Notes from Westwater
Father’s Day 2025: “You seeing this?”
A photo of smoke and flames shooting up from Westwater accompanied Terri Winder’s terse message.
I hurried onto our balcony where I could see the flames, dense smoke, fire trucks, and law enforcement vehicles in Westwater. The fire had apparently started in the...
“Why do you live here?” I blurted, my legs feeling like noodles from the intense heat.
“I ask myself that question every day,” Shannon, Ted’s niece, admitted as we walked toward the huge horse arena where her son’s graduation would take place at seven p.m.
“It took me three years to adjust to the...
As Ted, Kenidee, and I hiked across the desert south of the Bookcliffs, we heard the whistle of a locomotive, two longs, one short, and one long blast, signaling the train was approaching an intersection.
The sound sent shivers through me. I couldn’t help wondering if a train whistle sounded like...
I scrutinized the wide-angle, black-and-white photograph taken inside the Phelps Dodge Mercantile in Dawson, NM, circa early 1900s.
The ceiling, supported by massive pillars, was probably 20 feet high with long windows lighting the spacious building and electric lights hanging from chains every few...
I inched across the ice on the trail snaking down into the Capulin Volcano crater. I had super treads on my hiking shoes, but as I took another step my feet slid out from under me and I landed with a thud on my back.
Ted, who had already crossed the icy patch, said he heard the crack. My back ached...
Our grandson, Sam, has been fascinated with ancient civilizations for a long time, so at the beginning of his spring break, his dad drove him from Lee’s Summit, Missouri, to Denver where we picked him up.
Although it was spring, this 15-year-old, with curly brown hair and a smile that could light...
“If I can turn the wheels enough,” my hubby said, “we’ll go down backwards instead of sideways. If we go down sideways, we’ll roll.”
Still out of breath from struggling up the muddy embankment, Ted hoisted himself, mud and all, into the driver’s seat of our new-to-us Toyota 4-Runner, which perched...
Soon
by Sandra Skouson
I will travel
slower than the dune
and let the blue-black beetle
leave her lacy tracks
in cool still
waves across my skin.
That day
I will lie in the sun
and hear
the warm wind’s
welcome to the sand.
Grain by grain
I will abandon
the groping cottonwood
And never mourn the...
Ted grabbed his camera and rushed out of the Grand Canyon restaurant where we were eating lunch.
I strained my eyes, caught a glimpse of huge black wings through the windows, and grabbed my own camera, leaving my puzzled mom alone at the table.
Once outside, Ted and I snapped photos of the...
“I am His Child
Made with His Love
And it is enough to
Bring me to my knees
He’s reaching down
And I’m reaching up
And somehow I feel
the Maker’s Touch”
– Jenny Phillips, “The Maker’s Touch”
The trail sloping up toward a huge sandstone arch was rocky and dry. Ted, Kenidee, and I were hiking in an...
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