Lion House

Sandwiched in between the BeeHive House and the Church Office Building on South Temple, the Lion House is famous for its food. It has been a favorite place for us to eat for years and we keep coming back. This time of year, in Spring, the front yard is filled with an impressive flower garden. The Lion House is also used as a reception center. It was built in 1856 and was the family home of Brigham Young, the second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the first governor of Utah.

Water Dance

We seldom see the detail in the world around us. Our brains process information in batches and assign detail to the batch through experience. Unless we stop the action and look at the patterns and contrast around us, we fail to see everyday objects in their full detailed glory. This image of a water fountain illustrate the point perfectly. It is something you cannot see without stopping the action and looking at the detail.

White Spectacular

Temperatures are soaring into the 80s here along the Wasatch Front. Spring is progressing and will soon turn to Summer. We have made several excursions out to photograph flowers and that will be the main theme of my photos for a while. These white tulips are incredible. I feel like every flower I pass is crying out to me, "Please take my picture, I too want to be remembered." I get into overload at this point and see thousands of possible photos. I can see flowers out my window where I work now and all of the trees now have leaves. It is very interesting to have my first Summer to Fall to Spring experience in many years without citrus fruit and cactus. But it is more than a little sad.

Mallow on Glass Mountain

One of the most remarkable rock formations I have seen is the so-called Glass Mountain located in the Capital Reef National Park in central Utah. It is mound, about 15 or 20 feet high of selenite or gypsum crystals of unusually large size. Quoting from Wikipedia, "Gypsum was deposited as sea water evaporated 165 million years ago and then buried under other sediments. The gypsum migrated upwards through fractures in the sediments forming layers and, very rarely, domes like the Glass Mountain." There is another deposit a short distance away, outside of the National Park, that has been reduced to ground level by collectors. This is one of the most persuasive arguments for protecting natural wonders in parks and monuments. The plant is a species of Sphaeralcea or globe mallow. There are up to 60 different species of globe mallow and I do not have the resources to tell them all apart.

An Amazing Purple Tulip

Purple is not usually a color I associate with tulips, but over the past few days I have seen a lot more tulips than I believed possible outside of the Netherlands. I hope you like tulips because I have a zillion photos of them and I am enamored with so many of the photos, I am likely to put them all on line.

The First Iris of Spring

These are the first Iris I have seen this Spring. They were growing on a south facing slope in full sun. The ones we have in our front yard are just barely starting to grow and are still quite a ways away from blooming. I am reminded of the wild irises that grow in the mountains of Arizona. They are small and delicate.

A Very Frilly Tulip

This is definitely not your stylized concept of a tulip. I guess this is my first year with tulips that didn't come from a florist or Costco. For me, it is a new experience to see acres and acres of tulips. What I see is color so intense that it almost hurts your eyes. This is one of the more unusual ones I have seen the last few days.

Fritilleria Imperial Crown

This unusual flower is an Imperial Crown Fritilleria. There is a painting by Vincent Van Gogh called Imperial Crown Fritillaria in a Copper Vase. The original is in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris , Bequest of Count Isaac de Camondo 1911. This particular one is growing in Pleasant Grove, Utah in my daughter's front yard. I don't think these grow so well in Mesa, Arizona, so I am not very familiar with the flower. One of the first paintings my wife and I first purchased was a canvas reproduction of the Van Gogh's Sunflowers. Just a few years ago, probably 40 years after we purchased the painting which had been hanging in our house all that time, I saw a photograph of me as a little child, maybe one or two years old with my parents. Behind us on the wall was a reproduction of the Van Gogh Sunflower painting. Apparently, I had subconsciously remembered the painting and when I got older was attracted to it.

Crazed by War -- Suicide in the Desert

This story appeared in the Coconino Sun from Flagstaff, Arizona on Friday, September 29, 1972. I have edited the content from the original to remove some of the graphic details. My interest in the story is the account of the remarkable tracking skills of the man who found my unfortunate cousin's body. Here is a link to the StoryPress recording.

A Flowered Perspective

It was a cold and rainy day, but the colors were incredible. My biggest challenge was keeping the camera mostly dry so it would not short out. Taking photos in the rain has its positive effects. The colors are so saturated and it is sometimes hard to believe that they are real. I have probably taken a photo or two of this water feature before, but this time with flowers it looks quite different than previous views.

Owl and Its Meal

Contrary to my other photos of owls recently, this one is very much alive. In fact, it has its dinner sitting on the rock behind its tail. I realize it is always disturbing to find out that animals eat other animals, but this is pretty graphic. This was probably the least expected photo I have taken recently since I was really looking at flowers and not thinking about birds, dead or alive. At first, I thought it was dead, until it opened its eyes and looked at me. Its feathers are gorgeous but do they make up for the fact that it is a predator? It seems that a lot of very attractive things turn out to be predators. I sometimes think that about people as well as animals.

A Fancy Tulip

I am not sure when I became aware that fancy tulips existed. They certainly break out of the common mould of what we think about when we think about tulips. They are really called Fancy Frills Fringed Tulips. One of the things we learned when we moved here at the mouth of a large canyon and right across the street from the National Forest is that deer love to eat tulips. We had a large number in our yard and they all got eaten except for one yellow one that grew in a prickly bush. The deer don't seem to like daffodils, so we will concentrate on them. My hillside, out my window, where I work is all green now. The last holdout bare trees have finally gotten leaves and some of them have new flowers. Yesterday, the wind was blowing and seeds were blowing off of the trees. I guess they winter over and fall off in the Spring when they have a chance to grow new trees.

The Famous Salt Lake Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah

I spent some time walking around Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was a cloudy and blustery day and a little on the cool side. My goal was to take photos of the beautiful flowers but despite the crowds, I was able to capture a lovely photo of the Temple itself. Many of the most important events of my life have been centered around the Temple and in particular, this Temple.

Spring Pansies

Pansies, as I learned over the Winter, are planted in the coldest part of the year. They may find themselves buried in snow, but they seem to survive the cold and look healthy and happy in the Spring. I always thought pansies were purple, but there seem to be a myriad of hybrids in different colors. I have never decided whether their little faces are happy or cross but they are a welcome sight in the Spring.

Early Pioneers Cross the Colorado River from Utah to Arizona

As a young couple, my great-grandfather, Henry Martin Tanner, and his wife Eliza Parkinson Tanner, traveled by wagon in southern Utah to settle along the Little Colorado River in northern Arizona. Henry and his wife were married in 1877, he was 24 and she was 19. Shortly after they were married, along with many others, they were called as missionaries by Brigham Young, to settle in the wilderness of northern Arizona. At the time, they lived in Beaver, Utah and the trip to Arizona would be close to 500 miles. There was no direct route between southern Utah and Northern Arizona. As a matter of fact, practically the same conditions exist today. There are only a few places to cross the Colorado River especially in the canyon country that stretches across the northeast corner of Arizona. At the time, there was a crossing at Lee’s Ferry, however, the pioneers had been asked to explore the crossing of the Colorado River at Pearce’s Ferry below the Grand Canyon. The ferry across the river had only been established a year before. The location of the ferry is now submerged under Lake Mead.

 One of the party of the pioneers wrote "this road was very bad, dugways for miles, very hilly and water scarce. This is a new road from St. George to Pearce ferry.”

 When the pioneers arrived at Pearce’s Ferry, it took two days to get the wagons and livestock across the river. The wagons were ferried across in short order, but the livestock refused to swim the river and there was no other way to get them to the other side. My great-grandfather Henry was an excellent horseman and was used to handling stock. It was his job to get the livestock across the river. After many attempts, the party was about ready to despair of ever crossing the river.

 On the second day after many failures an old Indian came into the camp asking for food. While he was being fed, the Indian noticed the men trying to get the livestock to cross the river. One of the women noticed that the Indian was very interested in the operation. It came to her that this Indian had had experience in crossing the river with animals and she mentioned the fact one of the men. By the use of sign language, the men ask him if he was experienced in getting livestock across the river. He said he was and that he would help but he wanted to be paid. After negotiating, he was given a small sack of flour which he tied to the saddle of his horse. He then went down to the river and motioned to the man to drive all the cattle to the edge of the water. When all of the animals were up to their bellies in the water, the Indian took off his clothes until he was covered only by a blanket. He seized the corners of the blanket and began flapping the blanket and letting out large whoops.

 The animals were now more afraid of the Indian than they were of water and they immediately headed for the other side of the river. The last animal to get into the water was an old mule, once the mule got to his depth in the water, the Indian threw his blanket to one of the men, jumped into the river, grabbed hold of the tail of the mule and let the mule pulled him across the river. As the Indian cross the river he took mouthfuls of water and blew it at the frightened animals and then let out another whoop. The pioneers experienced some difficulty in rounding up all of the animals when they reach the other side of the river.

 As a note, a dugway is a road cut into the side of a steep hill. The place where is this pioneer band settled is now called Joseph City, Arizona.

Rugged Country

As I look back on all of the experience that I've had in traveling around Arizona and Utah, the one fact that stands out most prominently is that the country is very rugged. Of course there are wide valleys, but the valleys all seem to end abruptly been very steep and rocky mountains. All I have to do to feel at home is to step out onto the sand or rocks on the Colorado Plateau or in central Utah. These particular rocks are across a deep canyon from the Water Pocket Fold. The steep uplift of the Water Pocket Fold is mirrored in these sharp pointed rocks. When traveling out in the desert, the weather is always a great factor. In this case, the temperature was lovely in the bright sunshine was almost overpowering. Just the day before, we had had very strong winds and nearly freezing temperatures.

I Count the Woodpile

Old Wood Wagon from the Margaret Godfrey Jarvis Photographic Collection now on FamilySearch.org Memories

When I was six years old my father graduated from Harvard Law School and moved back to Saint Johns to live and practice law. We lived in the house my grandfather Leroy Parkinson Tanner had built. The house was very nice but had a few limitations at that time. The main limitation was that the house had no central heating and all the heat came from a fireplace in the front room. During the winter it can get well below zero in Saint Johns and we had to keep the fire going almost all the time.
Sometimes my father would cut wood from the cedar (juniper) trees that surround Saint Johns. Other times he would get a load of wood from the box factory. At that time there were a number of saw mills for making lumber to the south of Saint Johns in the White Mountains. Out by the fairgrounds, in Saint Johns, there was a mill for making boxes, like were used for shipping fruit and other things. When they cut the wood there was always a huge pile of scrap lumber, all pine, which they burned in a big incinerator. There was a conveyor belt that carried the lumber up to the top of the incinerator to be burned.

They would allow anyone to burn that much wood today. Today the wood would be sold to a paper mill for making paper.

We could stand next to the conveyor belt and pull off pieces of wood to fill up a pickup or trailer. My father would borrow a truck and we would go out to the factory and get a huge load of wood. We would then dump the wood in our yard to burn during the winter.

When we first got to Saint Johns we even had a wood stove to cook on. So not only did we need the wood to keep warm but we needed the wood to cook.

One day after I had learned to count. I was sitting outside on the wood pile, which was much taller than I was, and I decided to count the pieces. I got a pencil and began numbering all the pieces of wood. Unfortunately, I don’t now remember exactly how many pieces there were, but I finally, after many hours, got through numbering every single piece.

Now why did I do that? Who knows. But I suppose that it was a curiosity about how high the numbers would actually go before I ran out. Fortunately, I ran out of wood before I ran out of numbers or I might still be counting.

Singing Canyon in Long Canyon

This is a very accessible slot canyon located along the Burr Trail in Central Utah. It is called Singing Canyon and is a side canyon to Long Canyon. There are no signs or other indications of its existence, which is the case with many of the area's slot canyons, but it is well known in the area. I had to wait around to take a photo without any people and there were a steady stream there at the time. It is only about 50 yards long and ends abruptly, but it is worth the very small side trip if you happen to be driving the Burr Trail and happen to notice the canyon.

Clay Hills

A great deal of my life has been spent in and around clay hills. This is probably known as the Mancos Shale and Mesaverde Formation from the Cretaceous period. Some of my early memories involved walking in the clay hills when they were wet and having the mud pile up until we were standing on piles of mud until we fell off or the mud came off. Some of my most interesting experiences came from interactions with these hills. 

Coral Pink Sand Dunes

The Coral Pink Sand Dunes are almost on the border of Arizona and Utah. Rather than being a remote spot out in the desert, as it was when I first visited the dunes years ago, it is now a highly popular weekend and Spring Break get-a-way. The dunes are open to all types of ATVs and hiking across the dunes is an exercise, not only of walking in sand, but watching out for roaring ATVs. This is a star dune and the highest dune, at about 100 feet, in the area. It is a lovely place to camp and quiet and peaceful when the ATVs are not busy racing around on the dunes.

Storm Over the Henry Mountains

I paint with light on the canvas of my camera. The Henry Mountains of south-central Utah were the last mountain range to be added to the map of the 48 contiguous U.S. states. See Wikipedia: Henry Mountains. I still consider this distant range to be one of the least visited and most remote in Utah and elsewhere. They aren't particularly high or rugged, but there are only a very few dirt roads that get close. One thing is that they are highly visible from great distances. The Henrys are also the home to the only free-roaming and huntable heard of American Bison in the 48 contiguous states.

The Distance in Perspective

This almost surreal landscape is part of 69 mile loop. You can barely see part of the road at the bottom of the photo and yes, it really is that steep. We were fascinated by the rock on the top of the prominently striped hill in the mid-distance. The little black speck is really a huge boulder that has resisted erosion and caused the conical shape of the top of the hill. It is very difficult to get a sense of how large these hills and mountains really are. The mountains way in the distance are easily over 10,000 feet high. The view probably shows the mountains that are at least, twenty or thirty miles away, but probably more like fifty or sixty. This photo was taken on the way to Cathedral Valley in the Capital Reef National Park. The road is recommended for high clearance and preferably 4-wheel drive vehicles. In Utah, when they say 4-wheel drive recommended, they mean it. I learned that a long time ago.

Wildfire

The prolonged drought in Utah is taking its toll on the landscape. A number of fires have already started with some loss of property. We passed by this fire while driving in Central Utah this past weekend. There were no fire fighters or anyone else present and it looked like it had just started a short time before we passed. This is the closest I have been to a wildfire recently. Another fire the same day destroyed two cabins in the Fishlake National Forest area.

The Desert

I was watching a movie and the characters started talking about the desert. They said that deserts were dry, hot and had a lot of sand. Well, I am here to tell you that dry is the only thing deserts have in common. This desert in Central Utah was cold and rocky. There is sand around, but none you can see in this photo. The wind was blowing and the sky was covered with clouds. We had just come through a trip over the mountains with snow, sleet, hail and rain all within a few hours. Here the ground was dry and dusty. When I think of a desert, this is what I think of.

Antique Horse Drawn Sickle Mower

This is an antique horse drawn sickle mower. It is possibly a McCormick Deering but it could also be an International Harvester #9. Both appear similar to the one I photographed at the Capital Reef National Park. The Park was once a working ranch and fruit orchard operation. Much of the old farm, including the farmhouse has been preserved in the National Park. The highlights of the Park, however, are the tremendously impressive rock formations.

Temples of the Sun and Moon

Our recent visit to Capital Reef National Park was an absolutely stunning place. We could not stop saying "wow" at almost every turn in the road. This is Cathedral Valley at the north end of the 100 mile long Park. It is located at the end of a very long dirt and sand road. Unfortunately, a photograph does not do justice to the size of these huge formations. This is a fabulous place and we have barely begun to explore even a small part of its wonders. I imagine that with the Park only three hours away, we will take the opportunity to visit this remarkable area of rocks and sand more frequently.

Wisteria Blooms in Spring

For many years, we had a large wisteria vine in front of our house in Mesa, Arizona. When we moved, I missed the wisteria. I just spotted a huge vine in a house in our neighborhood and it brought back all the memories of our old home in Mesa. These are such lovely, beautiful smelling flowers. In our new house (new to us) in Provo, Utah, we do not have anyplace to grow a wisteria vine. I spotted this particular vine in Canada on Vancouver Island.

Waterpocket Fold, Capital Reef National Park, Utah

This is a panoramic shot of the Waterpocket Fold, an extensive geologic rock formation in Central Utah. Most of the Waterpocket Fold is in the Capital Reef National Park, stretching for more than a hundred miles. This is the east side of the Waterpocket Fold looking west. On this side, there is a steep slope with "V" shaped canyons along the face of the rock. These canyons catch water hence the name of the formation. The west side of the Waterpocket Fold is a huge vertical cliff. The whole formation is only a mile or two across but presents a formidable obstacle to east-west travel across Utah. We drove most of the length of the formation from north to south. In the area of Capital Reef National Park, the name "reef" came from the appearance of this rock formation. The rocks are different layers of sandstone. You may wish to click on the photo for a larger view.

Desert Arch

The concentration of arches in Arches National Park would make you think that these strange rock formations were common. However, they are not common and when you see one, it is always a surprise. This arch is far from the National Park as the saguaro cactus evidences. This small arch is in the Superstition Wilderness Area east of the vast Salt River Valley. If you weren't looking just at the right time, you would miss seeing this arch altogether.

Hyacinths

One of the earliest flowers of the Spring season, hyacinths are a joy to behold. Their rich purple or blue color is a welcome addition after a covering of snow. They are not as showy as some flowers and do not get the attention they deserve. They gladden the heart.

Early Tulips

When you move from perpetual summer into a place where there are seasons, you learn a lot you had either never known or forgotten. One of those interesting facts is that the flowers bloom over a season and not all at once. In the low desert, we were used to seeing annual flowers bloom in January and be gone by February. Here on the side of the Wasatch Mountains at about 4,000 to 5,000 feet above sea level, the flowers only begin to bloom in March and are not completely bloomed out until the end of April or later. These are early tulips. They seem to bloom in stages depending on the variety.

Barn Owl

I have only seen a very few Barn Owls in the wild. They are mostly nocturnal and this photo is of a real owl but both the mouse and the owl are dead. The owl is stuffed and in the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum in Provo, Utah on the campus of Brigham Young University. My wife was interested to find out while doing some family research that she is distantly related to Monte L. Bean who married one of her ancestors. Although not very extensive, the Bean Museum is really interesting and worth a visit if you are in the Provo area.

Great Horned Owl

My experience with Great Horned Owls dates back to when I was in the third grade. One day during school at the Rose Park Elementary School in Rose Park, a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah, a student's mother brought an injured Great Horned Owl to show the students. I distinctly remember seeing the owl outside by the schoolroom. Years later, my wife and I were comparing notes and we realized that it was her mother that had brought the owl to the school. We were in the same third grade class. I was only in the class for a short while and then moved to Arizona. We kept in touch because our parents were friends and when my wife graduated from the university, we got married.

Real or Unreal?

OK, now this is really a "fake" picture. Not in the sense that the butterfly isn't a real butterfly, but in the sense that I took the picture in a museum not out in the wild. This points out an important aspect of modern photography; very little of what you see in photos is real. I can guarantee that not only have the images themselves been highly altered in Photoshop or a similar program, but the images themselves have been "staged." That is the reality. If you want to see how staging works, you can watch any number of videos on YouTube.com, especially those about home staging by real estate agents.

Following the Spring Sun

It is interesting to note that fields of flowers all point in the same general direction. They naturally grow towards the sun. I have been made more aware of the sun due to my moving north rather than the traditional retirement direction to the south. One of the things we have experienced for the first time in many years is the addition of Daylight Savings Time. Arizona is one of the few places in the United States blessed to be exempt from this outmoded adjustment. Even after a few weeks, I still am not quite adjusted to the time change and by the clock, I am still waking up about an hour earlier than my normal time.

Little Cottonwood Canyon -- I fall off a cliff

With this post, I am beginning the evolution of WalkingArizona. I have been interested, for some time, in telling and recording stories. For the past few months, I have been interviewing people in my Ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and helping them record an oral history. Most of them have asked me if I was going to record my oral history. Then I got a suggestion with an offer from a website called StoryPress.com to put blog post and stories on their website. So I decided to do so. Surprisingly, my readers on Genealogy's Star, were apparently interested in listening to me read my blog posts. I decided it might be a good idea to put my stories here on WalkingArizona along with my photos. So, from time to time, there will be stories, not just my stories, but stories about my ancestors also.


Here is the first story entitled, "I fall off a cliff" and the link to the recorded story on StoryPress.com.



When I was much younger, about 14 years old, I started to become very interested in rock climbing. At that time rock climbing was not the popular and even competitive sport it is today. We had only the most basic equipment and had to teach ourselves. Later, when I moved to Utah to attend the University of Utah, I became much more involved. I was the adviser for an Explorer Post in the Boy Scouts of America. We decided to become mountain climbers.

At the time of this story we were very experienced climbers. We had a lot of equipment and had spent a lot of time learning how to use ropes, pitons, carabiners and the other things that went with climbing. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that we were safe or anything like that. It was still a very risky business (like the time I got caught in the avalanche, which is another story).

We used to go climbing on the granite in Big Cottonwood Canyon just east of Salt Lake City, Utah. Right at the entrance to the Canyon there is a lot of really nice granite. In fact, it is the same granite they used to build the Salt Lake Temple. It is near the Granite Archives where they keep all of the genealogical information. The cliffs are almost perfect for rock climbing.

This day we had all gone out to practice direct aid climbing. That is where you climb as much as you can and then use pitons pounded into the rocks to go higher. It is very difficult and strenuous. It also takes a long time to go very far. The boys were climbing up a crack in a corner of about a fifty foot cliff. I got tired of watching them and decided to climb another cliff about 50 yards away. It wasn’t that steep and I was climbing without a rope or anything else except my hands and feet to keep me on the rock.

Earlier that day, I had walked under a big rock with a hole in it and one of the climbers had knocked off a rock that hit me in the head. It hurt quite a bit and I was still thinking about my hurt head.

You are never supposed to climb alone but technically, I wasn’t alone. I had all of my friends over on the other cliff. I started climbing up the rock through the trees until I was well above the tops of the tall pine trees. I could see out over the entire canyon. It was a warm day and the rock was still cool. There were beautiful cracks to hold onto and shortly I was probably 25 or 30 feet above the tops of the pine trees.

I kept moving up the cliff. I think I could see a ledge about another twenty-five or thirty feet up that I would use to move across the cliff and come down through a chimney on my left. I kept moving up the cliff, not thinking very much about the climb when I suddenly peeled off the cliff. I can remember thinking, that I did not want to hit the cliff or I might start to tumble, so just as I fell, I pushed off the cliff with my boots out into space. I was about 150 feet up on the cliff. When I pushed off the cliff, I twisted my body around so I was facing away from the cliff, falling feet first. I didn’t have much choice but I was falling directly towards a pine tree.

I aimed for some branches and twisted so that my feet were straight down. I crashed into the top of the tree and the branch slowed me down. I broke several branches and crashed down through the tree until I finally stopped. I was completely unhurt. The tree saved my life. If I had hit the rocks, I would have, at least, broken a leg or something more serious. I climbed down the tree and told my friends what had happened. Nobody was impressed.

Upon reflection on this and many other experiences in my life, I have come to the conclusion that nothing in life happens by chance. There is a plan for each of us. We can accept the plan or reject it, but if we reject it, we will not achieve our full potential. I am thankful I was saved from serious injury or death on that cliff that day. I just hope I have lived up to whatever purpose our Heavenly Father had for me in this life. 

Peacock Feathers

When I was much younger, our house was near the northern edge of Phoenix. Of course now, Phoenix goes for miles and miles past where our house was located. We were surrounded by orange orchards and farms. One of the farms just south of our house raised peacocks. I loved their colorful plumage, but I soon learned that they have a very loud and squawking cry. They also fly very well and would come and perch on the roof of our house. Even though I still admire their lovely feathers, I always remember how loud they can be. I would not be interested in having them around. They are fine on farms and in zoos, but not where I live now. I have enough diversion here with the deer and other animals.

Popping in the Sun

Poppies are some of the brightest of the early Spring flowers. But they are also some of the most delicate and the blooms only last a short time. Here in Provo, where I live, we have to worry about which types of flowers are part of the local deer populations' food supply. Tulips don't last long enough to bloom, but they don't like daffodils at all. I don't know where poppies fall into the food chain, but I did like this one very much.

Swirling Waters

Much of what we see around us we really don't "see." Our brains store stock images that we use instead of looking at what is really there, we substitute a stock image of the subject and move on to the next impression. This is especially true of fast moving subjects. The camera takes an instant in the movement of the water and magnifies the forms. If you were standing there looking at this small waterfall, you would not see anything more than your brain's interpretation of the movement into a blurred sense. It is this quality of photography that fascinates me the most. The ability to create an image that reveals something fundamental about our world that cannot be seen without the instantaneous ability of the camera to stop the moving world and focus in on the parts that are not moving. In this regard, I am not a fan of the new way of showing motion in water, where the image is blurred. It may be more "realistic" in one sense, but it loses the essence of the image experience.

A Dusting of Pollen

I went out yesterday into the warm Spring air and realized that it was thick with pollen. I don't think flowers like this one were the culprits, more likely were the other flowering plants and trees. It is ironic that I never knew I had hay fever when I was a child, I thought itchy eyes and a stuffy head were normal. I realized how different things could be and what everyone had been complaining about all those years when I lived in Panama. Surprisingly, where there were the most plants, in the jungle, I had no allergies and my nose and eyes cleared up for the first time in my life. There were many other reasons for not staying in Panama, so I came home to the dry, pollen-filled desert air. I did not escape the pollen here in Utah, I just got a different round of the same thing only in different months.