A Golden September walk along Parley's Creek

The County has just completed a stretch of multi-use trail that goes down into and comes up out of Parley's Creek Corridor. As you will see, it was a golden September day. I walk in the foothills in all four seasons, but fall is my favorite. Cool crisp mornings, warm, quiet afternoons, and abundant amber sunshine.

The trail drops in to the hollow and follows the creek for awhile

 Mount Olympus presides over it all

This structure was finished in about 1891 by pioneer era workers. It carried water from Parley's Creek in canals to the valley below, and was a major source of irrigation water. This little section in the hollow is the only part of the canal that remains.

Oh, and by the way, my tomatoes have finally come in. They were worth the wait!

No certificate I've ever received is more important or more valued than this one. Ada spent the night a couple of nights ago. I saw her working on this in the kitchen and asked her what it was. She said it was a "little project."

I encountered a rattler about this size on my walk in the foothills today. He wasn't coiled, didn't seem threatened, wasn't rattled. He just slinked away behind a rock and underneath a sage bush. He didn't speak to me, didn't try to lure me away. He just slithered, silently. And as I walked away thinking about him (and looking more closely under rocks and sage as I passed by), I thought what a perfect symbol he is of the master tempter: subtle, sometimes easy to miss, but deadly. Forked tongue, beady eyes, strong, quick. And the boy knew what he is when he picked him up.

I've been singing one way or another all my life. My mother says I was singing "Tennessee Waltz" all the way through at two years old. She was my agent until the pediatrician she took me to told her to lay off.

I still sing, though now mostly to myself, occasionally accompanied by my guitar.

Cristie bought me this guitar for my birthday twenty-three years ago after my first one had been played out. A good friend who is now battling a brain tumor taught me how to play in college. I've been thinking of and praying for him since he received his diagnosis and dedicated a few songs to him this morning.

This guitar is my friend. I prefer to play it alone and when a little sad, though it performs well. I'm not very accomplished on it, knowing only a few basic picking patterns and chords. My stubby fingers weren't meant to ever master a bar chord.

Sam, Dave, and Melissa all play and sing much better than I do, but that is as it should be and is the proper order of things. Strains of folk and mountain music run strongly through our family, probably placed there by our ancestors. It's a beautiful thing to hear my children and grandchildren play and sing.

A DAY ON MY HOME RIVER

It was in the mid 50's  in Provo Canyon this afternoon. Cloudy. I thought the conditions were perfect for a good blue wing olive hatch. I was not disappointed.


MY TOOLS

MY PREY

One of the brown trout I caught today. Most were about this size. She was released to eat another bug after I took this shot. I caught seven. The big one got away, of course.

MY FLY OF CHOICE

 the adams

I'm not a great multi tasker.  Cristie has been posting wonderful poetry on her blog for the past several months and my prose has all but withered and died. It seems I can't read her offerings and then conjure up my own. Hers is mine vicariously. We are truly one; she posts and I'm dry.

But.....I did have a thought today. I enjoyed a nice cold, thirst quenching can of Squirt on ice, while in my office working on my computer.

As it's sweet goodness revived me, I thought of my history with this ubiquitous beverage.

A lady who worked for a soft drink company used to live near my Aunt Sergene. When I was oh, maybe nine or ten, Serge would get cases of an unlabeled soft drink from this lady to try out. I guess Serge and her family were part of a marketing test or something. We would get an occasional case of the stuff ourselves. We all liked it and were glad to get it. Turns out it was Squirt. It came on the market a year or two after the test was over. The test product had actual little pieces of grapefruit in it, like the pulp in orange juice. Otherwise, it was the same Squirt you have tasted.

My Squirt saga turned tragic. Awhile later, the soft drink lady was bludgeoned to death in her home one night, just a few houses away from Sergene's. No one knew why she was killed; at least it was never made public. She was there and then she was gone, and we kids were left to walk slowly by her dark house and wonder what horrors were still inside. My adult relatives talked about how awful it all was, and then we just got on with our lives. I don't remember it ever being revealed who the killer was. Maybe it was a Pepsi executive.