Notes From A Bear's Journey

    It had happened, an overseas trip canceled only to be followed by a road trip also canceled, and now an alternative, a last-minute decision to once again make the ten-hour drive to Sedona, Arizona if only to get away" we told each other.  Granted we were far luckier than most.  We weren't driving to flee a fire, or driving aimlessly because our home had been destroyed and we now had nowhere else to go, or that we were unable to "get away" because we were wondering if we would even have a home because we couldn't be certain of making our rent or mortgage.  Instead we were among the lucky few, able to just drive somewhere in order to temporarily recharge, to lose ourselves in the vastness of the land, the miles and miles and miles of roads and horizons. The British writer James Parker, in a short essay for The Atlantic , described his feelings on a similar drive this way: ...an overwhelming (for a Brit) apprehension of scale, a k...

    John Lennon wrote : I'm so tired, I haven't slept a wink.  And hats have to be taken off for the countless firefighters throughout the West who are indeed "so tired" and yet keep on going.  Out here in Utah and "our" portion of the West we faced a strange meeting of a cold front hitting our ridge of high pressure, resulting in a 50-degree change in temperature and a fury of winds .  Over a thousand trees, many a hundred-years old, were toppled by the winds in our forests, and another thousand fell on both public and private lands such as local parks, church yards and even at our Capitol.  Semi trucks were littered across our highways, also knocked onto their sides, and by the next day the sound of chain saws didn't seem to end...our neighboring streets alone saw 14 trees blocking driveways and even traffic (most were trees too large to fully wrap your arms around the trunks).  For those who live in hurricane- or tornado-prone areas, this scattering...