a dying fire, late in the moonless night, crickets singing all the while, on the leeward side of the summer solstice.

the Enigma of Presence. being here is the initial event that triggers all else.

there in the other national park, not this one, feeding the animals is simply a specific event/action that further distorts the fabric of the local universe, where presence causes wholesale materialization of the local universe itself.

so, leaving the world is the ultimate de-materialization from impressing that outer world. talk about reducing carbon emissions!

deep in the shadow of the towering sandstone cliffs, in the dark fracture zone, Pool Creek breathes life into the heat of the mid-summer day.

the Solstice, in Echo Park. what more to ask?

walking upstream in Pool Creek Canyon above the abandoned ranch. cross one branch of that major fault, and there the creek is, totally spring fed, gushing from a sand bank in the center line of that huge fault. continue up the canyon in the dry wash. find a cave with a crude lean-to fashioned in it. hung with clothes, boots, and other items. old, very old. at least 50 years, perhaps 75. on the wall are a couple rock paintings. the clothes are working ranch clothes, the rock paintings appear to be authentic. I do not disturb anything, but am very conscious that my boots are making footprints in the sand floor. continuing up the arroyo, the canyon is defined by subtle and massive structural essences of the rock. on the uplifted side of the fault, the underlying limestone shows in the wash. the down-thrown side is at least 1000 feet lower. dramatic geology, good location for field mapping exercises.

sense a mountain lion at one point, the sage is often taller than my head, so, walking through deep brush, scrambling over rockfalls, peering into the numerous caves formed in the eroded sandstone. shooting many images. this is one of the best walks taken in the area. with plenty of cool places to stop, even in the vibrating mid-day zenith of the Solstice sun -- overhangs, caves, some Douglas Fir trees, large old junipers, and areas of over-hung canyon wall, rising a few hundred feet above. the absolute depth is about 800-1000, perhaps a bit more. I do not go as far as I can, but stop for 30 minutes to remove fox-tail burrs from pants, socks, and boot inners, where they are beginning to drill into my skin.

Loki does not accompany me.

we later swim/wade upstream to the Green/Yampa confluence and explore. the Yampa seems a few weeks' yet too strong to cross. the current is strong even in the hip-deep areas, making a perfect speed for swimming a hard workout in place. the flow of the Yampa is around 2000 (cubic feet per second, cfs), it was twice that at the beginning of the month (see the USGS water data site). in May it can reach up to 11000 cfs on occasion the Green is half that, and does not very from around 900 cfs because of the Flaming Gorge Dam. there are a pair of beavers who have found a sheltered cove to hang out in, noshing on aspens up to five inches in diameter which they have cut down and dragged to the river, leaving strange markings in the sand whilst doing so.

the previous day, coming down from the Uinta Mountains, we pass the monstrous phosphate mine which has modified a significant chunk of the south side of the Uintas. I continue work on the Domination of Landscape series to be uploaded later. everywhere in the west is plenty of material. unfortunately.

too dang windy for sonic recordings of the thermal features. but the same wind keeps the ubiquitous mosquitos from simmering around the body -- all feeling, as much as Bill Clinton could, for the sources of carbon dioxide emissions which carry an encoded message: warm blood for re-creation.

Yellowstone. for the second day. struggling with the teenager and such. which distracts from and distorts the energy of place. interaction of place and person. the series of images continues domination of landscape which traces the very tangible interactions between human and land. in this case, 21st-century Amurika and the accumulated legacy of a pioneering land which is filling up. to be sure, there is the tribal essence of camping in a tent where nearby there is a very large and possibly very aggressive bull buffalo chewing its cud. and the thermal activities which do remind of the possibility that the planet could most probably simply throw off the species which has raped it in extremis and spend another few million years developing another species for potential evolution. but here we are now, the heart of the Western Frontier Spirit. Old Faithful. the semi-circle boardwalk with bench seats made from fake 2x4 boards, those extruded from recycled polystyrene bottles courtesy of some corporation, surrounding the low tufa deposits. where the faithful, in their hundreds and perhaps thousands come on a semi-hourly basis to watch an endlessly variable repetitive event, marking a psychic continuation from those pioneering days to the present where the frontier is an unknown and fearsome -- with Them bent on prising from Us everything that we've built up and enjoyed on the backs of Them over the last 100-some years.



that evolutionary struggle along with another one -- the elegant mosquito which will still be around after this country is down-graded to a tropical storm from Cat-5 Imperial hurricane of the post-war era. though the moot question comes up, exactly which war am I referring to?

approaching the solstice, ahead only 3 weeks. too early to be really thinking about it. in a phone call, Deb mentions "since Hector died," in passing. "what? I knew he had cancer, but when did this happen?" "didn't you get the email we sent in February?" "no." sheesh. email is so imperfect, as far as my experience of it is. too many mission-critical failures over the years, and things like this. gees.

Hector was always a bit of an enigma. he's a friend of Nick's who I met several times over the years, a nurse at a VA hospital in Denver. he was a Vietnam vet, grizzled and gruff, although that part of his past never surfaced overtly. he knew that I really liked the area around Crestone -- and I knew he had started to build a house down there on the Baca land. so, one summer I was there in Colorado visiting, and he was heading down to the house for a week, so he invited me down. the house was sort of done, he had built a small wooden cabin to begin with, then a two-story structure built from rastra-block on a 2-acre lot. it was telling, the upstairs where there were windows on the south wall, but only from chest height up. standing there, it felt like an observation post. with an expansive view of the valley, and Blanca Peak at the south end of the Sangre de Christos mountains. I recall hanging out there several evenings, watching the twiLight settle on the valley, and then the stars coming out until there was a vast blanket of them filling the sky. consumables were consumed. mosquitos raged outside the screen doors. binocs were used to check out far details before full dark took over. no night-vision goggles, just consumables which makes the darkness clear and palpable as a place of second sight. Nick came down later that week for a few days, and introduced me to some of his friends in the area. we all did some nice hikes in the area -- up some of the watersheds leading down from the Sangre highlands just a mile away or so at 14,000 feet. met a young couple who were making a straw-bale place and in the mean time were living in a ragged school bus. another family living in a beautiful self-buit octagonal log house with an electrifying view straight up at the Crestone Needles.



rough place. though now, 12 years later, it's up-scaled to some degree. but those few days at Hector's place got me hooked on the location, just ten miles as-the-raven-flies from the Center of the Universe. thanks Hector! Vaya con Dios, amigo!