Grass

I just got back from my weeklong course in astrophysics, which I am dying to write about. I actually have several things I need to discuss—the surprisingly strange experience of spending a week at “The Chautauqua,” the origin and nature of the universe(s), and questions of Being and Nothingness. While I’m working on those, I thought I'd slide back into blogging with a photo blog, one that has been forming itself over the past few weeks. It started like this …

A few weeks ago—after the heavy rains and before the scorching heat—my partner and I were taking our regular early Sunday morning walk and commented on how tall the grass was getting. It was lovely, green and dense, promising a gorgeous summer scene in our local open space. Then, over the next several days … which stretched into weeks … I started paying attention to how complicated “the grass” really is. The result is this blog, which honors the many growing things that combine to form “the grass” along my daily walks.

First, I started to realize how many types of grass make up "the grass" (not even counting the kind whose possession recently became legal in Colorado and Washington State). For instance ...

 

  

                             

              

 

Then, there are all the friends of the grasses that live in its midst, some easy to spot and others more shy … 

      

        

    

It turns out that “the grass” has a whole lot more to say than I first realized. Since I started thinking about how to portray its complexity, I’ve been seeing it in a new way. I don’t think I’ll ever say “the grass” again without thinking about the texture and variety that get hidden by those words.

If I were a philosopher, I’d find a commentary on life and living here.

Spirituals Awakening

So, I’ve been AWOL since Utah. I’ll start with a brief explanation / excuse for my absence, but I don’t want to dwell because I have something better to talk about as my re-entry, re-awakening post. The spirituals.

To get right to the (first, but less important) point: I spent my free time during the last month totally changing my study. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been suffering from a bad case of cabin fever, and I finally realized that a large part of the problem was my study. First, the room is sort of small and doesn’t get much light. And then there was the issue of my desk. Because of its size and configuration, I sat with my back to the window. For someone who loves the outdoors, this is not a good thing. And with the desk filling a sizeable chunk of the middle of the room, I felt like I was trapped in a tiny corral made of heavy oak, facing the darkness and mumbling to myself. 

So I decided to change my furniture, which turned out to be a major undertaking. And that, it turns out, consumed my time, my energy, and apparently my mind for several weeks. But it paid off. I ended up with a glass desk that seems to take up no space compared to the old oak one, and its configuration has me facing the window. I believe the days of sitting in a corral with my back to the window are over. And I am ready to resume my rambling blogging ways.

Then, lo and behold, just as this mega-project wound down, the inspiration for my “re-awakening” blog came in the form of a conference my partner and I attended this past weekend.

The Spirituals Project is a non-profit organization founded in 1998 by a psychology professor (with a fabulous tenor voice) at the University of Denver, Dr. Arthur Jones. Over the years, the initially small program has grown in size and scope and now has an expansive mission: “the preservation and revitalization of the music and teachings (including especially the social justice teachings) of the songs commonly known as ‘spirituals,’ created and first sung by enslaved African women and men in America in the 18th and 19th centuries.” I first learned about the Spirituals Project from my partner, who had interviewed Art Jones as part of a documentary she made on heterosexual allies who took a stand against Amendment 2. She recommended Jones’ book, Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals, but I let it slide from my reading list. Later, I heard the Spirituals Project choir perform, and I was reminded again that I really wanted to learn more—both about the spirituals as a musical genre and about the “wisdom” they carry. Again, I let it slip.

And then, several months ago, we learned about (and quickly signed up for) this multi-day conference on the spirituals. The promise of several days’ immersion in learning about the spirituals sounded wonderful. And it was. The weekend was full of workshops and performances, so I'll just mention a few highlights:

The first night opened with a performance by Sankofa, a small ensemble of the Spirituals Project choir. It closed with a poem sung/read by the Spirituals Project’s poet in residence, Dee Galloway. The poem, “They Slice the Air,” was a moving elegy to the spirituals and all they have meant over the centuries. Click here for a (shaky, amateur, but authentic) video of Dee Galloway performing the poem at the conference. A few lines:

As they spill from the holds of the ships …

Onto the shores of this new world

They are called to bear the burdens

To bear the lash

To bear witness

To the squalling birth of this new world …

And as they bear the burdens and bear the lash

This strong new nation bears witness …

They witness with the songs carried with them in the holds.

And again the songs shift and change

To become the sorrow songs

The sorrow songs that slice the air.

Later in the conference, Dr. Vincent Harding, an educator and a long-time leader and “encourager” of the Freedom movement (the term he prefers to the “civil rights movement”) led a remarkable workshop on the role of the spirituals in the Freedom movement. He opened the session by talking about how the spirituals, sung by generation after generation after generation of people, always share in the same energy—the wisdom, the strength, and the yearning of generations before, back to “the ancestors” who first sang them. With that framework, he then invited us to sing along, to join in the generations-long community of people who have used these songs to gain strength, to give testimony, to carry coded messages, to ease sorrow. "Wade in the water," "Woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom," "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around." 

And with that framing, I found myself experiencing songs that I’ve often heard and sung before in a whole new way. I understood more deeply the power this music has carried across the years, the layers of meaning and passion it bore for people who were enslaved, yet sang "ain't no harm to keep your mind stayed on freedom." And I felt on a new level how it must have energized and sustained folks as they left community meetings in the churches in the 1960s South to face dogs, truncheons, fire hoses, and jail—or worse. When we all stood to sing “We Shall Overcome,” crossing arms to hold hands, as is the tradition with this song, I doubt there was a dry eye in the room. Most of these folks have probably sung this song scores of times before. But in this setting, with Dr. Harding’s guidance, I, at least, sang it with a new level of consciousness.  

The last event of the conference featured a talk and poetry reading—including a poem written for the conference—by Nikki Giovani, a brilliant and wonderfully irreverent poet and activist. And then the conference closed, fittingly, with music by members of the Spirituals Project choir. I left feeling re-awakened.

I realize it has been nearly two decades since my partner first talked to me about Art Jones’ book. I’ve decided not to let it slide from my list again. I’ve asked to borrow her copy to take along for reading material during breaks in my astrophysics course in New York next week.

Stay tuned for more on the wisdom of the spirituals per Dr. Art Jones and on the origins of the universe per Dr. Michelle Thaller.

Southern Utah, the center of the cosmos

I first visited southern Utah about 40 years ago. More than half my life has been spent loving this dry, sandy, lonesome, breathtakingly gorgeous corner of the world. The red rock canyons and undulating slickrock flats of southern Utah are the places I imagine when I meditate, when I’m conjuring up a scene that evokes peace. Over the years, I’ve spent weeks deep in the backcountry there, hiking, biking, backpacking, and canoeing those canyons and mesas. More recently, I’ve added rafting to the list, along with shorter hikes, less freeze-dried food, and more time in towns than in tents. Still, after all these years, the sight of a sheer redrock cliff, shining black with desert varnish in the bright Utah sun soothes my soul, lowers my blood pressure, calms my mind.

Last weekend, my partner treated me to a Utah trip as a  birthday gift. As I considered what to say about this trip, I realized I have about a million topics I could talk about: the flowers, the cliffs, the folks I saw on the walk to Delicate Arch, the vegetation growing improbably in cracks in the slickrock, the changes in Moab since I first visited four decades ago, the changes in the weather over this 4-day weekend, my sadness at the things I can no longer do there, my delight at the things I can. Instead of choosing, I decided to share a few (or maybe a few dozen) pictures, along with sparse commentary. Longer discussion can wait for now.

We arrived late in the afternoon to a carpet of flowers growing out of the dry earth on the salty flats above the Colorado River outside Moab. The Utah state flower, the sego lily, was profuse, in standard white and rarer pink versions. The ubiquitous orange mallow (whose color matches the orange of the cliffs farther south, but not so much the dirt on these salt flats) was, well, everywhere.

 

                    

As we entered the Colorado River canyon above Moab, we were treated to beautiful views of the cliffs and the river in low evening light. The combination of red cliffs reflected in the reddish water that gives the river its name made the air feel amber. 

We cruised into Moab in time to get the full, over-stimulating experience of a formerly small, sleepy desert town turned into a full-scale congested 4-wheel-drive, OHV, mountain bike, and t-shirt shop tourist destination. I vented my self-righteous dismay, not seeing myself as a tourist at all, but instead as a long-time desert rat who felt like my wilderness was being overrun by these interlopers. Imagine my mortification the next morning when, dressing for a hike, I looked down to see that the light blue Nike swoop on my socks exactly matched my shirt. Color-coordinated sportswear, the ultimate sign of a tourist. Unbefitting a desert rat, for sure.

Vaguely humbled, I proceeded to reassert my station as an insider by playing tour guide as we wended our way through Arches National Park, en route to the day's hike. Through it all, the flowers continued to do their springtime-in-the-desert welcome.

                  

And then the walk to Delicate Arch, the iconic representation of Arches and of Utah (it's even on the license plate). So many gorgeous pictures of Delicate Arch have circulated over the years, it seems a bit outrageous for any normal human being to try her hand at capturing this unlikely fluke of nature. But undaunted, and despite less-than-ideal sun conditions, try I did.   

The most remarkable thing about Delicate Arch is that it stands alone, framing the La Sal Mountains to the east, with nothing but space on either side. Most arches form within huge walls, but the vicissitudes of wind and water carved this one out of one huge slab of sandstone. Astonishing. And astonishingly beautiful. You come upon it suddenly, as the trail emerges from behind a wall. The sight is stunning, even the many-th time you see it.

A short walk around the "bowl" below the arch brought a different view ... and looking backward, a view of people viewing me viewing the arch from beneath.

There are other arches in the neighborhood, too, some of them "pothole" arches formed by water erosion from above, some double arches that include both a pothole and its outlet through the face of a cliff, some angular, formed by sandstone slabs' falling away.

That evening, we had dinner in a restaurant up on the cliffs overlooking Moab. Across the valley, you can see the "portal" where the Colorado carves its way out of the valley formed by the Moab fault and runs onward toward Lake Powell, some distance downstream. It was getting cloudy by now, but still, the contrast between the sandstone cliffs and the greenery below (though not as stark as in bright sunlight) was a reminder of how much water it must take to make this desert verdant. Echoes of my "American West" class.

To finish off the day, we drove out to Dead Horse Point, an overlook above the Colorado River. By now, the clouds were rolling in, so the hoped-for spectacular sunset didn't materialize. But the view is spectacular by itself. Seeing the river from this perspective so highlights its prodigious power and the eons of time it took for these canyons to form. I found/find myself silenced by the thought.

The next morning, we decided to forgo another hike near (crowded) Moab to visit the Needles district of Canyonlands, the place where many of my fondest memories of the desert and most of my meditation imaginings are located. On the way, we stopped at Newspaper Rock, a panel of early Indian petroglyphs pecked into the desert vanish on a protected sandstone wall. 

As we stood there, gazing at the petroglyphs, a serious storm swept in, complete with thunder, lightning, and hail. I missed my chance to snap a picture of the hail piled up by the roadside, looking all the world like snow in the desert in May. But it was pretty fun anyway. That storm hung around all day, stifling our planned walk but making for beautiful vistas of the red cliffs, the slickrock flats, and the distant buttes through the storm. In the overcast sky, you could sometimes see the red of the land reflected in the clouds.

Despite the on-again, off-again rain, we managed to get out and walk around a bit, and we found more desert flowers there to greet us.

The next morning, we headed back to Colorado, driving up through the Colorado River canyon. The morning light on the east-facing cliffs and the flowers in the shade across the way provided a lovely farewell. 

How could you see this and not yearn to come back?

Our last night was spent in Glenwood Springs. I wanted to stop there so I could walk the South Canyon Fire memorial trail on Storm King Mountain, which I mentioned in an earlier blog. Unfortunately, Storm King lived up to its name, shrouded in rain and heavy clouds all day. Since I wouldn't be able to see what I came to see (not to mention the promise of a steep, mud-slimed trail), I postponed that hike to another day, already saved in my calendar. But in honor of the reason I want to go, we visited the monument to the young firefighters who died on Storm King in 1994. 

                                       

We drove home in a snowstorm. Later, we heard that Arapaho Basin got 7" of new snow that day, and chains were required on Vail Pass. Fortunately, we beat the worst of it, getting home in time to have breakfast out before my partner went to work at noon. No picture of that storm ... but lots of mind pictures of the trip.

Back home in Colorado—which, as you know, I love—I am already eager for another visit to Utah. My socks may match my shirt, but I remain, deep in my soul, a desert rat.