A Walk with Grace – While Struggling with Patience

A Walk around Strickers Pond

A Walk through the Woods © Bo Mackison

I am in wait mode, struggling with patience.

I walk through a wooded area heading towards Strickers Pond,
cross a street, a prairie grass restoration spreads before me,
the glacial pond is just beyond.

A Walk around Strickers Pond

Strickers Pond © 2014 Bo Mackison

I imagine walking with Grace around this pond.
I love the sound of that, the double meaning.
For I have an application in for a rescue dog,
a sweet four-year-old labrador/pointer mix.
Her name is Grace.

A Walk around Strickers Pond

Prairie Grasses © 2014 Bo Mackison

The process is excruciatingly long, understandable enough,
the rescue group wants to find the perfect home for Grace.
She was rescued from a Missouri shelter on what would have been her last day alive,
and transferred to a foster home in Wisconsin with only hours to spare.
(“She loved the car ride, by the way!)

But she’s been there since November,
and she needs a home of her own and I need a companion.

A Walk around Strickers Pond

Stickers Pond and American Lotus © 2104 Bo Mackison

We met, Grace and I, at her foster mom’s place.
Such a sweet girl, and still waiting for a home because, though she is a large breed dog,
she is small for her size, just forty pounds.
I find that a simply perfect quality. I find her quite perfect, too.

The questions in my head start.
Am I good enough? Will she be happy with me?
Will she like the desert as much as I do? Will she love to travel and hike and camp?
Am I good enough?

A Walk around Strickers Pond

Purple Martin Colony © 2014 Bo Mackison

She has the sweetest eyes, her look says I want to please.
Her foster mom gives her glowing reports. She sits and shakes hands, and looks at me.
Bright eyed, tail in perpetual wag.

I struggle with patience — on so many issues —
and I’m impatient with the wait for Grace as the adoption process slugs along.
Application, in and acknowleged. Now the papers are sent to “the board”
the vet is called, three references checked, and last, a home visit.
Another test of patience.

A Walk around Strickers Pond

Purple Martin and Colony © 2014 Bo Mackison

I’ve been searching for a companion dog since January,
and now that Grace and I have found each other,
I want her to be in a place she can call her own.
I’m seeking that same place – my place to call home.

A Walk around Strickers Pond

The Resting Place © 2014 Bo Mackison

Settling in is always a struggle after I have been in Arizona.
I know this. I expect it. I plan for it.
And still, I do the transition with many requests for the gift of grace.
For acceptance of what is, acceptance of what isn’t,
and the courage to embrace each day just as it is, just as I am.

Fits and starts, and ups and downs,
this practice of sitting with patience.
Of fitting in, of finding my place again.

I wait, and learn to wait with more ease as I practice.

All shall be well, I whisper. Yes, all shall be well.

An Interlude in Travel; Expounding on Spring in Wisconsin

Silver Drift Ornamental Crabapple

Silver Drift Crabapple © 2013 Bo Mackison

There are bugs, no-see-ums, in Wisconsin.
There are crab apple trees so heavy with white blossoms you know they are really
floral bouquets gently swaying on the earth, in Wisconsin.

There are skies dense with clouds, white, gray, pink, puffy, dense, beribboned, in Wisconsin.
The red maple stands tall, branches widespread, deep in greening leaves, sturdy, in Wisconsin.
There are tiny bugs that buzz about my ears, in Wisconsin.

The rain pounds the earth, sheets of water, and thunder snap crackles,
The rain barrel is overflowing, in Wisconsin.
Gnats swarm in my eyes, follow me in a haze of flight as I dodge and swat, in Wisconsin.

The yard is green, abundantly so, not cultivated,
we chuck the hang tags from the pesticide companies,
greens of clover, purple and white violets, and wildly growing,
rampant spreads of escape-artist mint.
I pick the mint sometimes, the runners squirm loose from the earth with a tug, in Wisconsin.

The paper birch is pregnant with leaves, they drag upon the grassy understory, hide the neighbor’s yard from view, in Wisconsin.
Its bark once pale and baby skin smooth those many years ago
when we dug a hole and set it in the black earth,
the bark’s now rough and deeply textured, full of character like its caretakers, in Wisconsin.

The moss creeps between the flagstone, a tiny community for ants and beetles,
littered with maple spinners and bits of dried purple scent
from the overhanging lilac, in Wisconsin.

Two ashes we planted a quarter century ago began as sticks,
each with a lesser god’s headdress of leaf, and now
they rise taller than our two-story home, in Wisconsin.

The hummingbird feeder has fresh nectar, but the sighting of a hummer
is a rare treat, in Wisconsin.

The perennial garden we planned, painstakingly mapping color and height,
bloom time and sequence, it weathered the harsh winter with fair results, in Wisconsin.
The pink spikes of the coral bells wave two feet above its fluff of purple leaves,
but nothing else is yet in bud. There are spaces now for three or four new sets of plants.
The ornamental grasses and lavender were lost to winter’s brutal cold, in Wisconsin.

I dawdled this year,
unwilling to leave Arizona for the greener spaces, of Wisconsin.

There was work to finish, meetings to attend, and the lure of the desert remained strong.
I watched the saguaros bloom. I lingered.

I wasn’t ready to depart, and then I was.

Fate had other plans. A disabled car 300 miles down the road
and an engine overhaul, delayed parts,
led to weeks of side adventures into red rock wilderness and the Grand Canyon.

When I return to get my car,
I’m told there is another week’s delay, it is the same day Slide Fire begins
scorching beloved Oak Canyon, and a pyrotechnic smoke show hovers over Flagstaff for days.

Fire, twenty miles distant, throws up orange walls of smoke to the south of town,
obliterates the San Francisco Peaks to the north. They stand, shrouded in gray.
And then a black looming cloud, reminiscent of sci-fi saucers, settles on this city of 70,000, and blots out the sun. We breathe through makeshift masks, in Arizona.

The blooms are late-coming this year as was I, to Wisconsin.
Respite from my travel, the lilacs and crab apples, the dogwoods and magnolias in flower.

The sandhill crane, squawking its rattly ka-roo-roo, flies over my home, in Wisconsin.

Lookout Views from Cape Royal Road – North Rim of Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon -Kaibab Plateau

Point Imperial © 2014 Bo Mackison

We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation. ~ Theodore Roosevelt (1906)

Point Imperial, 8803 feet in elevation,
Overlooking Grand Canyon to the east, and beyond, the Painted Desert.

Grand Canyon -Kaibab Plateau

Vista Encantada © 2014 Bo Mackison

The lack of power to take joy in outdoor nature is as real a misfortune as the lack of power to take joy in books. ~ Theodore Roosevelt (1906)

Grand Canyon -Kaibab Plateau

Cape Royal © 2014 Bo Mackison

When your spirit cries for peace, come to a world of canyons deep in the old land, feel the exultation of high plateaus, the strength of moving waters, the simplicity of sand and grass, the silence of growth. ~ August Frugé

Cape Royal, the point, the southernmost view on the North Rim,
the widest panorama of any Grand Canyon overlook
the gorge has a view of about 270° of the horizon.

Look to Marble Canyon in the north, gaze south towards the Palisades of the Desert.

Grand Canyon -Kaibab Plateau

Angel’s Window from Walhalla Point © 2014 Bo Mackison

How the striking of the great clock, whose hours are millions of years, reverberates out of the abyss of the past!
~ John Burroughs

Grand Canyon -Kaibab Plateau

Angel’s Window, North Rim of Grand Canyon © 2014 Bo Mackison

. . . each man sees himself in the Grand Canyon – each one makes his own Canyon before he comes, each one brings and carries away his own Canyon. ~ Carl Sandburg

Grand Canyon -Kaibab Plateau

Grand Canyon Rock Formations © 2014 Bo Mackison

We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so. ~ Theodore Roosevelt (1906)

Early Morning at North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park

Grand Canyon National Park - North Rim in the Morning

North Rim, Early Morning on the Veranda ©2014 Bo Mackison

I didn’t get to the North Rim for sunrise. 5:20 am. But I was there, coffee and camera in hand, a bit after 6.
Early enough to share the veranda with only a few early risers.
And catch a few shadows as morning was waking.

Grand Canyon National Park - North Rim in the Morning

Early Morning at Grand Canyon National Park North Rim ©2014 Bo Mackison

A view of the Norht Rim, shooting west,
and capturing the Grand Canyon Lodge.
Rock and copper and just a touch of timber.
(After fire destroyed the first lodge, a wood structure,
the second edition relied primarily on stone.)

Grand Canyon National Park - North Rim in the Morning

Grand Canyon National Park – North Rim in the Morning © 2014 Bo Mackison

More sunlight, more shadows and definition.
Mid day, and the canyon will be pale in comparison
to the early morning or late evening color.
Still, it was hazy. The San Fransisco Peaks, 60 miles away near Flagstaff,
I could easily see the day before, this morning they were barely visible.

Grand Canyon National Park - North Rim in the Morning

Point Imperial Overlook © 2014 Bo Mackison

Two fellow travelers and I drove to Imperial Point, and stopped along the way.
They had hiked rim to rim the day before, and wanted to see the North Rim.
No shuttle is available, so we explored together, all of us with cameras in hand.

Grand Canyon National Park - North Rim in the Morning

Morning Blues Panorama and Point Imperial © 2014 Bo Mackison

What a grand opportunity for vistas!
More photos to follow. Wouldn’t I love to
explore this bit of heaven for an entire summer.

First Day Exploring Grand Canyon National Park – North Rim

Overlook - Kaibab National Forest

Leave Kanab Utah. 6:42 am Utah time, 5:42 am Arizona time.
Partly cloudy, dulls the red rock, but sun rays streak and shimmer in the early morning.
Coffee at Jakie Leigh’s Bakery.

Street plaque commemorates the movie filming of Apple Dumpling Gang and Don Knotts.
Color Mountain Motel
Purple Sage Inn

Kanab Airport
Flagman. Traffic stops.
Time to study the layers of rock – red, yellow, white, with forest lines interspersed between the colors.

Arizona State Line.
Fredonia Arizona
Buckskin Tavern State Line Bar
Welcome to Arizona Strip District Public Lands

Moose Next 12 Miles.
Entering Kaibab National Forest
Fire Danger Moderate.

Why did the coyote cross the road?

Kaibab Lookout. Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1938

Kaibab National Forest

Jacobs Lake 9 Miles
Flagstaff 173 Miles
Open range next 10 miles.

Stands of naked lodgepole pines, forest fire remnants from 2008.
Please Do Not Litter.

Junction 67. Jacobs Lake.
Jacobs Lake Inn. Elevation 7925.
cafe – motel – curios – store

Kaibab Plateau Visitor Center.
“In Memory of Theodore Roosevelt. “Teddy.” Protector of Arizona.”
Grand Canyon 45 Miles

Deer next 30 miles.
Cattle next 30 miles.
Don’t Drink and Drive.

Why did the chipmunk cross the road?
Black and white stripes on tree toothpicks, old fire damage.
Elevation 8400 feet.

Meadow, Birches just leafing.
Crane Lake, surrounded by a fence to keep the cattle out and allow the wildlife access.
Kaibab Lodge. No Vacancy.
DeMotte Campground. No Vacancy.

Grand Canyon 4 miles.
I keep reminding myself to breathe!

Grand Canyon - North Rim Entrance Station

I am here.
Grand Canyon North Rim Entrance.
Elevation 8250.

Icy road next 11 miles.
Only a few piles of snow, deep in the cover of the forest.
Wriggly aspen trunks – snow pressure during growth.

Grand Canyon - North Rim

And the North Rim opens to view.
I am standing at the edge of the canyon.

Grand Canyon - North Rim

Lookout over the rim.
To take in this view would require a lifetime.
Grateful that I have even these two days.

Grand Canyon - North Rim

Rocks, rocks, and rocks.
A geologist’s haven.
And heaven, too.

Condor Talk, Park Ranger, North Rim Grand Canyon

Condor ranger talk.
Park Ranger Gaelyn Olmstead demonstrates the proper way to build a condor nest.
Cliff edge or shallow cave. Scratch. Scratch. Done.

Grand Canyon - North Rim

These rockers are put to good use.
Hiking is hard work. And glorious.
But at some point the feet say, “No more. Sit down.”

Temple, North Rim of Grand Canyon, at Sunset

Sunset on the veranda.
Friends from the sometimes amazing social media introduce me to Gaelyn.
Nature lovers, photographers, wanderers.

We choose to sit and chat, watching the Grand Canyon.
Another reason that Grand Canyon is so grand – the people.

Sunset approaches, the canyon does its light show,
shadow, light, red, purple, yellow.
Sunlight on the Temple.

Grand Canyon - North Rim Sunset

And the after sunset glow.
Grand Canyon – North Rim.
Views of infinite grandeur – the canyon, the sky.