A Toolbox for locating Power Places

There is an honest experience of spiritual space.  We all understand this somewhere deep in our psyches.  It comes out of a time when there were fewer of our species on this earth and we banded together for safety.  A time when we could walk for days without seeing a person; when our eye scanned [...]

Combine yourself with your Experience

Sunday was the finest day we’ve had so far this year.  Elk Creek is one of my favorite drainages in the valley and I decided to roam it for the day.  The creeks are just beginning to rise, the snow pack in the high country barely beginning to melt. The first two creek crossings I [...]

I am a Tree Hugger!

I can proudly state that ‘I’m a tree hugger’.  In Wyoming, that can be considered name calling and a put down.  But why?  I love trees and really, everyone else should.  Without them, there would be no shade, no cover for wildlife, no food nor shelter for so many animals.  Our trees high up near [...]

Hunter gatherers and the Internet

A friend sent me an interesting link the other day.  Nicolas Carr, technology writer, discusses how our brains have changed over the centuries, beginning with the first maps all the way to the internet.  Maps, he argues, may have been the birth of abstract thinking.  Instead of using visual, verbal, or auditory clues to find [...]

The Eternal and the changeable

I haven’t lived here much time, but it’s confirmed by my neighbors and friends that in the past year there’s been lots of enormous changes in the valley.  When so few people live around you, the impact of just one becomes magnified.  And although we all live different lives, seemingly unconnected, we are connected through [...]

“We were home”

In her book When the Land was Young, Sharman Russell works a sensitive exploration of North American archaeology today.  She visits and talks with archaeologists on site.  The book is written more as poetic prose than dry hard science.  Here is one of my favorite excerpts: Vance Haynes is here today mapping a well he [...]

Sedona, Arizona

I’m having a good time visiting friends in Sedona, Arizona. Here’s some vital information you might need when visiting: 1.  64 percent of visitors come to Sedona seeking some kind of spiritual experience.  The National Forest brochure even talks about vortex sites saying “Sedona is believed to be a vortex meditation site”.  Local bookstores give [...]

Our Social Nature

Black Elk, after traveling all over including Europe with Buffalo Bill Cody’s show, made this comment in his book Black Elk Speaks. “After a while I got used to being there, but I was like a man who had never had a vision.  I felt dead and my people seemed lost, and I thought I [...]

My Toolbox

What do you need to live in the world of nature?  I ask myself this question in many forms all the time.  Today these are my answers to myself: Awareness.  To be aware is to be alive.  Yesterday I was hiking with a friend.  I looked ahead, up the hill, for a moment, instead of [...]

The Abstract Wild

I’ve just finished reading The Abstract Wild by Jack Turner. The book is a series of essays, a ‘rant’ for wild Turner says.  Wild, as Turner defines it, is not wilderness, not a managed environment with collared animals, hunting quotas, ‘fun hogs’, 7 1/2 minute maps, gps, cell phone availability, not to mention logging, mining, [...]