Friday, October 12, 2012

fall in zion

mo's face tells the real story
today is our second and final day at zion.  things haven't gone quite as smoothly as one might hope (hint: zofran was the hero of the day yesterday.) i sometimes think i've learned not to have unrealistic expectations, then realize, no, i still need to lower them quite a bit.

lula wisely decided to stay ahead of our group & to pretend she didn't know us.
you would think after twenty plus years of motherhood and teaching, i would know not to get my heart set on a specific outcome

but no!

it's really hard to divest oneself of hopes, and to do that thing i've been trying to learn for so long, that is to live in the moment, to acknowledge, as john cage says, "what authentically is."


no tights in the park, but rock climbing chic.

enough of the meta-vacation.

i'm here right now, watching sponge bob with moses and waiting for everyone to wake up, hoping to get my kids to do the emerald pools hike today (hint: yesterday we did a completely flat river walk, one mile, and it took two hours.  two slow, tear-filled hours.)  i really want to see the artist-in-resident cottage today (is this where messaien wrote les canyon aux etoiles?) and at least one other thing.  is that too much to ask?

one thing i love about southern utah is all the ccc projects.  so inspiring.  and so much fantastic stone masonry.

in history's declivity.
and then, of course, it's really hard to find any words to describe the sandstone cliffs of zion.  i think music might be a better way to try to reflect the experience of standing in such a dramatic history of geology, time, earth.

4 comments:

  1. good luck with your day! we want to get back to so. utah - so amazing! hang in there. hi to Lula, she looks like ready to go to Sorbonne, no? also, regarding the cabin...is it true? M. wrote in the park? I have read SUCH disparate accounts of how Canyon/Etoiles came about. Music History seems to lack a lot of footnotes. One source sas He visited Bryce & Grand Canyon. others say Zion, Bryce, Cedar Breaks. So strange. on the bright side, at least you didn't have to go with the ipecac...

    ReplyDelete
  2. tari, i was patting myself on the back for remembering to pack the zofran. it's magic.
    i've always heard zion for canyons. idk. i'm pretty sure he did stay and zion for a month at some point. xo.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Roland's mother Marian, whose not-so-distant ancestors settled Cedar City, had a cousin who lived for decades in an off-the beaten-track neck of Zion. He was a painter; U of U did a retrospective of his work a year or two ago--he's only recently died. But I can't remember his name, probably Jones. Hanging in her living room, she's got a magnificent painting of the park viewed from the North Rim that she commissioned him to do maybe seven or eight years ago. It's fabulous; she paid him $5,000 for it, not much, but also not nothing--he managed a living on his work.

    I think artists of all kinds have long been inspired by Zion. Whenever I go there--and I started visiting in ernest at about age 18--I always think: of course this place is named Zion. What better name for a place of such astounding physical perfections and, in the era of modern travel, such an assortment of people that you can hike to Angel's Landing, exchange greetings and share canteens with half a dozen different couples or families or small groups of friends and never with any of them exchange a word of English? Undoubtedly, were the stars correctly aligned, the need present, and Heaven's actual angel's loud enough in issuing their instructions, you might find yourself offering Zofran to one of these strangers and foreigners in this landscape named for God's own dream.

    ReplyDelete