ourselves. I continue to work on it, with some success and with some failure.

Happy back to school, teachers and students!

Narrowing and Focusing: Traveling Home

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The Watchman, Zion National Park

I began teaching composition approximately 45 years ago. In all that time, I am not sure that I managed to help many novice writers become more effective writers of expository prose. However, I did read hundreds of essays and write many comments. Over the decades, I found that the same few bits of advice remained constant: narrow and focus the topic, have a clear thesis, give specific examples, and do not overstate.

I am thinking of about expository prose today because I am struggling (again) with my own writing. How will I be able to distill a six week road trip into a narrow and focused thesis-driven post that includes specific examples and which does not overstate? I don’t know–maybe I won’t be able to manage it–but I can comfort myself with a bulleted list. I don’t understand writing, but I do believe words have power.*

Our Route: Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Arizona, California, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia
Birds: I hauled along my new binoculars (see Vision Quest), but I didn’t use them much. The binoculars seem a little heavy around my neck and they annoy me when they bang on my chest when I walk. Still, I think I spotted a few golden eagles this trip, and perhaps a bald eagle. We saw hawks, Steller’s jays, a red-headed woodpecker in Wind Cave National Park, a hairy woodpecker in City of Rocks National Reserve, and more.
Favorite Set of Facts: “Roosevelt credited his Dakota experiences as the basis of his ground-breaking preservation efforts and the shaping of his own character. As president 1901-09, he translated his love of nature into law. He established the US Forest Service and signed the 1906 Antiquities Act, under which he proclaimed 18 national monuments. He worked with Congress to create five national parks, 150 national forests, and dozens of federal reserves–over 230 million acres of protected land” (From the National Park Service information pamphlet for Theodore Roosevelt National Park).
Not narrowed, not focused, not in proper order, but here is my thesis: We traveled home the whole six weeks of our journey.
- Home was with my brothers and sisters-in-law. We visited them in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan at the beginning of the journey. Later on, we were lucky to be able to travel in Nevada, Arizona, and Utah with two of these dear ones.
- Home was with our friends in Salt Lake City and near Cromberg, CA.
- Walking through mountains, forests, prairies, and canyons felt like home.
- I am from Michigan: Water has always felt like home to me.
- North Rim and Zion: it was old home week for the soul.
- Kind strangers we met along the way made us feel at home. (Tom just suggested that I need to be more specific. Haha, see one of the bits of advice, above. I am talking about the bellman at North Rim, the tour bus driver in Zion, the server at the Duluth Grill, fellow hikers on the trail, people in line at the Huron Mountain Bakery in Marquette and many others.
- Tom and I were on the road again, but we were at home together.

*NOTE: Because of the ongoing Kavanaugh debacle (my home is about 4.5 miles by foot from the U.S. Congress), I am somewhat sad and angry today. Thinking and writing about beautiful places, family, and friends helps me feel somewhat hopeful.

in the Sierras

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Porcupine Mountain Wilderness State Park, Michigan

Lake Superior

Grand Canyon from the North Rim

Tom above Lake of the Clouds, Michigan

reading in the van

I Am in the Middle of a Mirage

Excuses, Spring is Coming, and One More Staircase Story

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day planners old and new

Excuses Although it is March, I still haven’t transferred all of my phone numbers, passwords, and other data from my 2017 Audubon Birder’s Engagement Calendar to my 2018 Audubon Birder’s Engagement Calendar. This transfer usually happens early in January (see Old Year, New Year: Flexibility, Part 3). Part of the delay may simply be that there is so much minutia scrawled in the 2017 book that I am daunted by the task of transferring it to the new book.

I think the real reason might be more fundamental, though. I have been sitting here — each day at once agitated and inert–waiting to see what happens next to our country. My own version of Potomac fever, I am afraid. And I am afraid: I used to tell my children that our country had had difficult times before and had gotten through it. Now, I believe the current regime and its attendant problems are by far the worst in my lifetime. I went to one march so far this year and will soon go to another. I sign petitions. I walk. I do my weights and stretches, and sometimes I even do my planks. I photograph flowers and trees. On TV, I watch cooking shows and basketball games. I think spring is coming. I believe my hibernation is ending and my hope is growing.

oak leaves and crocus

scilla, Mary L. Ripley Garden

Happy Interlude In early February, Tom and I camped for three nights in the Big Cypress National Preserve and for one night in Everglades National Park. We saw alligators and manatees; anhingas and egrets, mangrove islands and dolphins, and much more.

gulf fritillary, Big Cypress National Preserve

great blue heron, Shark Valley, Everglades National Park

Spring is Coming Wood frogs are mating in vernal pools here in Arlington, Virginia. Salamanders are on the move. Daffodils are blooming and so is the witch hazel and some forsythia. Almost two weeks ago a cherry tree was blossoming at Arlington National Cemetery. Tourist groups are massing on the National Mall. I think it is time to put aside my 2017 almanac and rejoin this year, this fight, and this life.

sign, Gulf Branch Nature Center, Arlington, Virginia

witch hazel, Mary L. Ripley Garden

early cherry blossoms, Arlington National Cemetery

Staircase to Heaven, again

1972–1973 (North Rim and environs)

Did I ever tell you about the time I got dropped off at Pipe Springs National Monument? I was on my way from the North Rim to my friend Anita’s wedding reception in Salt Lake City. Someone drove me to Pipe Springs–on the Arizona Strip–87 miles from the Grand Canyon Lodge where I worked. I tried to hitch a ride from Pipe Springs to Cedar City, Utah so I could catch a plane to Salt Lake. At least back then, Arizona State Road 389 was not a well traveled road.

After some time, Pipe Springs National Monument closed for the day. It got dark and I felt forlorn and probably a little scared. I settled down in the ditch beside the road. I wasn’t about to take my chances standing on the side of the road through the night. I worried some and I slept some. Morning came, someone picked me up, and I made my flight to Salt Lake and the wedding reception. I was an idiot back then, no doubt, but all that expansive sky, sand, canyons, and forests made me feel that all was possible, all was good, and I would not be harmed.

Angry and sad aside: Most of my life now, this Grand Staircase, this Colorado Plateau, has been for me not only the land of the beautiful, but also of the good and hospitable. I want to scream and cry and kick and yes, hate, as I see people and entities want to destroy this land. I don’t do those things: I am still trying for the beautiful and good.

So many more stories to tell, but I think I am finished for now. I wanted to tell you about Hop Valley, the double rainbows on the snowy road to Bryce, pine nut gathering at Cape Royal, the smell of the ponderosas in the sunlight, and Chesler Park in late winter.

Now, I will march, I will sign petitions, I will walk. In the end of summer, we may be at North Rim again, and, in November I will vote.

Thank you for listening.

Here are some photos:

aspens, La Sal Mountains

near Chesler Park, The Needles, Canyonlands National Park

In the Needles District, Canyonlands National Park

clouds, Natural Bridges National Monument

our camper in Capitol Reef National Park

ponderosas on the North Rim

Staircase to Heaven, Part 5: Words

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Kodachrome Basin State Park

I have been putting off writing this post about the Grand Staircase. Photos are easy, but sometimes words are hard for me.

This morning I have Windexed the living room table (where we leave smears when we eat in front of the TV). I’ve washed a load of clothes and I am about ready to put them into the dryer. I’ve put two applesauce cakes in the oven (from The Fannie Farmer Baking Book ). I feel comfortable and happily domestic. Even so, somewhere inside, I am afraid that the despoilers of the land will win this battle of the Grand Staircase and Bears Ears and the others. I am sad and angry because I don’t think my words or photos can change the minds of those ones. I will try the words anyhow.

Three days later: My words still haven’t found their way to the computer. I sit in my living room chair. Through my window, I watch the winter silver Potomac flow in the distance. Like most people I know, my heart weeps and my mind hurts. More hate, more racism, more lies spew from our country’s White House. So many things to grieve about and to fight for, where should I begin?

I know. I look around our room and I see the huge blue and pink(ish) map: “The Colorado Plateau and Its Drainage.” Tom bought the map for me about 18 years ago, when I briefly had a job with an office and benefits. To the left of the map are two bookcases, a Navajo rug, and a poster of Zion National Park, “Celebrating a Century of Sanctuary 1909-2009.” On the walls closer to me are the Thomas Moran print of Indian Gardens from our friend Laura, a painting of Hopi basket designs by our friend Sally, and many other talismans. Enough for now: Like a movie, the sun just broke through the clouds a tiny bit. I will try my words again.

our living room, 1.13.18

Now, it looks like I have too many words. Here are some more. I will stop soon.

1958 (?) I saw it on Mickey Mouse Club, I think.

I felt sad when I saw and heard a piece on TV about a river that was going to be dammed and a canyon that would disappear. I saw a fabulous rock called Rainbow Bridge. I felt sad until the feelings were buried. Only decades later, I uncovered this memory and realized I had loved this land of the Colorado River Plateau 12 years before I ever even saw it.

The Glen Canyon Archeological Survey, Part 1, May 1959

1970 (My spring and summer in Zion National Park)

One of my Mormon friends, told me that if one prayed earnestly—some lines from The Book of Alma in The Book of Mormon—one would hear a response from God. I remember trying this praying somewhere up the canyon side not far from Emerald Pools. I thought I prayed earnestly, but I heard nothing. Well, I heard something. It was the tranquility, power, and beauty emanating from the land, sky, and water. Then, and, onward through the years, I became increasingly comfortable with my being a secular humanist nature-lover.*
After hours of walking, my coworker and friend Pat and I finally came across the Coral Pink Sand Dunes. At least one source says the park is 12 miles from Highway 89 to the dunes. No wonder it seemed so long to us tenderfoots. After Pat and I clambered around on the dunes, we settled down for the night. We had trouble opening up the can of peaches we brought, and I think we finally drank the juice through the little opening we had somehow managed to make. I don’t remember what else we ate or tried to eat. One more thing we didn’t know about the desert—at least at 6000 feet elevation in April—was that it was cold. Because we were freezing, we were wakeful through the night. We shivered all night inside our cheap sleeping bags, but, set down, this set down, I saw the starry sky I have never forgotten. The stars in that desert night sky have been the standard by which I have watched every night sky since and none have surpassed or even matched it. When I read the environmental news, I think maybe our atmosphere is now sufficiently polluted that no one can have the gift again of that starry sky. Magi or no, magic or no, god or no, I thank those stars I was lucky enough to see.*
Third person in line on a hike along Taylor Creek in Zion’s Kolob, a rattlesnake warned me. I had never heard the rattle before, but I knew the sound. I have always tried to be careful.
Losing my way on my first hike and wandering to the rock face of the Watchman, The Narrows, West Rim Trail, and much more.

Coral Pink Sand Dunes

1971 (North Rim and environs)

Tom and I thought we might go to Page on our day off. I don’t recall why we wanted to go to Page. Page is 123 miles from the North Rim and we had no car, but we weren’t daunted; the North Rim is a long way from everywhere. We were hitchhiking and there wasn’t much traffic. It took hours, but we finally got past Jacob Lake and off the Kaibab Plateau. We were picked up by a young Navajo family and we got to ride in the back of their pickup. It was night by the time we got to Page. It was not much of a town, and all I remember is the crazy lady who was walking around the streets talking to herself. I felt uncomfortable and sad about her. Tom, as he has in such situations since then, just felt a kindly empathy for the woman. I don’t know where or if we slept and I don’t remember how we got back to the rim in time for work the next afternoon, but it was the start of a long journey for us together.*
I never made it to Calf Creek Falls. A coworker Ariane and I drove in her Datsun from North Rim toward Boulder, Utah. The water came down in torrents from the fresh falls streaming off the cliffs and from the sky itself. A large boulder fell a car length and a second or two ahead. We survived, unscathed–just. We turned around and drove to the low bridge that spanned Calf Creek. The flash flood drove the brown water far above the bridge. The rain and then the creek subsided. We got a room, probably in Escalante. I haven’t gotten back to Calf Creek yet, but I still hope to.

1972 — 2014: Too many years and too many stories

I have to stop for now. If I write too many words, I don’t think people want to read them.
If I keep thinking of this hike or that story or that friend, my mind lives too much in the past.
If I write too much, I worry too much about what is going to happen to our wonderful land.
If I stop worrying or writing, I think the the vandals might win. So, I will be back soon.
Tomorrow, though, I will contemplate the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr, the hero of my youth.

Singletree Campground, Fishlake National Forest

Close to the Ground: Living Inductively

Lynda Terrill

Tag Archives: North Rim

Salad Days, Salad Years: Reverie

August 2022: Both Sides Now

Happy New Year, 2022

Summer 2021

Winter 2021

Page, AZ

Narrowing and Focusing: Traveling Home

I Am in the Middle of a Mirage

Excuses, Spring is Coming, and One More Staircase Story

Staircase to Heaven, Part 5: Words