"Where would you most like to be right now?" Favorite Scenic Places

1. "Where would I most like to be right now?"*

So many scenic places nipping at me, but none has got the playful jaws to clench the "sight".:-)

Maybe on the Boucher Trail in the Grand Canyon in the spring or fall...

Or hiking along Glacier Point’s rim in the early summer...

Or looking for sea shells and agates on a warm beach day on the southern California coast, Morro Rock Strand or Laguna...

Or somewhere in the bright red and cream-shaded rock landscape of southern Utah in Zion...

Or walking on a mild summer day through the light and shadows amongst the giant sequoia redwoods...

*Question from How Far Will You Go? by Evelyn McFarlane & James Saywell



In the Light, Dan Wilcox

Blind-sided by Circumstances...after 5 Weeks, 12,000 Miles of Driving Adventure

FROM HIKING AT DESERT VIEW, GRAND CANYON TO 'PLANKING' INVOLUNTARILY AT ARROYO GRANDE, CALIFORNIA
ACUTE REHAB FACILITY in only a few weeks--

WOW, WHAT A TRANSITION! To go from basic daily living—often swimming before breakfast, driving, walking, getting up, morning routine including washing my face, combing my hair, etc. guiding and playing with our 3-year-old grandson, working on a number of writing projects,
TO INABILITY
in all actions!--
being only able to use my limited arm range to get things,
and having to push the red button for nearly everything else:-(

Becoming a patient with lots of impatience...

GIST: Last Friday, I woke early before 5 am so decided I might as well get to the pool for a good swim. BUT
when I got on my feet, I toddled! Not dizzy, I was confused. Then I realized it was because my left leg was wobbly (despite the fact that I don’t live in 1916 and am not a western Colorado mine worker—corny historical allusion)…

I was wobbly, toddling; I didn’t know why since I had walked a lot yesterday—stable and full of energy--and had driven home 500 miles with no problems.

SO, I decided to swim down at WV, and did. And it was good, except, my left leg refused to cooperate. When I frog-kicked, lefty, moved in slow motion, more of a laze than a kick.

Worried, I managed to climb out of the pool and get to my Ram camper van, but then it got worse. I became Long John Silver...I had to drag a wimpy peg-leg along behind me, as I posted forward on my right:-(

Somehow I managed to climb up in the Ram and get home. Worried...my condition worsened moment by moment...

Within 2 hours, we decided that I needed to be driven to Urgent Care, but when I tried to stand up, neither of my legs would listen to me.
'Planking' NOT by choice (that fairly recent shenanigan where humans lay flat without moving, like a wood plank)

(not actually me, of course, though I have planked in National Parks)


So, then a quick call was made to the ambulance guys. They hefted me into a body bag and carried me down our narrow stairs to Merriam Hospital.

The rest is my history—me turned into a bed potato, incapable of almost anything except continuing to study a long biography on Aaron Burr, Fallen Founding Father, and one on Paul Simon of Simon and Garfunkel, while I listen on You-Tube to Simon's songs.

Now I call my left leg, "Arizona," because in so many ways it is Petrified, as in that National Park.


Respond to bad circumstances with commitment to transcendent truths,

Dan Wilcox

Beautiful Vistas

VISTAS OF BEAUTY
from our cameras

Sculpture by Oglala-Sicangu Lakota artist Colleen Cutschall
at Last Bighorn Battlefield, Montana

In the Light of Beauty,

Photos by Daniel and Betsy Wilcox

On Justice and Poverty

Ruminate on those wise words while this blogger recovers from 5 weeks of driving:-)

The lone ranger/long distance driver/historical site sojourner has returned from his cross-country van exploration, after he and his wife visited with his son, daughter-in-law, and 3 grandkids on a Florida cruise. This was my first cross-country adventure since 1967. Then I had been drafted and drove all the way to Trevose, Pennsylvania in my Mystical Hippotamus Chevy van to begin alternative service at Eastern State School and Hospital, a medical facility for the treatment of emotionally disturbed children and teenagers.

Older, wiser (a little:-), and far more tired, here I go again, writing blogs:-)

Below is a picture of the ol' backpacker hiking down the Tanner Trail in the Grand Canyon several days ago. Triple play...it was my third time down into the Canyon via that seldom used trail. I was the only one on the trail, except for a guy from Pennsylvania who I told about it.

You can vaguely see the continuing trail in the middle of the picture in the side of the central greenish bluff. I didn't go that far. Last time I walked the whole way carrying 2 gallons of water in my backpack (as there is no water on the trail until you get to the bottom at the Colorado, and the Tanner Rapids).

It's over 8 miles long. And back then I spent the night in my Eureka tent, and watched a few boats run the rapids the next day. BUT I'm not up to that any more. Still, despite my bad back, lack of energy, etc., I was able to go for about an hour down the trail this time and made it back up:-)

Here I am paused part way down into the grandeur earlier this week.



The first time I backpacked down the Tanner was in the winter and I had to post-hole through knee-deep snow, often couldn't even find the trail, just descended gullies at times. On that freezing, snowy trip, I didn't make to the bottom either. Finally gave up after I camped on the Tonto Plateau, and another snow storm was moving in, and I decided to pack up my tent, and come again when it was warmer:-)
Long live the Grand Canyon:-)

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Innumerable Trails: A Reflection on Choices

We’re old backpackers; we have hiked up various high trails in the Sierra Nevada’s and down many a descent-track into the Grand Canyon.

Similarly, the ascent of life/existence itself has innumerable trails that lead off in many different directions.

However, too often, we humans forget that fact, that there are so many alternative ways, and instead get caught in an Either/Or fallacy of 'trials.'

I got caught there once—made the worst decision of my life, one that would cause me seemingly endless grief and others, especially my close family, plenty of problems, too.

The split in the trail came one bright sunny day—really splendid weather outside—where I stood on the sidewalk between 4-story classroom buildings at Long Beach State in California in the fall of 1966.

The memory has remained so vivid, so option-able since I stood undecided looking up/down two entirely different routes, conundrum-stopped at 50% to 50%, uncertain which way to go.

I stood there torn between the atheism highway of most of our brilliant professors and knowledgeable fellow students

versus

the Christian religion of my past childhood and youth.

At the time, there seemed to be only two choices--an Either/Or.

If I had to do it over again, I would still opt to take the trail away from atheism—for that philosophy, besides being essentially negative (emphasizing "from a- "without"), mainly represented what was wrong including subjective and relative ethics.

But this time around—if I could live again, was able to revise/revisit my life journey, I would never choose religion as a path.

The latter led mostly to years of false promises, delusion, trials, deep despair, and hopelessness.

Thankfully, that is only part of my life's arduous journey.

A number of times, I have backpacked on dangerous primitive trails in the Grand Canyon.
But once, on one hardly used trail it was extremely dangerous. The path thinned to only one foot wide, with a drop-plummet of at least 2,000 feet almost straight down to my left.

And there were rock slides I had to crawl over, and wind gusts of about 20 miles per hour pulling on my backpack!

Let me tell you, truthfully, I got very scared, and I promised myself that if I ever got off that trail, I wouldn't ever take it ever again.

Since, I am writing this you know I survived:-)


Plus, I got to see a small herd of seldom-seen Big Horn Sheep,

and a growling fox warning me off the trail's switchback;
and I almost stepped onto a very large
curled-up rattlesnake on the walk path, too. And so many
geological layers of vividly colorful rock dating back
multi-millions of years ago.


Dangers! But now, I look back on on that dangerous trip and am filled with wonder and almost joy.



I wish the same could be said for the dangerous 'trials' I took in religion.

But those chosen pathways have caused so much hurt and harm to so many humans.
And many have plummeted over the edge,
and even worse many of religion's leaders
glory in that fact:-(


I am so glad and thankful to be free from religion! Now I go to the Church of the Swimming Pool
and Book Club, and live in the Light
of Reason and the Good.

Daniel Wilcox

The Beginning of Wisdom

Remember we spoke last time of how Scripture is paradoxical, of how the Bible is mainly pictorial, symbolical, and mythical and less often or seldom logical, philosophical, and scientific. Poetic utterances come forward more often than journalistic prose.

So how does this help us to understand biblical contradictions? Consider Psalms 110:10-112:1 saying "The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom..How blessed the man who fears Yahweh..." versus I John 4:7-21 saying "Beloved let us love one another, for love is from God..God is love..There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love."

First, notice that humans are "blessed" who fear God. In Scripture, to be blessed is a wondrous happiness. Obviously, the writer isn't dealing with the kind of fear that we often think of when we use the word today. When a person says he has a fear of terrorism, he is not "blessed."

Second consider a rather simplistic analogy: I both fear and love the Grand Canyon. I've never cringed toward the Canyon; that is not what I mean by fearing the Canyon. Rather, when I was on one of my many trips into the Grand Canyon backpacking, I had to crawl across several rocks slides and move along a trail only as wide as a large book and slanted toward a cliff which plummeted straight down over 1,000 feet!

The wind was blowing, yanking on my 60-pound backpack. Let me tell you, I was aware of the awesome danger--that this was real not some virtual game or safe tourist area. I feared the Canyon!

Yet contradictorily, I loved the Canyon. Few times in my life have I ever felt so in love with any place, any scene. To descend down dangerous trails, being able to look back geologically millions of years and outward visually for miles and miles, the vista so vast that I almost ended in ecstatic awe!

Extrapolate this basic example to fearing and loving Absolute Goodness, Total Truth, Ultimate Reality. Fearing and loving God are complimentary responses/actions. Ecstatic awe and deep intimate relationship with the Eternal are together as one. At least that is Jesus' view.

When I John writes that there is no "fear in love" he isn't speaking of absolute awe. Rather the writer is saying that an individual who responds to God's love will no longer have a cringing kind of fear of God. He or she will live in the Beloved.

Consider this modern version of these scriptural passages: "The Love of God is the beginning of wisdom."

In the Light of God,

Daniel Wilcox