Tag Archives: North Rim of Grand Canyon

The Road to Diamond, Day 229: Intensity Continues

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Posted by on in animal and plant life, children, Education, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Spiritual, Striving

July 15,2025- My final feeding of and cleaning up after the cats was the quiet and easy part of the day. I was able to get past the road construction zone fairly easily as well. While heading to get coffee and breakfast, afterward, I came upon a fundraiser car wash, for a high school dance group, which is starting up this year. Sportage really needed it, and the girls did a great job. So, there was coffee, but breakfast waited until I got to my post as Blood Donor Ambassador. It was a bag of pretzels. I lived.

Once at the Red Cross Blood Drive, there was a steady flow of donors, most of whom were able to complete their donation. It was nice, though, that I was accompanied by a second Donor Ambassador. “Lunch” was a bag of Cheez-its. I still lived. The building was comfortable, even with the temperature of a meat locker, in the main donation bay. This is necessary, to keep the blood fresh. In the lobby, where I spent most time, the temperature was more conventional.

In a sign that the intensity of the past eight days will continue, I am now part of a plan to provide shelter for workers who were evacuated from the North Rim of Grand Canyon. If this works out, I will provide management for the shelter. It will be in Page, near Lake Powell, at the Utah border, and likely be from July 18 until the end of this month. Arrangements will need to be made tomorrow. On it goes. It is the least I can do, though, for people who have their livelihoods in the balance.

There was a prediction, not too long ago, that life would get more intense, after July 7. Looks like there may be something to that.

The Road to Diamond, Day 227: Thoughts While at Rest

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Posted by on in animal and plant life, Assistance, children, collaborating, Community, impediments, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

July 13, 2025- Today was an auspicious day. It is the birthday of my twin sisters-in-law. It is the anniversary of the beginning of a thankfully brief journey down a dark rabbit hole. It is also the anniversary of the passing of a good friend. In brief, July 13 is a mixed bag.

Today here in Prescott and at Bellemont was a peaceful day. The third day of camp was, by all accounts, splendid and people worked together to get the camp broken down and deep-cleaned. Here, I took care of the cats and did scant else, regrouping after yesterday’s full schedule and looking carefully at the fire reports from the North Rim of Grand Canyon. The news was terrifying: Grand Canyon Lodge, the North Rim Visitor’s Center, staff lodging and various cabins were destroyed. Fortunately, all workers and guests had been evacuated before the fire hit.

I never stayed in the Lodge, but enjoyed its lobby’s art and wandering around the neo-Victorian structure. The hotel was a rebuilt version of the original, itself lost in a fire in 1937. It will take time, but the likelihood is that the Lodge will be rebuilt.

I thought a lot today about where I am in the world. How much good am I actually doing? A project I had sponsored in the Philippines, in the first area I visited in that country, has fallen victim to thieves, who took building materials that were intended to improve a children’s school. So many people in this world look back on their own childhood, tell themselves that they were deprived and therefore, it’s okay for them to steal from the children of today.

I was raised to take the bitter with the sweet and to not expect to be put above anyone else. This is not a lesson that is universally taught, and thus we are in a hard place, as a species. Those who place themselves above the rest should not be at all surprised, when in the end, deprivation rears its head and takes back from them what was never due them in the first place. That is just a general observation on the way things tend to transpire.

It has been largely a restful day, but also one that has been bittersweet.