Tiny Dancer: 2020

Posted by Tiny Dancer / Monday, May 11, 2020 / No comments / Viva

Refugees Welcome

Refugees Welcome

Donau Canal, Vienna It is a small ugly fringe component of American society, a racist minority who wants to close our borders to thos...

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Getting Ready </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br />I am alone. And while I do not mind being alone and in fact need to retreat to my home deep in the mountains when I have had too much of the world, the solitary confinement imposed by the pandemic is a bit much even for me. I had not realized how the small social interactions with the local librarians, cashiers, clerks, the random person at the recycling outpost, these added up. Last week, when I caught myself talking to the moss, I made the commitment to get on social media. This was not a light decision as Facebook has always filled me with anxiety. I’m not sure why. It could be something as simple as the time commitment, but there are only so many psychological blocks one has the time to excavate and heal and avoidance seemed easier until now. How long will this quarantine last? What if I lose my communication skills?</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Everyone is beginning to feel what they miss the most about their previous lives. For me, it is dancing at a concert or festival. My battery was already running low from the previous year of choices that had removed me from this lifestyle. It never occurred to me that those joyful times may never happen again. So when I was invited to a virtual dance party with my peeps, I accepted. I had done some exercise classes via Zoom and been wondering if the connection with others could be expanded to dancing.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">But in truth, a half hour before the event I had pretty much determined to bail. I was tired and did not feel that any more stimuli would be a good thing. I have as of late limited my news feed and social interaction to every three days and this was Day Three. I had committed myself to making regular phone calls if possible, just to reach out knowing that this isolation is hitting people pretty hard. I’d had two lengthy phone calls, conversations on Facebook, read stories on Instagram, worked in the garden dragging a heavy ortho boot on one leg and worst of all, read accounts of exactly what I had been looking for and not found since the ‘get-go’, descriptions of what it felt like to have COVID19. The New York Times provided exactly that when I woke: accounts of people describing how COVID19 feels and frankly, the thought of an anvil on my chest fills me with terror.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">I’d also gone into town.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">It is odd being completely alone with no level set of the world outside. Only a few cars a day pass the road at the bottom of my long drive. Not that many ever did. The road turns to dirt in another mile or so and then heads down a treacherous winding rutted path through the woods, so it’s only used as a throughway by people who have been drinking and want to avoid the main road. I didn’t know what the outside world looked like. The nearest town is forty-five minutes away. I stopped at a greenhouse. No one was wearing masks. A woman who worked there sidled up to me to admire the plants I’d chosen, actually stroking the pots. I gave her a dirty look as I backed away. I didn't want confrontation. I just wanted to leave.  But the cashier took forever to ring me up after she finally got off the phone. I wanted a receipt, to which she responded quite grumpily, loping into another room to find paper to handwrite one. After she finally stuffed that into my hand, making sure that we had skin contact above my glove, I turned and tried to appear patient waiting for an ancient couple to hobble very, very slowly through the doorway. They were both terribly stooped over with age so I tried to look especially kind. Once she finally made it through the door and down the steps, the tiny crooked old woman looked up from the floor and raised a gnarled hand to point at me. “Look at you!“ she cried. “You’re wearing one of them things!”</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">A mask.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">My view of how the world was waiting this out had been one of more serious respect. It was comprised of ethereal figures in the National Geographic Instagram feed: people gazing plaintively out their windows waiting for the dread disease to strike or pass.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Mine appeared an entirely different world, magnified when I reached Lowe’s.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">I’d ordered lumber on-line so I could just pick it up, but store policy mandated my physical presence before they would cut my boards to size, so I was stuck there. For a half hour. Inside the crowded store. I counted. Eighty people, including cashiers. Five masks. No social distancing. In fact, the traffic flow was such that it was impossible not to be within another’s breathing space at any given moment.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">When I got home, I wanted to cry. But instead<i> </i>I just got a headache.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">It was all just too much. I was exhausted and planning to forego the dance party. But as the time got closer that old excitement of going out percolated to the surface. Remember that feeling? My mood changed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">I switched the computer back on and before you know it, I was putting in my contacts, brushing on mascara, dressing in a flowing skirt, donning bracelets and smiling.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The experience was a bit weird. Although it was dubbed as a private event, my screen told me that some 500 people were planning to attend. Participation in the event, a dj run dance party was by invitation only and the link provided only to those authorized. Once on Zoom, I landed in a waiting room to enter the party. I'm not sure if that was for technical reasons or an additional screening step. My understanding is that it was private primarily to minimize the bother of hacking possibilities. The party did not cost anything upfront, but a Venmo address was periodically run as a banner across the screen to tip the dj who was visible just then doing his thing. That reminds me, I'll do that now.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The audio was provided through Mixlr, which was cool because that meant it could be run through my stereo and that worked beautifully. There were a few brief interludes of inexplicable silence throughout the three-hour party, but I do not know which end, transmission or reception was responsible for those.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">I was not sure at the time how many people actually showed up. I chose the option on my screen to pin the Live Feed as the primary video with four thumbnail sketches along the side. The operator running the Live Feed did an excellent job. Sometimes it was just a screen filled with thumbnail sketches of participants, as many as could fit on the screen and sometimes it was a video of a single person or a couple dancing. I am guessing these were rotated as over 200 folks did attend and the screen did not fit that many. Participants were encouraged to make use of the create-your-own background feature Zoom offers and that was entertaining. It was a Grateful Dead party so many of the living rooms had colorful psychedelic overlays. Some people wore full face masks and costumes like they would at festivals. The hula hoop girls with their light-up hoops spun around. I felt a rush initially: my people! And I could almost feel the human energy field. When the guy in the tie-dyed shirt with the big grin was dancing toward me center screen, I loved him like I would have in real life if he were dancing next to me. I liked watching the hippie girls twirl about in their own worlds of rhythm.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">But I admit it took an effort to sustain.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The producers did an excellent job of recording dancers and then playing it on the screen. I could tell from my own thumbnail screen that my living room was too dark, yet somehow they lightened it and caught me twirling. And while I don’t mind being watched when I dance, watching myself was a bit odd as I did not appear as the goddess I thought I did. That brought me an awareness and self-consciousness I had not been seeking. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">By not simply letting real time scenes play on the “Live Feed”, the producers were able to avoid scenes of empty living rooms. I, for one went outside a couple times to soak up the full moon. You had to get up really close to the screen to make out the figures in the thumbnail images so a couple folks were caught doing that and that came across as sweet. I imagine the more awkward attempts involving craning and squinting were intentionally not included. Nor was there footage of anyone picking their nose.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">There were decided advantages to simply pulling a beer from the fridge instead of waiting in line and to using one’s own bathroom. And a mixed advantage to being able to just lie down on a whim. On my last return from the bathroom, my soft velvet couch proved impossible to resist. Had I been at a venue, I would have waited out the last half hour, supporting the band and my remaining friends, but here I knew they could loop me dancing on the screen while my feet said ‘Awesome, thank you. Remember that stress fracture you’re nursing?’</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">And while I was lying there, my battery died and the video screen turned black. I went upstairs to bed.  </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Had I been with real humans, even dead tired I would have stuck it out to the last dance. And who knows, maybe even found that the night was young and there were still shenanigans awaiting.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Viva

The Virtual Dance Party

Getting Ready I am alone. And while I do not mind being alone and in fact need to retreat to my home deep in the mountains when I hav...

Posted by Tiny Dancer / Friday, May 8, 2020 / No comments / Viva

Bouquet of Dogwood Flowers

Viva

Bouquet of Dogwood Flowers

Mystery on the Farm

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Looks idyllic, doesn't it? Well, there is more going on here than meets the eye and I could use some help identifying the culprits.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Here are my outbuildings, the loci.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is the smokehouse, c.1819.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I have lived here twenty years and never visited its attic. There is something foreboding about it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The first clue that something was amiss was the plastic drip irrigation tubing hanging outside from the open attic. I did not store it in the attic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I hung the tubing on five-foot high hooks near the door. This is tubing that was cut because I had used it used it in the past. There are a couple left hanging there. Today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It was pulled down, dragged across the floor and somehow taken up to the attic. For what purpose is beyond me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The floor is rotting, my leg is in a brace, and I am reluctant to stand on a stepladder to reach the attic to see if I can figure out who lives there and what they are doing with the tubing.  Ideas?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Now, note the hole in the floor with the ripped blue linen tablecloth pulled into it. This is another mystery. It was once a long tablecloth I used to drag the black plastic bag containing a crazy heavy sack of concrete across the floor. It was not that close to that little hole. Someone tore the tablecloth and dragged it down into that hole. I pulled it out each time I went into the smokehouse, but the other party won this tug of war as evidenced by the last remaining fragment of cloth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">I have watched a rotund groundhog wiggle under the smokehouse to escape me on a few different occasions when I have charged madly toward him, screaming obscenities. But truly, he is far too fat to get through that hole to the first floor and retrieve the tablecloth. And there is no other way in.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Mystery Three. These are the stables.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The mystery is behind Door Number Two. It has been going on for a year. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">As you can see, I store a small grille and charcoal in here. There are two bags of charcoal, one still unopened. The open one I close carefully and secure it by putting its own weight over the folded opening. And yet, when I open Door Number Two I find that someone has carefully opened the bag and again removed the charcoal. Why?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">A friend from New York noted there was an artistic design to it, so I have photographed it as she saw it. I am just a Virginia farmer, so I can only see it as bizarre. Who is doing this?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">A clue might be that it is the same creature that created lovely nests of rosehips with their shiny branches last autumn, a couple in the stables and about twenty neatly lining the shelves of the smokehouse. I only think it’s possibly the same creature because the nests were, when fresh, neat and clean and charcoal is a filtering substance. But probably not, because after I dismantled those nests no effort was made to rebuild any. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The charcoal saga continues.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Viva

Mystery on the Farm

Looks idyllic, doesn't it? Well, there is more going on here than meets the eye and I could use some help identifying the cu...

Posted by Tiny Dancer / Wednesday, April 29, 2020 / No comments / Viva

April Tuesday

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Woke to a damp, dark morning. </div>
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Didn’t look like much hope of sunshine, but it’s Spring, so there’s always hope. Had two new visitors walking awkwardly up the hill. Could not t first identify them: smaller than turkey vultures, larger than crows, wrong coloring for turkeys. When they took flight to the smokehouse and a post overlooking the garden, thee rush of wind under their white-tipped wings was quite noteworthy. Black vultures!<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vulture on Apex of Smokehouse, c.1819.</td></tr>
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Worked on my essay to submit for a contest deadline. The theme is Utopia. I finish and go to the webpage to enter. It has been canceled due to the pandemic. Oh, well. Now I have another year to dream on my utopia.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Talked with a lady from the Department of Forestry. It is frustrating that so much of the government and the land grant schools with agriculture and viticulture programs are subsidized by herbicide companies. I cannot get the answers I need.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Finished turning over a plot in the garden big enough to plop in the rest of my garlic bulbs, a few remaining carrot and radish seeds and packets of beet and turnip seeds.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Mowed a bit around the property, stalling on a slope as I have yet another existential crisis over the tiny blue flowers ahead. I look over my shoulder and realize that I have just neatly beheaded some buttercups and I wonder how others do this. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Tinker around inside the cabin, performing small repairs which turns out to be a disaster. The crazy glue did not hold the broken fish on the wine cork I got at the Hundertwasser house in Vienna. Friedrich Hundertwasser is a personal hero. There might be an article about him somewhere on this blog. I threw the wine stopper away. The glue may or may not have worked on the other broken stone object, but I still don’t feel like touching it. Five minutes of repair and an hour and a half trying to get the glue off my hands, acutely aware the entire time of the California prop 65 warning on the label and the open wounds on my hands from splinters. I drew a Farm Use license plate to attach over my Janis Joplin one on the Cadillac when I drive it down Pig Run and out into the world with my gasoline containers. And I attached yet another temporary tag to the Subaru bought in February; evidently the Virginia Department of Transportation is operating in slo-mo these days. Swept off and dragged in the twenty-four-foot ladder to wash down the chimney rock. The ladder kept sliding and I didn’t do a very good job.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Then headed out to clear the outer perimeter of the garden for my live fencing project, coupled with using the debris for Phase II of the bonfire project. The live fence project involves planting a tall perimeter of amaranth, a beautiful tall edible grain which also makes a gorgeous red body paint at harvest time (are you wondering just what you’ve been missing in your life?), sunflowers of many different shades, planted close together, these two plantings are intended to discourage deer from entering an area they cannot see. At their feet I will plant marigolds, which allegedly discourage rabbits as well as certain vegetable-loving insects. Rabbits should not be able to hop over my fence but the marigolds evidently signal the warning “Don’t even try.” I am at a loss to envision the testing that resulted in this finding and question both the sanity and the ethics of the tester as well. Even if this is not abusive animal testing in the conventional understanding, who goes out of their way to mess with a rabbit’s head? I do believe the theory that deer are reluctant to hang out too long near fragrant blooms as they want to be able to detect a lurking predator, so a million flowers in and around the garden are helpful. Toying with the notion of turning an acre over to plant zinnias and sell as cut flowers this year.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Then I cart the debris, the piles of brown oak leaves that have blown against the fence and the dead grass matted in clumps beneath them down to the burn pile I hope to torch again soon. Will haul up leavings from bush hogging the lower field too as burning the field has proved too laborious a project. My recent scare with the giant bonfire has me exercising more caution when I burn which means for one, moving slower and burning smaller areas at a time. However, I don’t have a million years to fool around with the lower field and am trying to safeguard my respiratory system which that project was definitely compromising.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Plenty of charred trees left to burn at the bonfire site. Sooner or later this copse of felled trees will be cleared and I will plant, am thinking weeping cherry to surround a private shady grove for the hammock again.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bonfire Project Phase II<br /><br /><br /><br /></td></tr>
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Looking up from the garden project to this tree. Do you see that it has mistletoe in the top branches? You could pick a bouquet of dogwood flowers (look left) just before you get there. Just sayin’. The frogs are out; soon the lightning bugs will be here to join them. All quite enchanting. I hear a frog in the woods beyond the studio and go hang out to listen. I want to imitate this frog’s call. I wait, lying on the grass stretching to get my back in place and release some of the tension I store in my shoulder blades, especially the right one. Perhaps if I lean more to the left? Lol; how much further left can I lean? My (Republican) father once commiserated with a new acquaintance because his son ‘was like me.’ My father chuckled disdainfully: “He straps himself to the front of Greenpeace boats.” I was honored. The frog is silent. I wonder why I don’t hear the peepers from the pond behind the old c.1819 farmhouse at the edge of the lower pasture. They can be deafening, but I have not heard them at all this Spring. Finally, the frog calls. It is a low bass rolling lalalala with a resounding echo that brings it all together into a fat chuckle. I do a pretty good imitation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Sunny now. Removed the tarps from the woodpile for the summer and laid them out to wipe down and dry.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ran around the house chasing carpenter bees with a badminton racket. Like to do this when my hair is down so I look particularly crazy with it flying behind me as I charge in fury.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Decided to get a cold beer and go see what’s going on down at the pond. Find out what’s up with the peepers. It's a bit of a hike down to the pond.</div>
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Turns out to be a magical adventure in the understory there, better than a trip into Narnia. Several springs push above the ground near the old farmhouse. I have a few enclosed in my Springhouse, but several more are simply free-flowing across the meadows and through the dark understory, joining together there to head down to the pond and eventually Pig Run. I’d like to harness the ones in the front of the farmhouse and build a lake in the lower pasture, surrounding it with tall pines. Pines grow super-fast here so it is feasible. Look at this beautiful pine growing super-fast.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Anyway, it has been too boggy to bush hog down there and the evil autumn olives have spread ...choking off any reasonable ingress to the pond, so one must stoop into a glorious netherworld of mountain streams and flowering bushes for quite a ways before reaching... well what used to the be the pond but is now a shimmering wetlands of felled cattails.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />The earthen dam holding the water back has crumbled and the water flows on through. No ice skating next winter unless I adopt yet another project. The water is clear and the watercress will be excellent for sandwiches.</div>
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The edge of the pond where the dam once was is a little creepy though. A barbed wire fence divides my property from my neighbor’s. My side is clean, but the other side I cannot reach is littered with old whiskey bottles and rusted cans. The water is milky and murky here and the spot just has a bad vibe as though there was a deadly dispute here once. I pick my way back through the swampy clods of grass and venture up to the overgrown vineyard, wishing I’d win that essay contest and could excavate the autumn olives from the vineyard and start over. I’d erect a tall round oak reservoir like the one on Petticoat Junction at the top of the hill and run the overflow up from the springs below via a solar pump and just use drip irrigation to water the vineyard. The Petticoat Junction reservoir would have a shelf around the interior for towels and beer. It would be a lovely spot for stargazing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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On the way back home I feel confident that I have at last found my tattoo blossom. I have been doing a serious survey of blossoms on the farm this spring (see earlier post Spring on the Farm) to find the perfect one for a tattoo. Check this out: I am thinking apple blossom. This is a bit more profusion that I want, but part of it might be excellent.<o:p></o:p></div>
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 Truth is, in all fairness I must wait until the blackberry bushes blossom before I make me final decision. This is for the following three reasons:<o:p></o:p></div>
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1. Blackberry Blossom, Norman Blake</div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">2. Blackberry Blossom, Tony Rice</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">3. Blackberry Blossom, String Cheese Incident</span></div>
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A million marigold seeds from a friend! I tried to photograph the excellent job she did drying them but couldn’t capture the beauty through the plastic bag. I wonder if the coltsfoot leaves I sent my niece and she has yet to receive are moldering in a mail truck somewhere between here and San Francisco.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Back to the house and I want to take a close-up of the dogwood blossoms. They are very cool sprinkled about in the woods as they are here in Virginia, looking like sheets of lace but they are also pretty up close. The prisms hanging inside flicker cool lights: blue, green, pink and I spend a silly amount of time trying to catch these in the photo on my iPhone, unsuccessfully.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Remove my muddy clothes and leave in a heap on the porch. Smile affectionately at the blood orange through the dark tree branches that the sun has left in its trail.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Evening came fast again today. Pulled a bowl of leftovers from the fridge: a curry concoction of potatoes, carrots, peas and sausage. Bit into a stink bug. Cursed and spent fifteen minutes swirling around various concoctions in my mouth. Too tired to fix anything else. A bowl of Cheerios it is. Did you know Cheerios provide 70% of the minimum daily requirement of iron? Good thing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Haul muddy clothes to the washer in the basement. Hot soapy shower.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Too late for screen time. Stare out the window at the stars. So many.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Haul a heavy book into bed and fall asleep before I open it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Viva

April Tuesday

Woke to a damp, dark morning. Asian Pear Didn’t look like much hope of sunshine, but it’s Spring, so there’s always hope. H...

Posted by Tiny Dancer / Monday, April 20, 2020 / No comments / Viva

The Legend of the Hoodoos

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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the year 1220 AD the Paiute Indians lived in the panoramic cliffs and pine woodlands surrounding Bryce Canyon. They lived in harmony with nature. As such they acquired certain skills. They were able to shape shift into condors, mountains lions, dragons. They could create fairy castles with a simple sleight of hand.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As sometimes happens, a group of them became enamored of their own powers, much like the residents of Slytherin Hall…and they formed an evil cult. This cult became known as the Legend People.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now the Legend People were very selfish. They ate all of the manzanita blossoms in the Spring before they could become pollinated and bear the little apple fruit, a vital source of food for many of the creatures living there.  In the summer the Legend People who were very much aware of their appearances made beautiful clothes, dresses and loin cloths from the deer hides.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Two kinds of deer roam the forests and forage in the grasslands there: the mule deer, a deer with big ears and the pronghorn with the striped shoulders. Now the pronghorn aren’t really deer. Nor are they antelope as some will insist. But they are their own species, remaining from the Ice Age. And they are the second fastest animal on earth after the cheetah. They can run 60 mph and detect motion up to four miles away. They can often be seen browsing at the edge of the forest at dusk.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To augment their colorful costumes, the Legend People chopped off the tails of the darling little Uinta chipmunks and dyed them in the glorious pigments of the canyon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now most people don’t realize but even today, it requires 600 gallons of water to make and dye a single t-shirt, so the impact on the canyon was quite dramatic. In the summer the monsoons bring water: torrential rainstorms that blow in and wreak havoc with lightning strikes and boulders tumbling with the forces, but apart from trees, even scrubby juniper blackened from lightning strikes, soon after there is little evidence that a storm has passed through. After only an hour the canyon is dry and everyone is thirsty again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So the impact on the canyon life of the Legend People using all this water for dying was quite dramatic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the Fall, the Legend People ate all of the pine nuts before they could be eaten or disseminated. Bruce Canyon is home to an unassuming little bird, the Clark’s Nutcracker a grey bird with black and white wings and central tail feathers. The Clark’s Nutcracker gathers 100,000 pine nuts and buries them in different locations. The following Spring it goes back to these places and retrieves the seeds to feed its newborn.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then the Legend People began selling off our national monuments to private interests…Forgive me, I have slipped into the present. It is impossible sometimes not to submit to the time warps in the Canyon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Any hoodoo, the other Creatures were starving and thirsty. They went to the Legend People time and again, saying, “Look. We just have this one home. We must share her resources We must live sustainably.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the Legend People didn’t even seem to hear. They were intent on living the good life now and that trumped all other considerations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And so finally in desperation the creatures went to Coyote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now Coyote is a wise and powerful god. He works through a shift in consciousness and he is still with us today. You can recognize him by the way that he teaches you his lesson. Let’s say for example you have a day where you have a certain deadline you absolutely must meet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You wake up and you have no internet, which you need. You get in the card to drive to Starbucks for internet and your car won’t start. When you finally get a jump, you are caught in a traffic jam. Your best friend calls you; he is having a meltdown. Your kids need money. And on and on. You are becoming increasingly frustrated. You are def not going to make your deadline. Along the way you have perhaps been treating your loved ones who keep checking in with less respect than they are due and you know that further cascade of problems you have perchance created, awaits.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then in the evening when your angst is finally beginning to unravel, you realize that in the bigger picture perhaps your deadline was not that important. The bigger picture is starkly visible in Bryce Canyon. You can look into the canyon and see back one hundred million years. You can look up onto the starry skies and…why the keynote speaker from NASA at Bryce’s recent astronomy festival told the audience that NASA is rolling off a new telescope to follow the Hubble: the James Webb. It can see back in time fifteen billion years.  How big is this picture?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She also told us that someone rented the Hubble Telescope for three days focusing it on an ostensibly black space between stars and with time-lapse photography over three days, 5,000 galaxies came into sight. So what aren't we seeing?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is definitely a bigger picture where the delivery of a report is not significant.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So as I was saying, it is  Coyote behind the scenes egging on a change of your perspective so you see the bigger picture instead. When the creatures approached Coyote, he thought about it a minute and then came up with the perfect idea how to deal with the Legend People.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He invites them all to the canyon for a big banquet. He tells them, “You can eat all you want and dance your moccasins off all night.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They are stoked and they all show up. Some in their shape-shifted forms. Some in their beautiful finery and frippery with their sego lily earrings. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-usjDNUuhwWo/Xp2xKJJEQjI/AAAAAAAASrk/tMpGlqF8hDQIgTDNnODFAxiqwxqufxDWwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Sego%2Blily.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-usjDNUuhwWo/Xp2xKJJEQjI/AAAAAAAASrk/tMpGlqF8hDQIgTDNnODFAxiqwxqufxDWwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Sego%2Blily.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sego Lily, Utah's State Flower</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And some of the Legend People showed up wearing only body paint.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Coyote meets them at the rim of the canyon and with hands folded in prayer in front of his heart says, “Welcome Brothers and Sisters. We give deep thanks for each other and for this Earth. To show our respect we are going to learn to live in harmony with the Earth.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">With this he lifted his right arm - some say that he held a throbbing gold wand - and he cast a powerful spell that froze the Legend People. Right where they were standing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And that is what the hoodoos are. You can see them there in Silent City, on Wall Street and all about the canyon. The hoodoos are the Legend People meditating on becoming one with the Earth as they dissolve into it.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9ny-7gkVtys/Xp2xs6O4HAI/AAAAAAAASrw/8Cop3-NeOeY63ovYxU4XE_UgYkz3RtCFQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/window%2Boverlooking%2Bwall%2Bstreet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9ny-7gkVtys/Xp2xs6O4HAI/AAAAAAAASrw/8Cop3-NeOeY63ovYxU4XE_UgYkz3RtCFQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/window%2Boverlooking%2Bwall%2Bstreet.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Window to Wall Street</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Paiute Indians referred to the hoodoos as evil creatures with red painted faces. They weren't stupid. They did not hang out in the canyon. At all. A young brave wouldn't even go in on a dare.  Nothing short of a mountain lion hot on his heels could persuade any half-way intelligent Paiute to go into the canyon. Indeed, the surly faces of the hoodoos are a subject deserving consternation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Now the hoodoos themselves are well known for changing colors. And for their deep saturation of color. Visitors flock to the canyon at sunrise and sunset to watch as the rays of rising or dying sun move across the canyon and the hoodoos light up, sometimes glowing the hollow gold of false idols, sometimes catching the quartz and shimmering the dazzling white of stars and sometimes the soft peach or coral of the sky suddenly ignites the hoodoos into a fiery red.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Clouds passing across the sky during daylight hours play their own tricks, changing the expressions on the faces so that it often seems that a hoodoo has just moved his lips or his eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Nighttime presents no fewer transformations. The silhouettes against the infinitely starry sky gain stature and nobility.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It is not just the hoodoos and their variable expressions that intimidate the Paiutes. You must remember that Coyote froze the entire lifescape of the hoodoos. A visit to Bryce reveals trails into a land of fairy castle and caves that seem like all the world to still be occupied. It is as though they are lived in, heavily used in a dimension just beyond perception, but tangible enough that the sensitive know to be wary.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Can you solve the riddle and gain entry?</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Loose lips - listen closely and you will hear the baritone voice deliver a message for your ears only</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The boulders, the shifting mounds of crystalline sand, the twisted blackened trees, they all seem to have a nearly audible consciousness. And there are the shapeshifting animals and birds: the snakes, the dragons, the vultures and the owls. One moment a geological formation, the next moment, flapping large wings and taking flight, blocking out the sun or suddenly scuttling over a hilltop or sliding around a bend in the trail.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Check out the wraith sneaking up the hill - front left</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Once one begins truly looking at the trees, a new realm of reality opens. Surviving in the canyon is a lesson in resilience and tenacity. Winds are fierce: whipping hailstones like artillery fire ricocheting through the canyon; bitter winter winds cut skin and churn snowfall into vortices. Merciless blizzards of vortices, their wind screaming through the ages. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Winter is not only brutal, but protracted. I took this photo upon arriving Memorial Day weekend.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Even summer's warm wet winds blow strong: the ones that hear a rumble and simply form, loosing a monsoon who travels without warning in dark clouds. Clouds not on this morning's radar spread tentacles across the canyon and there is no getting out in time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Flashes of lightning crack trees apart. Rain pours rapid currents down the canyon walls, disintegrating trails in minutes. Boulders dislodge, tumble and crash. The pebbly sand barely cradling struggling tree roots cascades. Gravity, wind and rain, but the trees are staying. They balance, edging their roots to stay in the dancer’s frame and keep them hanging on to what soil remains, however tenuously. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Holding on</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These tree roots have been pulled up to help balance and to block a powerful windstream otherwise hitting the main trunk.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Last survivors</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">They pull their roots up to shield the wind, to protect a neighbor, to refine their balance. Most have been blackened by lightning at least once, even the small scrubby junipers. It is their fate. They embody the spirits of the canyon and only their feistiness allows them to survive. Perhaps it is the same with the hoodoos. The meek do not endure. Only the powerful. Only the evil.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It is not just these uncertainties that intimidated the Paiutes from sojourns into the canyon. There exists one other looming uncertainty in the canyon. Time Warps. It is not uncommon for a traveler to walk through a certain passageway and find herself taking the same steps through the same passage in the same direction an hour or two later with no accounting for the interlude. It has happened to me on several occasions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Take heed. Hiking in Bryce Canyon is every bit as magical as the trails suggest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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