Tied to the Post

Two kids gone

I am in a funk, and this monumental muddle is affecting my ability to negotiate for Navajo baskets, trade for turquoise, and bargain for beads. Indeed, I can hardly function at all. Fortunately, Priscilla and Rick are here to manage things while I mope about. Without them, this would be a...

Livin’ outside the box

During the 1970s and ‘80s, “Thinking outside the box” became the watch phrase for solving conventional problems using unconventional means. Once introduced, this metaphor was quickly adopted by the business community, and over the intervening years has seeped into every aspect of our daily lives,...

A rafter of wild turkeys

It was a blustery morning; the day was just getting started and I was cold. Cold is one thing I do not get along with anymore, so I sought out a sunlit corner and looked out over the Jones hay farm, inviting the nascent rays to penetrate my hide and warm my bones. Warmer weather was testing the...

Caterpillar to butterfly

When Kira and Grange were young and their vocabularies were just developing, their misfires often made me laugh out loud. During that period, we lived in the apartment above the trading post, so they were constantly wandering in and out of the store. It was common for them to be here countless...

Pack Man

The other day Priscilla the Packing Pro was on her way to Las Vegas with her family. As a result, Rick and I were alone together in the trading post. The Internet gods had been good to us, so there were packages to pack. Since Priscilla generally heads up projects of this nature and she was...

Intersections and the best path

Lately, Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken has been on my mind. In that verse, two roads diverged in the yellow wood and, as it turns out, the poet had the good sense to choose the best path. In my case, two roads converged in a small town on the high desert. Unlike Frost, however, I,...

Annual color display is right around the corner

Spring is right around the corner. It might be hard to believe for those of you who are shoveling out from the latest snowstorm, but around Bluff, we are beginning to see signs of warmer and longer days. Along with the improvement in the climate, we will soon be experiencing one of the joys of life...

Essential elements

If I had to pick a defining characteristic that has guided Twin Rocks Trading Post through its more than 30 years of existence, the likely winner would be... curiosity. A close second might be openness. And the third? Probably, more curiosity. As the dictionary defines these traits, curiosity...

Spending money to make money?

A couple months ago, I started reading the biography of well-known “Indian trader” Elijah Blair. Beginning in the 1940s, Blair operated trading posts at Mexican Water, Aneth, Kayenta, Dinnebito, and Page. “Lige,” as he was sometimes known, played an important role in 20th-century Southwest...

The arts – illuminating the void

The global pandemic of 2020 has devastated the local arts community. While there have been a few attempts by federal, state, county, and even tribal governments to support individual artists, the helping hand has not reached far enough. At Twin Rocks Trading Post, we have had a front row seat from...