i thank you God

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes





(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)





how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?





(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e.e. cummings

Do Not Despise the Small Things

I just finished Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," which chronicles a year in her and her family's life of eating locally by growing most of their own food, sourcing other things as locally as possible, and learning to live without everything else. Suffice it to say, they made it through the year with aplomb and discovered that this way of living had become the new normal; there was no going back. Kingsolver concludes with a quote that really struck me. On p. 346 of the book, she writes:

It's the worst of bad manners--and self-protection, I think, in a nervously cynical society--to ridicule the small gesture. These earnest efforts might just get us past the train-wreck of the daily news, or the anguish of standing behind a child, looking with her at the road ahead, searching out redemption where we can find it: recycling or carpooling or growing a garden or saving a species or something. Small, stepwise changes in personal habits aren't trivial. Ultimately they will, or won't, add up to having been the thing that mattered.

So much of what our society values involves the big gestures: asking someone to marry you on the Jumbotron at a ballpark, winning American Idol, "royal hunting," celebrity tabloids and notoriety, getting onto Oprah (that that's defunct for now). Even philanthropy has to be big: the Gates Foundation with their billions of dollars or the 10 year plan to end homelessness in King County; these are the things that matter. Donating $10 each month to your local charity pales in comparison. There isn't a lot of respect for the small things. But when it comes down to it, the question, as Kingsolver puts it, is "How do you encourage people to keep their hope but not their complacency?" And in this case, as with many things, it's not despising the small things in order to keep hope alive: grow some herbs or a kitchen garden, carpool or ride the bus once or twice a week, buy organic if possible, visit the local farmer's market, say "hi" to your neighbor, walk up the stairs instead of taking the elevator, turn off the TV during dinner. It doesn't seem like much but as Helen Keller puts it:

The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.

Who Are We In This Complicated World?

If we come to sleep
we are His drowsy ones
And if we come to wake
we are in His hands

If we come to weeping
we are His cloud full of raindrops
And if we come to laughing
we are His lightning in that moment

If we come to anger and battle
it is the reflection of His wrath
And if we come to peace and pardon
it is the reflection of His love

Who are we in this complicated world?

— Rumi

Flora of the Southwest

Bristlebrush Pine, Bryce Canyon, UT




Tree Root, Fairyland Trail, Bryce Canyon, UT




Mormon Tea Bush, Arches National Park, UT




Dried Flowers, Park Avenue, Arches National Park, UT




Red Flowers, Park Avenue, Arches National Park, UT




Cactus, Hole in the Rock garden, UT




White Puffs, Mesa Verde National Park, CO



Flower Pods, Mesa Verde National Park, CO

Forget the Golden Arches

Check out Arches National Park in Moab, Utah, instead!




Panoramic of Delicate Arch




Feeling mighty small can put things into perspective




Balance Rock does just that




Double Arch




Close-up of Delicate Arch, which has been compared to a bowlegged cowboy's legs




The local rock shop




Tumbleweeds, anyone?

Hoodoo Voodoo

The hoodoos in Bryce Canyon are a result of a various geological forces starting from 2 million years ago. According to the article "Hoodoos: The Odyssey of an Oddity" found in the Bryce Canyon visitor's guide, "sediment eroded from mountains in northwestern Utah was deposited into a lake, lithified (turned to stone), and later uplifted to be re-eroded into hoodoos."




There are 3 steps in forming hoodoos. First, naturally acidic rainwater dissolves the limestone, creating fins. Then, ice and snow melt during the day and the refreeze at night creates cracks in the fins, making holes or windows. When the windows collapse, the pinnacles, or hoodoos, are formed.





Their spectacular colors come from two types of limestone rocks. The reddish type comes from a more marsh-like environment where plant roots helped oxidize iron to give sediments a red color. In the pink layer, grey layers formed, suggesting that there were ponds in the marsh that were so salty and/or mineralized that only certain bacteria could survive. As for the white top limestone layer, it suggests that eventually the basin transitioned to purer lakes where the less iron-rich limestone was deposited, hence creating these spectacular layers of color.

These hoodoos are amazing reminders of what a tiny speck of time we occupy in the continuum of the life of the earth.