Happy Birthday!! Thanks for 20 Great Years!

Me and Mine have been Wallace and Gromit fans almost since their inception. In fact, I haven't taken the newest short, "A Matter of Loaf and Death" out of the cellophane--waiting until I can garner a few fans to watch it with me. Thomas? Season? I'll bring the cheese...Incidentally this is the UK Google Doodle homage to the charming duo. We, on the other side of the pond, got pretty caught up in the 40th brouhaha over Sesame Street with nary a nod to our British "rock stars".

Sunday, September 16, 1973--"IMPACT...The First Three Days"

"Words to write. I feel the obligation--possibly not the prompting--but my heart and mind are full and brimming. Besides, no one would believe me in a month unless I write it down as living proof now. Today is Sunday. We are R & R ing (resting and recuperating). We had a short simple Relief Society. Seems like my life has been reduced to a simple matter of keeping track of my Dr. Pepper can! My existence would be very feeble should I be deprived of it. As for my last three days, they've been REAL! We've hiked and hiked and drunk water and thrown a little sleep in here and there. VERY little here and there! I'm sitting here on the side of a small dune up to my waist in sand listening to two kids playing a guitar and singing. Beautiful. It was right that they meet now and sing together so well. Lots of people are harmonizing in other ways.
Here are some highlights of the adventure so far: The bus dropped us off literally in the middle of nowhere. Actually I think we passed nowhere and went beyond it! We had a prayer, tanked up on water from coolers on the bus like camels and buckled our possible bags (like fanny packs which carried small necessaries like our soda cans, pocket knives, journals, pens and a toothbrush. My dad and I had great fun picking mine out of a WWII surplus store heap.) on. Our first landmark, Keg Knoll, seemed so far away. But then we were looking back on it several hours later. You can't imagine the type of thoughts that pass through your mind as you travel blindly in the dark up a road out in the desert. You're scared and your bladder is having second thoughts as well! One girl and I were ahead of the group because we were excited and overwhelmed by the allness of it. Meanwhile the group had taken off the road. We had to run, and we couldn't find them! It was a unique sense of panic for about 15 minutes! We hiked until about 4 A.M. down two huge sandstone canyons. We set up camp which merely meant that we built fires and dropped in our tracks huddled around the fire. I'm a little worried about the water that we drank. It smelled strongly of fungus. Water is going to be a big deal, I can tell. Earlier this evening on the way down the canyon in the dark, I came upon a group of the kids crouched down. Lo and and behold they were sucking water out of a mud puddle through an old piece of cord. It tasted scrumptious!!!
Friday we crawled mostly through 7 foot tall bullrushes on cliffs above the Green River. When we got down to the river, Yosemite (one of our student leaders--bright red hair and handlebar moustache)gave a special prayer to bless the water. (the first of many many many prayers sent up on behalf of water!) We had been told that we could watch animal footprints flow by in the river! It didn't really flow; it slugged along. We dipped it up and strained it through our bandanas. That was to be our source of water for the day. In the afternoon we were in the hot hot sun which was hard. The group stopped, and we felt the pure sheer please of life's simple necessities--quenching thirst and cooling off. It changed our whole outlook! ...to be continued"

September 13, 1973

"I'm sitting here propped up in my seat in the bus. We've been waiting for the back-up crew here in Green River, Utah, for over two hours. Everyone super-scarfed for about a half hour. I ate an apple, some apricot nectar, some celery, and cheese. I'm sitting here with milk-soaked bib overalls. Someone got a little feisty and doused me--probably nerves. I am quite excited sitting with my boots off inhaling what are going to soon be sour milk funes. This is ironic. I am writing so light-heartedly, and in a matter of possibly two or three hours I'll be out floundering in sand with thoughts of 'What kind of fool am I?' ringing in my dust-studded ears. Such is life--laugh about it today and dig it out of your skin the next.
The kid behind me is blowing his brains out on the harmonica. My companions are interesting. We're all getting a bit punchy. I can't wait for the REAL HARDSHIPS to begin. It will be enlightening to see facades fade and real spirits shine through. Most of all I'm looking to see what I am--just how much of my mortality I can shed. I hope I can learn so much about my eternal self that what I am going through will only serve to make me aware. Someone is pulling my toes.
September 14, 1973--Last night we climbed down canyon after canyon--big huge goblin rocks all around. My hiking partner Roy was truly my lifesaver. He was my wall to jump onto and my railing all the way. My muscles started to shake, but all the water I drank helped. Before we left Green River the leaders had told us to drink. I drank 7 Dr. Pepper cans of water. On the way to the desert, we obviously had to make a pit stop! Picture this! 36 posteriors exposed simultaneously to the air!! What a relief!!!! I had almost exploded!
It was beautiful beautiful gorgeous on the desert. We walked up over a rise, and the moon was full and orange. I have a new friend, Bethany. She is an opera singer from Salt Lake. We immediately connected. I'm in an adventure now.

Not For the Faint of Heart

When I was 20 I packed an army blanket, a pocket knife, my toothbrush, a couple of books, a journal, a primitive camera and a few changes of socks and underwear and headed for the desert of southern Utah with this motley group of strangers. This experience was affectionately known as Survival, but on my BYU transcript it somewhat sterily comes up at Youth Leadership 480. A bus dropped us off in the general vicinity of Green River, UT, and picked us up in Escalante, UT, exactly 30 days later. We filled that month with walking, starving, climbing, walking, bonding, huddling around campfires, hiking, orienteering, losing one another, finding one another, eating cactus and wild berries, talking ad nauseum about food, and generally having the time of our young lives. A few of us started the trip with drug addictions, a few of us were on the trip to escape troubles, and at least one of us joined the Church and took up a whole new lifepath as a result. We read a lot of books, discussed even more, and at the end of the trip we spent 3 days entirely alone figuring it all out. We cooked a couple of snakes and learned amazing culinary variations using only flour, salt, a little cheese, and rosehips if we could scrounge them out. We held Church services and passed around a canteen and some nuts we found rollling around on the ground for sacramental purposes We drank some pretty rank water out of the Dirty Devil River--after we'd rung it out of our bandanas. But most of the time we just walked. Lots of walking. They estimated we covered over 500 miles in that month. The amazing part of this story is that I carry this experience so deeply in me that it rarely surfaces in conversation--yet it has colored the very lenses through which I view life daily. Go figure. This picture shows us at the gathering we held at the "Cookie Jar"--my place of residence for 2 years--a day or so after we returned. We've cleaned up obviously. Notice that all the girls pretty much insisted on wearing dresses. What I wouldn't give to wrap my arms around just one of these necks...and drop back for awhile. Where are you all? Oh in case you haven't found me--I'm the head on the back row under the right arm of Don perched above the group looking off into the distance. I think I'll go dig out my journal and post some stuff out of it. Do you mind?

Halloween by Proxy

I could barely utter my own name yesterday and spent a good deal of the day thinking how glorious it would be to pass on to the other side. But I took great comfort in knowing that "they to whom I have passed on my genes" were celebrating in the traditional style. Had I been able to match a costume to the antics of the swine flu in my body, I would have truly scared the tights off of one and all...Out Maryland way

...Over in Colorado
Down in Happy Valley

We are SOOO going to play this at Natural Helpers!!!

The Sloth Returns

I've been on the wing a bit as of late. And even when on the ground I've been flying low. Had you followed me closely this weekend you'd have witnessed me supervising a very amateur homecoming float thrown together, three hours of some pretty major burger/dog grilling at the homecoming game, and some pizza slinging at the grade school Halloween carnival. Lest you think I'm doing community service for naughtiness, I'm not. But almost. I have a 400 hour internship for an administrative degree I've been slaving at for 4 years. This internship WILL be the death of me, just for the record. But in an attempt to get back in the blogging saddle, I am posting some pretty random shots of my last couple of months hither and yon.

A wee little wiener pig who made it all the way to the Minnesota State Fair! Congrats, little porker! Hold on! He may have been BORN there!

A couple of "geezer" brothers rocking out in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

My sister and daughter in Williamsburg.

Paco and Charlie carrying water in an old oaken bucket from the well to the garden watering barrel in Williamsburg.

An incredible example of "I Can't Believe They Do This!!!" in the Black Hills! THEY RAKE THEIR FOREST FLOORS!!!!! MILES AND MILES AND MILES...sheesh...

Trying out the brand spanking new bike path from Moose to Jenny Lake in the Tetons. A PLUS!

On an "Angel Errand" in the Manhattan Temple with beautiful people. Good on ya, Mary Jane.

Paco takes his medicine like a man in Williamsburg.

We slept on the GROUND in this teepee in Cody,WY!!