Tag Archives: Zion

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

in the Sierras

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Porcupine Mountain Wilderness State Park, Michigan

Porcupine Mountain Wilderness State Park, Michigan

Lake Superior

Lake Superior

Grand Canyon from the North Rim

Grand Canyon from the North Rim

Tom above Lake of the Clouds, Michigan

Tom above Lake of the Clouds, Michigan

reading in the van

reading in the van

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earth Days: Past, Present, and Future

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daffodils

daffodils

Since January 2017, I have belonged to a Facebook group, March for Science. This group has been focused on organizing Earth Day (April 22) marches in support of science. In my life I have been mostly an English teacher, not a scientist. On my registration form for the march, I checked “science enthusiast.”

For months, March for Science group members have been posting “Why I march” comments. I loved almost all of the comments I have read and sometimes I cried about the stories. I never laughed because the current repeated attacks on scientific truth are deadly serious.

I love—I really do—the scientific method. I have read about, known, and admired many scientists.  I admire many of my mentors in the Rivanna Chapter of Virginia Master Naturalists. In literature,  John Wesley Powell, who scaled canyon walls with one arm, is one of my heroes.  Farley Mowat, who railed against the decimation of human and animal populations in Canada, is another. However, my reasons for marching next Saturday in Washington, DC are, perhaps, more in keeping with my English major sensibility.

Exploration

The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons

Why I Will March for Science on Earth Day

I attended the ENACT (Environmental Action for Survival) Teach-In on the Environment at the University of Michigan in March 1970 (see https://blogs.lib.msu.edu/red-tape/2016/mar/march-11-14-1970-university-michigan-holds-environmental-teach/ for more information about the teach-in). I was a young idealist then and I am old idealist now. I won’t give up.

I march in honor of my mother. I planted my first garden with my mother: popcorn and radishes against the side of the house in Detroit. Counting that garden and the one I grew with my brother George, that’s 45 years of gardens, most of them organic. Food and beauty. I won’t give up gardening now.

swiss chard, "Rainbow Mix"

swiss chard in my garden: “Rainbow Mix”

I march in honor of my father. My father taught me how to fish, skip stones, rake leaves, and shovel snow. He put up a hammock between two tall oaks, so we could see the sky, the water, and the leaves while we rested and dreamed. I won’t give up the dreaming.

Scenic Lake, Michigan (my brother's lake; I don't have a photo of mine)

Scenic Lake, Michigan ( my brother’s lake; I don’t have photos of the lake I grew up on)

I march in honor of Michigan and the Great Lakes, my first home. They want to cut EPA research for the Great Lakes by 97%. I want them to hear my “no.”  I remember the crayfish and the sunfish in the sunny shallows of our lake. I remember the power and strength of Superior. I will not let them destroy our lakes without a fight.

Lake Superior

Lake Superior

I march for the Grand Canyon, Zion, Glacier and all the rest of the federally protected lands.

Transept Canyon from Widforss Point

Transept Canyon from Widforss Trail, North Rim of the Grand Canyon

I march for the Kaibab squirrels of the North Rim, for the condor who glided past us on the South Rim, and for all the crows and ravens everywhere. I march for the bees, and for the butterflies, and for the American hornbeam that we planted in our yard last month and for the ponderosa pine, iconic tree of the North Rim (and food for the Kaibab squirrels).

butterfly with black-eyed and verbena bonariensis

butterfly with black-eyed and verbena bonariensis

I grow old. I do, in fact, sometimes wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled, but I will not stop now.

I have many more things to say. Maybe I will write about them another time or maybe not, but I will march and I will not stop.

Happy Spring.

 

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.