Monthly Archives: May 2015

The Road to 65, Mile 162: Illuminate

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May 9, 2015, Granite Dells- Today was an unusually busy, productive day, for a Saturday.  The large Prescott Farmer’s Market opened today, at Yavapai College.  It’s several booths larger than last year.  I spent about forty minutes there, with a couple of friends, buying one a half-dozen poppies that were poised to open, after she admired them.

The afternoon featured a two-hour organizational meeting for Hope Fest 2015, a faith-based effort to help the homeless, the victims of domestic violence, and those in recovery from addiction.  We will have the event here on October 3.  I won a T-shirt and sat for a five-minute videotaped interview, which I haven’t done before.  My role on festival day will most likely be running errands (handling emergencies) and taking displays down, after it’s over.

I bought a new camera.  My Samsung 5X gave up the ghost, after four years and over 3,000 photographs.  My new camera is also a Samsung Digital, and is a 21X.  I have enough time to learn its features, before heading northwest.  Tomorrow may be a Sedona day, unless service calls.

The evening was spent again at Heaven On Earth, with new friends Happy and Johnny hosting a preview of the Illuminate Film Festival.  The Festival features thought-provoking films and will be in Sedona, May 27-31.  I’ll be in the Seattle area then, so tonight was a fine substitute for the actual event.  There was a fairly large crowd, about forty people, and after we enjoyed vegan hors d’oeuvres, the organizers of the Festival presented eight movie trailers, each with a rather deep theme.

We are told, in several sacred texts, and oral traditions of indigenous peoples, that in the “last days, all that is dark shall be made light”.  Illuminate does not just deal with the wretched acts of the rich and powerful, but those of the less well-to-do, also.  It addresses matters of altered states of consciousness and of expanded spiritual and cognitive awareness  The evening was time well-spent, among many inquiring minds.  If anyone reading this is interested, check:  www.illuminatefilmfestival.com.

The Road to 65, Mile 161: Weather

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Posted by on in Hiking and Nature

May 8, 2015, Prescott- We had the odd experience here today, of being colder than parts of Canada.  Snow swirled here, outside the classroom window, for about twenty minutes, and stuck on the ground, in the surrounding mountains.  It’s supposed to be twenty degrees warmer by Monday, so the moisture will be useful in staving off wildfires- at least for a month or so.  It was also gratifying to see that the mountains of southern California also got precipitation.

It will be an unusual May, in this regard.  I am quite sure we will see more rain, between now and Memorial Day.  It remains to be seen what this means for our “monsoon” cycle, though I’d be happy to see it be wetter than normal as well.

Weather has been weird, worldwide, and for several years now.  Some blame carbon dioxide, and I’m certain that excess gas emissions of all kinds, from CO2 to methane, don’t help.  There is also the shifting of the Earth’s magnetic poles, which I am convinced is happening, little by little, so that by the time my yet-potential grandchildren are seniors, say, in 2080, they will be in a rather different world.

It seems already happening, though.  Another friend mentioned that the populace of Maldives are fleeing their island homeland, in droves.  People in Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands are eyeing property in more spacious, less-threatened places, like Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.  The shifting may be affecting the world’s fault lines, thus adding to the dynamic stress that brings about earthquakes-great and slight.

We are surely in for more excitement than some would like, and can expect feast and famine, precipitation-wise, to alternate, with more volatility than the New York Stock Exchange, over the next half century.  Don’t put away the longjohns, or the summer wear.  Get used to layering; it’s the new normal.

The Road to 65, Mile 160: Soldiers

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May 7, 2015, Prescott- A year ago today, a painfully brief text message brought me out of my early-morning fog:  “Dad’s gone”.  The Dad in question was my father-in-law, ninety years of age, a former Prisoner-of-War ,who had been rescued from Juden Kamp Berga right after Hitler’s suicide.  In his subsequent life, he had been a traveling shoe salesman, owned a boot and shoe shop, ridden horse and motorcycle, avidly, and been a licensed pilot.  Norman David Fellman and his wife had raised three daughters from infancy and seen them become strong, successful professional women.  They had been to various parts of the Caribbean and Asia.   They were the bulwark of my little family’s life, for over twenty-five years, and their legacy was to lend me strength in so many hours of darkness. Norm was a true soldier.

The day before my father-in-law passed, unbeknownst to me until a bit later, a young man died of complications from a medical procedure.  He was one of my son’s childhood friends.  Though they were very different in personality and interests, and went on separate paths, they reconnected a few years ago, and maintained correspondence.  The young man was a talented musician, with a deep well of consciousness, and its attendant well of pain.  Brooke Bohner was a true soldier, in the spiritual sense.

We all carry on our battles, day to day.  I, too, struggle: With anger at those who manipulate others, for the sake of amassing power and wealth- telling anyone who will listen to them that “This is the way of the world.”;  with doubts about myself, for not following through on my promises to so many people, over the years; with the suspicion of so many people whom I encounter, almost daily; with injustice, in general.

I still stand, though, and keep on going, because for the sincere, for the dedicated, there is no other choice.

The Road to 65, Mile 159: Process

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May 6, 2015, Prescott- I took this morning to set up a delivery system for leftover hotel breakfast buffet items to go to a feeding station for the destitute, here in town.  This had been giving me fits for a few days, but it’s all worked out now.  Each end of school year sees projects come up, and get arranged, funds for the summer be put aside, and any advance arrangements that need to be made for a journey get accomplished.

The most critical thing about all this is that, in the past, I have formed grandiose ideas in my head, made long lists of things that will happen, in the course of a project- and then, very little has been accomplished.  I am doing better at finishing what I start, though that would be cold comfort for all who have been disappointed in the duds of yesteryear.

Process is done one step at a time, and now that I am more clear about who I am, in the scheme of things, it’s all easier to follow through, to the end.  Funny, but this may be the first school year, since 1997-98, that I feel a real sense of accomplishment, as the year draws to an end.

The Road to 65, Mile 158: El Cinco

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May 5, 2015, Chino Valley-  A restaurant on the south end of town burned today.  I’m not about to speculate, as to the cause.  I just know that the few times I ate there, the meal was satisfying and the service folksy and prompt.  My work here was on the north side, and consisted of four hours with a group of fourth-graders, who had been left behind from a reading reward field trip.  They bought the story that their teacher was at a long meeting, rather than at the field trip that was attended by some of their classmates.

This is Teacher Appreciation Day, so community members supervised the kids in the lunchroom, and at recess.  We enjoyed a vegetarian Mexican lunch, provided by other community members, and cupcakes prepared by an office worker.  All was magnifico!

I checked on the status of my hapless acquaintance, who had been jailed on Friday, and was told he had been released today.  So far, he has not contacted me, and I will leave it at that.  The sheriff’s clerk said I am under no obligation to seek him out, in any event.

We did make headway, in a plan I am helping to establish, to connect a local hotel food service with a kitchen that serves meals to homeless people, four days a week.  Someone made the astute observation that the kitchen has a staff member who could pick up the food from the hotel.  I will work that detail out, tomorrow, either after, or in lieu of, going to my day job.  Another person has also stepped forward to help with this.

Cinco de Mayo commemorates the routing of French soldiers in Mexico, on May 5, 1862. It is a minor holiday in Mexico, but is widely celebrated in the Southwestern U.S.  I note that it is also an excuse for people to indulge in midweek partying.  Camaraderie, though, is a good thing.

These random notes on the day may be tied together with a neat word bow:  Love is a productive struggle.  This is a message written on the bulletin board of the teacher whose classroom I covered today.

The Road to 65, Mile 157: Chasing Away the Night

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May 4, 2015, Prescott-  I made another visit to Miller Valley School today.  Being with rambunctious six- and seven-year-olds, and actually getting them to accomplish a day’s learning, is among the finest of days spent.

Kids carry their inner selves so openly, and this is a superb thing.  Those who love, can draw the pain out, and elevate their loved ones.  It’s said that the child who needs love the most is the one who presents the most unlovable persona.  This, I have taken as an article of faith since my own childhood.

By that, I don’t mean to imply that I was a difficult person, as a child.  Rather, I found that the bullies, the disquiet ones, the recluses, all had a feature that made me want to work harder to understand them, just as I, an autistic, before such a label was in use, wanted to be understood.

We all want someone to chase away our night.  The boys whom I had to list for the regular teacher to make parent contact are very bright and, in many ways, delightful people.  They don’t fit easily with others in a class setting, and a sense of darkness is a good part of their life experience. They clamour for an externally imposed discipline, and mine is a rather gentle, firm approach, directly addressing the underlying.

I felt that, at the end of the day, no one felt demeaned or diminished, but knew the security of limits.

The Road to 65, Mile 156: Failure to Thrive

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May 3, 2015, Prescott-  So much debate has taken place these days, regarding various issues:  Black youth, same-sex marriage, helping people in other countries vs. taking care of “our own”.  I believe the majority of people, on all points along the spectrum of thought, want to see the best for humanity.  Where the matter goes haywire comes when money, power, excessive fear and callous ignorance take the fore.

We are at a turning point in the affairs of mankind.  Those who seem to be causing so much of the mayhem and devastation in the civic affairs of the world are often those on the margins of society.  We have seen the violence in Baltimore, and last year in Ferguson, MO, stem largely from the PERCEPTION of those on the outskirts of the American Dream that there is no hope of any advancement on their part.  The frequent stodginess and inflexibility of those in positions of power in many communities doesn’t help.

We in Prescott have seen a lengthy, and thankfully successful fight by lower middle class people whose heads of household were killed in the firestorm of June 30, 2013, as they battled a wildfire.  The powers that be were largely against paying compensation to the survivor families, adhering to an outmoded frontier dictum that “One should know what one is getting into”, and deal independently with whatever life tosses at you.  The families have received just compensation.

The major effort, as I see it, has to lie in encouraging and preserving one’s own dignity and sense of value to a community.  I’ve worked with thousands of children, teenagers and adults, over the past five decades.  To a one, the people causing the most disruption and heartache to those around them, from my first disquiet students, in my hometown, to the recently incarcerated homeless veteran who I was encouraging to re-enter society, have been the emotionally and spiritually dispossessed.  Economics sometimes plays a secondary role, as well. With the first two bases covered, however, most economically disadvantaged people can overcome their living circumstances.

Failure to thrive comes from a chronic lack of love.  This we have seen in numerous psychological studies of people and animals, and in our daily lives, as abused people of all ages present themselves to the rest of us, as both harbingers of crisis and opportunities for service.

The Road to 65, Mile 155: Oasis Within An Oasis

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Posted by on in Hiking and Nature, Personal goals, Social

May 2, 2015, Granite Dells-  I spent the day immersing myself in better health practices.  Around 10:30, I set out to this dazzling blend of rock, water and greenery, to pay a call on a natural healer and anthropologist, who calls herself Happy Oasis.  She lives with her husband, John, in a delightful two or three acres of land, known as Heaven on Earth.  Happy has been all over the planet, in the course of her twenty-five year career, yet she has chosen, and fought hard for, this sublime paradise.

Thanks to her efforts, there are trails aplenty where there could have been condos too many.  So, Happy and her associate, Jack, took thirty of us on a walk of discovery- to meet the wild plants which can be foraged for sustenance, in the ecosystem of the Dells. It rained a bit, as if to bless our jaunt.

Here are some scenes of this unique experience.

The home of our hosts is a work in progress, after a fire took out its predecessor.  They are nothing, if not multi-talented.

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Here is a slippery elm, with its full supply of salad greens.SAM_4879

I don’t remember what the next several plants are, but they are safe and taste very nice.

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Here is a mustard plant.SAM_4885

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THIS, however, is loco weed.  It is highly hallucinogenic, if ingested.

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Happy, in front, showed us about a dozen plants that can sustain a person, in the wilds of Granite Dells.SAM_4896

This flowering plant is often called prairie rose.  It tastes fine, flowers and all.SAM_4897

Here are some of my classmates, as we enjoyed the fruits of nature’s labours.

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It was one of the loveliest of days, so far this year.  In late afternoon and evening, I visited with a friend and  essential oils colleague, encouraging her in teaching a class on our oils. The day left me with the knowledge that there is more good in our future than not.

The Road to 65, Mile 154: May Day Meanderings

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Posted by on in Hiking and Nature, Personal goals, Travel

May 1, 2015, Prescott-   Th fifth month of the year always finds me taking stock of my assets, making concrete plans to consolidate my possessions, and downsizing, prior to a summer of journeying and carefully living in balance.  This summer will take me to Nevada,Mt. Shasta, the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia, southeast Alaska and back down through the Palouse, Idaho and Utah; then to southern California, after a brief July 4 respite here.

For someone who values survival skills, I am a bit wet behind the ears.  Tent pitching and foraging for food are my immediate concerns, as is mastering the art of inflating an air mattress.  See, I have put up my tent,had it stand for five or six hours, then woke up and found it hugging my face.  This needs to stop.  I like sleeping under the stars, and still will, whenever prudent.  Being that I will share space with Alaskan brown bears, for a few days in June, I think a solidly pitched edifice will better suit my circumstances.

Later this summer, Grand Canyon hikes and jaunts along the Mogollon Rim in AZ and New Mexico, will afford me the company of a master woodsman.  These days will prep me for a 2017 thru-hike of the Arizona Trail, as will this Fall’s earnest completion of the Black Canyon Trail, over four stages, from Bumble Bee to Lake Pleasant Road.  The Prescott Circle will finally be unbroken, and the Maricopa Trail beckons, in Winter.

All this crossed my mind, after a day of hearing the woes of a teen boy who has a serious crush on a lovely young lady, ten years his senior.  It will go nowhere.  The woman has a good man in her life, and besides, that’s where crushes are supposed to go.  I used to be there, though my crushes, early on, found more contemporary focuses.  He will, as well, no doubt.

After making a brief visit to a school whose constituents and staff observed its last “birthday” as an institution, I came home to find that the man I had befriended, and tried to help, over the past seven months, was actually a wanted felon.  He was being taken into custody, as I pulled up to my driveway.  I pulled in, through the neighbour’s drive, and was informed that he had vandalized my upstairs neighbour’s property, thus the collar.  I have no idea what he is accused of doing, previously, but this does explain the hackles I have started to get on the back of my neck, as the day for taking him up towards Las Vegas approached.  Now, that is no longer in the works.  I have some of his possessions in my back storage, and his vital papers in the house.  These will all stay put, and untouched, until the legal process plays itself out.

So, I begin this fascinating month, hopeful, energetic, and chastened about human nature.  Tomorrow, I brush up on foraging and go to help a dear friend, one who can be trusted.

The Road to 65, Mile 153: The Flow

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April 30, 2015, Prescott- We each reach the point,in our grief process, where the events of our present existence take the precedence they deserve, over constant thoughts of the departed loved one. That said, it only takes a small trigger to bring it all back- if only for a short time.

Some regard it their solemn duty to act as “reality checks”, forcibly keeping the bereft person “focused”.  I had family members who did this, in 2011, mainly because they had either no direct experience with grieving a next of kin or because the experience they did have was so extreme in severity, that they had little choice but to carry the poor soul forward.

In my case, I went through  confusion and lack of focus, in the first year of grief; a new appreciation of life, in the second year; misplaced attachments to others, in the third; and, at present, a more concrete concern with reality.  Each stage has had its spiritual component, and each, its learning curve.

I have many well-wishers, a few, scattered, haters and a dedicated cadre of friends and family, on whom I can rely for just about anything.  As others in my circle face their own first, second and third stages of grief, I find myself being ready to wrap my spiritual arms around them and feel the concourse of spirits guarding us all.