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Weekly Photo Challenge: Tiny

May 21, 2011 by Pat Bean

Just the universe, my jump master and me. -- Photo by Charlie Trentelman

On my 70th birthday I went skydiving. It was one of those things on my T0-Do list for years and I finally decided I needed to just do it.

Interesting was the fact that the day I left a perfectly good airplane while it was still in the air, there was another 70-year-old woman doing the same thing.  That’s says something about how many of us “little old ladies” are really “feisty old broads” still enjoying life to its fullest.

I do know that I smiled the whole way down from 13,000 feet. And I do know that in the expanse of the sky with a wide expanse of the earth beneath me, I felt as tiny as a pin point in the universe.

“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to imroved the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.”  — Robert Kennedy

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A Long Drive With a Welcoming Friend at the End

May 20, 2011 by Pat Bean

Checkerboard Mesa

Checkerboard Mesa

 “A journey is best measured in friends rather than miles.” — Tim Cahil

*Travels With Maggie

The fastest, shortest way to Ogden, Utah, from the Watchman Campground in Zion National Park is to head west to hook up with Interstate 15.

The longer, more scenic route with minimal truck traffic is to head east from the campground on Highway 9 and then take Highway 89 north as far as possible – which is of course the one I took.

"...at the lemonade springs, where the bluebird sings, oh the Big Rock Candy Mountain." Not just a song, but a place. Highway 89 passes right by it at Marysville. -- Photo by Pat Bean

This choice required me to backtrack up twisting hairpins to the mile-long mountain tunnel and then to retrace my route of a week ago through the park’s fantastic scenery, like Checkerboard Mesa. Unless I’ve been extremely pressed for time, its always the route I’ve taken between Zion and Ogden, where I lived from for over 20 years.

I had 360 miles ahead of me, the longest day’s driving since I started this journey. But my week in Zion had left me well-rested, and I wouldn’t be stopping to do any sight-seeing this day on this very familiar route.

Instead I would satisfy myself with simply seeing the world around me from behind my RV, Gypsy Lee’s, steering wheel. As I watched the familiar sights, and of course the birds along the way, Maggie snoozed beside me.

In the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains, I always feel at home. This is the view from my friend, Kim's, backyard. -- Photo by Pat Bean

As usual when driving, I don’t listen to music instead choosing to let the symphony in my mind entertain me. It was quite pleasant communing with my little gray cells until Spanish Fork, where Highway 89 meets up with Interstate 15 for the last 90 miles of my journey.

My timing at this point was as bad as it gets – Friday during rush hour when everyone wants to get home or away for the weekend.

Although Interstate 15 had been widened to eight lanes in many places, it still didn’t seem enough to handle all the vehicles on the road. While I was ready for my journey to include people again, I wasn’t ready for this fallout that came with it.

Maggie awoke when I finally turned off the interstate, and begin getting excited. It’s what she always does when Gypsy Lee gets close to familiar places. And when I finally pulled into the driveway of my and Maggie’s friend, Kim, we both felt we were temporarily home.

Maggie renewed her acquaintance with Neo, Kim’s dog that is six times as big as Maggie but whom she thinks she has to boss around. I, meanwhile, got caught up on all the latest news from Kim, who eased my long day’s drive with fried chicken and a Jack and Coke.

Everyone should have such a thoughtful friend.

*Day 18 of my journey, May 6, 2011.

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Zion’s Emerald Pools Ensnare My Soul, But Not My Feet

May 19, 2011 by Pat Bean

“Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.” Freya Stark

The trail to the waterfalls begins by walking across a bridge spanning the Virgin River. -- Photo by Pat Bean

*Travels With Maggie

Today was my last day in Zion before moving on.

I spent part of it by riding the shuttle bus and simply enjoying the sights up Zion Canyon and then hiking the trail to lower and middle Emerald Pools, a 2-mile round trip with only a 150 foot gain in elevation.

The upper pool would have added an extra mile to my hike plus a couple more hundred feet in elevation gain. My body, still stiff from its lazy Texas winter, balked at the extra strain and I let it have its way.

I hadn’t walked the Emerald Pools trail in at least 10 years, and today it seemed like I had more company hiking with me than every before. It’s a colorful mountain-side, easy walk that runs past tiny running streams, dainty displays of wildflowers and musical waterfalls.

The path begins gently, and offers awesome views in every direction. -- Photo by Pat Bean

While I longed to have the path’s peaceful serenity to myself, I also rejoiced that so many others were getting a taste of Mother Nature’s wonders, too.

As I came back down the trail, I was saddened thinking about leaving this beautiful place in the morning. It’s been the same sadness I’ve felt on leaving all the awesome places I’ve been blessed and privileged to visit during the seven years my dog, Maggie, and I have been full-time RV-ers.

I grew up as a big-city girl who never got farther than 50 miles away from home until I was 14, when I took a trip from Dallas to California’s Sequoia National Park as babysitter for my aunt and uncle’s 2-year-old daughter.

That 1950’s summer vacation, with my uncle speeding across Route 66 way above the speed limit, changed me forever. It was my first glimpse of mountains and my first true brush with Mother Nature. I slept in a tent with cousins my age and learned the next morning that a bear had roamed through the campground.

I wasn’t the least bit frightened, just upset that I hadn’t seen it.

I have better sense these days than to want a bear strolling past where I’m

The end reward is the sight and sound of water falling down from the mountain. -- Photo by Pat Bean

sleeping, but I still have the desire to see one – and ever other wild creature, and every mountain, and every lake, and every redwood, and well, I guess you could say I simply want it all.

And while I would drive away from Zion in the morning sad at leaving this special place behind, I would also be eager for what the day’s journey would bring. While I know I can’t have it all, I’m going to insert as much of this country’s beauty into my soul as time will allow me.

One day I will have to allow roots to grow from my feet, but it won’t be this day, and hopefully not the next day, or the next, or the next …

*Day 17 of my journey … May 5, 2011

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Zion: Angel’s Landing Called But I Hiked Parus

May 18, 2011 by Pat Bean

 “Age is opportunity no less

 Than youth itself, though in another dress

And as the evening twilight fades away,

 The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

             — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Me in April, 2007, with Angel's Landing in the background. I made it to the top that year and two more years since then. My heart tells me I'll yet be up there again, just not this May. -- Photo by Kim Perrin

*Travels With Maggie

I walked the Parus Trail today. This paved path that crosses back and forth across the Virgin River was just what my body, which has been trying to heal a sprained shoulder since March, needed.

Although dogs are allowed on this one trail in Zion National Park, I didn’t take Maggie because I wanted to walk farther and faster than she prefers these days.

While I’m certainly no just-hatched bird, Maggie is 13, which in human years makes her about 91. The vet says she is in pretty good shape for her age, for which I’m thankful. It’s the same thing my doctor said to me at last year’s annual checkup.

Maggie’s been my faithful but spoiled traveling companion now for seven years, and just my spoiled pet for five years before that. I rescued her from an Ogden, Utah, animal shelter when she was a little over a year old.

 Back then she was timid, too submissive and frightened at the sight of a broom. The shelter said she had been abused. Today’s she not afraid of anything and expects to be treated like the queen she thinks she is.

While I was never abused as a child, I did survive some rough times, including growing up in an alcoholic family, being frequently accused of having cooties by school mates in elementary school and a disastrous too-young marriage.

Daisies growing along the Parus Trail brightened my walk this day. -- Photo by Pat Bean

But it’s not who you were, or how you were treated growing up, that counts. It’s you are today. And if you’ve survived past your 20s, then the only person responsible for who you are is you.

Not sure why my mind got going in this direction. Maybe because I walked the easy 3-mile flat Parus Trail today instead of hiking the 5-mile steep and strenuous Angel’s Landing Trail that I always do when coming to Zion.

I could whine about disappointing myself, or be grateful for what I can still do. I’d like to say I was grateful, and I can certainly do that.

 But I whined, too. Who I was today, physically speaking, wasn’t who I wanted to be.

I guess age and health get a say in who we are at some point in our lives.

Dookie! Dookie! Dookie!

*Day 16 of my journey, May 4, 2011

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Protecting Zion From Millions of Fans Not Easy

May 17, 2011 by Pat Bean

 “I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend? — Robert Redford

Instead of removing a fallen tree trunk still spouting leaves, a path from the campground to the visitor center goes over the obstacle. -- Photo by Pat Bean.

*Travels With Maggie

I remembered a visit to Zion back in the 1980s when our group got highly chastised by a park ranger because we had put our tent in vegetation slightly behind our assigned site. At the time I wondered why he was being so picky.

Today I saw why.

As I looked around the carefully marked-out camping sites, I saw a return of healthy native vegetation that both accommodated the wild nature of the park and provided a bit of privacy from the neighbors in adjacent sites.

While Zion, with over 2 million visitors annually, will never be the wilderness this country needs to protect, its caretakers have done quite well in maintaining Mother Nature’s ambiance for the masses.

Run by propane, this shuttle bus takes visitors sight-seeing up Zion Canyon. -- Photo by Pat Bean

One of its biggest, and most successful efforts, was the creation of the shuttle bus system for the drive up Zion Canyon.

When I first visited the park in the late 1960s, parking in the canyon at trailheads was never a problem. By the 1980s, as interest in our national parks gained in popularity, it was in disaster mode.

The shuttle buses have not only solved the problem of too many vehicles polluting up the canyon and having nowhere to park, they have encouraged the return of wildlife and returned peace to the landscape. Simply from the window of a shuttle bus I’ve seen wild turkeys, deer, porcupines, squirrels and even once a coyote.

People grumbled about losing their freedom to explore the canyon at will when the bus system first began in 2000. But I’ve never heard a complaint from anyone since who availed themselves of the service.

One can get on and off the buses at all the major canyon attractions, and never during peak season daylight hours have to wait more than 10 minutes for another one to pick them up.

Here’s hoping we all find ways to be kinder to this planet we live on. It’s not just that we need something to defend, we need to take care of our home because it’s the only one we have. .

*Day 15 of my journey, May 3, 2011

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Zion a Good Place to Dream of a World Without Hate

May 16, 2011 by Pat Bean

 “Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.” — Coretta Scott King.

Out my RV window -- Photo by Pat Bean

*Travels With Maggie

On this day two weeks ago, as I drank my morning cream-laced coffee while watching Zion National Park come to life outside my RV window, I read the New York Times headline announcing to the world that Osama bin Laden was dead.

It was news Americans had been waiting to hear for over 10 years. I rejoiced, as did most of my fellow countrymen and women. And then I was ashamed of myself. While I was still glad bin Laden was dead, I did not like the fact that I could celebrate his execution.

It just did not seem right, even though he and his followers celebrated the deaths of Americans on that tragic 9/11 day when al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for killing nearly 3,000 people.

Sadly the world has not been the same since

I have no heartache about the death of any murderer who hates and kills. My heartache is for the people on this planet who can not accept other people who are different from them.

Members of my own family call me idealistic because I dream of a world in which there are no borders and where everyone gets along regardless of their country of origin, color, beliefs or lifestyle.

The mixture of joy and sadness over bin Laden’s death colored my day here in Zion in a way that I find hard to explain. Everything seemed a bit shadowed, and at the same time brighter.

A sage lizzard showing off for the ladies. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I watched a sage lizard pump itself up and down on a rock in its attempt to attract a mate so together they could make babies.

Maggie and I walked beside the Virgin River on the Parus Trail, the one trail in the park where dogs are allowed. The river was flowing fast and muddy, continuing to etch its path upon the landscape as rivers have been doing for eons.

Delicate flowers pushed their way up through the earth as they do in Zion and elsewhere every spring.

Everything told me that life goes on renewing itself each day, each season, each year.

It’s sad that hate also seems to renew itself . How can we stop it? I ask this question a lot, but find no answers.

*Day 14 of my journey, May 2, 2011

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Zion National Park: A Bad Time Creates Good Memories

May 15, 2011 by Pat Bean

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair… “ Charles Dickens, “A Tale of Two Cities”

The Virgin River was running fast and muddy during my visit this year to Zion. -- Photo by Pat Bean

*Journeys

Waking up nestled in the shadow of Zion National Park’s sandstone cliffs in the Watchman Campground this morning felt like being at home.

As I watched, through the window of my heated RV,  the rising sun coming up over one set of high cliffs to dance down the cliffs on the other side, I thought of the many other mornings here that hadn’t been quite so comfortable.

The first one that popped into my was the cold morning I melted a pair of tennis shoes — while wearing them – because of putting my feet too close to a blazing campfire while watching the rising sun in eager anticipation of it finally hitting out tent site.

Then there were other mornings when shorts were the order of the day before the sun had risen that high. Zion weather in April and early May is a crap shoot.

But of all my visits to Zion, the most memorable is the one my family refers to as the “Camping Trip from Hell.”

It was 1995, and family members were coming to Zion from Texas, Utah, Illinois and California to join me for my annual April birthday climb of Angel’s Landing. We were all on the road when a landscape up Zion Canyon blocked the Virgin River, which then backed up creating a lake before it finally broke through taking a section of the Zion Canyon road with it.

While Zion's awesome cliffs mesmerize me, I still remember to look down at my feet. -- Photo by Pat Bean

We put my mother up in the Thunderbird Motel east of the park, but the rest of us continued as planned with the camp out. Since we couldn’t access the Angel’s Landing Trail, we hiked The Overlook and Watchman trails instead.

Wind blew down our tents, snow froze us and rain made it almost impossible to keep a fire going. But everyone stuck it out, and while it might not have been the best of times, it made for the best of memories.

Today, whenever the topic of camping is brought up at a family gathering, you can count on someone immediately asking; “Remember our camping trip from hell?”

And then the tall tales begin in earnest – and suddenly everyone is smiling.

*Day 13 of the Journey, May 1, 2011

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Red

May 14, 2011 by Pat Bean

Canyonlands National Park, Islands in the Sky -- Photo by Pat Bean

“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.”
Marcus Aurelius

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Even in Sadness, Zion’s Beauty Can’t Be Denied

May 13, 2011 by Pat Bean

 

My friend, Kim, with her beautiful GG -- Photo by Pat Bean

“You can shed tears that she is gone, or you can smile because she has lived. You can close your eyes and pray that she’ll come back, or you open your eyes and see all she’s left.

Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her, or you can be full of the love you shared. You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday, or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday…

You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back. Or you can do what she’d want: Smile, open your eyes, love and go on.”

 — David Harkins.

 

*Travels With Maggie

My friend Kim, who was to meet me in Zion National Park yesterday, canceled because her 99-year-old grandmother, whom I also loved and called GG for Great-Grandmother, was on her death-bed. GG had adopted me into her family when I lived in Utah because my own family all lived elsewhere, mostly 1,500 miles or more away in Texas.

The pending death wasn’t an unexpected turn of events, but one that GG herself had been wishing for in recent months because her life had dwindled to helplessness. She had told me as much herself when I had hugged her frail tiny body for the final time last September.

I was saddened by GG’s pending death, but also relived that this day had finally arrived. And knowing that GG was surrounded by her own loving family, and that I was not needed, I didn’t change my plans to stay in Zion for the coming week.

But as if echoing the sadness in my heart, weather in Zion this day was a cold-hearted one. It was only 27 degrees when I awoke, and the cold penetrated a sprained shoulder I had been nursing now for two months.

Indian paintbrush doesn't let a rocky habitat hinder its opportunity at life. -- Photo by Pat Bean

My dog, Maggie, meanwhile, who normally sleeps in until almost 10 a.m. woke at 7:30 and demanded a walk. Of course I bundled up and she got it.

Back at the RV, Maggie immediately snuggled back in on our over-the-cab bed and soon was snoozing. I fixed myself my morning coffee and sat in front of the computer to read the news online.

It wasn’t good.

Tornadoes and twisters, including some striking very close to my youngest daughter in southern Arkansas, had left over 350 dead behind.

Life is so fragile. And we never know what curve ball it’s going to throw at us. All we can do is live each day to its fullest and be thankful we can.

After checking in with my youngest daughter and learning all was fine there, and although it was with a sad heart for GG , and for those who had lost their lives in the tornadoes, and my daily sadness for the loss of lives in the wars our country is fighting, I didn’t forget to appreciate and be awed by my colorful and amazing surroundings here in Zion National Park. .

Not doing so, with all the suffering going on in the world, would have been a sacrilege.

*Day 12 of the journey, April 30, 2011

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Zion National Park: Journey’s End Just Another Beginning

May 12, 2011 by Pat Bean

“Happy the man, and happy he alone, he who can call today his own; he who, secure within, can say, tomorrow do they worst, for I have lived today.” John Dryden

My RV site in Watchman Campground offered views of canyon walls in all directions. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

While leaving what many consider America’s most beautiful road behind me, this didn’t mean an end to the scenic landscape.

Highway 89, from its junction with Highway 12 south to Highway 9 continued to be an awesome rural drive with views of mountains, cliffs and roadside streams that this day were full and broad. .

The highway briefly passed through another section of Dixie National Forest and through the small towns of Glendale, Orderville and Mount Carmel, all early Mormon settlements begun at the command of the religion’s prophet, Brigham Young, between 1862 and 1875. Historic rock structures from those early days can still be seen today.

Each morning and evening I watched as the sun lit up the cliffs like a neon sign. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Orderville was the Mormon church’s failed attempt at communal living and Glendale and Mount Carmel, the earlier settlements, were abandoned because of Indian attacks. Many of Orderville’s men, meanwhile, were arrested because of their continued polygamous way of life after it was banned in the United States.

I left 89 at Mount Carmel Junction, where sits the Thunderbird Motel and Golf Course, and headed west on Highway 9. Thirteen miles later I entered Zion National Park, and traveled its winding road lined with colorful sandstone formations that boggle the eyes another 13 miles to the Watchman Campground.

The drive included passing through a 1.1-mile long tunnel that cuts through a mountain. The tunnel, built in the late 1920s, is narrow and dark. My very first drive through it took place in the 1960s, when one could park in a pullout and get out and look out one of the tunnel’s vast windows to a view of the canyon below.

My dog, Maggie, tried to chase a lizard into this cactus. Fortunately she was on a leash and I pulled her back. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Those pullouts are now blocked, and traffic is often regulated to one-way because today’s larger vehicles, like my RV, Gypsy, Lee, need to keep to the center line to keep from scraping the lower sides of the tunnel roof. I paid $15 for this center-line driving privilege.

I have visited Zion National Park over 30 times. This Southern Utah landmark, where peregrine falcons nest, mountains glow at sunrise and sunset, and the Virgin River tumbles downward in gurgling splashes, is my special place in the universe.

Hooking up my RV to electricity in Loop B in of the Watchman Campground, with the guardian mountain looking down on me, filled my soul with peace and contentment.

I was thankful that the coming week’s journey in my life would all be spent right here.

Continuing day 11 of the journey, April 29, 2011

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