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.