September 25, 2008
Grand Staircase Monument, Utah

I got out of Hole In The Rock Road on the 23rd and the 24th was spent grabbing a shower, feeding my body, sleeping and reading. Yesterday I spent the whole day labeling footage, digitizing and editing some upcoming online shorts, and reading.

I’m reading The Dancing Wu Li Masters, An Overview of the New Physics. Here are some passages and quotes I enjoyed.

“Science promised man power… But, as so often happens when people are seduced by promises of power, the price is servitude and impotence. Power is nothing if it is not the power to choose.”
- Joseph Weizenbaum Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“I obey only my own instincts and intuition. I know nothing in advance. Often I put down things which I do not understand myself, secure in the knowledge that later they will become clear and meaningful to me. I have faith in the man who is writing, who is myself, the writer.
– Henry Miller

“I just write a song and I know it’s going to be all right. I don’t even know what it’s going to say.” – Bob Dylan

I'm going back down to Hole In The Rock now, because I feel I have to, I feel I need to capture more of that place. I feel it has more to tell me. Maybe I'll bring back some images for you this time.

peace,
d

September 24, 2008
Grand Staircase Monument, Utah

About a week ago I was hiking through Zion and a bat flew right up to me, and as crazy as it may sound it paused running its sonar over me as a blind person would run their fingers over your face. I’ve been thinking about that encounter since, because some say to run into bat is to run into death.

Now the death we’re talking about here isn’t the literal death of the body, but instead it refers to a spiritual death. We are unable to be reborn spiritually without first moving through death.

At first I figured the transition from home and family in Colorado to me lugging my gear around in solitude and suffering was to make up this process, but as always it seems the universe had other ideas.

I was doing laundry in the town of Escalante on the 21st when I ran into a couple who had been backpacking throughout the Grand Staircase Monument, we discussed the state of the world, where we’re heading, and they gave me direction to head down Hole In The Rock Road. I did just that heading about twenty miles into the Staircase to a pull-off near the Dry Fork Slot Canyons to sleep.

The slot canyons were beautiful, and I spent a good amount of the next day taking photographs of these narrow channels of erosion. My friend Jeff loves slots, since as he puts it, “You realize how insignificant you are, a little human being deep down within a crack in the earth.” I’d have to agree.

I still haven’t found a place to buy a cheap digital camera, but I’m going to try to get some prints digitized in Moab of the images I’ve taken. But there’s also a part of me that feels that whatever this process is I’m going through there’s a reason I don’t have a digital camera on hand… but I am shooting film.

From the Dry Fork Slots I decided to go deeper into the Monument, another thirty miles of washboard gravel rattling Veronica’s bones, down to Fifty Mile Ridge Road. Due to deep sand I only made it halfway down the ridge to a circular pullout overlooking the landscape in all directions.

It’s similar to being out in the ocean, everywhere you turn, as far as the eye can see there’s nothingness, except in this case in the form of desert. I don’t know if it’s possible to feel any more alone. In the north you’re surrounded by trees, rivers, lakes… here there’s just dry heat, sage, lizards and coyotes waiting for you to run out of water, waiting for your car to break down, waiting for someone who isn’t prepared.

Luckily, I am. I have enough food and water for two weeks, three weeks rationing my intake. And even though I’m prepared the desert is still the perfect place to find humility.

I awoke at 6:45 on the 22nd to film the sunrise; I’m finding I’m more into capturing sunrises these days. I’m not sleeping much and mornings, although quite cool, have a certain peace to them.

After breakfast, I grab my camelback, protein bards, GPS, blanket and camera gear and head north away from the van, away from the bulk of my food and water.

It isn’t long before I’m well away from my van and the morning coolness is giving way to the desert sun. I’ve gone down into a wash and I feel as though I’m in what was once a swamp. The sand is deep and around me the protruding rock formations look swamp-like as well. There’s one in particular a large dome of rock with giant erosion sculptured lizards circling around it. It’s amazing how the rock has taken on these forms and its consistency with my own personal perspective.

I trudge on making my way out of the deep sand, past what I think is Hamblins Arch… and it hits me… an overwhelming sense of nausea. My knees grow weak and my body buckles over, my right hand sinks deep into the sand supporting me. I heave hard, hurling last nights dinner and this mornings breakfast into seemingly swampy dunes beneath me… My body contorts as images pass through my mind of my childhood, of the road up until now, of the people I’ve met and the places I’ve left behind.

I find a calm point so I suck in some water, then again my body purges itself, crippling me. In some strange way this also feels good, so I tell myself, ‘get it all out!’ I’m past food and into the realm of water and bile, but now waves of emotion are washing over me and I’m on the verge of tears. ‘Let it all go,’ I keep repeating between gasps for air, ‘let it all go.’

Then it stops… I stand up, I feel fine. Actually I feel great.

I stand for a moment, check myself, check my water, and kick up sand to bury my puke. I turn right away from that spot, and I don’t look back for a second, moving up out of the dunes onto the rock that makes up the middle ground.

I feel better; I find a nice spot there on solid ground and sit. I am thirsty now so I drink and fill the plastic dish for Moses. He’s been watching me, sitting by me, looking concerned, as if to say, ‘You better not die on me out here dad, cause I’ll be screwed.’ Either that, or, ‘Poor human, you thought you were the man eh, well I guess it’s time to wake up. Here’s some humility for you.’

We hike a bit further up the rock towards four large spires; the highest points around. Every time I think we’re almost there another wash reveals itself and I have to go down into the opening before rising again. I stop on the last mound before the spires fill the dish for Moses and drink. We’re down to about a liter and a half. I tell Moses to drink, it’s a command he’s learned out here, and he does, but only half the dish. I repeat, ‘drink!’ but now he just looks at me and continues on ahead of me. So I pick up the dish and carry it, we’re far from the van and water is too precious to waste.

So here I am, having just puked my whole being up, and now I’m carrying a dish around the desert for a dog… As I walk I am continuing up and down, in and out of gaps, but steadily I’m heading up, reaching the spires. Then it occurs to me that the way in which I’m carrying this dish of water, careful not to spill, makes it look as though I’m carrying an offering. I there was anyone else in that desert I’m certain that’s what they’d have thought.

Moses is running around having the time of his life, and I’m wondering who is the master now.

It has also occurred to me that the spires I’m rising up, the highest point for miles, in some way actually resemble some form of temple, or holy place. And this is strange to say, but I have a feeling of deep reverence.

Back in Alberta, on the Piikani Reservation, Morris and Betty Ann Littlewolf always demonstrated the value of offerings, whether in prayer or not. They always kept a bowl in the center of the table during meals: a spirit bowl for people to put food in so the spirits would not go hungry.

It now occurred to me that the desert pulled something out of me. The desert removed something I was carrying that wasn’t mine. I’m not sure what it was, or where it came from, but I think it was a bundle of things dating far back from throughout my life. Perhaps it was all the times I told myself I wasn’t good enough, all the times I told myself I wasn’t deserving, all the bad things others said to me, all the times I listened, all the bad moments that helped make up the lies I took to be true. Either way, whatever it was, I felt lighter and it only made sense to give something back. And what does a desert crave more than anything?

Water.

Now you’re not going to believe me, and that’s why I’ve captured it on film, but when I finally came up to the final mound decorated with spires the rock beneath my feet was filled with the faces of old people. One upon another were the faces of grandmothers and grandfathers outlined by the cracks weathered into the stone. And towering up above me was a spire clearly shaped like a dog/coyote baying at the moon. And the moon was quarter full there above us in broad daylight.

I stood in a mix of shock and humility… What was going on? How could this be? I know I’m not losing my mind, it’s there plain as day? But how could this be?

In my excitement I almost leapt upon the stone monument making my way up it, but wait. I sat thinking and pulled the 8mm camera from my bag and filmed both the faces in the rock and the towering dog/coyote above me. Then I figured before I cross this final threshold onto this monument I should circle it. I began walking around it water in hand, and soon I was on it spiraling up it making my way closer and closer to nature’s sculpture. As I climbed a phrase entered my head that I haven’t been able to let go of since.

Spirituality is not in what we do, but in how and why we do it.

There I was, the desert sun now blazing down on me, literally drained empty but also somehow revived. I felt like I had everything taken from me, but at the same time it was never mine to begin with, and for everything that was taken away, new things entered. The universe giveth and taketh away, and the universe giveth yet again. It’s not up to me and I should remember that. Stay humble, take care of yourself (it’s always first thing to do), and try my best to accept the things I don’t always understand. Not only accept but also be grateful to be here to experience this mystery of life in the first place.

So there I am, sun now hot as hell, rounding the final side of the circular mound, and I come to the place I’ve been working towards. And there at the base of that coyote/dog, in that space where I bow my head and pour my water offering is just the thing Moses and I need right now… shade.

I throw down my blanket, fill the dish again for Moses, drink some water myself, and lay back to share some beef jerky with that brave dog of mine, who now seems to be saying, ‘Poor human, I know it’s hard, but I think you’re starting to get it… Mmmmm, thanks for the jerky, It was just what I needed.’

peace, d

September 20, 2008
Bryce Canyon, Utah

Here are some pics grabbed off my digital footage of Bryce Canyon, the online video is coming soon. Bryce was a beautiful experience filled with hiking and solo meditation.

In Bryce I ran into some other filmmakers making a film with Polaroid film about dreams. They interviewed me and took my picture and came over to my campsite for tea. We shared some great conversation and I look forward to seeing their finished work. The pictures of me in this entry were taken by Martin Hasenöhrl.

peace,
d

First China's All Seeing Eye.. a frightening article on an experiment underway in China.. I can't help consider the future of Google... yikes.

http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008/05/chinas-all-seeing-eye

Second on a brighter note.. the future of Solar Tech from MIT.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html

and Lastly cows.. and food.. I've said it before and I'll say it again.. food is the future.. and I don't believe in a future of industrial agriculture.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid452319854?bctid=1667996405

peace,
d

This also from my good friend Steve. Track 2 of the two disk set called The Voice of Knowledge.

2%20Track%2002.mp3

You can buy the CDs HERE.
peace,
d

I forgot to mention in my Zion blog last week that long before I ever stepped foot in Utah a good friend of mine Steve from Colorado told me I had to go to Zion National Park. He told me I had to hike Angels Landing and he pulled a masterful quote out and laid it on me.

"You shall top rise and behold creation and you will need the tongue of an angel to describe what you have seen"

I hiked Angels Landing and found it extraordinary... but when I came to the last point I was stopped dead in my tracks. The last stretch of the hike takes you across a thin span of rock with, what must be, 2000ft drops to either side of you. This narrow section leads up the side of the last pinnacle of the hike to the large rise known as Angels Landing. Now in the past I've tried to motivate people afraid of heights, I never really laughed at them, I've been supportive, but I always tried to reassure them that it wasn't a big deal, they could do it... mind over matter.

Well karma has a funny way of teaching us things, bringing things full circle. Here I was at the scout lookout and there was no way in hell my body would let me go any further. I sat down, my mind trying to win the argument... you can do it, I said to myself. But my insides churned and guts rocked, and there was no debate.

Sitting under a tree nearby an older woman was watching me, clearly seeing the inner struggle I was putting myself through, clearly seeing that I wanted to try, I wanted to push on, I wanted to succeed, I wanted to will myself to overpower my physical body and all the truth I knew it was telling me.

At that moment she said to me, "A wise man knows his limits."

True... I thought to myself... we all have limits, and it is up to only ourselves to recognize them, and not push ourselves unreasonably, and not let ourselves be pushed by anyone else. There's no shame in having limits... everything in it's own time.

One day I'll hike to the top of Angels Landing... but I'm in no rush to get there.

peace,
d

(photo: Steve Knepper. Steve I tried to email you via Flickr to no avail. If you have any issue with the use of this photo please let me know.)

September 20, 2008
Location: Ruby's Inn Outside Bryce Canyon

I just wanted to give props to some good dog people. I needed to leave Moses with borders both in Zion and here at Bryce Canyon. In both cases I left him in good hands. If you ever need a place for your mutt to lay his head outside of Zion, drop him off at the Doggy Dude Ranch, where Hannah and Philly will be sure to take good care. Or if you're outside Bryce and need a dog border give PawzDogz a ring and Lorena will do a fine job.

In both cases your pooch will be able to run and swim and get some all around TLC... Moses was sad to leave both second homes where he met lots of cool dog friends.. dogs and horses, and goats, and chickens.. and of course people:-)

Thanks for taking good care of my boy!
peace,
d

September 17, 2008
Escalante BLM Land, Utah

After Zion I felt I needed to rest the legs a bit and save my money before heading into Bryce Canyon. I headed towards Page and arrived late in the day at Glen Canyon Dam. I shot some footage of Lake Powell and the Dam site to go along with some of the interviews I’ve done on hydrology in the southwest, but I have to say I’m disappointed. There’s very little footage you can capture of Lake Powell without renting a boat and heading out on the water. I was excited to see this vast reservoir but hey I’m earthbound, a rubber-foot as someone once called me. A rubber-foot being a pilgrim tied to a vehicle, versus a leather-foot who is tied to nothing but boots.

This is actually a nice segue to telling you all that I’m flat-ass broke. In fact as it stands now I think I’m in the negative a thousand dollars or so. I knew it was coming, it was only a matter of time, and time is something I’ve been really good at spending of late. But I would posture that it was all time well spent. I wouldn’t change a second of it, even the not-so-good moments, since it was in those moments I learned the most.

But this does put me in a bit of a predicament, seeing as I’m only in Utah and still plan on making it to Panama. I’ve been anxiety ridden in my sleepless nights under the full moon. As my friend Jeff says, there’s no stress like financial stress… I wonder why that is… or if it’s even true.

I don’t really have it so bad, there are people I can borrow money from, and/or I do have some money put away in retirement savings that I can draw from, but I’m trying to find another way out of this right now. I feel I’ve gotten myself into this predicament and out of principle I should get myself out with what I have. The day before yesterday I swore to myself that I’d sell my most expensive camera and go shoot the rest of the journey strictly celluloid. I could sell it along with some other gear and that should at least get me half way into Mexico, and hey with less to steal. I’ve been going over all the possibilities in my head, even to the point of selling the van and going leather-foot. Wouldn’t that make things interesting, man and dog walking to Panama, the folks back home would love that.

I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do in regards to my financial situation, but I do know I’ll have to do something soon. There’s only so much debt I’ll allow myself to take on before dipping into the nest-egg, selling things off, borrowing, or abandoning the project altogether, although the latter is highly unlikely. It’ll be Moses and I with backpack and one cheapo 8mm camera before that happens.

peace,
d

September 13, 2008
Zion, Utah

(Sorry I have no pics.. all on film.. returned my digital camera to Wally World.. need to get another one. This pic taken from the web from the Khalsa Family Photo Album.. credit where credits due.)

I have to say out of all the places I’ve been on this journey Zion Canyon is one of the most beautiful. This place is aptly named after paradise.

This place has everything someone could need to survive. The virgin river flows down it’s center, there are large numbers of deer everywhere, trees grow happily in the balanced sun and shade under the high cliff walls. This truly is a travelers paradise, and I could only imagine how it would have felt to come across it back when then Mormons were traveling the trail of tears.

I’m really working hard to get back to a place of solitude. I’m really working at letting Liz go. It’s hard to let someone go after you’ve woken up next to them for months on end. It’s hard to be alone again and not have the steady companionship that one can so easily grow accustomed to. Or even grow to depend on. I miss Liz and everyone back in Colorado deeply, and there’s a part of me that can’t help but wonder if I’m nuts to be back out here alone again.

I keep telling myself that it’s not about me, and that I’ve made a commitment and the all journeys are filled with trying times. I keep telling myself that it’s about finding the inner strength to carry on, and that in finding that strength we find ourselves, we find power and a sense of self that can never be taken from us.

These are the mantras I keep repeating as I trudge up an eight-hour hike to the top of observation point overlooking Zion. Once up there, I sit and finish the book my friend Josiah gave me a few weeks ago, Still Life with Woodpecker, by Tom Robbins. If you haven’t read it I highly recommend it!

There are some great lines throughout that book that resonated with me deeply, but especially the last three pages, which you’ll have to arrive at yourself if you’re at all interested.

On the way back down from Observation Point I watch as the sun disappears to one side and the moon rises to the other. I walk hike under the cover of darkness now, the moon and my headlamp illuminating only a few feet ahead. I remember that there are cougars in Zion so I’d better make some noise. In a mix of English and the Blackfoot taught to me up in Alberta, I pray. I pray out loud the entire hike down through the darkness, at times I cry through my prayers thinking of loved ones that I’ve lost that I’d love to talk to now more than ever, I pray for everyone and everything and when I’m done I pray some more. I pray for when must have been a good three hours until I am back at my van under this full moon in September.

Hiking throughout Zion I’m pushing myself harder than I’ve pushed myself in a really long time. There are moments when I feel my heart will pound its way free through the flesh of my chest. I carry 45lbs of film gear on my back everywhere I go and it makes every hike that much more difficult, in some strange way my commitment to this film is also a spiritual burden I’ve placed on myself. There’s a big part of me that would just like to go home, in fact, I think that’s what I tried to do in Colorado, I tried to go home. Maybe that’s even what I did on the Piikani Reservation, but I’m not free in myself to go ‘home’ yet, and a large part of my heart is still here within the freedom of the open road.

However, this freedom at times seems to be a double-edged sword.

peace,
d

September 10, 2008
Location: Frisco, Nevada (Ghost Town)

I’ve been on the road trying to get my head back into my film, back into isolation, back into silence, back onto the endless road. Yesterday and today I spent the days wandering around the ghost towns of Hamilton and Frisco. These were originally mining towns the former 10,000 people strong, and the later 4,000. Being towns in the middle of the Nevada desert they brought in most of the food and water. These places were prosperous and alive until the U.S. economy shifted and other places became better suited to living. It makes you realize how throughout history populations have moved and much of these movements were the result of external forces. No people or place lives in isolation, and it’s all tied together inextricably.

As I float through these abandoned ruins taking photographs, I can’t help feel like a ghost town, broken down, left alone, abandoned… I used to be vibrant a place that people went to. Now the wind brushes against me taking with it layers of skin, the rain batters me down into the soil, and there are no people… only the occasional passerby on their way to somewhere else.

Wait, I’m the passerby, it’s important not to mistake myself for a ghost town. It’s important not to empathize with archaic ruins when having a difficult time with newly created isolation and solitude.

I was asked recently if I get lonely… Of course I get lonely, I think to be human is to be lonely. But loneliness and I have an arrangement, I let it in, and it keeps me company.

In this time of transition as I move back into isolation and silence, loneliness and a seemingly endless open road, it’s important to remember what brought me here.

Myself… And an original project proposal for a film that was to be more than just a film. This project was designed to assist me in completing a pilgrimage of the North American Continent. And central to the project framework and the pilgrimage was the notion of solitude.

It’s important for me to take a moment and reread the quote that was inscribed on my project proposals title page,

“ALL PATHS LEAD TO THE SAME GOAL: TO CONVEY TO OTHERS WHAT WE ARE. AND WE MUST PASS THROUGH SOLITUDE AND DIFFICULTY, ISOLATION AND SILENCE, IN ORDER TO REACH FORTH TO THE ENCHANTED PLACE WHERE WE CAN DANCE OUR CLUMSY DANCE AND SING OUR SORROWFUL SONG -- BUT IN THIS DANCE OR IN THIS SONG THERE ARE FULFILLED THE MOST ANCIENT RITES OF OUR CONSCIENCE IN THE AWARENESS OF BEING HUMAN AND OF BELIEVING IN A COMMON DESTINY.”
-- Pablo Neruda, 1971

Solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence… although it IS difficult, it’s nice to see you again my old friends. For it is you who have helped me understand myself most completely, for it is you who have taught me that there is nothing like doing you own work, in your own time.

I just wish I would have understood that in relation to everyone else. I do now…

Let it be. – The Beatles :-)

peace,
d

When I was in India in the temple, I was sitting there and there was a river flowing by and there were birds chirping and it was gentle and I was meditating and I felt this great feeling of well-being and calmness and I thought, "What am I doing here? Why aren't I back on the front lines? Why aren't I back fighting? Why aren't I back doing what I believe for injustice and so on? Am I copping out? Is this like a rear battle rest station? What kind of scene am I in? Is this a cop out?" Then I began to see that staying alone in that room at that moment was confronting me with an internal battle which was much fiercer that any external battle I had ever fought before. And until I had found some way through that internal battle, all I could do was get sucked into the external manifestations of it in such a way as to perpetuate them. Right? I began to see that it was absolutely imperative in terms of socially responsible, effective behavior that I work on myself sufficiently so that I could look at any human being and see that place in them behind whatever their melodrama is, be it Nixon or a hippie, or Mao or Hitler or Schweitzer or Mahatma Gandhi or whatever the person's trip is, to be able to see behind that. Until I was centered enough, till I was in that place in myself, I couldn't really know that place in other beings. I saw that, finally, my responsibility was to work on myself.

Now, to bring this to the West, it seems to me that because of many of the factors that have been , I think, sufficiently well pointed out by Marshall McLuhan and other so that I don't have to particularly repeat them, there is a tremendous change in the cultural context in which we are living and it's been changing very intensively in the past ten years. This is leading to changes in out time and space concepts, the time and space concepts we live in everyday. Because of these changes we are experiencing a great input of energy. It's as if we're tuning in to more and more energy in the universe, so that you feel the geometric progression at which things are happening. Look at the culture. It's as if it's all going faster and faster and harder and harder in all directions, all at once. What I notice is that when a person feels this higher energy, which really turns out in the Hindu system to be fourth chakra, which is a place independent of time and space. When you start to experience that energy, you tend to want to "do" something with it. It's like, "I've got to do something!" And the things that you do are the habits you had out of the last trip you were on. In other words, you're on "I'm going to do something. I'm going to make this world a better place to live in. I'm going to change the system" - that's the feeling. The young persons feels, "I have all this energy. I see more. I can do it." When he starts to do something, what he ends up doing is a set of responses which are still in the third chakra, which is in the world of "we" and "them". So all he does is bring more energy to a set of old games that the culture's been playing out, where the son overthrows Daddy and then the son becomes Daddy and Daddy becomes just as bad as he was before, because he's now Daddy, see? So I can pick up a hitchhiker in Big Sur who's had to cut off all his hair because he's in the army and he says, "Hey, man, this is fierce," he says, "None o the chicks will go out with me because I have short hair." And I begin to see that there's a new establishment which is the long-hair establishment. They're saying, "You can't come into our club because you don't have the credentials. You don't have an American Express Card. I'm sorry, you can't stay here."

In other words, it's a new system that comes in when that energy is used unconsciously. They're just perpetuating the illusion, perpetuating the darkness. So now it became apparent to me that what one can "do" if one feels a sense of social responsibility, which is that vector that pulls me back out of the ocean and which is what I'm doing here. One first of all keeps working on himself to become a higher and higher rate of vibration. In other words, a peaceful man is the first criterion if you want to have a peaceful universe. You start with the universe you've got, which is you're own being; and if you're angry, you can't be angry about peace because all you're creating is more anger in the world, rather than more peace. So whatever you're going to do, you've got to do it peacefully. In other words, you've got to do it with peace in your heart if it has anything to do with peace. It may not, but if it has anything really to do with peace you've got to realize you are whatever it "is" and so you've got to start right there. You can't say, "Well, I'm angry about peace, and as soon as I have peace, I'll be peaceful," because it doesn't work that way. It works just the opposite because of the laws of action and reaction which the universe functions on. So you see that the only option is to work on yourself.

- Ram Dass, The Only Dance There Is

September 7, 2008
Location: Reno Nevada
(Photo: Michael Highland, Burning Man 08)

So Liz just got on a plane back to Colorado to finish up her degree, and for the first time in a long while I’m alone. The past eight months have taken me far from the project and it’s original intentions, but at the same time everything informs everything else. And although I’ve been on this slight tangent, I’m grateful for everything I’ve received and for the deep loving interruption to my loneliness. Liz and I have shared some beautiful times together and with her now gone I definitely feel the void…

Originally I had set out to encounter this void, this space of nothingness and everythingness, so I guess it’s right that I’ve found my way back here. Back to Now.here.

But I have to say, as I sit under this huge cottonwood tree, hawk circling overhead… sometimes it’s nice to be somewhere even if it's just for a little while.

Although it make the void that much more difficult.

peace,
d