Moab 2016

This blog began as a type of travelogue, and was hopefully going to document our world travels. We DO have an international trip coming up (yay!) but first here's a record of our traditional, closer-to-home travel. Moab, UT is a fantastic place for outdoor activities, be that porch-sitting or canyoneering. It's a family tradition (thank you, Grandma and Grandpa Fuller) to participate in their Spring 5-mile/Half marathon race and then head to Arches National Park, the La Sal mountain range, or any number of lesser-known hiking/site-seeing spots.

Snow fun

Yet another year passes and I failed to get my kids out on a sled, whooshing down a hill (although their Uncle Boston obligingly built a five foot tall snow slide in the back yard over new years--awesome!)

But we did get a  few fun snow days in. And we started teaching Rosie how to cross-country ski! She had a a much more positive experience than her dad recalls having as a young kid.

Thanks Dustin's work for the free passes to Sundance for an afternoon date of downhill funness!

Okay, winter, thanks for the fun--we-re ready for spring now.

Colors

Driving in the dark, the near-dawn, to begin hiking the Narrows:

The anonymity of duskiness brings a slow blink, a nod of the head, a study of the car interior. Eyes raise, and the sudden shift of the environment shedding its monotone shocks, unnerves, and then delights.


Strokes of watercolor percolate through the rock--streaks of sunrise and sunset, blue haze wafting off the trees and far peaks, junipers exhaling indigo to slurp up the sandy stone smudges. The rim of the sky embraces the leafy colors seeping upward, against gravity, and the domed sky swishes upward as the cloth is whisked away, first white and yellow, then orange, pink, sloughing away to leave the powdery blue of a dawn sky.

The sky recedes and the sun reveals the stony pigments blasted into the rocks, deep-seated color like kilned ceramics. But, blocked from the sun's radiance, the creviced blue shadows siphon the hues from the stone, wicking them back to air and sky.  

As tones become hardened by the sun's entrance, the scrubby flora emblazons gold, scarlet, and bronze onto the landscape. Orgasmic leaves boast their own brilliance, confident in their breath-taking, almost unnatural richness, until the sun overwhelms and incinerates the now curling, ash-light foliage. 

  It is too much to bear. Sunrise deceives us, portrayed so often as a calm, peaceful, moment of yawning and potential, of waking. As I watch it emerge through my window I am hard-pressed, breathless, stunned. The earth falls prey, surrendering its brushstrokes of innocence to the sun's savagery. We also fall prey to this celestial tyrant, intent on exposing beauty, pursuing it to the climatic moment when it is consumed. 

Halloween

Rosie was a spider...we all were, but she actually enjoyed it :)

Monster Mush for our Halloween breakfast (green milk, purple blackberries, and orange oatmeal)

I love sunny weather near Halloween. One of those idyllic moments in the life...short lived :)

Ghost pancakes--they can be any shape, and 3 chocolate chips (eyes and mouth) are much healthier than the twelve it takes to make a jack-o-lantern grin.

Our cookies actually turned out this year--no horror-story piles of crumbs and kid saliva.

In the process of making ghetto family costumes.

And hanging up spider webs.

Cutest kids ever!

Night Sky

Not long ago I wrote about how I finally got contacts but, I'm sorry to say, I just don't wear them that often. Busy-ness, forgetting, and hassle-factors all aggravate the reality that is this neglect. I did manage to go camping once while wearing them, and had a epiphanic moment while looking at the stars. My well-loved and often-sought night sky. But the stars I see in the light-polluted, contact lens-free display of my backyard has no comparison to the brilliant vista I witnessed, outhouse-bound, in that dewy field. With my contacts: breath-taking!

http://i2.wp.com/www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/night_sky-9030_0.jpeg?resize=416%2C277

Why are we, humankind, still so captured by the star-studded sky? (Popular radio songs come quickly to mind, among many similar pop culture references.) Why do we look up and feel a budding incomprehension but dreamlike wonder? How do we see something--recognize it with our eyes--and yet still be unable to comprehend its spanse, its meaning? It touches our brains and our souls, our sense of beauty, but we know it just enough to know that it is unknowable--our cognizance can't take that in. We see one level of indescribable beauty only to realize that in each twinkle of light is a blazing wonder of heat and color and sense...We hold a grain of salt to our tongue and attempt to grasp the sight and contents of the ocean.

But at least it pushes us to try. We continue to look at the night sky and are awash in a tingling awe we don't understand. But we recognize it, and continue to gaze.

Perfect Summer Days

Here's a glimpse of some perfect moments we have had this summer. It's great to have a 3 yr. and a 1 yr. old who both love walking the river nature trail near our home and taking advantage of Free Fishing Day in Utah. Ah, the idyllic and quixotic snatches of time we can reach out and pluck from a delightful summer breeze...

(fishing with Grandpa)

(and Bridal Veil Falls)