January 21, 2016, Prescott- I am spending today and tomorrow with fourth graders at a small elementary school, on Prescott’s north side.   It’s a welcoming place, that has offered me continuity, over the years.  I will miss that, in the latter part of next week, but one must choose, and move forward with those choices.

Here’s a bit of speculation, on a different note:

Is it ethical to practice vivisection on ants?

Looking at the segments of the writhing forms,

whilst knowing full well none of them may register a plaint.

The susurration of a shocked animal-rights advocate, in Scandinavia, may be the norm.

Yet, would it be any less barbaric, for a horseshoe to land on the insects, as they herd their aphids, among their plants?

(The above is in response to another prompt, in the Winter Scavenger Hunt).

January 20, 2016, Chino Valley- It’s easy to enter into hibernation, physical and /or mental, in the somnolent season.  I linger in bed a bit longer, in January, than I do even a month prior, or following.  The darkness does not spur one forward.  It is the sense of light; the inner sense of duty, that gets me going, during these days of what passes for winter, around here.

I will be going up to Colorado, next week, leaving Wednesday morning and getting back sometime on Sunday, the last day of January.  Much of the time will be spent talking, pondering and internalizing ways to promulgate the the beneficial use of essential oils.  I am encouraged when I see how many people are taking to these time-honoured healing media.  Whether through the company whose products I promote and use, one of its competitors, or that most American of systems, DIY, essential oils cast forth no side effects.

I digress.  The topic at hand is hibernation.  I wish the Wall Street bears would go back into hibernation, and stay there.  They have a job to do, though:  Teaching us all not to be greedy, for what one holds too tightly, others can and will take away.

Winter, for me, though, cannot be a time of slumber, or of sorrow.  I must go up north, and tend to my part in the healing arts.  I will miss my precious children, those three school days, but what I bring back will only help them, and everyone else I meet, to have a better life.

That said, I may sleep in (until 6:30) tomorrow- unless the call to duty comes beforehand.

January 17, 2016, Black Canyon City-  With the snow along Prescott Circle Trail slowly turning to mud, I determined that today was as fine a time as any to resume my journey down the Black Canyon National Recreation Trail.  Last spring found me stopping at a ranch in Bumble Bee, an old mining town-turned-have for off-gridders.  About a mile further east, along the old Crown King Road, lies Glorianna Trailhead.  It was there that I began today’s marathon:  12.5 miles, round trip, to Black Canyon City and back.

The crew of All-Terrain Vehicle enthusiasts, who greeted me at the trailhead, confirmed that this was the route I needed to follow-  a fact I had determined from looking on the BCNRT website, earlier.  It’s always good to have locals know where one is headed, the fantasy goons in “Deliverance” aside.  So, I bid them a fine afternoon, and headed out.

Granite tower, near Glorianna Trailhead, Bumble Bee, AZ

Above, I encountered a cholla cactus, shimmering in the afternoon sunlight, a group of sahuaro, seemingly on the march, and, upon climbing a ridge, my first trailside view of Black Canyon City, still four miles further southeast.

The shared use portion of the trail ran for about two miles, before it split off from the road, and headed uphill, just west of the small shooting range, where a very focused young man was practicing,  and thankfully facing away from me.

About thirty minutes later, I came upon one of the two big treasures of the route:  The Agua Fria River.

View of Agua Fria River, from a ridge to the northwest.

This used to be privately-held ranching land, and the old fence posts dot the trail.

Old fence post, about a mile west of the Agua Fria.

The river needed to be forded, but as you can see, the shallowness made this a minor task- and it was rather delightful.  The cast and stunt people of “The Revenant” would have been rolling on the ground laughing.

Just before I made my way down to the flowing stream, the ruggedness of the upper branch of Black Canyon presented itself.

Upper Branch of Black Canyon, north of its namesake town.

Above are two views of the Agua Fria, before I crossed (right) and after (left).  Just after I forded, a mother/daughter hiking pair came down from the south rim, accompanied by their protective 1 1/2 year-old-German Shepherd, who let me know my presence was not appreciated.  The women were more gracious, though, and held the youngster by her collar.

Onward and upward, I headed towards the canyon for which the town is named.  It is a far more interesting sight than I had previously thought. On the lower right is one of the four spur canyons which one encounters along the Horseshoe Bend subsection of the Glorianna.  On the lower left is a good view of the limestone “wall” which distinguishes Horseshoe Bend.

 

The canyon itself, which will be the focus of further exploration, next Sunday, is seen again, on the lower right.  I got a nice zoom shot of a cylindrical edifice that rises about three miles east of Black Canyon City, from the vantage point of Black Canyon’s north rim.

So as to get back to the wide road before dark, I did not tarry long at Horseshoe Bend, before heading in reverse.  Below are three examples of the mineral beauty to be seen along this trail section.

I encountered the three female hikers again, on my way uptrail, after recrossing the Agua Fria.  Dog was no happier to see me than she was the first time, but no matter.  I also met the ATV group, once back on the shared-use part of the trail.  They had been concerned for my safety, and once it was established that I was fine and knew where I was going, they headed on their way.

There are enough loose ends to be explored around Horseshoe Bend, that I will return here next weekend.  Stay tuned.

January 17, 2016, Prescott-

It had been about four months, since the last sighting of the fishermen.  Nadia, a red head among Romanians who had mostly jet-black hair, could feel the energy of those African fishermen, as they stared at her, and at the two, equally-ginger toned wolf-men who alternately barked orders at her, sometimes literally, and led her, tethered at the neck by a leather-collar, which they had devised from the hide of a small eland they had captured, about five months earlier.  Rather ironic, her plight, Nadia thought- a woman being walked about by wolves.  It all reminded her of an old Korean film she had seen, “To The Rose Inn”, she recalled, in which a man leads his female captive around on a leash, she walking on all fours.  “At least, I am allowed to walk upright”, she mused.

Narcolepsy was affecting the were-creatures, especially as they had discovered the local beer, which they were foolishly imbibing even in the the throes of a full moon.  They had stolen a goodly amount of the brew from some inebriated fisherfolk, whom they found snoozing in midday, about two weeks earlier.  It was this act which led to Nadia Donescu’s recovering her freedom.

On the morning of a waning gibbous moon, Nadia awoke to find her captors snoring, and lying in a copse, about 40o meters away from their usual spot- which was practically right next to where she was tethered.  Across the glade, she heard strange noises:  It seemed someone was slashing brush with a machete, but she couldn’t be sure.  The noises got louder, waking the two brutes.  The vocalist became clear:  It was a bull elephant!   The wolf-men looked at one another, then at the pachyderm.  They chortled to one another,  in delight.  Not paying the slightest mind to Nadia, they each grabbed a roughly-hewn atlatl, which they had fashioned from local flint, and attempted to encircle the snorting beast.

Nadia had her eyes on the elephant, too, but was more concerned with loosening the collar around her neck.  With the men otherwise engaged, and the bull warily eyeing them, she was able to extract herself from the shackle, and dart behind a baobab tree.  The bull elephant suddenly made for the man to his right and lifted the shrieking werebeast clear off the ground, throwing him into the cove.  A  Nile crocodile had an unusual lunch, that morning.

His partner-in-crime readied his makeshift atlatl and aimed for the crazed bull.  The weapon grazed the animal on his left temple, further maddening him and directing his attention to the now-hapless werewolf.  The man could not outrun the elephant, but tried to shimmy up the baobab.  The mad bull wrapped his trunk around the man-wolf, threw him to the ground, and stomped him, in one fell swoop.

Nadia wasted no time in clearing out of the disheveled camp, and ran towards the road she remembered from one of their infrequent forays into the fishing camps along the lake.  In short order, she happened upon a Chinese construction worker, and his two children, sitting by a koi pond they had devised, in which the children’s pet goldfish were happily at play.  The older child, a girl, took two of the goldfish, placed them in a plastic bowl with some lake water and covered it with wax paper, secured with an elastic band.  This, she proudly offered to the disheveled Nadia.  The father spoke some German, as did Nadia, and offered to take the newly freed woman to the nearest town.  Nadia was only too happy to accept.

January 16, 2016, Prescott-

God is reflected in the everlastings.

My love for my soul mate is everlasting.

Lemuria and Atlantis are not.

The joy taken from hearing children laugh, puppies bark and kittens mewl is.

The ups and downs of the financial markets are not.

A California traffic jam sometimes seems like  it is.

The joy of time spent with good friends definitely is.

The Sun, as vital as it is, is not everlasting.

Beauty and radiance will always be found, somewhere, so they are.

Earth, as familiar as it is, is not everlasting.

The Universe, with neither beginning nor end, is.

The stuff in my cabinets and my refrigerator, definitely is not.

I, in some form, will be- at least I strive to meet with God’s pleasure.

 

January 14, 2016, Prescott-  (The following is based on a Scavenger Hunt prompt including love letter, werewolves, taxi service, lost key, fish sticks.)

Laszlo had grown up in a Hungarian community in Constanta, a port on Romania’s Black Sea coast. So he found it second nature when, as a young backpacker exploring the outer limits of our world, he decided to stop a while on the island of Lamu, off Kenya’s golden shore.

He camped on the beach,  filleting and grilling the fish that he caught, each morning, and bringing it to a local woman, who dipped the meat in a spicy batter and baked it her beehive oven.  She then sliced the fillets into fish sticks, which were sold to German tourists, who reliably showed up for a quick lunch, each day, nearly ten months out of the year.  Lasz got enough of a percentage from these sales to allow him to live a simple, but satisfying life, under the radar of the National Police.

One day, while walking the beach, with a metal detector he had purchased, Lasz found a lost key.  It turned out to fit the trunk of a taxi, and had been lost by a former Somali pirate who had also settled on Lamu, and used his vehicle as sort of a Lamu-style Uber.  The taxi service was quite lucrative, and the grateful ex-pirate offered Lasz a partnership, making him an alternative driver, three days out of the week.

This, once cleared with a suddenly attentive Kenyan police captain, involved a bit of “gifting” to the captain.  Lasz drove the captain’s children to school, free of charge.  In return, he got a work visa.  Between the fish mongering and taxi service, Laszlo was becoming a fixture on Lamu.

He wrote his long-ago sweetheart, a Romanian girl, who had studied at the London School of Economics, and who was casting about for a future.  Nadia was intrigued by her dear friend’s love letter, and made arrangements to travel to Kenya.  On the night before she was to fly from London to Mombasa, she was approached by two rather scruffy, but suave, men.  They learned of her plans, and asked whether they might accompany her to Africa.  They did not seem to have any ulterior motives, and were not threatening to Nadia, so she agreed to meet them next morning, at Heathrow.

The men showed up on time, documents and tickets in hand, and the three boarded the plane together.  It was a delightful flight, from London, over Europe and the Mediterranean, North Africa and Sudan.  As the plane flew over Uganda, however, night fell.  Then, the two suave, scruffy men started to transform.  Somewhere over Lake Victoria, encountering a full moon, the werewolves appeared.

Laszlo waited several days for his Nadia, until a news flash from the BBC reported that a plane had gone down, with 300 aboard.  All but three were dead.  The three missing passengers were not found, but the word among tribesmen on the north shore of Victoria is that two hairy wolf-apes, and their captive white woman, are occasionally spotted in the rough terrain above the Lake.

January 13, 2016, Prescott- The year is starting to show its own character, as years always do.  There is less of the despair that seemed to hang over from its predecessor.  Maybe the State of the Union speech both reflected the longing for a new rising of national unity, or maybe it will ignite the light of that coming together.

There are issues:  More people’s lives are being snuffed out, both by the forces of authority and by those of anarchy.  David Bowie had not been dead 48 hours, when people began speaking out, regarding a heinous crime he is said to have committed, I believe in the ’70’s.  The forces of irreligion, masquerading as an army of the faithful, continue to wreak havoc, just about anywhere they walk.

Yet, hearing my little 4 and 6-year-old neighbours, riding their tricycle and bicycle along the alley that they rule, I know that several right things will happen in 2016.  The work that I need, in order to accomplish a few immediate goals, is presenting itself, and I get the sense that the Creator wants me to achieve some key tasks.

Regarding the prompt of Winter Planets and Constellations (#5):

Most of us are frozen, far beyond Sol.

Earth’s antennae signal us, calling out for love.

Each of us has our own denizens, living ‘neath the cold.

Microbes and carbonites alike, rarely venture to the ice above.

Terrestrials shall not see us, until the Universe says  “Behold!”

Yet, below the surface, we live unfrozen, in constant communication, undubbed.

We are the Winter Planets, and the constellations who light the chill.

Some clear, cold night, sit by your fire, and let us share our thrills.

 

January 11, 2016, Prescott-I had a job today, then it was cancelled.  In honour of that, I tended to small business items, like getting the drivers for my printer re-installed in my laptop.  Now, however, it’s time for a tale about a turtle, a bull snake and their minder.

Prompt # 3:  “It was most assuredly NOT my doing!”, fumed Dr. Pletenick, the lead herpetologist at San Saba Reptile Sanctuary.  The broken glasses, which belonged to his chief assistant, Gret (short for Margaret) Artursson, were a source of minor tension around the center, as she had left them on his desk, by mistake, before having to unexpectedly head home, yesterday.  Gret, at only 22, was facing cataract surgery, in a month. Her other pair of glasses were at home, 27 miles away, east of San Saba, which, as anyone familiar with the area knows, is tantamount to going to Timbuktu.

Ross Pletenick, for all his expertise about things reptilian, was a bit of that ilk himself, when it came to dealing with human beings.  Gret thought to herself that, were it not for the lucre coming from her job, and her own love of turtles and tortoises, she would be far away from THAT creature, and THIS place.  It was not the first time old Pletenick had dismissed her plight.  Yet, the insurance was bounteous, and would make her surgery that much more affordable.

Her unusual medical history was outlined in some obscure records, some of which were written in Icelandic, regarding her father’s line.  “There aren’t too many of us Arturssons in the world”, thought Gret, “but we are said to be descended from the old Anglo-Saxon king, himself.  How his descendants got up to Iceland, I’ll never figure out.  Maybe some of them drifted over to Ireland, after the Norman invasion, and went north with the monks.”

Her reverie was broken by the nudge of one of her favourite turtles, Micah.  The  juvenile  leatherback had been rescued from the Gulf, off Dauphin Island, following the Deepwater Horizon fiasco.  The Mid-Texas desert was an odd place of refuge, indeed, for a sea creature, but here he was, having been brought out here by a Gulf native, who had relocated to Odessa, but had no room for a marine turtle.

“Let’s play some nudge the beach ball, Babykins”, Gret cheerfully chirped to her chelonian friend, “then I must get over to check on the Aldabrans, referring to the three Indian Ocean giant tortoises who had been brought here by the Bush Brothers, following the Tsunami of 2004.  So, the two rolled the beach ball back and forth,for about 30 minutes, it being Micah’s favourite pastime.  Then it was back to the salt water pool with him.  Dr. Pletenick, for his part, was busy tending a pregnant bull snake, whom he goofily referred to as Cow Snake.  Gret rolled her eyes quite frequently, on this job.

Twenty minutes after setting the sea turtle back in his safe haven, Gret was sitting out on the deck, relaxing with a cool iced dark roast coffee. That was one saving grace about Dr. Ross Pletenick.  He knew how to whip up a mean pot of Joe. “I think I will come back here, after the surgery”, she mused, “after taking out a pair of dice, and randomly rolling snake eyes.”  Then, she called her father, for a ride home.

 

These two shorts are drawn from # 2 and 3, of  Mark's Winter Scavenger Hunt.

#2- It was almost 8 A.M., and the sun was getting a bit too high in the sky for the swamp creatures to stay close to the water’s surface.  Alphonse, being a grouchy sort of alligator, decided to stop checking out the nosy, noisy humans who were standing around his corner of the pond.

The bayou is fairly close to the Gulf, and the water in this particular pond was getting to be a bit brackish.  Alphonse was getting used to more salt in his food and drink, though it was giving him a fair amount of indigestion, though not nearly as much as he had after that oil spill.

It seems funny now, but he had somehow managed to end up wearing a child’s bonnet, after that accident.  It had fallen into the water, been carried to the bayou and covered Al’s head and eyes.  He bonked into a rather large retaining wall stone, while thrashing around, trying to get the darned thing off.  Tourists gathered and were photographing the hapless alligator.  One, who was eating butterscotch pudding, from a cup, listened to Alphonse’s growling and moaning.  He said the gator reminded him of a mermaid playing an oboe.

It’s not all fun and games, being an alligator.

#3- Doctor Miranda’s wife was a bit ill today, so he generously offered to take her enchiladas con pollo to the parish potluck. He placed the recipe in his suit pocket, in case any of the other ladies wanted it, after eating some of his dear Luisa’s signature dish.

As he was going towards the parish meeting room, after church services were finished, he took the recipe out to make sure he understood all the terms.  A gust of wind came up and blew the recipe out of the good doctor’s hands and off into a copse of trees.

Everyone raved about the enchiladas, though.

 

January 9, 2016, Prescott-  I read a discussion about the current downturn in investments, even as the economy is improving, overall.  It was explained there that what is happening is the repricing of stocks, akin to maintenance that is done on equipment, necessitating a brief shutdown.  This will supposedly take another week to complete, and stocks will decline a bit more.  Then, things will reset themselves, more realistically. That is a bit less threatening than the disorganized freefalls we saw in 1987 and 2008, to say nothing of the horrors our parents and grandparents saw in the Thirties.

It set me to thinking.  I have been in transition mode, since returning from southern California, last July.  Work is more urgent, and my sense of community is more front and center. We reprice ourselves, so to speak, whenever a change is felt to be needed.  Nobody, it seems, stays in a holding pattern, even when they think that’s what’s going on.

On my recent visit to the place of my childhood, I didn’t always get the feeling that I was understood by those around me.  I tended to speak more slowly and act more cautiously when there, and it wasn’t always comfortable.  Maybe because I had a fair amount of baggage, and often felt in the way, when I was growing up, I fell into a default pattern of behaviour.

So, I made an effort to stop myself, reprice, as it were, my worth and make the effort to do for others, this time around.  It wasn’t understood, or accepted, back there, but I am going with my renewed sense of self, anyway.  Revaluing myself means that no one, no matter how important they were in my life at one time, can knock me back down to a dependent state.  I have work to do, goals to accomplish and people to love.