See-and-Share

Stuff to see and share.

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Climb Climb Climb

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The ancient, sprawling elms may be the best part of New Orleans. 

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"Karma." -- One of my favorite sculptures at New Orleans' Sculpture Garden. 

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Big games for big kids. 

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Climbing hands. 

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Druids are hiding behind a keyhole arch in Canyonlands' Needles District. 

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Native spirits haunt the red rock walls of Hidden Canyon in Moab. 

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I made a quiver!  Next up: bows and arrows.  

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The aged bark of this old hollow juniper tree spirals around it in raggedy twists, mirroring the eroded bands of the sandstone knobs around it.  

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The sunset view from the confluence of Pine Creek and the Virgin River.  My phone cannot do it true justice.  Guess you will just have to go see it for yourself!

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Climbing in Zion is a great way to spend a sunny February day. 

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Medieval Meeples real estate land grab. It's a good thing that modern day urban planning is not done like a Carcassonne game!

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Spring is here!

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I love Utah. 

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Some great articles on redefining career, success, life from my brother's blog!

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The Raven's Gift

On the first day of 2013, a raven visited me to mark the new year and to deliver me a message.  I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but I knew it was significant and needed pursuit. 

The Rock and the Hard Place

For the past few months, I’ve really been struggling with whether to go back East for my MBA at MIT Sloan or not.  Five months after my windfall deferral, I was no closer to clarity.

On the one hand, I’ve truly fallen in love with the land out here.  I love the wide expanses.  I love the sense of freedom and connectedness to the earth.  I love my quiet, small existence and the feeling of being overlooked by the world.  Furthermore, my anxiety over a lifestyle bound by wires and airwaves, by ambition and ladders—a lifestyle that I fear would suffocate me—this anxiety is as real as it ever was. 

On the other hand, I hesitate to give up the opportunity to attend a Top 5 MBA program, to learn from and work with the best of the best, to challenge and stimulate my mind.  I hesitate to give up the stability of that path—to give up its simplicity and formulaic certainties—not to mention the $20K tuition voucher I have for the fall of 2013 and all the time, energy, and money I poured into applying to schools last year.  I know the latter are all sunk costs, and yet, my fallible human mind finds it hard to cut my losses. More than anything, I am unsure if I have the courage to reimagine my future, to strike out into wholly unfamiliar territory where I do not know where or how to look for road signs.

And no matter what I choose, I fear that I am locking myself in.  After this, either my debt will force my hand and likely push me to be an itinerant consultant, or I balk and will never be able to go to a top 5 MBA program again.  I have trouble discerning whether my angst stems from wanting to choose short-term happiness (i.e. continuing to be a mountain bum) at the expense of my long-term future, which may result in regret ten years down the line, or if this angst is a sign to abandon ship and build a new one instead. 

The Raven and the Revelation

           “With [the Raven] totem, we can make great changes in our lives;                      the ability to take unformed thought and make it reality.”          – Animal Totems - Raven

  Some Native Americans believe that Raven is a teacher of mystery and magic.  Raven reveals secrets and answers within our deepest hearts, gives us clear eyes with which to look inward, and leads us to difficult truths. Ravens are also scavengers, and their life comes from death in the eternal cycle; and so it is that Raven symbolizes change and rebirth.   

Since learning this, I have been taken with a strange certainty.  I had been resisting and repressing inchoate convictions within me, fearing that I do not have the courage to revoke and to rebuild.  But then, my New Year’s raven drew a circle around me at the top of Zion Canyon, in an ancient, immutable, and sacred place, and I understand now that it was bringing me the courage I needed.  

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The Moon Marks My Days and My Weeks

In my new life as a wilderness field guide, I’ve been gifted with the time and opportunity to observe and absorb in a way my hectic city life did not allow.  In particular, I have found a lot of pleasure and comfort in understanding and anticipating the phases a moon, a constant companion of mine in my nights in the field. Her quiet beauty is a restful kind of primetime entertainment that impels introspection in the place of distraction.  Her regularity assures me that the universe moves forward as it must and that all is well. 

And these are her phases:

New Moon

The moon's light is blocked by the shadow of the earth, and so the stars take up the opportunity to come out more fully, bright and white against the dark night sky.  Far from city lights, the Milky Way smears across the sky in a messy smudge and steals the show.

  One Day Older Than New

The day or two after the dark clean slate of the new moon is the crescent moon, a hard bright white sliver carved into the twilight sky.  Sometimes it stands upright and alert.  At other times it lies crooked on its side like a hook.  And on certain winter nights, it grins wide-mouthed with mischief like the Cheshire cat.  So early in its cycle, it sets not long after the sun, chasing its warmth and light and almost catching it.  As the moon sets in the darkening western sky, its thin white sliver transmutes to gold, falling into the last splashes of orange haze on the horizon left by the retired sun.  The hard bright white sliver turns into a golden crescent hovering over the dark horizon line where black earth meets an orange haze that runs quickly into a deep complementary blue.  In these moments, the moon is slender, graceful, delicate. 

Quarter Moon

Though it is a quarter, it looks like a half, and the moon lies on her curved back as if waiting for something.  Maybe the moon, like me, enjoys lying with her arms under her head and gazing up at the stars.  Does she have another moon to look at as she stares up into the heavens?

Full Moon

The full moon rises just after sunset, chasing her brother with heavy steps.  On these nights, the moon rises slowly, sitting low and full on the orange horizon, barely peeking over the tops of the intermittent desert mesas.  When the moon rests close to the earth like that, it is so much bigger.  It’s so round and so full, I wonder if it can make it all the way up.  So low to the earth’s long curve, it looks strangely vulnerable, a hair away from tumbling down.  What great effort it must take to heave its round fullness upwards.  So low like this, it’s a different moon, closer, more intimate, though I know once it’s up in the full arc of the night sky, it will regain its confidence and preside over the night, bright and aloof and beyond reproach.  But for now, as I watch it struggle to haul itself up over the horizon, it looks more like a fat man huffing with exertion. 

Waning Moon

This moon you can see in the mornings even after the sun has risen.  If you wake early enough, you can catch the moon setting while the sun rises as the two orbs play cat and mouse across the blue and rose-colored dawn sky.  As this phase passes, I know to ready myself for a new cycle in the sky, familiar in its structure and made delightful in its infinitely varied details.