Notes From A Bear's Journey

That Sinking Feeling     There's a certain feeling of safety when one walks upon a surface as solid and as ancient as the rocks of where we were hiking in Sedona, Arizona.  Our first time here, we felt as home in this area as when we would visit the southern part of our own state, Utah.  The geologic similarities were striking, the layers of sandstone and clays that camouflaged the millions of years they took to form as well as the eroded surfaces that looked so impenetrable now beaten back by the isolated winds and rains that arrived well before us humans.  But we would soon discover (as we did in Arches National Park), that what may appear to be something solid may often prove to be a false comfort.  Within a short distance on our trail we encountered a sinkhole, the acidic rain coupling with the runoff water underground to create a weight too difficult to support...the surface we were now walking upon.  One sees this in other parts of the wo...

    There's something magical about a long road trip.   I say this with some caveats as one would not be apt to think this if one were doing it for a living such as long-distance truckers or regional salespeople whose life is pretty much dependent on driving as a profession; and admittedly, I remember as a child being rather horrified at the thought of a long drive vacation with my parents (and bored as it eventually came to fruition), even as we were given free-reign in the back seat, all happening at a time and in a world without seat belts, planting ourselves as kids onto the top "shelf" by the back window, stuffed and waving to the cars behind us as foolishly as the dangling arm of a puffy jacket crammed into the same spot.  No idea what the accident rate was back then but cars were built of thick steel in that era, gas was cheap and somehow through it all most of us managed to survive.  To those of you scratching your heads at this image, one has to remembe...

    You're at a party or a dinner with friends, the conversation getting lively, the subjects popping up and bouncing with such rapidity that you want to jump in but there's no opening; then there's a moment of pause and you can speak but...you forgot what you were going to say.  It's gone, as quickly as it came and as desperately as you try to remember, it's gone.  There was an old concept of this, that by going backwards to the "main line" you can retrace your steps and thus remake the connection, the old "what were we talking about" question serving as a trigger for your "ah-ha" moment and suddenly you're back on track.  But for many, there is no going back...it is simply gone.  I witness this almost daily at my mother's care facility, one woman in particular always smiling and always happy to see me and always, always wanting to engage me in a conversation; but then she begins and within seconds --seconds-- her chain of th...

Going Local Painting by Jordan Brun     With the rise of corporations and monster chains buying out small businesses (something we witnessed en masse while visiting England some years ago as pub owner after pub owner told us about having to close due to being underpriced by one of the beverage chains, currently the owner of over 500 once-local pubs in Britain) going local is a phrase one hears quite regularly.  Buy local produce we hear, use local services, eat at local restaurants.  Sometimes this is easy to do, and sometimes not.  At one of our grocery stores, the local produce is a mixed bag of good and not-so-good veggies and fruits (much as one would find at the outdoor markets).  But behind all of that mish-mash is a lot of hard work and a lot of inching through life for the small farmer.  That bruised batch of fruit might be the difference between profit or loss to that local farmer, one who is unable to simply toss away tons of lettu...

Overload     It's been a busy week, a phrase uttered by many and likely uttered with more meaning and justification than that which is coming from me; but it has at least seemed busy.  Our friend arrived for her mother's funeral (our Irish friend) and spoke of how much there was to do...the arrangements, the cleaning, the settling of the house, the papers.  Her husband (the daughter's husband, that is) is an independent app developer for games and she spoke of the competition he faces (400 new apps released daily); our neighbor is a published author (with an agent) and he often mentions the competition there as well (750 new books released daily).  Then came the three new pilot episodes from Amazon, each struggling to find a new place among that group's massive streaming audience.  And then I went to pick up my mail only to again find a weight of magazines overfilling my box.  Pick up, sort, prioritize and repeat again next week.  How does...

History Disappearing     There was a piece in a recent issue of Smithsonian , one which showed the wanton destruction of historical sites and monuments by ISIS saying: ...Never has more history been willfully destroyed in one swath of the world than in recent years...The group’s annihilative psycho­pathy seemed to peak in August, when it publicly executed Khaled al-Asaad, Palmyra’s 82-year-old head of antiquities for more than 40 years and a beloved archaeologist.  ISIS beheaded al-Asaad and hung his body from a column in the city, condemning him as a “director of idolatry.”  But according to some reports, the Islamists killed him because he had refused, during more than a month of captivity and interrogation, to reveal the location of antiquities that his staff had hidden away.  One can imagine the thoughts of watching something dating back to a god from Mesopotamia being toppled, history falling before one's eyes, and giving one's life to protect ...

The Passing     She passed away, the Irish friend I wrote about in the last post.  We were gone, back at our friend's cabin for a quick overnight, a chance to once again view the overly dark sky lit only by the ancestral light of distant stars, planets and the occasional passing satellite.  Sitting once again by a crackling outdoor fire, we glanced upward at the billions of stars (or so it seemed to our "citied" eyes, even if astronomers seem to agree that the average person can only view about 3000 stars at the most even on a dark and cloudless night).  Somewhere would be an even more distant speck of one of our outer planets, Uranus (a good page to keep up with what is happening each month in your night sky comes from the University of Manchester ).  We couldn't see it, much less even try to pretend we could find our way around to navigate should we be drifting alone in space as our friend was likely doing now, perhaps not physically but in some ot...