Author: Patrick Kelly

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Freedom in a Land Called Utah…

Green River Meanders Courtesy NASA, September 18, 2018 NASA Earth Observatory
Green River Meanders
Courtesy NASA, September 18, 2018
NASA Earth Observatory
I am sitting next to friends on top of the skeleton of an excavator from the 1950s at an abandoned uranium mining site. All around us are tamarisk chokes, redrock fortifications, and the bleached steel bones of Pittsburgh’s former glory. We descend off of what we imagine the remains of a great steel minotaur which used to rule this dead tributary, and head up the wash into a side canyon. Following old trails and roads, we find stone sculptures pitted and bored by wind, scorpions avoiding our misunderstood company, and the remains of camps left by those the scorpions take us for.

We scramble past ash mounds, graffitied rocks, and discarded tin cans to each find a perch on one of the many boulders which have in time broken and cascaded down from the high red cliffs above like magnificent apocalyptic rain. Each dwarfs what we think possible to exist surviving such a fall, yet it does and will continue to do so long after we have ceased. Our expectations cannot deny their reality.

I sit on one of these great cleaves, facing west, enjoying life as the last rays of the deadly August sun hits my cheeks. I close my eyes and hear three ravens. When I call, they call back. Their dialect is not like those back home, but we both understand and appreciate the good company. They call from on high, and I from on low. Together we fill the canyons around us with the joyful elixir of rendezvous comradery.

Those other humans with me begin to wander around, discovering where water once fell and may again, where the ancient deep sands have laid new claim to man’s tin and iron waste, seeking to bury it and create the world in its own granular image, and where hardy shades of greenery have used their roots like vices to cling first and drink second.

I stay upon my boulder. The ravens stay upon their wing. I dream of being nowhere but where I am.

There’s a place in Utah where the sun burns a bit hotter and the air smells like home. Down the Green River with her tangerine mornings lies Labyrinth Canyon and the lair of the steel minotaur. This Labyrinth, the river’s hand at Daedalus’s task, can also in the same make and destroy and make again. True to its name, the canyon allows all to meander into its fluid center, and gives opportunity for you to meander into your own if you’re willing to disconnect from what lies above the crests of those ancient concretized dunes, and see the world for what lies within a cradle older than time itself.

This wisened world, a world holding evidence of man’s potent messages in petroglyph, graffiti, and iron beast, holds an even greater message of hope found etched by the thumping course of the Green River. That message tells not of man’s stories looking back, but of the joy, warmth, honest decision, and echoes of time found in looking ahead.

By our freedom in this world we have license to hoot n’ holler like the wild animals we are into the amphitheaters given by the river’s mind. Let those without joy or heart file a noise complaint, for the river holds no objection. She responds back in our words, whispered to us with unbridled power by her own red and rough maw. Hearing me howl and the walls rebuttal, somewhere in the distance a beaver slaps its tail upon the water. The river calls back to him as well.

The world does not discriminate against those who choose to live within it and not simply upon it. It feels good to belong to such a place. It feels good to have such a place belong to no one, for who can be deserving of such creation but the riverine creator?

Lucky for us in Utah, our land still has more creation than not, even given the efforts of our minotaurs. Wherever you are right now, find a window. Look outside of it. There, just past where you’re looking, lies more of Utah to be found. Just past where you can see lies another labyrinth, another message of hope, another space to dream of being nowhere but where you are, where the sun burns a little hotter and the air smells like home. So go out and be free and wild as Utah makes all who live not just on it, but within. Find your freedom in the land that we call Utah.

My name is Patrick Kelly and I am Wild About Utah.
 
Credits:

Images: Image Courtesy NASA Earth Observatory, Public Domain
Audio: Contains audio Courtesy & Copyright Friend Weller, Utah Public Radio
Text:    Patrick Kelly, Director of Education, Stokes Nature Center, https://logannature.org
Included Links: Lyle Bingham, Webmaster, WildAboutUtah.org

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah Pieces by Patrick Kelly: https://wildaboututah.org/author/patrick-kelly/

The Uranium Mines of Bowknot Bend, Green River Utah, AZ Backcountry Adventures, Ernie Parks, 2014 Trips, http://www.azbackcountryadventures.com/uran.htm

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Watching Bird TV

watching bird tv: Flicker, Courtesy Pixabay
Flicker, Courtesy Pixabay

Two American Robins and a Northern Flicker Drinking from a Bird Bath Copyright © 2012 Linda Kervin Two American Robins and a
Northern Flicker Drinking from a Bird Bath
Copyright © 2012 Linda Kervin

bird tv: Chickadee Courtesy edbo23, photographer and Pixabay Chickadee
Courtesy edbo23, photographer and Pixabay

There are some days that I just don’t have it in me to get outside. Maybe it’s the winter blues; maybe it’s exhaustion from a full day’s work. Either way, there are days where all I want to do is sit in the shelter of my home next to the heat ducts, or under the shade of a porch, and just exhale for hours. Sometimes, getting into the thick or exploring one of the many unmapped nooks of Utah’s majesty just isn’t happening.

I used to feel bad about this. I have but one life, one short blip of time upon this earth, I should be making use of every second. Whether it’s laboring on an overdue chore, or out testing my grit in harmony with Utah’s character, I need to be doing or I am dying; wasting the one life I am given.

It took me some good time to not overcome this mentality, but see my struggle with new eyes: to wash them and see the world fresh. My ablution began by asking a simple question: how can I love the still wild land that has provided for my family, my nation, my species for millennia, even when I don’t have it in me to go out and commune with it as I know I should daily?

The answer for me was to find a way to appreciate and give in such a way that allows me great joy and relaxation, yet fulfills that higher narrative which only the world beyond human influence can provide. My answer was watching birds at my small backyard bird feeder.

While it may not sound as exciting as fording a river while carrying my dog, or submitting a mountain that still holds on to deep winter snows (again with my dog), it gives me a chance to still learn about the cut of my jib, to see what character I’m made of, and to see my place in the world, in creation, and in life.

I test my grit upon the stillness of my mind when cheerful chickadees begin to see me as a part of the scenery and perch ever closer and closer to the branches above me, or my honest acceptance when rackets of starlings come to steal the suet left out in hope of a Stellar’s jay or lost mountain bluebird, or my reflection on where my body will one day go as scraps from my last hunt are eaten by the local neighborhood magpie clan.

This is an activity I have dubbed Bird TV for those who will often find my attention turn suddenly from conversation with them to quickly confirming the flicker drumming on the feeder’s home tree marking its stake. Through the lessons of my wild neighbors and in my observation of them, I can still hold true to myself in seeking to commune with the real world daily. By watching Bird TV, I can learn the calls of different species, notice when they change with the food supply or weather, and reflect upon my place within this world and within this life, no narration but the sounds of the real world, alive and vibrant in front of me.

So when you don’t have the energy or time to be upon the land from which has given life to your family, our nation, and all species, consider setting out sunflower seeds, nuts, raw meat, or even jams for the birds. Set them someplace you can catch yourself noticing who’s visiting out of the corner of your eye through a window at any moment, and if another human asks as to why you’re being distracted by a what’s outside and not by the usual glowing rectangle, just let them know that it’s Bird TV. Invite them to watch too, and catch them up on what’s been going on in the world. Hopefully then they’ll learn to tune in too.

I’m Patrick Kelly and I’m Wild About Utah.
 
Credits:

Images: Image Courtesy & Copyright Patrick Kelly, Photographer, all rights reserved
Audio: Contains audio Courtesy & Copyright Kevin Colver
Text:    Patrick Kelly, Director of Education, Stokes Nature Center, https://logannature.org
Included Links: Lyle Bingham, Webmaster, WildAboutUtah.org

Additional Reading

Project Feederwatch, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University, https://feederwatch.org/

Axelson, Gustave, 30 Years of Project FeederWatch Yield New Insights About Backyard Birds, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University, January 11, 2017, https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/30-years-of-project-feederwatch-yield-new-insights-about-backyard-birds/

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Short Works

Avenue Road Path Trees, Courtesy Pixabay, Peggychoucair, Contributor
Avenue Road Path Trees
Courtesy Pixabay, Peggychoucair, Contributor
Now with a baby and persistent lacks and gaps in sleep, longer-form writing is gone. Lost. Kaput. The big thinking bits of the brain where creativity lies are in perpetual short-circuit from having to deal with so much else, that the only way I can write and get enough material is in the shorter form. I wonder to myself if this is how George Saunders or Rumi started. I reflect, maybe, but I’m also no George Saunders or Rumi. Probably for the best.

Regardless, I rarely find myself with the time I need to write in general. My time has been otherwise accounted for by care. That’s not a bad thing, but I don’t have the same allocation of space. Now, there are just the spaces in between care, where normally chores are done in the style of feudal ninjitsu: as fast and quiet as possible so as to not wake the sleeping. Sometimes though, there can be spaces in the spaces, where a nap goes longer than usual, and I can sit with presence, and write a few words on why, in the midst of it all, I’m tired, but still Wild About Utah.

Grandmother

Summer’s heat is now just warmth as the sun sets lower in the autumn sky. I listen to the last rumbles of lawnmowers and leaf blowers and reflect upon the high hot season gone by. I think about the adventures, the growth, the newness, and the labor. I think back, too, on what has passed, and whom — family, friends, mentors, and confidants. Loss never gets easier; it gets harder. Each loss is another hole in our being, which lets in the cold, and so that just as summer’s light wanes, memories fade and darkness seems inevitable as it seeps through the gaps. The challenge that is always easier said than done, though, is to take that hole and make it a window in our souls; to try to look out those new windows upon new vistas; to see that they also let in the light, even of just the stars when that darkness falls. And then it is still work to know that we can shine through them a beacon of the hearth which requires stoking. Light is given then to those who gave. It sounds easier than it is, because healing is hard, but without hope through work, it will never be. And work we do. All wounds heal soon enough, but we save the scars to remember that life is tough. And so are we.

Let the leaves lie.

When worlds collide, let the leaves lie.

Ask what is right, and do not bide

Your time making arguments for “clean” or “pure”

For trees’ ears are full of sap and so are yours.

Use your better senses, and let the leaves lie.

Season of rest

I can’t wait to slow down,

take a breath,

and warm my bones with tea by the fire.

Morning commute

Crimson canyons and golden hills

Blanket my eyes in awe

Termination snowcapped bliss

Premonate the frigid maw

Temporotone

Waning sunlit days

Fowl all fleeing imminent

Refrigeration

I’m Patrick Kelly, and I’m Wild About Utah
 
Credits:

Images: Courtesy Pixabay, Peggychoucair, Contributor https://pixabay.com/photos/avenue-road-path-trees-landscape-3850799/
Audio: Courtesy & © Anderson, Howe, and Wakeman
Text:    Patrick Kelly, Stokes Nature Center, https://www.logannature.org

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Posts by Patrick Kelly

Stokes Nature Center, https://www.logannature.org/

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Vignettes of a Utah Summer

Vignettes of a Utah SummerSun Backlit White Dandelion Courtesy Pixabay, Adina Voicu, Contributor https://pixabay.com/photos/dandelion-sun-backlighting-1557110/
Courtesy Pixabay, Adina Voicu, Contributor
Disclaimer
What you’re about to hear
Is the opinion of someone who really does care
I oscillate between an optimist
And a pessimist who doesn’t want his dreams to come true
Maybe you’re like me
But hopefully you’re like you

Now I may and often do complain, critique, and crack
But it’s because I want us all to do better
Leaders, followers, neighbors, you, and me
Better nice
Better good

However, with these benevolent intentions
I do freely admit to have a hidden top-secret cryptic agenda:
My hope that we don’t stop at better
But instead be our best
Best nicer
Best gooder

Impossible? No.
Improbable? We’ll see.

I have hope.

Adaptive Palate
The tomatoes ripen quicker
The peach leaves scorch deeper
The neighbor’s grass drinks more
And seeing all this it’s hard not to as well

Hot
Hot
Hot hot
Too hot
To hot

Ambition
Change isn’t a four-letter word
It’s at least five
Six even depending on how you spell it
Three if you know geometry
Unless you’re thinking about cash

July
I can’t hear through the firecrackers
The crickets,
the owls,
My thoughts,
the baby’s breathing

The dogs hide from the booms
The screaming town children joust with screaming Roman candles
Squires ready to blindly defend their k/nights

Baby
My wife and I, but mostly my wife
Honestly exclusively my wife
Had our first child in June
A daughter
Born this spring
Living through this summer
Her first

She’s seen the hottest days since records began
And not just her records
All of them
The hottest weeks
The hottest June
The hottest July
But she doesn’t complain about it necessarily

I do though
My wife does
The dogs do
Our friends do
Not all of our neighbors do
But a lot of them
OK maybe not a lot of them
But at least the ones we talk to
Some of those ones do
The rest are ready for the end
And engorge their lawns in the sun accordingly

While baby sleeps
While baby dreams
While baby has tummy time
While baby gets strong
While baby eats and eats and poops and eats
While baby grows
While baby slowly learns about the world she lives in

Cache Valley Desert
Personally, I can’t wait
Until Cache Valley is a desert
I want those early mornings just outside my door
Those cool desert mornings
When the snakes are in their dens
And the birds are working their plains
I’m ready for crepuscular adventures
Siestas
For the end of the era of turf
And for the beginning of the age of roadrunners
Meep meep!

Humble
Evaporation
Five whole feet
But where are all the pelicans

Four whole feet
But why is there still dust

Three whole feet
But shouldn’t it be more

Two whole feet
But where did it all go

One whole feet
But ten more are needed

But ten whole feet
Isn’t that impossible

It is with that attitude
So let’s change it
Change us
And work

I’m Patrick Kelly and I’m Wild About Utah

 
Credits:

Images: Courtesy Pixabay, Adina Voicu, Contributor https://pixabay.com/photos/dandelion-sun-backlighting-1557110/
Audio: Courtesy & © J. Chase, K.W. Baldwin and Anderson, Howe, Wakeman
Text:    Patrick Kelly, Stokes Nature Center, https://www.logannature.org

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Posts by Patrick Kelly

Stokes Nature Center, https://www.logannature.org/