books

books i've read this summer that i recommend.

i also want you to know that i love my dad for 1. driving my family around maine, wyoming, washington, oregon, california, colorado, arizona and utah and the rest of america and 2. being smart and interesting and telling me to read good books. i would be 1/2 as interesting without him. the other 1/2 is my mom's responsibility.

the chosen - chaim potok

a year of living biblically - a.j. jacobs

my boyhood and youth - john muir

the solace of open spaces - gretel ehrlich

holy the firm - annie dillard

crossing to safety - wallace stegner

the milagro beanfield war - john nichols

you found me by the fields of wild gold / my hands still filled with ashes from fires long cooled

there's something about mary - for laurie. maybe i can enter this into the 700 club or something as a "mary-sighting"

sometimes i drive on dirt roads and listen to country music with the windows down.

note the moon in the bottom right corner. it's what makes the picture worth it.

more than i love the grand canyon - i love what surrounds the grand canyon. to the north - well, you have more canyon. to the east, there is the painted desert, to the south there is the san francisco peaks, oak creek canyon and sedona, and to the west... you have las vegas, but that's besides the point. i had today off and took a hike in the coconino national forest to the top of slate "mountain" - it's not a mountain, by my standards, or most standards, it only took 3 miles to get to the top. it was easy. but no less beautiful because of its ease. it was a good way to spend my labor day.

i went to a barbeque at the house of two friends from church. they're married with a cute little girl named sophia. there were a few of us there - ate some hot dogs and then watched a bad robert dinero movie on their new 50 inch screen tv. i left early to get home so that i could waste my evening alone, doing the same activity - only better: watching the entire series of six feet under, again, for the second time.

during dinner, i realized that i was happy there. although these friendships aren't the most intimate relationships in my life - or anywhere near it, they're what i've got here - and they're enough. i've said this a few times before, and i probably won't stop saying it - but one of the greatest lessons of the desert is that sometimes enough is . . . enough. with less options, you find that you need less, you desire less, you want less. or maybe what you need, desire and want changes. either way - the idea that you are entitled to more seems to be understood as what it is: an idea, and a faulty, deceptive idea at that. and what makes it so false is that it simply doesn't work. or - at least, it hasn't worked for me.

i thought i was smart enough to know that the right job, right friends, right things wouldn't make me happy. i don't think it was until i got out here and had to actually settle for less that i realized it hasn't felt like settling at all - in fact, i don't think i've felt this satisfied in a long time. maybe it's something of a mystery, and maybe it's impossible to explain, but i've traded the things that have mattered the most to me in for an average job, average friends, an average church - and not only am i okay with it, but somehow it's better.

halfway

i've been here for almost 3 months. and i'm going home in less than 2 months.

there is freedom here that i've never known before. it's not just living on the rim of the grand canyon, or having access to some of america's most beautiful landscapes and wonders, it's the simplicity. the canyon helps, the desert, and sky, and mountains, rock formations, colorado river, wild flowers, winding roads - these things all help - but they're not quite exactly what i'm talking about. of course the drives with my windows down help too - with my hair flying about inside and outside of the car, my radio up so loud and the sunsetting gold, purple and red over sand, dust, rock and desert. walking along creeks, and rivers, watching butterflies flutter and wild flowers passively wave as you walk past, looking upwards to the sky as the gnarled bark of desert brush points towards the sun - all of these things are also helpful. but they're not it, either.

out here i'm void of the two things that have defined me the most: community and kids (feeling purpose in my job). and for now, i haven't really missed it. i am almost convinced that most of my not missing this has to do with the fact that my time here is temporary - but regardless, the lessons are still real and permanent. finding myself defined in other terms - or maybe no terms at all, has been probably the most freeing thing of all. the simplicity of this life here has been what's freed me, the freedom from obligation to myself and others, the freedom from care, the freedom from purpose - just to be. to sit. to walk. to work a simple job. to read.

can someone tell me how to do that in a city?

to be fair, though, i miss home. i miss my family. i miss my friends. but i know they'll be there. and i know it'll be just as easy to come home as it was to leave. and that's what makes it home. and what makes them my family and my friends.

and still somehow it's cloud illusions i recall, i really don't know clouds at all

i took a month-long break from the grand canyon. yesterday i saw the clouds from the window of the lodge i work in and i knew it was time to go. so i went. people always ask me if i ever get sick of it - and the answer is yes. so i take breaks. and then i return. unfortunately, very few people will ever get to experience the overwhelming, sweeping silence of the canyon. it's the biggest, loudest, most fantastic and awesome silence i've ever experienced. most people get to see the canyon with 5,000 tourists all around them. so, a community of 2,000 people have kept this place our secret. i spent a few hours here. overwhelmed, powerless and useless before the silence.

we will see when it gets warm

everyone from the team has left the canyon. this leaves me a little more "alone" time and with a lot more to think about. with time and distance now beginning to separate us, my head is clearing and my reflections on the summer are becoming less scattered. a correction: my reflections on community this summer are becoming less scattered. my time here is polarized: my story and our story. and rarely do they seem to overlap. the most obvious difference seems to be that my time here is not finished / our time here is finished. other differences seem to be that my personal time has been fantastically vibrant, loving, happy, spiritually-focussed and peaceful. my time here as a member of a community seems to be the opposite. as a whole, the group ended up being fantastically divided, disjointed, and sort of an embarrassment to christian community. individually, there was reconciliation and peace made between me and the "others" - we learned not just to love each other, but, i think, even like each other. this summer, for the most part, has been about me - alone, individual, independent - and my relationship with the community was an extension of this. i had success with the team. but i don't think the team, as a whole, was successful - rather a complete and total disaster. learning to deal with things when they're just fine - not great. and being excited to start looking forward to returning to real community and friendship.

oh, it's a picture of the moon from the street i live off of. i'm really happy that this picture is as awesome as it is.

strange people in a strange land

badlands?

after sahra and i left sedona, we headed north back to flagstaff and then east on 40 to winslow, holbrook and the petrified forest national park. i got my picture taken with jackson browne while standing on a corner in winslow, arizona. we spent most of the day stopping at funny old route 66 hideouts and slept that night at a KOA along the highway in holbrook. in the morning we woke up early to get to the national park - we knew it'd be too hot to enjoy anytime after noon. the national park was ugly - i mean. i talk about the grand canyon sometimes being ugly to me - but this, this was ugly. it was difficult for me to remember that i wasn't on a construction sight - and the white stuff wasn't cement, and the piles weren't piles of coal. instead, it's a fantastically old, prehistoric sight, full of history, and remnants that give proof of the power that nature and time have. beautiful petrified wood. awesome color, pattern, movements of textures mixing together, stuck like something dead in the middle of a dry, lonely, desolate and unforgiving landscape. not beautiful in spite of it - but beautiful because of it.

i want to be petrified wood is maybe what i'm trying to say.

sedona

my friend sahra and i planned to go to havauspai falls this weekend - but due to the monsoon season and the fear of flash flooding, we instead spent a few nights camping and traveling around the areas a little south of the grand canyon. our first night was spent in sedona (cottonwood to be exact) and in the morning we hiked around a little. by hike, i mostly mean walked, and walked slowly. sahra lost her shoe in the creek and so we continued along the creek and path nearby for a little while and turned around when the path was getting too difficult/hot for her to walk on without shoes. mostly i feel like if i never go back to sedona in my life i won't really be sad about it - i kept thinking about the hills / laguna beach and how sedona would fit perfectly into an MTV reality-drama about rich high school kids. only instead of their parents being lawyers, their parents would be psychics and fortune tellers.

there are trees in sedona with leafs - and that's nice. it felt good to feel the sunshine through the leaves, in spotted patterns across my eyes and face. it made me wish i was laying in frick park.