Our Grand Canyon adventure and my husband's healing process have taken me far afield from my writing life. Everything just seemed to stop on November 16. Interesting that I had carefully packed some paper and a pen so I could write a journal entry after my walk down the Grand Canyon that day. Unfortunately I never used them after hearing the news of my husband's injuries and the challenge I faced in getting back to the rim and to the Flagstaff Medical Center to be with him. However, in this past week I've sat myself down at my writing desk and managed to write a couple of poems in response to Robert Lee Brewer's poem a day challenge that ended on November 30. And it felt good to poem (as Brewer likes to say) again. I am also putting together a new chapbook that I'll submit for the Frost Place contest that's due on January 1. Though I'm not back to my writing in full force yet as you can see from how long it's been since I wrote my last post here, I'm getting back … [Read more...]
Erasing an item from your Bucket List is OK!
I started my Choices blog in November 2007, and one of my very first posts was entitled The Bucket List. And first on the list was climbing down into the Grand Canyon. For the life of me I can't tell you why that was such a prominent item. I do know after finally completing the climb down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, spending the night at Phantom Ranch, and then climbing back up this November 16 and 17 2016, it would have been much better to erase that item from my list and move on to less rigorous and dangerous endeavors. One of my friends completed the climb a few years ago. She warned me not to take the steeper though shorter trail, Kaibab, but to go on the so-called "less steep" Bright Angel trail, which we did. She mentioned the steepness but not the trail's narrowness and the very rocky and slippery terrain (perhaps when she was at the Grand Canyon the trail was less rocky). It goes without saying how close the trail is to massive cliffs on one side. Though none … [Read more...]
