My Book: "Walking Through Time" …a new kind of online novel.

As I knelt on the grass in our backyard this morning, glorious rays of sunlight touched my face and body. As energy streamed down from on high, I thanked my lucky stars that I now share my life with you. After offering all my love to All that Is, I asked for All that Is love in return. If you desire something, ask for it, they say. I offered my love, asked for love, and I received love in kind.

Years ago, I cried each morning. Then, the grown-up inside me stepped forward and put a stop to that. On occasion, I reconnect to long forgotten subjects or feelings. When the subject and feelings combine, creating poignancy in my heart, a new point of consciousness opens on my path of life. When those feelings become us, we then shall live out our dreams. Despite the tears that stream down my face, I enjoy this moment. Those are tears of joy, part of the divine essence, foretelling our destiny together.

Closing my eyes and displaying my naked body to the Sun, through closed eyelids, I felt God. Is He really so powerful as to affect human destinies, individually and All together? What human instinct compels us to give away our personal illusions of power to an entity that we only feel? It feels so good when I surrender-to-surrender and allow that higher power to experience human life through me.

Is our higher power a clearinghouse for both love and hate? If so, may I live in love and still show compassion for those who hate? Our human choices include praying to God, ignoring God or ranting in denial of His existence.

Unlike my previous three-night trips from Moab to LA, this time "I took the ride of my life". For me, it was a Quantum Leap, both in the compression and decompression of physical distance and in growth of non-physical consciousness. On the way from Grand Junction to Denver, our regional jet crossed the Rockies from west to east. Less than two hours later, our fully loaded Boeing 757 took us for a long takeoff-roll at Denver International Airport. Once we were safely airborne, we muttered, "Thank God", and then crossed the Rockies from Denver to the southwest. In less than three hours, I had seem more of the Rocky Mountains than had any mountain man of the nineteenth century, and all in air-conditioned comfort. Throughout the flight, our airplane window displayed a continuous, moving image of the Four Corners States and, near journey's end, Southern California. As we traveled, unnamed places appeared before us on the Earth below. They were desert places, where humans never go. Only from an airplane window might we observe these locations, expanding or contracting just enough to accept or reflect energy on a universal scale.

From an altitude of 36,000 feet, my mind revealed the Earth below as an intricate and detailed object. In one place, a scorched brown desert appeared below me. Immediately after that, I saw a single ribbon of blue, reflect from deep in the Grand Canyon. Unlike Moab, Glen Canyon Dam upstream of the Grand Canyon filters out all mud and sand along this stretch, thus changing the Colorado to a reflective blue from above. While passing by Lake Powell, the observer sees an impossibly blue body of water surrounded by dramatic sandstone shapes and deep side canyons. Even with prior knowledge that the lake level was far below its historical highs, from our vantage point, the reservoir looked full.Downstream at Hoover Dam, so too did Lake Mead.

During two hours in the air, no passenger said more than a few words, usually in answer to a flight attendant's offer of a drink. With the quiet rush of cabin noise to sooth us, we were going to LA, the fabled land of orange groves and Hollywood stars. During our thousand flight miles that day, I saw again that Nature ruled the world, not humankind. During the flight, I finished reading a biography of Samuel Clemens (1835-1910 CE). Several times while reading any given page, I would glance away from my book and observe the Earth below.

A stream of consciousness that was Mark Twain had visited me in 1986. It was around the time that Halley's Comet passed by this Earth, ricocheted around the Sun, and departed here for deep space. Until my midair completion of his biography, I did not know that Mark Twain's birth and death corresponded with appearances of Halley's Comet. In midlife, Mark Twain wrote that he came in with the comet and would depart terrestrial life when it returned. With a touch of both irony and humor, Mark Twain lived and died by his own self-fulfilling prophecy. As reflected in his writing, Mark Twain realized, "As It Is Above, So It Is Below".

Looking out of my window once again, dimensions previously unknown reflected and conducted consciousness to the depths of my soul. Seeing the world as God sees it allowed us a brief glimpse at own divinity. As with all angels, I soon returned to ground level, landing at LAX. Until I fly that route again, my powers of recall will provide that celestial perspective, if I so choose.

That is who we are after all; angels released from heaven to live an Earthly existence. Our destinies placed us together here at birth. After many decades on Earth, a desire to share my love matched your desire to share your love and we met, never to live without each other again. When physical distance now separates us, we look forward to the time when we shall again be in each other's arms. "Geography be damned", as Mark Twain might have said. I look forward to sitting again with you on our front porch, to toast with a glass of Zinfandel and then share the stories of our lives.

We shall continue to share the beauty and grandeur that is our home in the West. Visit with me again all the secret places that we know and love. On a crisp October morning, stand with me atop Little Ruin Canyon at Hovenweep, New Mexico. With luck, sunshine will illuminate a final earthbound home of the Ancients. If we ask, they shall join us as our spirit guides, offering sage advice regarding love the land.

Last week, on a daytrip to the Canyonlands Anticline Overlook, I spotted a lone pine tree growing at the base of a cleft in a sandstone monolith. In the distance, partially shaded by the boulder to its south, the tree appeared to be a ponderosa. That tree was the only tall pine for miles around.

Near Dewey Bridge, along the Colorado Riverway,
our Bright Red Chevy Cobalt Sedan

The Ancients tell us that once, over eight hundred years ago, they carried pinecones from the La Sal Mountains to this small, windswept plain. Daylight ended and on came the night. In order to warm themselves, they built a campfire from the deadwood that they found. Sheltered from the wind by the massive boulder, they threw pinecones into the embers of their dying fire. As the coals cooled, it was the youngest member of the party who sat up until the charred pinecones were cool enough to remove from the embers.

In the ashes of that fire, a single pinecone remained unroasted and unseen by the youngster. In the morning, rain doused the campfire, converting its ashes into soluble potash. This, the last small group of Ancients to leave the foothills of the La Sal Mountains, took with them what roasted pine nuts they could salvage and were gone. In the spring, our singular forest giant germinated in that fertile spot. Was it chance or was it the collective consciousness of humankind created and sustained that tree?

On a high desert plateau now dominated by sage, with occasional pinion and juniper, the ponderosa germinated in a place where runoff from even the smallest storm would reach its roots. Standing there unnoticed for centuries, the tree now makes a statement to us all. I am here, waiting out the drought and the silliness of humankind. Will this beloved tree survive, or will it dry up and die before the rains return? Eight hundred years after human intervention helped to create this tree, its fate is again uncertain. Its survival now depends on humankind creating a sustainable relationship with Nature. Will our collective consciousness ascend sufficiently for this tree to propagate, thus starting a new cycle of reforestation in that place?

After driving half the required distance on a paved highway, I drove a gravel road on the final leg to the anticline overlook. Informational signs at the entrance to the road touted this stretch as a "highly maintained gravel road". There, we decided to test our car, the road and our driving skills. On an earlier trip along Interstate I-70, the Cobalt was stable at speeds up to seventy-five miles per hour. Above that, the winds would buffet the car, making my stomach feel uneasy. Now, on a gravel road posted for forty, the low-profile tires floated and swayed at fifty. When the dashboard display flashed, "Low Traction", I took notice. Floating along a desert highway an inch above the ground is fun. Rolling a small car over in a roadside ditch is not, so I gently let up on the accelerator pedal. My road rallying for the day was complete. With God's grace, I lived to write the story.

At Canyonlands Anticline Overlook, I stood agape in temperatures of 103 degrees Fahrenheit. After a short hike up a hot hill, it took some time to calm down, if not cool down. A drink of water in that stark, dry land was just what I needed to feel human again. Looking to the north, the dry watershed of Kane Creek Valley and the Moab Rim, beyond, dominated my view. Other than what moisture remained in my water bottle, I saw no running water in the streambed running down the center of that deep valley. Despite the complete lack of observable water there on a mid summer afternoon, we knew intuitively that here, over eons, water erased what had once been an enormous plateau. The resulting deep canyon exemplified the concept that, "Less is More". Over a span of time that most humans can barely comprehend, a mesa several miles long had washed away. The dry gulch that now replaced it was large enough to swallow Manhattan Island, New York, at least as far as Wall Street. Here, in a place of apparently solid rock, a once golden land had dissolved into the Colorado River below.

Further to my east, stood a rocky plateau named for its location, relative to Moab. Maps shows its name as "Behind the Rocks". That day, my view was from above and beyond Behind the Rocks. At the top of my eastward view, barren of their usual snow fields, lay the La Sal Mountains. Looking almost directly below, I saw one vehicle moving slowly along the red dirt track. Its engine-noise rose to meet my ears, a thousand feet above. If not for the intense quiet around me, the growling SUV could have crested Hurrah Pass and exited the Kane Creek Valley unnoticed.

SUV - Look out below.

To my west and far below, was the Colorado River. With no major dams upstream of there, the Colorado River ran red, and true to its name. On the opposite riverbank, the Potash processing plant looked small, as did most other manmade features within my field of view. The single dominant manmade feature in that landscape was the iridescent blue and white evaporation ponds terraced into bench lands above Potash and the Colorado River. As impressive as the shimmering water seemed from my vantage point, up-close the ponds look like lap-pools for the gods.

I then looked west to the vast landscape that is Canyonlands National Park. From my vantage point, the massive bulge of the Cane Creek Anticline visually accentuated the curvature of the Earth. The effect was that of a smaller Earth, on which I could see a pronounced curvature along the horizon. In juxtaposition to what looked like a small world, my 270-degree view, encompassing hundreds of square miles made the area appear vast, if not endless. I was alone, or at least I was the only living human at that location. Below, on the Colorado below, a motorized raft ran noisily upstream. The distance to the river below was so great that the raft accelerated upriver well before I heard its motor whine. Looking up, I saw a California condor, drafting easily above the canyon rim. Despite signage, protective fencing and a rudimentary shelter for human visitors, surely this was God's place.

That evening, after returning to the Moab Rim CamPark, I fussed with my webcams. Since October, 2008, this had been a pet project of mine. The goal was to stream multiple live images of Moab and Spanish Valley.

Colorado River - Look out below.

Now I am home with you, the love of my life, in Southern California. If all the webcams in Moab were to fail now, I could accept that fate, so long as you were by my side. In October, when the rains return to the desert and snow dusts the La Sal Mountains, we shall visit our favorite pine tree. Perhaps there, we shall hear the wisdom of the Ancients, carried on the wind.

In Love, light and Life,