Tag Archive for: grand canyon

Desert Therapy

7:00 AM, November 13, 2018, EC-1 (Elephant Canyon –Campsite 1), Canyonlands National Park, Utah

There is nothing like the silence of the desert. This very cold morning (20 degrees) is only interrupted by the quiet hiss of the Whisperlite-butane stove heating my morning coffee.

It was cold last night. I had almost all of my cold weather gear on (Expedition this and Expedition that), and bundled up in my 12-degree sleeping bag. I awoke with frozen condensation on the inside of my tent. As I write this, I’m sitting on my 1 lb Helinox chair while the sun is rising.

As I gaze on the canyon walls, the cedars, the dry stream bed, I have a sense that I’m better than most people, but no, rather luckier than most people. Very few eyes, relatively speaking, have witnessed a morning like this, in this place. This place is only for those that are willing to pay the toll. And the toll for this place was a 4-mile hike with 60 lbs. on my back, scrambling in and out of canyons and over slip rock.

As I witnessed this new day in the desert canyon, I remembered that I had carried Edward Abbey’s book “Desert Solitaire,” with me, not the paperback, but the digital copy in my kindle.

And so, I spent the morning soaking up the sun and browsing Abbey’s work.

“Wilderness” he wrote,” is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.”

Abbey wrote his autobiography after spending two seasons in the late 1950’s as a park ranger in Arches National Park. He fell in love with the canyons and the desert. It became part of him.

“The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need—if only we had the eyes to see.”

The wilderness changed him and it changes anyone willing to spend time in it.

It can heal you.

I had come here for healing. Not because of the people and things in my life. But because I needed to become a better person for the people and things in my life: to be a better counselor, a better partner, a better parent, and most importantly, a better human. The water was boiling. The sun was warming me now. It felt wonderful!

True North Counseling Rememberance Blog

Who Changed Your Life?

Who Changed Your Life? George Flores Changed Mine.

My list is large. Of course, my parents and family are on my list. As a child, my bronchial tubes were closing and my sister, Shirley, put me under a homemade-steam tent. I was able to breathe. I was 8 years old.

Many of you who know me, know that I love hiking and backpacking. I love the Grand Canyon.

The person that introduced me to the Canyon was George Flores. He changed my life.

It was February of 2002. I remember it vividly. All of our equipment was rented from the General Store on the rim of the Canyon. We arrived at our first campsite and realized that we had left one of our tents in the store. There were four of us: two women and a child, and George and me. And now just one tent. We looked at each other and smiled. George and I spent the next 4 nights sleeping under the stars in the Grand Canyon. I’ll never forget it.

George passed away last year and we released his ashes into the Canyon. In between the time that he introduced me to the Canyon and the trip that laid him to rest in there, George helped me develop a hunger for the outdoors, and really, for life.

We fished for trout in the Sierra’s, cycled across the Golden Gate Bridge, backpacked in Yosemite, through the Tetons, up to Thousand Island Lake, and to countless places in California. We photographed at Big Sur, Monterrey, Death Valley and the Canyon. I am a photographer, cyclist, and backpacker in large part because of George.

We had a Victory-Beer outside the Giant’s baseball stadium the year they won the World Series.

All of it changed my life. He was my brother-in-law and a friend.

Was it the Canyon and those road trips, listening to the Eagles? Was it George? He was a teacher and he taught me many things. And I suspect that George learned a little from his friend and brother-in-law, Mark Neese.

Standing at Plateau Point and watching George’s ashes blowing in the Arizona wind, I thought of this beautiful poem:

 

Do not stand at my grave and weep

I am not there, I do not sleep

I am a thousand winds that blow

I am the diamond glint on snow

I am the sunlight on ripened grain

I am the gentle, gentle autumn rain

 

Do not stand at my grave and weep

I am not there, I do not sleep

When you awake in the morning hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circling flight

I am the soft, soft starlight, starlight at night

 

Do not stand at my grave and weep

I am not there, I do not sleep

 

I will never be able to look into the Canyon without thinking about George. And for that I am thankful.