October 2, 2009. This morning, as I walk down the road toward Crossfire, I barely avoid stepping on a small, silver-and-grey-winged butterfly sitting on the pavement, trying, I think, to warm itself after our first night of ice-on-the-dog’s-dish cold. The insect’s coloration matches that of surrounding gravel. Only its thin wings and their accompanying shadow [...]
Guest post by Saul
Mom came home at just after 11 AM on Saturday and told me that she wanted me to finish what I was doing and go down into Crossfire Canyon. She explained that the creek had stopped flowing, leaving some fish stranded in a puddle, at the mercy of garter snakes.
I was working [...]
This is the first part in a two-part Field Notes entry written by two authors. I’ll take the first part, my son Saul the second. It wasn’t my intention to put up Field Notes again so soon, but this story is just too good to wait for.
July 11, 2009. As I take Coyote Way into [...]
June 2, 2009. I hiked into Crossfire Canyon via Coyote Way. The morning had a warmth to it I didn’t feel while I walked topside through currents of wind blustering north out of some rise of weather. But as I followed the trail down into the canyon the breezes thinned. Then holes formed in them, [...]
Saturday, June 13. As I was coming up out of Crossfire I heard voices. Much has happened lately in our small, southeast Utah town, so I was curious about who might be coming into the canyon. I saw a woman on the rocks above me, well off the trail, turning back in response to a [...]
Forgive, please, the late, overhasty and not especially informative nature of this post, but I wished to get something up for Earth Day before the opportunity passed. As usual, consider yourself invited to report on your own Earth Day activities in the comments section.
Here in SE Utah, Earth Day opened gorgeously. Warm and blue. To the south, [...]
April 21, 2009 (pre-Earth Day)
Today, as I head out for the trail into the canyon that will take me past the dead coyote, I decide to call that trail Coyote Trail, or maybe Coyote Way, to remember that coyote mouldering at the trailhead. As I pass those remains, I try to satisfy my curiosity about the [...]
Parts of this entry rise a little above-average personal in nature. I don’t mean to make this an “alms before men” post. I want to try to show how easily — for me, anyway — thinking can slide between my experiences with animals and the ones I have with people. Also, I don’t remember ever having written down the “Hillbilly [...]
April 13, 2009
Why do I still do this? Why, at my age, do I follow as if I were nine years old unmarked, unpaved trails away from what I know into the wilds of what I don’t know? That’s how this striving creation—part light, part water, part air, part earth, and all aspiring flesh—shows itself [...]
Posts in this series are semi-polished exerpts from the pocket-sized hiking journal I carry when I go out walking in local canyons, etc. If something interesting happens or a bolt from the blue strikes, I pull out the old journal and get down the basics. I’ve left Field Notes elsewhere around the bloggernacle, such as here and here, but I thought that for Wilderness Interface Zone and [...]