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.

   The girls practice their new knitting skills learned from Grammy (or mom)

Thanksgiving. A time to be together. Alison and her family visited and we laughed, ate, expressed gratitude, worshiped, and the girls learned to knit. We missed Katie and her sweet family.

I found this pic in an old album today. I'm guessing I was six or seven here. The girl is Janice Carter and the picture was taken at Carpinteria.

                             What would September be without a Farmington Peach?

Carpinteria - 2008

It's September 1st and I'm back. It's my mother's 83rd birthday today. I think she's holding up rather well, don't you?




This post is dedicated to my mom. Our new bishop was in our home for a few minutes last month when she was visiting for Dave's wedding. She of course wasted no time in telling him a story or two, and then launched in to how she feels about Barack Obama (hates him and everything he's done so far). "He's giving away our country, and just why does he have to go all over the world apologizing to everybody?", she said. " WE DON'T OWE ANYBODY AN APOLOGY!" The bishop looked at Cristie and I and said, "She tends to have strong opinions, doesn't she?"

My mother has had strong opinions as long as I can remember and comes from a long line of colorfuls that didn't mince words when it came to politics, religion, weight gain or loss, and general misfortune (ever met her sisters?). Some of my fondest memories are of the spirited card games with extended family up at the family cabin on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Before I was old enough to be included, I'd lay up in the loft listening to the name calling, accusations and exclamations, all in full color, wishing I was down below in the middle of it all with my parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins. My mother hated the mountains, but loved the family time. The altitude, dirt, fish, and lack of a shower every day didn't agree with her. She's always felt much more comfortable at sea level.

As she's aged she's become less flexible in her views and more flexible about how often she repeats them. As my kids know well, she'll ask you if she's told you about something or somebody, and when you answer in the affirmative, she tells it to you again. I've heard the same story sometimes three times in the same day. She says she dosen't cuss anymore and then swears; says she never watches TV and then asks you if you saw a recent program. But with all of that, she's a great listener (well, she can hardly hear anymore, but she's very inquisitive), and is more compassionate than about anybody I know. She's been a wonderful mother, an inspiration, with high expectations. She's been my big fan and also a precise critic and I love her and am grateful Heavenly Father gave me her as my mother.


My mom is not a blog reader. Please, don't anybody call her and read this post to her. I don't mean it to be critical at all, wouldn't think of it, but she might take some of it that way and I would NEVER want to hurt her feelings.

On Summer hiatus. See you in the fall.

Old



New


When we lived in Denver in the 80's, I used to travel to New Mexico almost every month on business. I have fond memories of working in that state. I'm drawn to Native American culture, and there it blends with Latinos and the whites and becomes a "Land of Enchantment." I loved traveling among it's vistas and deserts, shopping for pots, rugs and jewelry made by the Navajo, Zuni, Hopi, and several other pueblo Indian tribes. I visited ruins left by the cliff dwelling Anazasis and enjoyed Tony Hillerman mystery novels set on the Navajo reservation. I've always preferred the state to it's bigger, more populated and in my opinion more glitzy neighbor, Arizona.

I don't know how new it is, but last week I saw the latest New Mexico license plate with "USA" printed on it at the bottom. I guessed that the new plate is a response to surveys done in the US mostly on the east coast, where when asked where New Mexico is a surprising percentage of Americans answered it is in Mexico! I'm sure the good folks in the Land of Enchantment are proud of their status as a state and felt that putting "USA" on the license plate will forever settle it's status in the minds of those who don't pay much attention to anything not in the Bos-Wash corridor. Myself, I prefer the old license plate.

We in the Rocky Mountain states like to be taken seriously. Utah has struggled with it's national image since before it became a state and it continues to try hard to prove that it's well within the mainstream. That's what hosting the 2002 Olympics was about, the candidacy of Mitt Romney, and the tourism board's motto of a few years back, "A Pretty Great State." Idaho would love to shed it's image as the potato state, Utah as the fundamental Mormon state, and New Mexico would just like you to know it IS a state. Montana is in better shape, known as the place where rich celebrities buy up huge ranches, Arizona is where the snowbirds go, and Colorado has successfully marketed itself as THE Rocky Mountain state.

Being a transplant (we've lived here over twenty years, but still, I'm not a native), I've always enjoyed the uncrowded open vastness of the west, sagebrush and all. I was raised in Los Angeles, and we lived there as a family and moved to Philadelphia, Denver, and back to Philly before coming here. Having lived in those big cities, I wouldn't want any city in the Rockies to approach the size of those places (alas, Phoenix already has and Denver is close). To me Las Vegas is everything the real west isn't, and I'd like things to stay pretty much the way the are out here, or even revert back a little. I love to visit San Francisco, New York and Chicago (especially because Katie and her family are there) but give me a home where the buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope play.

Posting from Delhi, India on Saturday, May 9th. 5:50PM GMT +5:30

This is my 8th day in India, and in a few hours I'll be boarding a flight back home, via a layover in Newark, NJ. The flight to Newark from Delhi alone will be about 17 hours. This has been a business trip and I have been very busy running a training program for 22 Merck Indian Sales Managers. I've mostly been confined to my hotel, running the training all day and socializing all night. I have escaped to walk around the local neighborhood here by the hotel a few times, I've seen a couple of malls here in Delhi (boring, just like ours), and we drove into Old Delhi yesterday afternoon and spent a couple of hours in the markets.

Old Delhi was reminiscent of my experiences in Tijuana as a kid and also of some places we visited in South Africa. I was chased and pestered by the old and young, hawking their wares, mostly junk and knock offs. I didn't buy a thing. I t was crowded, dirty, and noisy just like you'd expect. I'm glad I saw it.

My observations...

POSITIVES

The people. Indians are very friendly, warm folks and it is genuine. They all speak English but some have accents so strong I have difficulty understanding them. You see them dressed in traditional Indian colorful, draping clothing, some are red dotted on their foreheads, some men wear turbans, and many are dressed more like us westerners. Indians sometimes angle their heads from side to side when asked a question which looks like they mean "no" when they really mean "yes." Made for an interesting first couple of days.

The food. I absolutely loved it. Very spicey, very flavorful. They eat a lot of rice with a variety of sauces to the side or on top. The people I worked with all used western silverware to eat their meals, except one guy who ate with his fingers. They enjoyed intruducing me to new dishes, were delighted when I tried everything and were even more delighted when I loved almost everything I tried. Many were surprised at how spicy hot I like my food.

Architecture. Most of the buildings around the hotel are cheaply built out of brick and mortar. I can imagine what this place would look like after a strong earthquake. The few traditional buildings I saw downtown, however, were striking in their majesty and detail. I wish I'd had time to visit the Taj Majal.

NEGATIVES

Hot and dusty. Dust everywhere, suspended in the still air at night almost like fog. I came during the hottest time of year here. It was well over 100 degrees every day.

The power grid. The power goes out at least five times a day.

The smells. Not so much the smells of life which fester in a warm climate, but the sickeningly sweet air fresheners hotels and other public buildings use to try and cover it up. I'd prefer the real thing. I was surprised they don't use incense for that purpose. I was told that many don't like the smoke it produces and it just adds to the pollution of the city.

Drivers. They have lanes marked on the highway, but nobody cares. Drivers honk to communicate with each other, not just when they're angry like we do in the U.S. I was surprised to not see more accidents in the chaos on the streets, with pedestrians, cars, trucks , thousands of motorcycles, bicycles, tiny little open air rickshaw type vehicles, etc.

Poverty. Lots of it here. I was told that there are so many poor people here, the government can't take care of the sick. No money here, means no treatment. When I asked a guy what people do or where they go if they're sick and don't have money, he said "God is good."

SPRING...THE CRUELEST SEASON?

I love living in Utah. I'm a mountain guy and living in the mountains brings four seasons. I do a lot of musing about the seasons, the virtues and blessings of each. I love them all and welcome the arrival of each and to a lesser extent, mourn their passing.

My relationship with spring has been the most ambivalent. For many it brings the excitement of a new birth, a fresh start, an awakening, a coming out after a long, cold winter, longer days, more daylight. Easter brings the promise of the of the resurrection which adds to the symbolism of the season.

I've found the reality of spring to be much different. Sure, we have our warm sunlit days in spring here, where the bulbs begin to sprout and the birds sing. But just as often, spring brings blustery cold winds, rain, snow, mud and lingering cold. It baits you, tempts you and then quickly abandons you.

Spring in the east, where we have had the privilege of living two different times seems to be a little more predictable than here in the Rockies. It certainly is more colorful, with it's tulip trees in early spring and azaleas and dogwoods coming later. Here, we often go from cloudy and cool to hot with not much of a pleasant transition in between, without an abundance of color to show for it .

This year I've decided to change my attitude about the season and embrace all of it's unpredictability and look more closely for it's unique beauty. I've not been disappointed. I'm in no hurry for it to go. I'm savoring it (well, except for the wind).

Below is a short video I took today of our deck and trees in a spring snowstorm. What you're really seeing is here is me experimenting with the video feature of a new camera.

JOE RETURNS AND SAMMY PAYS A VISIT

I'm proud of my four sons, all faithfully serving in their respective fields of labor. And I love my grand kids. Sammy is the latest.

"O wind, if winter comes can spring be far behind?" -Percey Shelley

Well, the wind came this week. Three straight days of the cursed stuff. Howling during the day, moaning at night until finally it blew in the blessed snow and stopped. Something about the wind just leeches the juice right out of me. Dries me up like a prune.

Wind has been on my mind of late and came to the forefront of my orb this week. My daughter in law Melissa recently proclaimed her love of the wind and we discussed it one Sunday evening as a family. Her husband and my son Sam and I along with some friends, took a desert hike in a strong wind a few weeks back and loved the hike in spite of it.

On day two of the blast this week, I took my usual walk on a trail above Salt Lake City. This wasn't a cooling, dancing summer breeze, mind you but a stiff steady 30mph 'er with gusts up to 50. Part of the trail goes right beside a busy freeway and I imagined drive by chuckles at Jerry-at-an-Angle, bracing and trying to walk at the same time. Dust kicked up, blew in my eyes and air borne debris stung my face. I was mildly amused at articles flipping and gyrating in the air, out of control and worried about their future. I watched an unleashed kite dive and pitch by on its way to Kansas, plastic bags looking desperately for a fence, and a long piece of tp twisting like a snake in very strong current.

The valley below was cloudy with with dust, the mountains above me blurred. Walking with the wind at my back was also a show as I lurched forward trying to negotiate through the gusts.

Driving home, I got to thinking that it wasn't all that bad. I walk in all four seasons, am a nature lover and thus should appreciate all she has to teach me. Re-thinking Melissa's wind love, I pulled in to the driveway and was confronted with three overturned trash barrels spewing their contents all over ours and the neighbors yards and to the dusty sky above. As I chased I changed my mind back again.

I made a snowball as
perfect as could be.
I thought I'd keep it as a pet
and let it sleep with me.
I made it some pajamas and
a pillow for it's head.
Then, last night it ran
away.
But first-- it wet the bed.

--Shel Silverstein

Happier times on the slopes a few years ago



I was skiing by myself at Deer Valley on Friday. I enjoy skiing with others, especially my family, but I also don't mind spending time alone doing things I love like fly fishing and skiing.

It was a beautiful sunny day, the snow was good and the pre-holiday crowds manageable. I skied hard in the morning and was moving over to some easier slopes to cool down before going home. On one of those easier runs I was skiing faster than most on the hill when a young girl turned unexpectedly into my path. To avoid hitting her, I went down....hard. I did the splits and immediately knew I'd pulled or torn a groin muscle. The swelling and bruising indicate it's a tear.

So I'm hobbling around the house feeling sorry for myself today. I read online that groin tears are slow to heal. It's the end of the ski season for me this year and I hope I heal up enough to ump again come spring!

The Wave






Me and my son Sam, my friend Bob Nydegger, and his brother Fred took this hike yesterday. It's not far out of Kanab, Utah, right on the Utah/Arizona border. It was chilly and windy, but the chill, wind, and the snow the previous day meant we had this very popular little trip in paradise all to ourselves. I've taken many hikes in our red rock country and lived in it for a month with nothing but an army blanket when I was in college. This ranks right up there with the most beautiful spots I've ever seen.