Notes from Westwater
For Valentine’s my hubby gave me a return trip to where we’d spent part of our honeymoon — Lake Roberts, NM. We planned to leave February 15th, but the forecast predicted snow and high winds. Being sensible, we postponed the trip until the following week.
The next week, the weatherman once again...
Ted started down into the muddy arroyo with our new little buddy, Kenidee, close behind. I followed more slowly. Unexpectedly, my hubby skidded on the slick mire, spun around with one leg in the air to maintain balance, flipped around again, jumped the water, and landed perfectly on the other side...
“You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.¨ Kahlil Gibran
Our Jeep jolted over what looked like huge slickrock slabs punctuated by polished river rocks. Our niece, her husband, and four of their children followed in their Tahoe.
They’d recently moved to Blanding...
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” Albert Einstein
Many years ago, Ted bought Ellis Palmer’s beautiful, wine-colored GMC pickup with a matching camper shell. Ellis had treated the pickup like a queen, using it to take his...
“It’s dry – completely dry,” my hubby said as we drove the dirt road intersecting the basins in Cheyenne Bottoms.
I stared in disbelief at the golden grasses and cattails growing where water once shimmered under the Kansas sky. Even more disturbing, some of the basins had only deeply cracked soil....
White Canyon Town
I hopscotched across the crusty mud deposited by Lake Powell. The mud had cracked two feet deep in places, so I needed to watch my step—as if I hadn’t been watching it the entire hike.
It was getting late, but we were searching for where Tom McCourt’s grandparents once lived....
“You’ll have to use your knees and feet,” my hubby told me as he tried to pull me over the lip of the cliff.
Although we weren’t very high, maybe nine feet above the ground, I couldn’t convince my knees and feet to cooperate, so I dangled with my legs flared out behind me like superman in flight....
We’ve searched for Bert Loper’s Hermitage three times. The first was during the summer of 2020. We explored Blue Notch Canyon, found the remnants of old mines, and hiked to a cliff overlooking Lake Powell and Good Hope Bay but saw no evidence of the ranch, long submerged under Lake Powell.
Since...
“For those to whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into supernatural reality.” – Mircea Eliade
“I’ll walk to lessen the weight on my side,” I told my hubby as I crawled out of our Pioneer 500 at the base of the steep trail to Mike’s Canyon, named after Jim...
I could hear the clank of shovels hitting buried rocks and the men panting from exertion, but they didn’t talk much as they dug dirt from the side of the road to fill the crevices of the washed-out road from Piute Pass into Red Canyon.
Ned Smith, Ted, and I had started from Blanding with our ATVs...