Great laughter rang from all sides. I wondered what the spirit of the Mountain was thinking; and looked up and saw jackpines in the moon, and saw ghosts of old miners, and wondered about it. In the whole eastern dark wall of the Divide this night there was silence and the whisper of the wind, except in the ravine where we roared; and on the other side of the Divide was the great western slope, and the big plateau that went to Steamboat Springs, and dropped, and led you to the eastern Colorado desert and the Utah desert; all in darkness now as we fumed
and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the mighty land. And beyond, beyond, over the Sierras the other side of Carson sink was bejeweled bay-encircled night like old Frisco of my dreams. We were situated on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess - across the night, eastward over the plains where somewhere a man with white hair was probably walking toward us with the Word and would arrive any minute and make us silent.
--Jack Kerouac On the Road
CHEOPS PYRAMID--ISIS TEMPLE SADDLE
TWO VIEWS OF HANCE RAPID
HAUNTED CANYON COTTONWOODS
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
--William Cullen Bryant Thanatopsis
Grateful Dead: Black Peter
Grateful Dead: Black Peter...2/13/70
see here how everything
leads up to this day
and it's just like
any other day
that's ever been
sun going up and then
the sun going down
shine through my window
and my friends they come around
Every fortune-teller I ever met was a faker.
First thing you should do to a soothsayer
is poke them in the eye and say, Didn’t see that coming, did you?
--Mark Lawrence
Distance changes utterly when you take the world on foot. A mile becomes a long way, two miles literally considerable, ten miles whopping, fifty miles at the very limits of conception. The world, you realize, is enormous in a way that only you and a small community of fellow hikers know. Planetary scale is your little secret.
Life takes on a neat simplicity, too. Time ceases to have any meaning. When it is dark, you go to bed, and when it is light again you get up, and everything in between is just in between. It’s quite wonderful, really.
You have no engagements, commitments, obligations, or duties; no special ambitions and only the smallest, least complicated of wants; you exist in a tranquil tedium, serenely beyond the reach of exasperation, far removed from the seats of strife, as the early explorer and botanist William Bartram put it. All that is required of you is a willingness to trudge.
There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere. However far or long you plod, you are always in the same place: in the woods. It’s where you were yesterday, where you will be tomorrow. The woods is one boundless singularity. Every bend in the path presents a prospect indistinguishable from every other, every glimpse into the trees the same tangled mass. For all you know, your route could describe a very large, pointless circle. In a way, it would hardly matter.
At times, you become almost certain that you slabbed this hillside three days ago, crossed this stream yesterday, clambered over this fallen tree at least twice today already. But most of the time you don’t think. No point. Instead, you exist in a kind of mobile Zen mode, your brain like a balloon tethered with string, accompanying but not actually part of the body below. Walking for hours and miles becomes as automatic, as unremarkable, as breathing. At the end of the day you don’t think, Hey, I did sixteen miles today, any more than you think, Hey, I took eight-thousand breaths today. It’s just what you do.
--Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods
HOLY GRAIL TEMPLE
ALSO WITH KING ARTHUR AND GUINEVERE CASTLES
ZOROASTER AND BRAHMA TEMPLES FROM HORSESHOE MESA
AND OUTSIDE LONETREE CANYON
HANCE RAPID
James McMurty and the Heartless Bastards:
No More Buffalo There was no confining the man. Famous Shoes was in the habit of walking where he chose and when he chose. He might get up one morning and walk for three months. Once, when he was younger, he had decided to walk north, to the place the ducks and the geese came from and returned to every year. He knew the birds could travel much faster than he could, and that he would have to get a big jump on them if he was to visit them in their home in the north. He started early in the spring, thinking he would be in the place the birds returned to, when they returned. He had been told that they nested at the edge of the world. An old Apache man who, like himself, took an interest in birds, told him that. The old Apache believed that the ducks and geese, and even the cranes, flew to the edge of the world each fall, to build their nests and hatch their young. Famous Shoes wanted to see it. In his dreams, he saw a place where all the ducks and geese came to nest. It would be noisy, of course. So many birds would make a lot of racket. But it would still be worth it. What defeated the plan was that Famous Shoes did not really enjoy cold weather. It was cold enough in the Madre, and even colder on the plains, north of the Rio Rojo. But those colds were as nothing to the north. He had walked to the top of the plain, and into the wooded country. As the days shortened, he began to see strings of geese overhead, and thought that he must be getting close to the great nesting place at the edge of the world. But then, it seemed to him, he reached the edge of the world without getting to the nesting place. He passed through the great forests, and came to a place where the trees were only as tall as he was, and Famous Shoes was not tall. Ahead, he could see horizons where there were no trees at all, and only a few plants of any kind. There seemed to be only snow ahead of him. He survived by knocking over fat birds and slow rabbits, but the snow was becoming painful to his feet, and the diminishing vegetation worried him. With no wood to make fires, he knew he might freeze. Also, it was only fall. The real cold was ahead. Reluctantly, Famous Shoes stopped when he reached the place of the last tree. He looked north, as far as he could see, wondering if the edge of the world was only a day or two away. A day or two he might risk, but he knew it would be foolish to go to a place without wood, when the great cold was coming. Overhead, the sky was thick with ducks and geese, going to the place Famous Shoes wanted to go. He heard them all night, calling to one another as they neared their home. He was annoyed with the geese, for he felt that they should appreciate how far he had walked, out of an interest in them, and that some great goose should come down and help him go there. The old Apache man claimed that he had once seen a white goose big enough for a man to ride. Famous Shoes didn't know if the story was true, for the old Apache man had been a little crazy, and was also fond of mescal. He might have been drunk, and the liquor might have made the goose grow into a goose that a man could ride. But if there was such a goose somewhere, it too must be on its way home. Famous Shoes waited a whole day by the last tree, his feet aching from the snow, hoping the great goose would see him and recognize his appreciation of the greatness of birds and alight and fly him to the big nesting place. Also, while he was there, he meant to look off the edge of the world and see what he could see. But no great goose came, and Famous Shoes was forced to turn back, before his feet were frozen. Months later, when he was still far from his home in the Madre, Famous Shoes saw the geese and the ducks overhead, flying south again. It seemed to him that their calls mocked him, as they flew above him. For a time, he became bitter, and decided he didn't like birds, after all. They didn't care that he had walked a whole year, just to see their nesting place. He resolved to take no more interest in such ungrateful, unappreciative creatures. But once back home in the Sierra Madre, watching the great eagles that lived near his home, Famous Shoes gradually lost his bitterness. In the presence of the great eagles, he became ashamed of himself. Two or three of the eagles knew him, and would let him sit near them; not too near, but near enough that he could see their eyes, as they watched the valleys far below. Their dignity made him feel that he had been silly, to expect the ducks and geese, or any birds, to take an interest in his movements. He knew himself to be a great walker--he was not Famous Shoes for nothing--but what was that to any bird? The geese and the great cranes could fly in an hour distances it would take him a day to cover. The eagles and the hawks could see much farther than he could, and even the small birds, the sparrows and the cactus wrens, could do the one thing he couldn't do: they could fly. That was their greatness, not his, and his walking must seem a poor thing, to them. Famous Shoes was grateful to the eagles for letting him sit near them and recover himself from his long journey. He needed to recover from the vanity of thinking that he was as special as the birds. He did not deserve to see the great nesting places, nor to look off the edge of the world. He was only a man, of the earth and not of the sky, and his skills were not the skills of birds. --Larry McMurtry Streets of Laredo
watching the long faces
riding this rundown track
and the lost places
from a dream that
never brings them back
and the sad truth is
nothing but a cold hard fact
i'm riding the blue train
over the miles yet to cover
a ghost in a hurry to fade
i'm taking it one way to nowhere
afraid you might be there
to find me inside this blue train
counting the burned bridges
trailing this rusted wreck
as our back pages
scatter in the dust we left
like a pearl necklace
falling from around my neck
i'm riding the blue train
over the miles yet to cover
a ghost in a hurry to fade
i'm taking it one way to nowhere
afraid you might be there
to find me inside this blue train
away down the low road
a ticket to an empty room
a rendezvous unknown
i'm riding the blue train
over the miles yet to cover
a ghost in a hurry to fade
i'm taking it one way to nowhere
afraid you might be there
to find me inside this blue train
we can share the women
we can share the wine
we can share
what we got of yours
cause we done shared
all of mine
keep on rolling
just a mile to go
keep on rolling
my old buddy
you're moving much too slow
I just jumped the watchman
right outside the fence
took his rings
four bucks in change
ain't that heaven sent?
hurts my ears to listen
Shannon, burns my eyes to see
cut down a man in cold blood
Shannon, might as well been me
we used to play for silver
now we play for life
one's for sport
and one's for blood
at the point of a knife
now the die is shaken
now the die must fall
there ain't a winner in the game
he don't go home with all
not with all
leaving Texas
fourth day of July
sun so hot
the clouds so low
the eagles filled the sky
catch the Detroit Lightning
out of Sante Fe
the Great Northern
out of Cheyenne
from sea to shining sea
gotta go to Tulsa
first train we can ride
gotta settle one old score
one small point of pride
there ain't a place
a man can hide, Shannon
will keep him from the sun
ain't a bed can give us rest now
you keep us on the run
Jack Straw from Wichita
cut his buddy down
dug for him a shallow grave
and laid his body down
half a mile from Tucson
by the morning light
one man gone and another to go
my old buddy
you're moving much too slow
The summer had inhaled and held its breath too long
The winter looked the same, as if it never had gone
And through an open window where no curtain hung
I saw you, I saw you, comin' back to me
One begins to read between the pages of a look
The shape of sleepy music, and suddenly you're hooked
Through the rain upon the trees, the kisses on the run
I saw you, I saw you, comin' back to me
You can't stay and live my way
Scatter my love like leaves in the wind
You always say you want to go away
But I know what it always has been, it always has been
A transparent dream beneath an occasional sigh
Most of the time I just let it go by
Now I wish it hadn't begun
I saw you, yes I saw you, comin' back to me
Strolling the hills overlooking the shore
I realize I've been here before
The shadow in the mist could have been anyone
I saw you, I saw you, comin' back to me
Small things like reasons are put in a jar
Whatever happened to wishes wished on a star?
Was it just something that I made up for fun?
I saw you, I saw you, comin' back to me
Orion's Tips for Sane Witchcraft (Ponder and Apply to Living)
Know your boundaries. Find time for stillness. Look within! Do not confuse spirituality with egotism. Don't abuse power or give it to those who would abuse you with it. Live your life as an expression of conscious creation and divine revelation. Seek counsel daily with your source, your center, and your ancestors. Don't get lazy, crazy, or otherwise in your own way. Remember grace! It brings wisdom and unlocks more vast knowledge. Be sincere in all that you do. Never compromise (especially your integrity) or be compromised. If you lose yourself, you have nothing. Choose what matters and feed it. (Starve the bane, feed the blessing.) Get the lesson and get on with life. Too often life is what happens when you are busy doing something else. Maintain an attitude of thanksgiving. For in doing so, you give gratitude to source and maintain inner fertile space to receive more.
Thank the source and its good spirits at the beginning and ending of each day. If you wake up in the morning, your day has already started out good . . . build from that position. Don't wait for a reason to be happy when it is right in front of you. Claim the direction of your spirit! Fall in love with being you. The seed of divinity is within you; live your truth. Give no enduring interest to what is not spirit while seeking spiritual truth in everything. Do not stray away from your faith in yourself and the source (for in truth they are one). You are guided by the source. Do not be bandied about by the waves of life or you will crash onto the rocks of doubt. Daily, reaffirm your connection with spirit. Renew yourself on the new moment and release the fetters of yesterday to their rightful home . . . yesterday. Weave your web to attract that which you desire . . . then seize it. A witch need not hunt when he or she can attract. If you fall down . . . move what tripped you, get up, dust yourself off, and above all, don't give up walking. In chaotic times, seek the eye of the storm, poise yourself there, and find the wisdom in the stillness. Give thanks for all opportunities to grow.
--Orion Foxwood The Flame in the Cauldron: A Book of Old-Style Witchery
