DR. JOE’S BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB/ HENRY DAVID THOREAU’S WALDEN

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

DR. JOE’S BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB

HENRY DAVID THOREAU’S WALDEN

 

January 25, 2012

BOOK CLUB RECAP

Several have written in asking me about my expectations for these monthly Book Club-related blogs.  To be candid, earlier on I concluded that there’d be a lot more enthusiasm on my part if I avoided nailing down a rigid template, but rather float out books I personally feel will enrich the lives of all those who read them (including myself).  And let our partners in this venture have a significant part in the hammering out of a book club template.  It’s always more fun to be part of an experiment rather than something that’s both pre-digested and pre-formulated.

As you know, I strongly encouraged–make that urged—participants to religiously keep a journal, for if they fail to do so, they’ll fail to get much out of their book-readings. If you didn’t read the blog on journaling, please do so today, if at all possible.

Here is the history of our Book Club blogs so far:

1.  “Williamsons and Travel”             October 19, 2011

Book #1 – C. M. and A. M. Williamson’s My Friend the Chauffeur

 

2. “Dr. Joe’s Book of the Month Club”            October 26, 2011

3.  “Journaling and Our Book Club”             November 2, 2011

4.  Book  #2 – Abbie Farwell Brown’s The Christmas Angel.

Book #3 – Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol.

Though Brown’s little book was the month’s selection, I urged all book club members who had never read Dickens’ great classic to do so as a companion piece to Christmas Angel.

5.  Book #4  – “Joe Wheeler’s Christmas in My Heart Turns Twenty”            December 7, 2011

Though this wasn’t the monthly selection, since I devoted a blog to it, let’s include it as a book club selection.

6.  Book #5 – Zane Grey’s Heritage of the Desert            December 28, 2011

So to sum up  2011, here is what we have:

1.  November’s book: Williamson’s My Friend the Chauffeur

2.  December’s book: Brown’s The Christmas Angel

3.  January 2012’s book: Zane Grey’s The Heritage of the Desert

And strongly suggested are:

4.  Dickens’ Christmas Carol

5.  Wheeler’s Christmas in My Heart 20

 

If you haven’t read all five, it would bring you up to speed if you caught up now as we move ahead with 2012’s books.

COMMUNICATION WITH ME

As you may strongly suspect, if you read my “Message in a Book” in Christmas in My Heart 20, I love paper and ink far more than I do digital imagery.  Furthermore, my lovely wife Connie (the computer fluent of the two of us) is already overloaded/overburdened with keeping up with the multitudinous Internet communiques, queries, and orders that daily flood in; consequently, I must not overburden her by piling on her shoulders all these book club responses.  So this is what we’d appreciate all book club members doing: write or type responses, queries, etc; along with photocopy journal entries you’d like me to read and respond to—and snail-mail all these to me:

Dr. Joe L. Wheeler

P.O. Box 1246

Conifer, CO 80433

and inside each mailer, indicate at the top that you are one of our book club members, being sure to include your mailing address, and indicate if you desire a personal response from me.  Only for such communiques will I make up a file-folder and archive them in my filing system.

RATIONALE FOR SELECTIONS

You will find my selection-choices to defy stereotypes, for though I have earned masters degrees in history (Pacific Union College) and English (Sacramento State University) and the Ph. D. in English—History of Ideas concentration (Vanderbilt University), my monthly selections will not be arbitrarily chosen from the ranks of classics sanctified by time and erudite scholars but rather will be much more eclectically chosen, in harmony with a statement I often make to media interviewers: “There are no great authors, there are only great stories” [or, by extension, “great books”].  Reason being: no author ever hits them all out of the park.  And even someone who has never shared a piece of writing outside his/her immediate family may be capable of writing a book worthy of enduring for generations yet to come.  This is why you will find my choices to be drawn from a much wider pool than is normally true of book clubs.

FEBRUARY’S SELECTION: THOREAU’S WALDEN

In literary history, there are very few writers society considers so significant that they can be referenced by their last names alone.  Thoreau is one of those unique writers, for he is not only significant to the literati, he is also iconic to society at large.

Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) lived less than 45 years, and was born and died in the same town, Concord, Massachusetts.  During his short life, he traveled little (once to Canada, once to the West, explored a few rivers, and graduated from Harvard). As a boy, he daily drove his mother’s cow to pastures; in the process he became enamored of nature and solitude.  As an adult, he dabbled in a number of vocations: teaching, lecturing, farming, writing, and surveying.

The best study of his life I have ever come across was written by Darrel Abel in his definitive American Literature series, published by Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., in 1963.  Following are some of his nuggets, which I have bullet-pointed:

• Thoreau put into practice what Emerson theorized about Transcendentalism in Nature (1836).
• Thoreau fell in love with Ellen Sewell, who rejected him.  To compensate, he immersed himself in nature, which led to increasing detachment from humanity.
• Unlike Bronson Alcott, Thoreau refused to join Transcendental communes such as Brook Farm.
• Thoreau quickly abandoned his attempt to make it as a writer in New York, declaring that there were “no real living persons” there.
• In 1844, he began his famous two-year sojourn in a cabin he had built with his own hands in a clearing on Walden Pond (owned by his friend, mentor, and colleague Emerson); here he was determined to find both a more natural and spontaneous mode of living and how he might best spend his life.  Here he sojourned, not as a hermit, but as one who used the hut as a camp where he might interrelate with friends.  Two years later, he left it because, in his words, “I had several more lives to live.”
• Here it was that he wrote Civil Disobedience (1849), generally considered to be the greatest American essay ever written.  In it, he placed individual conscience above state institutions, and noted that “That government is best which governs least.”  The essay has had a world-wide impact, even Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., using it as a bible for nonviolent protests.
• In his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), he postulated that one should live through the visible to the invisible, and through the temporal to the eternal.  Thoreau was fascinated by the sacred books of the East.
• But unquestionably, Thoreau’s masterpiece was Walden (1854), in which he explores themes such as mankind ought to lead sincere joyous lives rather than toiling through a sham existence, featuring such immortal lines as “A man is rich in proportion to the things he can afford to let alone”; “Our life is frittered away by detail…. Simplify, simplify”; “What is man but a mass of thawing clay?”; “As if you could kill time without injuring eternity”; and “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”; Walden is, without question, one of the most quotable books in all American literature.
• As the years passed, Thoreau dreaded having the scientist in him displace the poet, for he was at heart a naturalist.  In fact, his untimely death was caused by his lying down in the snow on top of his favorite mountain, Monadnock, in order to count the rings of a felled hickory.  From that experience, he contracted consumption [tuberculosis], which proved fatal.
• During the last decade of his life, Thoreau, as an Abolitionist, manned an Underground Railway station, enabling slaves to flee to refuge in Canada.
• Britannica editors note that “he came to know beasts, birds and fishes with an intimacy more extraordinary than was the case with St. Francis of Assisi: “Birds came at his call, and forgot their hereditary fear of man; beasts lipped and caressed him; the very fish in lake and stream would glide, unfearful, between his hands.”  Another of Thoreau’s memorable quotations is, “Who hears the fishes when they cry?”

* * *

Emerson, perhaps his closest friend, said of Thoreau’s passing, “The country knows not yet how great a son it has lost.”

* * * * *

Many a time have I taken college students to the still serene Walden Pond and the reconstructed hut that serves as a magnet attracting pilgrims from around the world, more than a few dressed in eastern garb, carrying banners, and beating drums.

Quite simply, Walden (available everywhere), though short, is one of those few books that are so seminal it is unthinkable to pass through this journey we call life without experiencing it at least once.  A warning, though: Be prepared to fill many pages of your journal with lines that will deeply resonate in your mind.

ZION NATIONAL PARK

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

SOUTHWEST NATIONAL PARKS #6

ZION NATIONAL PARK

 

January 18, 2012

 

For millennia, it was one of the earth’s loneliest places, known only to aboriginal Native Americans such as the Virgin Anasazi (arriving here in the 1200s), followed by the Paiutes [meaning “Utes who live by water].  A Mormon pioneer named Nephi Johnson is reputed to be the first individual of European ancestry to set eyes on the canyon, in 1858.  Isaac Behunin, another Mormon settler, in the 1860s, was so awestruck by the magnificent scenery of the canyon that he proclaimed, “This is Zion!”  Brigham Young himself packed into the canyon in 1863.  Famed explorer John Wesley Powell, hearing of the area’s wonders, trekked in sometime in 1872.

 

Even so, the canyon remained virtually unknown to the outside world until Scribner’s Magazine featured it in a 1904 article.  At that time, although there was a lot of national buzz generated by the new Fred Harvey hotel, El Tovar on the Grand Canyon’s South Rim, there was virtually nothing known about any of the many national wonders north of the Grand Canyon we take for granted a century later.

 

In 1917, National Park Acting Director, Horace Albright, accepted an invitation to visit Southern Utah, where the Virgin River carves its way through a beautiful canyon of sandstone cliffs.  It had been set aside as a National Monument in 1909—named Mukuntuweap, from a Paiute word for “canyon”—but had been virtually ignored by the federal government ever since:

 

I was surprised, excited, and thrilled.  More than that, I was just plain stunned.  I had no concept of the staggering beauty I beheld.  Local Utah people said that Yosemite was a [Mukuntuweap] without color.  But this didn’t faintly prepare me for the reality of the towering rock walls, splashed with brilliant hues of tans and reds interspersed with whites.

 

The great towers, temples, spires, and peaks appeared unearthly as they encircled the narrow, lush gorge cut by the sparkling Virgin River.

 

It was love at first sight for me.  I was so impressed . . . that I determined we should expand Mukuntuweap and have it made a national park.

 

Albright’s enthusiasm, upon his return to Washington, took him to the White House where he convinced President Woodrow Wilson to change the monument’s difficult-to-pronounce name to the name Local Mormons had long used for the canyon, “Zion.”  Within a year, Congress would follow Wilson’s lead, expand the protected area to 147 ,551 acres and elevate its status to Zion National Park (Duncan and Burns, 171).

 

But even national park status failed to significantly increase tourist traffic into the park, mainly because it was so difficult to get to.  Horace Albright and Stephen Mather, to remedy this situation, in 1922, persuaded the executives of Union Pacific Railroad to join forces with the National Park Service and construct spur lines into the park’s vicinity and create a lodge worthy of its setting.  In May of 1923, architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood was summoned to Union Pacific’s headquarters in Lincoln, Nebraska and invited to add Zion to his portfolio, along with Bryce.

 

It is interesting to note the pattern that developed over the years of Underwood’s long and distinguished architectural career with the National Park Service: the rustic lodges would be secondary to the landscape itself—lying gently on the land.  His earlier ones tended to simplicity, but as the years passed, Underwood’s vision for the lodges grew grander.

 

In Zion, Underwood constructed a two-story wood, stone, and glass edifice, anchored by four large native sandstone columns.  By 1927, he had flanked the hotel by ten duplex Deluxe Cabins; and by 1929, five fourplex Deluxe Cabins.  Those Deluxe Cabins were as beautiful and enduring as the Bryce Canyon cabins descried in our January 11 blog: characterized by native stone fireplaces, chimneys, foundations, exposed mill framing, gable roofs, and front porches.

 

At the same time, Mather and Albright helped push through an engineering marvel: the 10-mile-long Mt. Carmel-Zion Scenic highway [Highway 9]; the 1.1 mile tunnel, blasted through solid rock, took almost three years to complete.  Before the highway was opened in 1930, fewer than 4,000 visitors a year made it into the park; the year it opened, that number swelled to 55,000.

 

Sadly, on January 28, 1966, Underwood’s lovely lodge burned down, accidentally ignited by a crew doing repair work.  All that was left were the stone fireplace and the four pillars.  It was rebuilt in 108 days—but gone forever was the charming original.  Trying to be kind, Barnes characterizes the result as “a simple two-story utilitarian building with little appeal and none of the design and planning that went into earlier park architecture” (Barnes, 119).  Others were more frank, labeling ti a “monstrosity.”  Through the years since then, however, beginning in 1992, current ownership (XANTERRA Parks and Resorts [formerly Fred Harvey Hotels]), began a program of restoration and has tried to bring back some of the ambiance of the original.  But to anyone who has studied photographs of the original, what exists today jars and elicits a longing for what once was.

 

 

Park-wise, however, good things continue to happen.  Over 2,500,000 visitors come here every year, from all over the world. Since the valley was being destroyed by congestion, beginning in 2000, the heart and soul of Zion (the valley floor), has been closed to auto traffic during tourist season.  Instead, visitors park in Springdale and board propane-powered shuttle busses that ferry visitors into and out of the park.  The only exceptions have to do with those lucky few who have secured lodging inside the park at the lodge.  Their orange window cards enable them to drive to the lodge and park there until check-out time, when they may drive out.  Exceptions are dealt with by park police.  This has restored serenity to Zion.

 

OUR OWN JOURNEY

 

Awoke at 5:35 so as to get dressed and take in sunrise over Bryce Canyon.  We (Bob and Lucy Earp, and us) were disappointed as the overcast sky kept the sun from doing its usual colorizing.  After a delicious breakfast in the lodge dining room, we dithered as long as we could, furious at ourselves for failure to book two nights in that already cherished Duplex Cabin.  After checking out, we spent several hours driving along the rim, stopping at overlooks, then proceeding to Rainbow Overlook (the highest part of the park).  By then, the sun had broken through the clouds.

 

All too soon, we headed for the exit and then south on #89 through Glendale, Orderville, and Mount Carmel, to Mount Carmel Junction; here we turned west on #9 on the Mount Carmel-

Zion Scenic Highway.  That famed tunnel continues to amaze, even over eighty years after it was bored through solid rock.  The occasional panoramic windows provide us with glimpses of the magical world outside.

 

Once we came out into the sunlight, we were free to leatherneck—unfortunately, the Lincoln had no sunroof.  Finally, we turned in at the Zion National Park Visitor Center in Springdale.  It was a warm May day—but not nearly as warm as it gets in July (100E the daily average)!  We took full advantage of the film on the park’s history and iconic landmarks (such as the Weeping rock, Angel’s Landing, Kolob Arch, Temple of Sinawava, Great White Throne, the Organ, the Narrows, the Watchman, Towers of the Virgin, Kolob Canyon, Court of the Patriarchs, Checkerboard Mesa, etc).

 

 

Then we got back in our car, and made it past security, thanks to our orange card prominently marked (Registered Zion Lodge Guest), with dates.  We really felt privileged as we were permitted to drive in to the lodge.

 

The lodge was, as we knew it would be, a disappointment, after Bryce.  Besides, the area around it is roped off because of a habitat restoration project.  The wooden motel-like structure which housed our rooms was “same ol same ol,” typical of other forgettable lodgings we have stayed at through the years.  Dinner, we ate at the lodge’s salad bar.  After playing dominoes, we turned in.

J97 – Waterfall in one of the side canyons

 

Next morning, we awoke to a stunning blue sky day!  Breakfast was delicious.  We spent the day exploring the sites of the canyon, including side canyons, the Weeping Rock, along the Virgin River, and ending the day walking up into the Narrows where the Virgin River pours out of a slot canyon.  Along the way, we rubbed shoulders with men, women, and children, of all ages and nationalities.  Cooler than the day before, it turned out to be one of those absolutely perfect May days that come to us all too rarely in this journey called “life.”

 

Most visitors see only a small portion of the park, restricting their travel to the 6.2 mile road on the valley floor and possibly the Mt. Carmel-Zion Scenic Highway, and completely missing the spectacular northwestern end of the park, the Kolob Canyon area, which includes Kolob Arch, at 310 feet across possibly the largest free-standing rock arch in the world, and the steep 20-mile-long Kolob Terrace Road, out of the town of Virgin.  Neither did we make it to that part of the park; we could only sigh once again, and with Lucy, intone “A blessing for another time.”

 

SOURCES

 

Barnes, Christine, Great Lodges of the National Parks I (Bend, OR: W. W. West, Inc., 2002).

 

Colorado and Utah (Heathrow, FL: AAA Publishing, 2010).

 

Duncan, Dayton and Ken Burns, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (New York: Alfred Knopf/Random House, 2009).

 

Leach, Nicky, Zion: Sanctuary in the Desert (Mariposa, CA: Sierra Press, 2000, 2010).

 

The Most Scenic Drives in America (Pleasantville, NY: Reader’s Digest, Inc., 1997).

 

Scott, David L. and Kay W., The Complete Guide to the National Park Lodges (Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 1998, 2009).

 

White, Mel, Complete National Parks of the United States (Washington, D.C., National Geographic Society, 2009).

BRYCE CANYON NATIONAL PARK

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

SOUTHWEST NATIONAL PARKS #5

BRYCE CANYON NATIONAL PARK

 

January 11, 2012

 

THE ESCALANTE

 

Though millions of tourists throng Utah’s national parks, few are aware that most of them are part of a colossal geological formation Spanish explorers dubbed “The Escalante” (named after Spanish explorer Francisco Escalante), or “the Giant Staircase.”  The Escalante reaches into Capitol Reefs National Park to the northeast and Cedar Breaks National Monument to the northwest (reaching a height of over 10,000 feet).  Bryce varies several thousand feet in elevation (6,600 to 9,120); Zion (to the south) ranges from 3,666 to 8,726 feet in elevation.  East is the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (a vast 1.9 million acre preserve established by presidential proclamation in 1996).  The Escalante descends via Glen Canyon south to the Colorado River floor of the Grand Canyon (the lowest step).  Its two great river systems are the Paria and Escalante.  This area is without doubt one of the most remote regions in the lower 48.

 

            

 

BRYCE CANYON

 

“It’s a hell of a place to lose a cow.”

                                                                        –Ebenezer Bryce

 

Ebenezer Bryce, a Mormon pioneer, moved with wife and family to this then remote region in 1875.  Other Mormon settlers, since the then all but unknown canyon represented the Bryce family’s back yard, so to speak, dubbed it “Bryce’s Canyon.”  In 1916, Ruby and Minnie Syrett decided to homestead in the area.  As word of the canyon’s unique beauty got out, tourists started packing in.  The Syretts concluded that there was a living to be made here, so set up tents, fed meals to the visitors, and eventually built a rather primitive lodging they called “Tourists’ Rest.”  In 1918, the Salt Lake City Tribune wrote of the canyon in glowing terms, declaring it to be “Utah’s New Wonderland.”

 

In the fall of 1918, just after World War I ended, Stephen Mather (founder of our National Park system), came to southern Utah to see for himself some of the wonders he’d been hearing about. When he reached Bryce, a guide told him to close his eyes, led him to the very edge of the abyss, then told him to open his eyes.  When he did, he was so stunned by what he saw that he responded by saying, “Marvelous!”  “Exquisite!”  “Nothing like it anywhere!” (Burns and Duncan, p. 174).  He determined to preserve it at all costs for the American people.  In this, he was ably supported by Utah Senator Reed Smoot.  In 1923, President Harding proclaimed it a National Monument; in 1928, doubled in size, Congress created Bryce National Park.

 

It is considered to be among the most spectacular and rewarding of all America’s national parks: “The spectacle of Bryce Canyon unfolds from the rim, a panorama of pink, purple, orange, and white limestone figures creating visions of oversized gargoyles, spires, temples, and arches set in gigantic scoops that span miles and drop 1,000 feet below. . . .  At Zion you look up, at Bryce you look down.” (Barnes, p. 127).

 

Because of extreme temperature fluctuation and seasonal rainfall, Bryce’s topography is continually changing.  These often bizarre-looking rock pillars, pedestals, and toadstool forms are collectively known as hoodoos.  And they are what makes Bryce so unique.

 

There are three very different ecological zones: highest, where spruce-fir predominate; middle, ponderosa pine stands; and lowest, with piñon pine and aspens.  It encompasses 35,835 acres (56 square miles).

 

BRYCE CANYON LODGE

 

According to Christine Barnes, both Stephen Mather and his associate, Horace Albright were determined to have constructed lodges and hotels worthy of their settings.  Especially were they set on choosing only the best architects to design them.  For Bryce, renowned architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood was chosen for the job.  Underwood first visited Bryce in 1923.  Since he was not permitted to build it on the rim itself, he positioned it in a grove of ponderosa pines just a short walking distance from two of the canyon’s most spectacular overlooks.  Since tourism was crucial for park success, Mather persuaded Union Pacific Railroad’s management to partner with the Park Service.

 

Underwood had the needed stone cut at a quarry only a mile and a half away; the timber was local as well.  Even the workers were local.  From all indications, it appears that the lodge was intended to be only temporary, to be replaced with a better one later on.  Rather than using great logs such as were used in other lodges, 20-inch-logs were hauled in.  The original portion of the lodge was completed in 1925.

 

Adjacent to the lodge, Underwood completed a complex of 67 wood-frame cabins by 1927.  By 1929, Underwood completed fifteen Deluxe Cabins.  Given that the Great Depression of the 1930s followed that year, Underwood was never permitted to build a more substantial lodge.  Because of this, these Deluxe Cabins, with their steeply-pitched gable roofs, stone foundations and chimneys, big front porches, and half-log-slab exterior walls, are all that remain of the architect’s original template for Bryce.  Architecture historians today consider these cabins to be among the finest examples of historic rustic architecture to survive down to our time.

 

 

As was true of so many sister lodges, Bryce Canyon Lodge and cabins have had it anything but easy during the last almost ninety years.  During World War II, the lodge was closed completely for two years.  Union Pacific Railroad discontinued summer train service during the 1960s.  But the post-war boom brought in so many tourists that the lodging facilities were strained to the limit.  In 1986, a serious restoration program was begun.  In the process, they discovered the lodge’s foundation was virtually nonexistent.  They had to construct a new one.  Most everything was spruced up.  In cooperation with FOREVER RESORTS, a great deal of effort and money has gone into restoring much of the lodge and cabins.  So much so, that the original aura has been almost completely restored.

 

 

OUR OWN JOURNEY

 

At Torrey, we picked up Highway 12 going south.  Before long, we began to climb – and climb, up 9,620 feet Boulder Mountain.  Off to the east jutting into the sky were the snow-capped Henry Mountains.  We passed the road that led to the spot where a number of years ago, traveling solo, I’d camped out for the night in my sleeping bag.  A tiny piece of my life left in that grove of trees.

 

After reaching the summit, we descended toward Escalante.  Another memory awaited there.  Even though I am not paranoid about heights, ahead was a stretch of Highway 12 that gave me the heeby-jeebies the first time I drove over it—would it be less formidable this time?  Vain hope!  Like many of you who love to travel, I’m a veteran of terrifying roads: the old Tioga Pass Road out of Yosemite still comes to me in my dreams sometimes.  But on Tioga, even though you were only one loose lug-nut from plunging into space, one could always fudge into the inside lane.  Not so the Escalante stretch: the most apt metaphor I can think of is, it’s like driving on a razor blade, with a sheer drop to the right of you and a sheer drop to the left of you.  Grand Staircase without railings!  I noticed that it was mighty quiet in the car; not until we reached tierra firme again did natural breathing resume.

 

It was mid afternoon when we turned left towards Bryce Canyon.  At the village, there were quite a number of restaurants and lodging options; necessary, because reservations in the park itself are limited to Bryce Canyon Lodge.  Other travelers are encouraged to leave their cars outside the park and take the shuttle in, for parking spaces in the park are scarce.

 

We thought we’d learned our lesson the year before when we took the Northwest National Park Loop: stay two nights at each lodge rather than one.  Generally speaking, we’d done that.  But not at Bryce. After all, it was a relatively small park.  BIG MISTAKE!

 

         

 

We pulled in at the lodge and checked in.  The lodge itself was western rustic, simple, blending into the ponderosa grove.  Then we found our way to the Deluxe Duplex Cabin (units 538 and 539) that we’d reserved over a year before.  It was an architectural thing of beauty!  Both outside and in!  The soughing of the pines and the somewhat isolated placement of our cabin combined to strip us of all the pressures of the world.  Making the experience even more meaningful was the realization that well over eighty years ago, architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood, National Park visionaries Stephen Mather and Horace Albright, and executives of Union Pacific Railroad had all studied and fine-tuned the creation of this very cabin!  Then, the icing on the cake: a knock on the door.  A welcome basket from the high command of FOREVER RESORTS, cherished friends of ours.  And just think: we’d have to leave this heaven-on-earth in the morning!

 

It almost took crowbars to pry us from our cabin!  For after all, we’d come here to see the canyon, not the lodging.  It was mid-afternoon, yet the canyon still overwhelmed.  Down below we could see hikers descending into the goblinland of the hoodoos; and other hikers were emerging from them on the way back up.

 

 

After a while we returned to the cabin as we had made early dinner reservations in the lodge’s dining room.  Delicious quesadilla!  Afterwards, almost too late, we raced back to the rim and mistakenly went to Sunrise Point first instead of Sunset Point.  The colors, though stunning, were already fading and the shadows were remorselessly closing shop.  Right on the edge, two engaging young women were seated on a bench overlooking the canyon, a simple dinner spread out between them.  I struck up a conversation with them.  Turned out they were from Germany, here on a holiday.  All too soon they’d have to return home.  But, they admitted, already they’d fallen in love with Utah.  They’d be back!

 

Later on, we returned and listened to a fascinating lecture on migratory birds; unfortunately, the serenity of the place had so seeped into our bones that all we could think of was migrating back to that wonderful cabin, sitting by the fireplace, crawling into bed, and listening to the wind in the pines.  So we did just that.

 

SOURCES

 

Barnes, Christine, Great Lodges of the National Parks I (Bend, OR: W. W. West, Inc, 2002).

 

Bezy, John, Bryce Canyon: The Story Behind the Scenery (Wickenberg, AZ: K. C. Publications, 2001).

 

Colorado and Utah (Heathrow, FL: AAA Publishing, 2010).

 

Duncan, Dayton and Ken Burns, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (New York: Alfred Knopf/Random House, 2009).

 

The Most Scenic Drives in America (Pleasantville, NY: Reader’s Digest, Inc., 1997).

 

Utah’s National Parks & Monuments (New York: American Park Network, 2009).

 

White, Mel, Complete National Parks of the United States (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2009).

TO REACH THE PORT OF HEAVEN

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

 

TO REACH THE PORT OF HEAVEN

January 4, 2012

 

“I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it—but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.” —Oliver Wendell Holmes

As I write these words—yes, I still write with a Pilot V5 pen rather than type on a keyboard—and begin the third year of “Wednesdays with Dr. Joe” blogs, I am profoundly grateful.

First and foremost for the gift of life.  So many of my contemporaries have written the last page of their life stories.  For some reason, known only to Him, God has seen fit to extend my life beyond the biblically “three score and ten.”  The last time I was in the hospital for surgery, I watched with morbid fascination the digital zig-zagging on the screen that monitored my faithful aging heartbeats.  Each time it descended, I found myself wondering if this would be the time it would stop and never go up again.  Finally, I had to turn my eyes away; the stress was too much!

Second, for the gift of awareness.  One in every five of us will die mentally before we die physically.  That happened to my beloved mother.  Such a phenomenal near photographic memory she had!  Able to retain thousands of pages of short stories, poetry, and readings in her memory banks—then, one fateful day: the light of awareness flickered out of her eyes.  When we entered her room after that and looked into her eyes—there was no one home anymore.

Third, for the gift of family.  One of my cherished friends, an erstwhile millionaire, lost everything (job, house, bank account, solvency) in this recession.  When I asked him how he was coping, there was a long pause before he answered with, “You know, today my financial life is in shambles, I couldn’t even buy a used bicycle on credit—much less a car!  Belatedly, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only real bedrock in this unstable world is God, family,and health.  I still have God, a family who loves me, and my health.  I’m ever so blessed as long as I still have all three!”  I too am oh so grateful I still have a wife, children, and extended family who love me more than I deserve.”

Fourth, for the gift of friendship.  How bleak this world would be without friends!  Every Wednesday morning for over fifteen years now, I have met with Conifer Kiwanis!  Even though our numbers have shrunk from what they were before the recession, we still show up each Wednesday.  And each year, they grow dearer.  One is so fragile with age we rarely see him—and oh! How we feel his absence each week!  But I’m blessed with so many many friends.  My church family, my Zane Grey’s West Society family, my student/colleague family (generated during over a third of a century in the classroom), my alumni family (those who came into my life during my growing-up years), my Focus on the Family dear ones (I’ve shared Christmas with them in their Chapelteria and book store for sixteen years and counting), my publishing family (from twelve publishing houses) who continue to enrich my life.  And last but anything but least all those thousands who have come into my life because of our 76 books and counting, blogs, media interviews (between 500 and a thousand), and tweets.  One family (besides my family and agent, Greg Johnson) owns all 76 books.  But I’ve recently become aware that I have a wonderful extended family in all those who own all 20 (or 22) Christmas in My Heart books.  I call them “Christmasaholic completists.”  What can bring two people closer than a shared obsession?  By next year, I hope to have a list of as many of them as will check in with me.  I need their help as we together vote on the “20 Greatest Christmas Stories Ever Written.”

Recently, someone said to me, “Have you ever wondered how many people who’ve read your books through the years have had one-sided conversations with you?”  I’ll never know the answer to that question—at least on this earth.  So many times I’ve signed for ten to twelve hours a day—yet the Lord has miraculously saved me from carpal tunnel syndrome!

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So, Dear Friends, whoever and wherever you might be, Connie and I are so grateful you’re taking time out of your hectic weekly schedule to spend a little time with us!  Let’s together make 2012 “a very good year!”