In Search of Adventure and Ongoing Discovery

Windows of Time © 2014 Bo Mackison

watch Windows of Time © 2014 Bo Mackison

https://emduk.org/noknmowd The best way to promote growth and healing is to take a trip, to go in search of  adventure. Travel through space, whether by land, sea, air, or mind, is the universal metaphor for change. The hero(ine)’s journey creates new futures. New patterns and possibilities emerge.

https://dentaris-sa.com/2024/05/13/81knorhjl Many cherished beliefs come into question. New strengths, insights and talents unfold.

https://restoreredspruce.org/2024/05/13/xcd3h1vi When the journey is over and you return to where you began, you are faced with new beginnings. You are at a turning point, a place where new paths make themselves known.

Order Xanax From Mexico Online If the journey is successful, you return a changed person, a hero(ine) in your own eyes.

https://annmorrislighting.com/fhlvls1 ~ Jeffrey Kottler

Finding Your Way, When Home is Being Lost in the Wilderness

Trailhead © 2014 Bo Mackison

see url Trailhead © 2014 Bo Mackison

source site “I love going out of my way, beyond what I know, and finding my way back a few extra miles, by another trail, with a compass that argues with the map…nights alone in motels in remote western towns where I know no one and no one I know knows where I am… I have lost myself though I know where I am.

https://thegreathighway.com/4x6c2rvvjhm Moments when I say to myself as feet or car clear a crest or round a bend, I have never seen this place before. Times when some architectural detail on a vista that has escaped me these many years says to me I never did know where I was, even when I was home.”

Buy Xanax 1Mg Online Uk ~ Rebecca Solnit, in A Field Guide to Getting Lost https://someawesomeminecraft.com/2024/05/13/g4lza6z5w

Heading Dead Straight into the Storm

Driving through Painted Desert

https://discovershareinspire.com/2024/05/bno3s1uj Heading into the Storm © 2014 Bo Mackison

watch “When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
~ Haruki Murakami

An Interlude in Travel; Expounding on Spring in Wisconsin

Silver Drift Ornamental Crabapple

https://yplocal.us/6heko80uwve Silver Drift Crabapple © 2013 Bo Mackison

Buy Valium Tablets 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.

go here 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.

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.