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Posts Tagged ‘Zion National Park’

Favorite Places: Zion National Park

Posted in Favorite Hikes, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on February 15, 2012| 5 Comments »

“In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.” Leonardo da Vinci

 

All cares drop away when I hike Zion National Park's Gateway to the Narrows trail, an easy 2-mile out -and-back roundtrip that parallels the Virgin River. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 

“Rivers know this: There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” Winnie the Pooh.

Bean’s Pat: Philosopher of the Mouse Hedge: http://tinyurl.com/6mfskt4 Belly laughs and smiles. Especially if you click on the Carman Miranda link at the end. Remember her –  and her energy. I smiled all the way through the clip.

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Thankfulness: A Habit I Try to Exercise Daily

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , , , on February 1, 2012| 12 Comments »

 “Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.” William Faulkner

Travels With Maggie

A misty morning in Zion National Park also let my imagination roam free. -- Photo by Pat Bean

When I stepped outside with Maggie this morning, the landscape was heavy with wet, gray fog. It felt like I had stepped back in time to the Land of the Lost. My imagination could even picture a dinosaur emerging from between the two large, moss-laden live oak trees that sit in the park across from where my RV is parked. The fog was that thick.

I was glad it was just my imagination that took me back in time because I am most grateful for the age in which I was born.

I first thought about this when I heard the story of my mother almost dying from diphtheria, a disease that took many children before the 20th century was out of its teens. If not diphtheria, then it was polio, measles or even mumps, all diseases for which there are now vaccines. It was a rare family back then that didn’t lose at least one child.

The thought of that, after I had my own children, was just too horrible to think about.

As the years went by, the miracle of vaccines was joined by the miracle of automatic washing machines to replace the scrub boards and wringer washers which I saw my grandmother and mother use every Monday.

Other time-saving devices freed women even more, well until they joined the work force and found themselves, at least the women of my generation, both bringing home the bacon and continuing as full-time homemakers without help.

Lake's End Park, Morgan, Louisiana: The landscape and cormorants here have a Lost World look about them. Don't you agree? -- Photo by Pat Bean

Thankfully, my granddaughters won’t put up with male partners who don’t change diapers or wash at least a dish or two.

The past 10 years, meanwhile, have brought another modern miracle. The Internet.

While I lived my life mostly without it, I can’t imagine going back to such a time. I love being connected to the world, being able to find an answer to a question within minutes and the new friends it’s brought me.

I try, each day, to find something to be thankful for in my life. Today, I’m grateful it was only my imagination that took me back to a time before labor-saving devices, vaccines and of course Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press and plentiful books to enrich my life.

What do you value most that your ancestors didn’t enjoy?

Bean’s Pat: Portrait of Wildflowers: Seasonal Leaf Color http://tinyurl.com/82gq8np Everything you ever wanted to know about wildflowers. This is a great blog for someone like me who wants to know the name of everything in nature.

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I’m Fond of All Birds, Even the Ugly Ones

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , on January 6, 2012| 6 Comments »

 “Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we’ll soon be in trouble.” – Roger Tory Peterson

Recent California condor hatchling born at the Oregon Zoo, which has released 10 condors back to the wild. -- Oregon Zoo photo

Bird Talk

Judy Liddel, an old-broad birder like myself, whom I met on an Audubon outing to check mountain bluebird boxes in Northern Utah quite a few years ago, wrote about California condors on her blog. http://tinyurl.com/6ra4lg4

Her writing took me back in time, first to 1983, when the first condor egg hatched in captivity, and then to 2002, when I saw my first condor flying in the wild. The latter incident, which occurred just outside Zion National Park’s east entrance, was like a miracle, as their population had gotten down to only 22 when it was decided to take all of them into captivity for their own protection.

My granddaughter, Jennifer, who was with me when I saw a pair of the condors circulating overhead, was startled by my reaction. I pulled over to the side of the road, hopped out of the vehicle with my binoculars in hand, and started jumping up and down with joy. It was a sight I had never expected to see.

My fascination with the condors began one night in 1983 when I was the editor putting out the Sunday morning edition of the Times-News newspaper in Twin Falls, Idaho. A story came over the Associated Press wire about the first California chick being hatched in captivity at the San Diego Zoo.

One of the California condors now flying free. The markers on its wings allow it to be recognized and tracked. -- Wikipedia photo

Given that there were no murders, earthquakes or other catastrophes going on, I used the birth as the lead story on Page One. With it, I ran an enlarged photo using the color separations AP had sent over with the article.

Would you believe that quite a few readers took offense. One even wrote that the sight of the bald-headed, wrinkle-skinned chick had spoiled their breakfast. In their defense, I have to admit the paper’s reproduction of the photograph (this was still years away from the instant digital process newspapers used later in my career) had not gone well. The chick came out looking like it had been drenched in witches blood.

The managing editor was also not pleased, but I stood firm and told him this was a historic moment in bird history. He frowned, but didn’t fire me.

I have been following the progress of the California Condor ever since that day, and am pleased to tell you that the original 22 condors remaining in the world, with the aid of man’s efforts to save them, have multiplied to about 400.

It delights me that my friend, Judy, was as excited to see one of these birds flying free as I had been at the sight. Thanks for the memories Judy.

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Zion and NaNoWriMo Update

Posted in Favorite Hikes, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, Writing, tagged , , , , , , on November 17, 2011| 5 Comments »

 My Favorite Places: Zion National Park

 

Emerald Pools waterfall in Zion National Park in Utah -- Photo by Pat Bean

 

There are so many different kinds of writing and so many ways to work that the only rule is this: do what works. Almost everything has been tried and found to succeed for somebody. The methods, even the ideas of successful writers contradict each other in a most heartening way, and the only element I find common to all successful writers is persistence-an overwhelming determination to succeed.” – Sophy Murnham.

NaNoWriMo Update … 28,717 words

NaNo goal of 2,000 words met, physical therapy appointment kept, drive from my daughter’s homein Dallas to my son’s place  in Harker Heights accomplished, segments of my novel written out in my head as I drove,  hugs and kisses from my autistic granddaughter, yummy liver with onions and bacon, rice and gravy and green pea dinner with family, ice cream sandwich for dessert, Survivor show watched with my son, and now I’m writing and posting my blog post.

I’m pooped but happy.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Up

Posted in Nature, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , , , , , on August 28, 2011| 4 Comments »

Looking UP to the journey’s destination

The beginning of the trail UP to the top of Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park. — Photo by Pat Bean

Up high looking down

View from the top of Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park. — Photo by Pat Bean

These photos were taken in 2007. 

“We have not wings we cannot soar; but we have feet to scale and climb, by slow degrees, by more and more, the cloudy summits of our time.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow  
 
 

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Zion: Angel’s Landing Called But I Hiked Parus

Posted in Favorite Hikes, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on May 18, 2011| 3 Comments »

 “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

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , on May 17, 2011| Leave a Comment »

 “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

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , on May 16, 2011| 6 Comments »

 “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

Posted in Favorite Hikes, Journeys, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on May 15, 2011| 7 Comments »

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

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , on May 13, 2011| 6 Comments »

 

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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