Upcoming Performance – June 7, 2008

If you’re in the Phoenix area on the evening of June 7th, come out to the City of Gilbert’s Riparian Institute and enjoy a nature walk through the 110-acre preserve and listen to music by several members of the Mesa Symphony and yours truly. I’ll be playing harp and classical guitar near where the walk ends, but close enough to the parking area that you can simply walk over and sit down on one of the provided seats or settle in on the grass and have a listen if you don’t feel like taking the tour.

The nature walk starts at 7:00 p.m. at the east end of the public library. Check the Riparian Institute’s website for more information. There is a suggested donation of two dollars. I will be playing from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. I hope to see you there!

Photo by David Weingarten, Goldeneye Photography.

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Arizona Desert Wildflowers

Yesterday’s trip with D. through the Miami-Globe area and on further east onto the San Carlos Apache Reservation was a delight – great scenery and companionship, lots of humorous moments, good road music, beautiful weather, plus the chance to practice some of the new photography skills that I am learning.

Associating with a professional photographer is improving my eye and compositional sense, though it is also creating a bit of gear envy. F-stop, ISO, and depth of field, are all terms that are rapidly becoming a part of my vocabulary, even though I don’t yet have a camera with which to put that new knowledge to use. (My little “point and shoot” camera’s days are numbered.)

The following photos of poppies and lupines were all taken late Tuesday afternoon, March 25, 2008, on a hillside just north of Highway 70, near San Carlos, Arizona. Other than changing the size and resolution for the web, they’re pretty much straight out of the camera. I hope to have some time soon to do a little retouching in Adobe PhotoShop. If so, I’ll post the results. Enjoy!

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Moonlight on High Country Snows and Rain in the Desert

As I drove across Garland Prairie last week, the light of a full moon illumined the snow and the pines, casting deep shadows across the frozen ground. It was a beautiful and a bittersweet sight. The song of a great horned owl greeted me as I got out of my car and crunched through the snow to the door.

My plan was to continue packing my belongings, but most of the time ended up being spent running around Flagstaff dealing with the buyer, title agent, insurance agent…and getting some heat tape to keep my pipes from freezing again. Temperatures have been very cold, dipping below zero several nights in a row.

In a few days I won’t be a property owner in the high country anymore. My focus will be back on building my business, filling in with other work as needed, meeting new people, and making new friends. That is as it should be, but I will miss the high country, the pines, the wildlife, and being close by to family and old friends. I can’t help but feel a little pang.

Still, new horizons beckon and I’ve been having some unexpected fun in my life. I’ve met some very nice guys down here in the Valley and have had a couple of dates recently. As I write this post, it’s raining outside, as it has been all day. I know that soon the desert will be in bloom, alive with colorful wildflowers. And, there are friendships blossoming in my life right now, even the possibility of romance. Who knows what may follow the high country snow melt and the desert rains?

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Dancin’ With the River

Fun, friends, hikes up side canyons to hot springs, wildlife–it was soooo good to get out on the river! The weather was absolutely perfect–low eighties air temp, low fifties water temp. The sky was clear and we had a full moon. It was a real stroke of luck for it to be so pleasant so late in the season.

In the past, I’ve rafted the upper Grand Canyon, from Lee’s Ferry to Phantom Ranch (hiked out the South Kaibab), and I’ve done the San Juan, a tributary, but paddling Black Canyon just below Hoover Dam was my first excursion on a lower section of the Colorado River. The magnificent desert canyon scenery compensated for the flat water. We hiked in a slot canyon, played in numerous hot springs and seeps, and saw cormorants, herons, ducks, and even a mama bighorn with her youngster hopping up a canyon wall.

I learned something on the trip, too. For the last few months, I’ve been trying to “push the river,” to make things happen in my life. The first day on the river, I was still doing the same thing. Pushing the boat, seeing what it could do, what I could do with it. I was a little frustrated that we didn’t go further that day.

The second day, I began to flow with the river. I started dancing with the water, the boat, the breeze. Not fighting the current, but finding my way within it, getting the rhythm of each section, shifting as the river moved through wide and narrow stretches, slower and faster water.

We did have to push some for the last couple of hours to make our takeout, but even that was fun. I found the speed and rhythm that I could maintain over time, not unlike grubbing a line around a wildland fire, keeping the pace with a paddle instead of a pulaski. The strong, steady pulling felt good to my back and arms and the tiredness at the end was a welcome reminder of all we had seen and done.

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The Autumn Leaves

I haven’t blogged in quite a while and I’m just now posting the aspen pics I promised.

The leaves were already pretty well gone up on the San Francisco Peaks when I came up from Phoenix about three weeks ago. I did find a couple of late-turners, though, and discovered one tree that had been cut down.

I harvested some leaves from the downed tree and made up little packages for friends in Phoenix and points in between. I turned my trip back down to the Valley into a sort of reverse “May Day” excursion. Instead of baskets of spring flowers, I delivered colorful autumnal bits of the high country to folks that I know miss the mountains.

The sprig I saved for myself has held its color better than I thought it would. It’s a nice little reminder of a crisp fall day on Hart Prairie, the smell of wood smoke on the breeze, and the long-standing tradition I have had to always make it up to the Peaks at least once while the leaves are turning. I just made it this year.

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Sunflowers in the Arizona Sunshine

It’s getting close to the last hurrah for the wild sunflowers that dot my yard and line Arizona’s roadways in the late summer. They are definitely getting close to “bloomed out.” These two pictures were taken about a week ago in my front yard. The ones I saw today, on my return trip from Phoenix, have lost a lot of the their blossoms.

It was a good trip down to Phoenix and a joy to visit with my friends, as always. The drive to and from Phoenix is also a time for reflection for me. I’ve clarified some of my options and made some plans for the next few months. I also took a few days off exercising and the nerve problem in my leg has diminished, so the change of pace was healthy in more ways than one.

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Meteors and Moonshadows Near the Mogollon Rim

0500 MST, Parks, AZ – The Aurigid Meteor Shower was well worth staying up for, but I’m just about ready to call it a night. I saw several dozen meteors between 0330 and 0440 MST, some of them fairly bright. There were about half a dozen that were truly “ooh” and “aah” worthy, despite the brightness of the moon.

As per Ames’ viewing tips, I found a spot shielded from direct moonlight. My internet satellite service dish filled the bill nicely. I pulled the old purple sleeping bag that I used to use during my time as an EMT up on the Navajo reservation out of the shed and bundled up to watch the light show, moving my fold-up chair to stay in the shadow of the dish. The meteor activity peaked about 0420 with three short bursts of several meteors per minute between 0400 and 0430. I packed it in about 0440, due to the chill (52 degrees F) and general tiredness.

It was a good night for wildlife, too. I heard the Great Horned Owl again, as I have for several nights running, and a little before four o’clock there were several coyotes howling in the wash to the northwest. It was hard to tell how many there actually were as their calls echoed off the adjacent cliff and made it sound as if there were quite a few. Usually I hear just two, or sometimes three. There was even a small bat that fluttered by at one point.

To add to the local flavor, there was intermittent lightning to the north the whole time I was outside from thunderstorms up near the Grand Canyon. Lucky for me, the sky was clear here near the Mogollon Rim. A lovely night.

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Aurigid Meteor Shower

Tonight we’re on a once in a lifetime pass through the dust trail of comet Kiess, a known long period comet. Margie sent me a link on the Aurigid meteor shower from NASA’s Ames Research Center website.

The Aurigid shower should be visible from the far western United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Mexico for about an hour and a half, peaking at around 4:30 a.m. PDT.

The Ames Research Center site has full details on viewing and photographing the shower and a neat java applet that lets you calculate the best viewing time based on your location, type of area, and conditions. It also give you an estimated rate per hour. Do be forewarned, however, that the page did crash my browser several times (Firefox 2.0.0.6, Mac). I could view it for awhile before the page would bite the dust.

Along with the detailed observation tips, Ames also has information on how your viewing and reporting can help them in their quest to learn more about the shower, and its patterns as observed from the ground. The more the merrier, and the better the data! While we’re on terra firma, looking up, scientists from Ames will be overhead doing an observational flight much like the one they did on the recent Perseid shower.

At a rate of close to 200 meteors per hour, the Aurigid shower should be a good one. I’m hoping that the night sky will be clear enough to see it here in the Arizona high country. The monsoons are back, so I’ll be up anyway, doing my computer work during the time of lightest thunderstorm activity.

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Chilling Out in the High Country

Fall is just around the corner in the Arizona high country. The nighttime low was 42 degrees Farenheit last night and this is the first morning since spring that I’ve had to go back in the house and get a jacket for my morning sojourn out on the deck.

There were blue jays hopping about in the yard and I saw a gold finch fly into the big pine tree out front. Somewhere, out in the forest, a raven croaked and grated his morning ablutions as I jotted down some notes in my journal and ate breakfast. The grasses in the yard are drying out; we haven’t had any monsoon activity for about five days.

That half-hour or so out on the deck, weather permitting, has been my time to reflect on the purpose of my day. I set my tasks the night before, so that I can actually start functioning right away in the morning. It can be awhile before my brain wakes up. If I had to wait for that, I might not get anything done before noon!

Today’s focus was on getting more specific with my fitness plan for the coming year.

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Fresh Perspective

It’s funny but on reviewing my last post in light of a comment, I realized that it could easily be misunderstood. I decided to go ahead and post something by way of clarification that I’ve had on the back burner for awhile. It continues the sky and mountain imagery that seems to be such a theme here lately. Though not as polished as I’d like, I figure that it is a work in progress, much as I am, and I can always rewrite it later, somewhere down the trail…

End of the Trail

May I careen down that last few feet of trail
Pack discarded, boot soles worn thin,
Slipping sideways, a little dust and scree along for the slide
Carried forward by the momentum remaining from pure exuberance
Totally used up
Nothing held back in reserve for some other day,
Some other mountain.

May I not die with the best still left inside me,
Saved for some tomorrow that never comes.
No regrets, no recriminations, no dreams left unexplored,
Expired on some mountainside, spent
Ready for the next great adventure
Eyes upturned
And arms spread to embrace the sky,
The song of a raven in my ears.

[Gross Humor Warning: Read at your own risk.] Of course, my bonnie brown e’en (eyeballs) wouldn’t last long if that were the case…but, oh well. I can think of a lot worse things than being raven food. (Sorry, just had to say it. The memory of performing the old Scottish folk song “Twa’ Corbies” is still with me.)

And, more tools of the trade…

With all the affection that wildland firefighters reserve for the boots that carry them through hell and back.

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Rare and Beautiful Weather Phenomenon

0534 MST, Parks, Arizona – The rising sun illumines one area of virga, a weather phenomenon where rainfall evaporates before it can reach the ground:

Within minutes a whole veil of virga, glowing orange in the early morning sky, forms to the west of the San Francisco Peaks. This photo gives only a rough idea of what the sky actually looked like. The veil of virga shifted and undulated slowly, like a gauze curtain in a very light breeze. The intense color lasted for just a few minutes, then swiftly faded away.

The above shot is about thirty degrees north of the first one. The pine that shows in the first photo is just outside of this one to the right. The mountain is Kendrick Peak. Note the two (very tiny) ravens flying to the immediate left of the pine tree. The light continued to shift and change, turning bright yellow as the sun neared the horizon.

Man, I love living in the Arizona high country…

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Distant Thunder

There’s a lot of rumbling off in the distance, but I think I can get a post in before the next round of monsoon activity gets too close. That’s the story of my life lately –  trying to squeeze in online sessions between thunderstorms. It’s led to a lot of very late nights recently, but I’ve been having a lot of fun skywatching in between.

Here’s a lightning photo from two nights ago:

This doesn’t quite do justice to the light show that was going on to the south of my place, down over the Mogollon Rim, but I was happy to get even this much.  It was a spectacular display of electrical activity over Sycamore Canyon and the Verde Valley, with lots of cloud-to-cloud lightning. My digital camera is quite slow in shooting pictures, so I stood out on the deck and snapped, snapped, snapped away, hoping to catch a shot by chance. Out of about 90 shots, I got one!

Well, the thunder’s getting louder again. Time to disconnect and go do some practice.

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Arizona Summer Monsoon

The late morning through afternoon thunderstorms, so characteristic of midsummer in the Arizona high country, have been playing havoc with my computer work. Sometimes I can sneak some work in early in the day, but most of it has to happen from late afternoon to the wee hours of the morning, in order to avoid power surges and outages.

Ah, well. I’m can’t really complain. I’m not out on a fireline somewhere watching clouds like these build and worrying about what the winds are going to do. Instead, I’m able to shut down the computer and take a front row seat out on my deck to watch one of nature’s most spectacular sky views. Plus, the rain has made the area’s forest a lot moister and less prone to wildfire.

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Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Your Nose…

There’s smoke in the air, drifting in from somewhere in the area, but it’s been misty most of the day and I have no idea where the smoke is originating. As a result, I’ve been antsy all afternoon. I keep getting up and going outside and looking around; I feel like I should be doing something. It’s unsettling to be under the sway of such a strong, conditioned reflex that doesn’t have a place in my life anymore. You can take the firefighter out of service, but you can’t take the service out of the firefighter, I quess.

Actually, conditions are quite good in our immediate area right now. It’s cool and there’s a northwest wind of about 5 mph, the humidity is up, and it rained at least half an inch today. While a lot of the forest is still under extreme fire danger conditions, at the moment it’s pretty safe where I’m sitting.

The synchronicity of this is rather amusing, really. For one thing, I’m in the midst of re-reading Peter Leschak’s book, “Trials by Wildfire” as an antidote to feeling like I’ve gotten out of touch with much that was beneficial from working as a firefighter and EMT, particularly his notion of the emergency services as a “warrior calling” that serves as constant reminder of the fragility of life. Amen to that.

And, just two days ago I was going through the rest of the stuff from out of the van (I’ve put it up for sale) – two storage tubs that I continually carted around full of extra first aid supplies, fire investigation gear, several different kinds of gloves, various hats, glasses, goggles, binoculars, etcetera, ad infinitum – all kinds of equipment and supplies that will not be transferred to the PT Cruiser. Sorting through all of it has served as just one more reminder of what I’ve left behind.

There’s another storm cell moving in from the west. The temperature has dropped a few more degrees and the thunder is getting louder, so we may get even more rain by tonight. I can still smell smoke, but the agitation of feeling like I need to do something about it has passed. As soon as I’ve posted this, I’m headed over to the guitar corner for another round of practice.

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Arizona Highlands Sunrise

One Way to Become an Early Riser: Elmo has been making a habit of cavorting around the bedroom in the wee hours of the morning and waking me up. Meowing and little cat paws tromping across my belly have a way of ending a peaceful night’s dreams and launching my day earlier than expected. The upside of all this has been that I’ve seen some truly gorgeous Arizona sunrises the last few days.

Week in Review: Other than that, the music is progressing, as is the promo work. The old gig van is up for sale. I’ve rearranged the furniture in two rooms of my house and started purging my shed and the “sewing room,” which would be more accurately named as “the catch all, store every unfinished craft project, yarn ball, and odd end from the last thirty years of knitting, spinning, weaving, sewing and beading” room. There’s a lot of stuff being set aside for an upcoming yard sale.

I’ve also got some blogging surprises started in the background here, and those are set to launch in another week. And, I’ve lost another pound, in large part because I have been much more consistent in my exercising. Daily flamenco dance sessions, even if they’re only 20-30 minutes long, are great breaks and they have been the majority of my exercise. (I’m learning a flamenco tango, as opposed to the Argentine tango.)

Highlight of the Week: The highlight of the week was getting back in touch with a dear friend that I haven’t seen 30 years. It’s been wonderful starting to catch up on some of what’s happened in our lives in the interim. That about wraps up the week from the AZ high country.

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