Not Like This

The single kayak fits perfect in the stairs landing spot. The two seater, not so much. Got Pam on shore and she offered to pull me up but the back of the kayak started filling up with water so I went in a little sideways and got my foot out on the underwater step but then the kayak started to drift a little and I slid off the step getting water and mud up to my shoulders.

The River

Each year Pam comes out with her family for a week or so at Base Camp and this year has returned a second time for another week with co-workers and friends. Pam wants to kayak the river and from 6 to 10am this is what it looks like. https://youtu.be/-Fy6gDjdr70https://youtu.be/B8smij9krdk

The Road to Town

Back to get them come evening.

The Road From Town

Some of the guests wanted to go to town but nobody wanted to drive the road so I loaded a trials bike up in the truck, took everyone to town, unloaded the trials bike and rode back.

Tuesday Morning Hike

The Island (My Reading Place is Gone)

Land of the Skinny People

Trials Bike to Town

The truck was at Nations getting new tires and then Kristin's car broke down while she was out here so I gave her the jeep. My plan was when John and his two guys came out to work next door that one would bring the jeep and the other the truck. John said the one guy didn't have a driver's license and was pretty much blind. Ok, never mind. Have the other guy get the jeep. The trials bikes aren't street legal but I'll go get the truck.

Wednesday Morning Hike

Little Early Tonight

Tuesday Evening

Little Rain: The Driveway

Hiking Hurrah

Sunday Morning Hike

Life in the Cracks

Saying Goodbye to Ray

I was crossing Disneyland one afternoon some years ago, and walking toward me the other way and I saw a small girl in a bright blue-and-white dress, with long golden hair. As she approached and stopped before me, I looked at her and said

"Alice in Wonderland?"
She looked at me and said:
"Ray Bradbury?"

Hiking with Ray: The Naming of Names

And after the towns were built and named, the graveyards were built and named, too: Green Hill, Moss Town, Boot Hill, Bide a Wee: and the first dead went into their graves.

But after everything was pinned down and neat and in it's place, when everything was safe and certain, when the towns were well enough fixed and the loneliness was at a minimum, then the sophisticates came in from Earth. They came on parties and vacations, on little shopping trips for trinkets and photographs and the "atmosphere", they came to study and apply sociological laws, they came with stars and badges and rules and regulations, bringing some of the red tape that had crawled across Earth like an alien weed, and letting it grow on Mars wherever it could take root. They began to plan people's lives and libraries, they began to instruct and push about the very people who had come to Mars to get away from being instructed and ruled and pushed about.

And it was inevitable that some of these people pushed back.......

Kayaking with Ray

Mars was a distant shore and the men spread upon it in waves. Each wave different, and each wave stronger. The first wave carried with it men accustomed to space and coldness and being alone, the coyote and the cattlemen, with no fat on them, with faces the years had worn the flesh off, with eyes like nail heads, and hands like the material of old gloves, ready to touch anything. Mars could do nothing to them, for they were bred of plains and prairies as open as the Martian fields. They came and made things a little less empty, so that others would find courage to follow. They put panes in hollow windows and lights behind the panes.

They were the first men.

Everyone knew who the first women would be.

So the second men were Americans also. And they came from cabbage tenements and subways, and they found much rest and vacation in the company of silent men from the tumbleweed states who knew how to use silences so they filled you up with peace after long years crushed in tubes, tins, and boxes in New York.

And among the second men who looked, by their eyes, as if they were on their way to God...

Nightly Ritual (Ringtail, skunk, two hot dogs, 42 seconds)

Hiking with Ray: Tuesday Morning

After a lecture recently, a young man stepped up, holding his baby in his arms. “Mr Bradbury,” he said, “shall I tell you the dream I have for my grandchildren and you?”

“Tell.” I said.

“I’m in training to become an astronaut with Mars as prime destination,” he said. “Many years from now, when we have our first colony on Mars and I am there with my family in the middle of the night, one night, with Mars a desolation and dead, I’ll wake because of a sound and go into my ten-year-old grandson’s area of our smallish hut and bend down over the heaped sheets and blankets and quietly pull them aside. Underneath, what do you think I hope to find? My grandson, with a flashlight, reading a book late at night, against orders. Startled, he looks up at me. What are you reading? I say. The Martian Chronicles, he says. He turns the flashlight off. Turn it back on, I say. Okay? He says. Okay, I say. He turns the flashlight back on. Slowly I pull the sheet back up over him. I can see the light dimly under the covers. June 2033, I hear him whisper. I turn and walk away, blinded by tears. Is that okay, Mr. Bradbury?”

I cannot speak. I grab and hold the young astronaut, tears in my eyes.

At last I say, Okay.

And suddenly I am an ancient Greek myth reborn to live among disbelievers, summoned by one who believed.

Okay, I say again, and look up in my mind to again see dead Mars but hear the live whispering of that splendid child.

Clementine Monday Morning

I had a Monday morning routine doctor exam so dropped a load of carrots again to Clementine and friends.

Hiking with Ray: The Martian Chronicles

"Kind of alone out here aren't you pop?"
"I made up my mind when I came here I wouldn't expect nothing, nor ask nothing, or be surprised by nothing....I get a kick out of the different flower, the different rain. I came to Mars to retire and I wanted to retire in a place where everything is different. An old man needs to have things different. Young people don't want to talk to him, other old people bore hell out of him. So I thought the best place for me is a place so different that all you got to do is open your eyes and your entertained. I got this gas station. If business picks up too much, I'll move on back to some other old highway that's not so busy, where I can earn just enough to live on and still have enough time to feel the different things here."

"Sometimes I feel I'm here all by myself, no one else on the whole damn planet. I'd take bets on it. Sometimes I feel about eight years old. My body squeezed up and everything else tall......You know what Mars is? It's like a thing I got for Christmas seventy years ago--don't know if you ever had one--they called them kaleidoscopes, bit of crystal and cloth and beads and pretty junk. You held it up to sunlight and looking in through at it, and it took your breath away. All the patterns! Well, that's Mars. Don't ask it to be nothing else but what it is."

Sunday Afternoon with Clementine and the Gang

The Season

Despite a nice come back the Utah Grizzlies have been swept from the playoffs in the semi finals of the Western Conference and the hockey season for Linny and I is over.

Clementine, Noah, Kozo, and Tucker

Kobae

Kobae has learned to rest his head on his arm just like I learned to do in most of the classes I took in high school.

Three Guys on a Roller Coaster

Jordan, Chris, and I made a quick two hour round trip to visit Three Guys on a Roller Coaster and since I have access to very fast internet today I'm going to put a little more of the trip on then usual. Having listened to the snake video it sounds like I'm getting a little snarky to Chris and Jordan but what surprisingly Go Pro doesn't project is the snake rattling and I'm telling it we're moving on.

The Washing Machine Problem

Kobae always hangs in the laundry room for a week or two when I bring him back from San Diego but this year he took a little longer than normal to move back over to his house. Still, on occasional he'll visit the laundry room. In the past I use to have the big yellow mop bucket in there but Kobae didn't like the mop bucket and I could always here it getting slammed around in the room so I took it out. Kobae is about 150 pounds now so he's looking for larger enemies and today he found one.

Hiking with Ray

Ray said: “And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I’ve never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands? He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.”

The Hayduke Trail

Carl is doing the Hayduke. From Arches to Zions with a whole bunch of places in between. Whenever you can hang around with people that do things like this it can only make you better.

Hiking with Ray, R is for Rocket

In the Martian Chronicles the first three human expeditions to Mars never returned. I told Ray I was pretty sure I knew where one of them was. It had long since crash landed and petrified in the Martian atmosphere. The front, the side, the port holes on the side of the ship were all plainly in view. I took Ray with me to investigate.

Hiking with Ray, Ray Fell

“(in response to the question: what do you think of e-books and Amazon’s Kindle?)

"Those aren’t books. You can’t hold a computer in your hand like you can a book. A computer does not smell. There are two perfumes to a book. If a book is new, it smells great. If a book is old, it smells even better. It smells like ancient Egypt. A book has got to smell. You have to hold it in your hands and pray to it. You put it in your pocket and you walk with it. And it stays with you forever. But the computer doesn’t do that for you. I’m sorry."

Evening Around the Island

Hiking with Ray

With few guests over the next two weeks finally there's some down time for hiking, climbing, kayaking and exploring. When I woke up this morning I realized I was out of hiking partners. I met Ray in around the 4th grade and we've been friends ever since. The question before me was which Ray to take with me. Looking out the window, then at the bookshelf, it was obvious. Now, to find a spot to reacquaint.

Michelle and Jax

Today Michelle and Jax moved back to Salt Lake City. Michelle has a good heart, kind soul, great work ethic, and matched me sarcasm for sarcasm, not an easy task. Jax is the only dog that Kobae never figured out. Dogs always run from Kobae as there is nothing in dog DNA that explains a rock with legs and Kobae is all about intimidation. Jax (aka Desert Dog) would come right up to Kobae and lick all the dried food off his face while showing no fear in doing so. I shall miss them both.

Revisit the Fingers

Michelle, Jax, and I revisit the Finger Canyons.