A Tale of Two Missions

I joined the church when I was 16½ years old after a singular experience while reading the Book of Mormon. At that time, I received a personal testimony that it was God’s word. There was a lot happening in my life with being an awkward teenager struggling with my personal identity, a broken homelife, and unknown future. At 19, my friends who were also members of the church began leaving on missions. It seemed the obvious next step for me was to also apply to serve. I submitted my papers, and I was called to serve in the Italy Padova Mission in 1977 for two years. Only being a member 2½ years before serving put me at a disadvantage because I hadn’t learned as much as I should have before embarking on a mission to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. I had a burning testimony of the Book of Mormon, but I was not versed in other fundamentals of the church’s faith.

After serving for four months in Pisa, I was transferred to Firenze (Florence) for the next six months

When I was baptized, the family that brought me into the church gifted me a book titled A Marvelous Work and a Wonder. It is an introductory text of the basic beliefs of the Mormon faith. I took it with me to Italy and read it in the early months of my service. I recorded in my journal one day, “There is a lot more to this religion stuff than I ever thought.” That comment illustrates my inexperience and lack of knowledge at that time of life. One might expect a missionary for the church to have a deep understanding of basic doctrine before going forth to preach the word of God to the nations of the world. Not so in my case.

I had an interview with my mission president one day. Mission presidents are older priesthood leaders usually called in the retirement stage of their lives. They preside over a mission of 150-200 missionaries, mostly young men. In that interview, he expressed his disappoint with me, saying that I wasn’t living up to his expectations. It saddened me deeply that I was letting him down, but I wasn’t sure what I could do to change. I was young and inexperienced; learning fundamental church doctrine as fast as I could process it before turning around to teach it to my fellow man. The Atonement of Jesus Christ was a complex and abstract concept for me at that age. The basic principles of repentance, living the law of chastity, obeying a health and diet code known as The Word of Wisdom, the responsibilities of a lay ministry, truly believing in modern day revelation through living prophets and apostles, the mission of the Holy Ghost, the gathering of Israel, marriage for eternity, living a covenant life after attending the holy temple, observing the law of consecration, the act of fasting, paying a tithing, and a long list of other practices that constitute a disciple of Jesus Christ were all a part and practice of a good Later-day Saint. In one of the first lessons missionaries teach, questions of man’s preexistence, purpose, and destination are raised. I hadn’t fully internalized what those meant to myself, let alone to others I met on a street corner in the Tuscan hills of Italy. I wasn’t raised in the church, I hadn’t been taught as a child, I was a long way from home and without the support of my family. For the first time since joining the church, I was faced with actually living my faith under my own motivation and understanding. I think I was facing for the first time that I didn’t know how to live on my own. And not just live on my own, but to live a holy and consecrated life of a missionary. I don’t mean this in a “holier than thou” sense. It’s just that a missionary is set apart from worldly things to be an example to others, and as sin free as humanly possible. 19-year-old men don’t always have that figured out. I didn’t. I doubted my ability to fulfill my calling. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to remain a missionary for the full two-year term. But remain I did. I obeyed the mission rules, followed the council of my mission president, faithfully read my scriptures, and prayed every day and every night. One day followed another and gradually a miracle occurred; the Lord somehow took this goofy kid and changed him not only into a missionary able to survive the two-year term, but to also navigate his course through life.

45 years later, I once again look forward to wearing the nametag, “Elder Handley, Missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”. The difference now is that I’ve had a lifetime of studying the scriptures, serving in many church roles, raising six children, and attending a thousand or so Sunday school lessons. I think I know the doctrine well. My faith and my testimony far exceed that of my youthful 19-year-old self. I think I have much more to offer the world in terms of my gospel understanding. My first mission was not without success. I taught hundreds of lessons in my two years. I was even the participant in a handful of conversions and baptisms. When I look back at those years though, I can’t help but feel that the primary conversion made was of that awkward 19-year-old lad struggling through life and holding on with only a belief that the Book of Mormon held the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I’m not sure what my mission president’s expectations were of me. I wish he could have understood that I wasn’t much further along than the Italians we met upon the street or visited with while knocking on doors. I too was a young man in search of meaning.

Towards the end of my mission, I had the privilege of baptizing Lucianno in the town of Gorizia on the then Yugoslavian border.

At 63, I suspect this next mission will play out much differently. If I’m told by my mission president that I don’t meet his expectations, then I really do have a lot of soul searching and reevaluation to do. I believe I have been well-seasoned by life; fatherhood will do that to a person. This is not a proselyting mission. It is a service mission and a return to my work in the theatre. My approach to mission life and mission work is different. Virginia will be my companion, the companion I’ve been with for the last 37 years. Together we will set out in search of those who need a friend in life; a hand to strengthen and feeble knees to confirm (Isaiah 35:3). If I grow as much from this second mission as I did from the first, I’m curious to see what I’m like when we return in two years. When I returned from Italy, I found I had a lifelong love for the Italian people. I suspect that two years from now I will have a deep and profound love for those of Polynesian descent. You can’t help but love those whom you serve. Perhaps that will be the most cherished possession I return with, a love for another people and culture. Serving a mission is a deep sacrifice, and one that will bring great blessings upon Virginia and I, and perhaps even upon our children and their families. I hope that in the following two years I will transcend further my relationship to my Savior. This blog post is titled A Tale of Two Missions. Only one mission has been written thus far. It will be a while before I tell the tale of mission #2. Perhaps two years from now I’ll finish this blog post…

At the end of my mission in November of 1979, waiting for the train that would take me out of Italy and start my journey home.

Lag Error

When I started blogging about our mission experience a few months ago, I intended to write every week. It has now been almost a month since my last posting, and it is time to catch up on our adventure. We hit a bump in the road of our preparations, which I call a lag error. To explain a lag error, I’ll refer to an experience I had many years ago working in the theatre when I first learned about lag errors. I’ll take my account from my personal journal that I was writing at the time.

Oct. 29, 2014: At BYU Spectacular this year, we used the phrase “Take Flight” as our theme. We chose to celebrate the arts at BYU and the power art plays in our lives. The main ideas were that art serves for the enjoyment of mankind and as an instrument of God, and that art lifts us out of the mundane aspects of our lives. We invited the fantasy artist and former faculty and alum James Christensen as our guest host. We built the theme around James and a character from many of his paintings, his Everyman. James talked with Everyman in a conversational manner, revealing the message of our program. At the end of our production, we planned to have Everyman don a pair of homemade wings, take flight from the stage, and soar over the audience.

To accomplish the flying trick, we hired a company from Las Vegas called Flying by Foy. It was a complicated and expensive rig to install in the Marriott Center. We practiced for hours, programming the computers that ran the flying operation. The system was safe in that if it ever detected an anomaly, it would not engage the motors that lifted our actor off the stage. In our many hours of practice, the flying engineers troubleshot every location in the flight routine that caused the rig to malfunction. The malfunction points were indicated on the computer as lag errors. There were four motors that worked in concert to lift our actor and maneuver him around the room. A lag error was generally observed when one of the motors had not taken the proper slack from the line.

Pat Debenham as Everyman, Homecoming Spectacular 2014, BYU

On the final performance of our show, at the climax when Everyman runs downstage and is lifted over the orchestra, the computer gave us the dreaded lag error and Everyman did not fly. It was disappointing. We re-cued the show and made a second attempt. Once again, we received a lag error. The show ended, to our great disappointment without the effect we worked so hard to achieve. Otherwise, we had a terrific performance.

Pat in a successful flight during a dress rehearsal

Time has now passed, and I’ve reflected over the experience and decided there are two lessons I choose to learn from this. After I work on a show for an entire year there comes a time when I must let go and entrust it to the talents and expertise of other gifted artists. For the show to succeed there cannot be any lag errors in the various departments. Audio, lighting, staging, costuming, music, choreography, etc. must all work together in proper harmony and tension. If any area of production has slack in its line it is quite likely that we will register a metaphorical lag error and the show will not accomplish what we set out to do. BYU Spectacular is a complicated production, and it is a tribute to many talented individuals that we rise to performance level after only one dress rehearsal. Lag errors seldom occur and when they do, we work fast and hard to resolve the problem. For example, we registered a “lag error” at our dress rehearsal when the director of the Men’s Chorus could not hear her choir over the top of the orchestra. She was agitated and unhappy. As far as she was concerned, her efforts were wasted, and not only her efforts, but also the efforts of the 180 men in her chorus. This was a significant enough lag error that it threatened the over-all integrity of the performance. Our chief audio engineer worked for hours through the night and the next day resolving the problem. By our opening performance, the lag error had been removed, the choir sounded fantastic, and our choir director was satisfied with her choir’s participation in our program. A lag error had been resolved.

On a more spiritual level we are also potentially subject to lag errors. Our Father in Heaven’s plan of happiness is likewise built and engineered to err on the side of safety. That is why we have a Savior, and more importantly why we have the Atonement. If we hope to rise to our full potential, we must ensure all motors are fully engaged and there is no slack in any of the lines. If our lives are not in full harmony, if we are slow to remember our prayers, scripture study is forgotten, or we slip into a few bad habits, at the crucial time of lift off we may find ourselves with a lag error.

Preparatory to applying for our mission, we had to complete a physical examination with our doctor. In the bloodwork done at my appointment, an anomaly was detected that raised a red flag for a potential problem. My doctor recommended I follow-up with a specialist. I made an appointment with a doctor to review the findings, and he indeed appeared a little concerned. He ordered that I complete an MRI. Thus was the beginning of my lag error. The radiologist reported that my MRI indicated a high probability of cancer. Back at my specialist’s office, the next step was to acquire a set of biopsies from the tissue. After an uncomfortable procedure, I was sent home to wait for the results.

We dreaded every minute of our lag error. We ceased preparations of going to Hawaii. We tried, with great difficulty, to push the mission to the back or our minds. We avoided talking about our mission if possible. If someone asked if we were excited, or how we were doing, we side-stepped the topic as quickly as possible. We didn’t want to engage anyone in our situation. It was deeply saddening for us. I wasn’t upset about the possibility of cancer, its treatment, or my probable decline in general health as much as that this might mean the end to our plans to fulfill the mission.

To our tremendous relief and joy, the pathology report came back with all tissue samples benign for cancer. My doctor gave me a clean bill of health and his blessing to go off and serve the people of Hawaii. The lag error had been cancelled, and we are now allowed to re-cue for the continuation to Take Flight in this next grand journey.

Lag errors seem built into the system to protect us, and to protect others around us. They give us opportunity to reflect on what is most important in life and remind us of our humanity. I’m grateful my lag error raised the flag for a potential problem. I’m more grateful that it resolved so easily and blessed us with a glorious warmth and peace. We are moving forward once again, and we seem to be back on track. We are now down to 76 days before our departure, and all systems are GO.

Focusing on the Mission and not the Destination

Basalt cliffs and trees on the North Shore of Oahu

When we tell others that we are serving a mission in Hawaii, the immediate response is, “Oh, that sounds fun, more like a vacation”. In truth, even to ourselves at times, it almost seems too good to be true. Throughout my life Hawaii was always the preeminent vacation destination: white sandy beaches, palm trees blowing in a gentle breeze, the smell of tropical flowers, and the taste of fresh pineapple. I remember writing a report in grade school about Hawaii. It was the first time I had studied the island nation. I had romantic visions of the volcanic origins and its native inhabitants. It was a land so far away and different than anything I could imagine at the time. I visited Hawaii as a teenager. We went there on a family vacation and stayed for almost two weeks. We did all the things a traveler would do back in the 1970’s. I even had a surfing lesson, although I never succeeded in standing upright on my surfboard. Later in life, I returned to Oahu and spent a summer working at the Polynesian Cultural Center as a lighting designer in the Pacific Theatre. I was hired to light the show, Horizons. It was 1995, and I spent almost an entire summer on the island.

I would guess that most people who travel to Hawaii only spend one or two weeks before returning to the mainland, the sole purpose of the trip being to “vacation”. I think it is built into our psyche to accept that the purpose of those islands is to vacation, much like a visit to Disneyland, or to any other resort. When I spent my summer there and I broke the two-week threshold, I began falling into routines that patterned my everyday life at home. Some of the newness wore away and I stopped feeling like I was on holiday. I had work to do, and sometimes my work seemed as difficult or even harder than at home. And I was no longer on “vacation”.

We will be living in Laie Hawaii for 23 months. It will become our home. When we submitted our application to serve a mission, it was never with the intent to go on vacation. We would have gone anywhere in the world and committed to any number of mission duties. It just so happened that the Polynesian Cultural Center was looking for a Theatre and Lighting Specialist, something I had done throughout my life as a career. I am grateful to once again apply the skills I practiced for nearly 45 years of my life. The show currently running has years of life left in it. I am not going to help create a new production. I suspect my time in Hawaii will be spent in some sort of mentoring capacity, helping the employees and students who work at the Center better understand the art and craft of theatre. More importantly I will be a missionary. As such, I hope my roll will involve much more of an intimate relationship with those whom I cross paths. I will be commissioned to bear witness of Jesus Christ in all my daily tasks of life. I think I will take upon me the admonition of Isaiah, to “Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees” (Isaiah 35:3). In my case, I’ll be looking for opportunities to serve within my circle of influence within the theatre world. I may find those who need a friendly smile and a kind word among the cast and crew backstage, or it could be a visiting patron. No doubt the Lord may place someone in my path at any given moment of the day, from attending church on Sundays to shopping for groceries on our preparation day. The opportunities could be infinite. It’s the mindset that I have to adopt.

Lastly, it has been my experience that being in the service of God has never been easy. Every venture time when I have applied my talents and skillset to churchwork has been met with the greatest trials of my life. It’s almost as if God expects I make an appropriate sacrifice to complete the work and receive His blessings. There is a sanctification process I must pass through when engaged in the work of the Lord. So often in life I have found these times the hardest and most painful passages I’ve ever walked. They were the times I felt my soul about to tear within me. I am brought to tears, and I see my flaws and weaknesses. But along with that comes the growth and the increase of knowledge and wisdom. I’ve said a thousand times after passing through such a trial, “though I would never choose to go through that again, I would never trade the experience away for anything in the world.” I expect our mission to be hard. I hope it to be hard because I want to grow. I think I would be sad if I came home in two years refreshed from the “vacation”, but essentially the same person I was before I left. I want to be a better person. I want my Heavenly Father to teach me in a personal manner, which only comes through service in His workforce. I want to strengthen someone whose hands might be weak, or who stumbles because of feeble knees. I want the soles of my shoes worn out in His service.

For all who think we are on vacation, consider what we leave behind: leisure time with friends and family, daily activities at our choosing, the comforts of our own home, and the gentle life of retirement. We trade that all away to serve a mission at our own expense on a distant island in the South Pacific. What do we get out of it? We’ll know in two years. When I served my first mission in 1977-79, a member of my home congregation wrote to me soon after I arrived in Italy. She said, “Don’t go out seeking blessings for Michael Handley; go out solely for the purpose of serving someone else and you will be richly blessed”. Thank you LeVey Call for that reminder. It is our intention to lose ourselves in the work, whatever that may be and with whomever we find ourselves with. 

118 Days to be Ready

We received our assignment to serve as missionaries at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii on April 19. We report to the Missionary Training Center in Provo on Aug. 15. Between those two dates are 118 days to get ready. On the surface that seems like ample time. Already 8 days have slipped past, and I believe time will continue to move quicker the closer we get to departure. Here is what we will be doing in the following weeks and months:

Medical: Prior to submitting our application, we both needed physicals and dental checkups. For the most part, these were routine visits with our physicians. In my bloodwork, an anomaly occurred that is a small concern, and I am seeing a specialist to make sure there is no condition that will interfere with my ability to work. Virginia is getting additional care done on one knee, like oiling a squeaking joint on the Tinman. We thought we had all the necessary immunizations according to the preparation packet. Once we received our call, we learned that a pneumonia vaccination was recommended. Since we are in the 60-year bracket, we’ve always assumed we were both immunized for measles, mumps, and rubella as children. With no ability to produce vaccination dates, we had that shot repeated. Other than a follow-up cleaning with the dentist before we go, and whatever the specialist decides to do with me, we should be done with medical.

Putting our House in Order: Our second son will be staying in our home with his family while we are gone. We planned to move our personal belongings to the basement so they could have the master bedroom and the other upstairs bedrooms for their kids. Our daughter-in-law is 8 months pregnant, and we felt it would be better to get her settled before the delivery, so we decided to make the move this week. Starting Saturday, we emptied two bedrooms for their kids and shoved our stuff into a spare room downstairs. We then moved the kids upstairs. That took all day. On Monday of this week, we moved everything out of the master bedroom and piled it in the living room, kitchen, dining room, and family room. That allowed us to begin moving our son and his wife up from the basement. By Monday evening our home looked like a shipwreck. It was as if someone had turned our home upside down and shook it vigorously, or like a bomb went off, and there were no survivors. We worked through the piles and heaps yesterday and gradually we are finding order.

Wardrobe: It’s not uncommon to see missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints walking two by two through almost any city or town in the world, usually wearing a suit, white shirt and tie for men, and dresses for women. That is not our mission. Our mission is not a conventional proselyting mission. I will be spending a lot of time working backstage in the Pacific Theatre. We will likely have other assignments at the Center doing public relations work, hosting, or teaching the public. Backstage clothing for me is black slacks and black polo. Black is the traditional color for stagehands. Other assignments at the Center will require slacks and an aloha shirt. At home, my normal dress is tee-shirt and shorts if it is summer, and plaid flannel shirts and jeans in the winter. Needless to say, I have nothing in my wardrobe to help me fit into the Polynesian environment. We both have a lot of shopping to do from footwear to shirts, slacks, skirts, and other items. I will need a suit to wear on Sundays and other mission-related meetings. I’m not sure if I can make an existing suit work or if I’ll be shopping for a new one. Other than clothing, our needs will be simple for the next two years. The mission will place us in a modestly furnished apartment with most of what we need by way of cooking equipment. There will be the odd item here and there we’ll purchase after we arrive, but we won’t be living extravagantly by any means.

Training: I retired in January of 2021. That and the theatres being closed for most of 2020 means that I haven’t worked on stage for over two years. I need to brush up my computer programming skills. The PCC is operating technology that didn’t exist when I stopped working in 2020. That means I have a lot of training to complete in the next few months. My former assistant will be taking me into the lab and coaching me on the new technology through most of May.

Other Things to do: Among these activities, I still have a garden to plant and a yard to care for during the summer. In May, we have two grandchildren being born, one to be birthed in our own home. We anticipate being needed here and there as these two grandsons arrive. We would like to make a quick getaway or two in the Scamp, but that is secondary to everything else going on. I’ll have to meet with our accountant to figure out how to manage taxes while we are away, change mail delivery, deal with cars being left behind, a family wedding in July, regular church assignments, the occasional babysitting of grandkids. And then there is always life that gets in the way with a thousand distractions we can’t plan for. We’ll be busy for sure. In many ways, I hope our lives slow down once we leave home. We’ll need the rest.

Going on a Mission

For a while, I was planning to title this blog post something about a course correction, or a change in direction. That would imply however, that we were already on a course and following a direction, neither would be accurate. It’s true that Virginia and I have compiled a bucket list of activities we would like to check off one day. At the top of the list is visiting all the national parks in the country. Most of those could be reached while we traveled the backroads of America pulling our Scamp trailer behind us. We started that journey last year and saw most of the parks in the West: Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona. We had a great time. We found that we could live comfortably in 70 sq. ft. of space for extended periods of time.

After a while however, we started feeling restless. As fun as it was to visit new places and explore the many wonderful outdoor spaces, we began wondering if this were all we would do the remainder of our lives. Something was missing. We loved the mountains, forests, streams, and meadows, but we weren’t connecting to people, serving others, and developing spiritually. We’ve been home most of winter because we learned it takes a lot of dedication and work to stay warm in our little trailer. We spent a month in Arizona earlier this year but spent most of our time sitting in the sun reading books. Nothing wrong with relaxing, but again, we asked ourselves is this it for the rest of our lives. I’m 63, and I hope to have a few more decades of living still.

Upon serious introspection, and promptings of the Spirit, we decided it was time we submit an application to our church to serve a fulltime service mission. Typically, when one does this, it is with the faith that one is willing to go anywhere and do anything. There are opportunities to request areas that might take advantage of professional skills and talents. But in general, we agreed to place ourselves in the Lord’s hands, and go where He would have us serve.

So, instead of writing about a course correction, I have likened this to embarking on a journey, or a pilgrimage wherein we are searching for deeper meaning to life while serving others in a distant land. It is not about changing course but engaging life and applying ourselves to the betterment of others.

Until now, this blog has been primarily used to exploit my photography and share our travels in the Scamp as we traveled throughout the country. For the next two years, the tone and direction of the blog will follow our journey and pilgrimage on a church service mission. In saying this, I am letting my audience know that in future writings I will not remain faith neutral. I will openly relate the spiritual experiences that Virginia and I share, our trials and how we overcome them, and also how we live as Christians in a modern world. We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We have been called to serve in the Hawaii Laie Mission on the north shore of the island of Oahu. We will primarily be working at the Polynesian Cultural Center, which is owned and operated by the church. My specific assignment will be to work as Theatre and Lighting Specialist in the Pacific Theatre and other areas of the Center. We are unsure at this time how the Center will make use of Virginia’s many talents. We look forward to the great adventures that await us.

And of course, there should be plenty of room to include photography. Hopefully we’ll witness many glorious sunrises and sunsets.

Catching up after a one year hiatus

It’s been a year since my last blog post, and the first question may be, what happened? I think there were several factors that contributed to my lack of posting. I went through a number of life adjustments in 2021, partly due to covid-19, and partly a result of a major shift in my lifestyle by retiring as a theatre lighting designer. When I retired from my university assignment, I also decided to close the photography business (at least as I had been practicing it at the time). With no income from photography, I had no resource to keep an account with Squarespace. I made a commitment to Virginia many years ago that I wouldn’t use the family budget to subsidize an expensive habit involving cameras. For the most part, I’ve kept to that promise. It’s only recently that I found a stash of savings I had put away that should float me along for the foreseeable future. Traveling in the Scamp was a lot to manage at first. We would leave home for a month at a time starting in January and traveled through difficult and challenging situations. I simply didn’t take the time to blog about it. My plate was full just keeping up with living in 75 square feet of space, trying to keep warm, learning to cook on two burners and no oven, managing personal hygiene with little or no water, and many other simple life routines. I often felt lazy in the evening. While I read a lot of books on the road and streamed quite a few movies and shows when we had signal, I didn’t have the energy to write creatively. I kept up with my personal journal, but I didn’t put the additional effort into a weekly blogpost to share with family and friends.

Front row seat to watch the churning surf at Montana de Oro State Beach in California.

So, with no funds and little energy, I allowed my account with Squarespace to lapse and instead I occasionally tossed a photo up onto Facebook or Instagram, believing that I had fulfilled my responsibility. To be honest, I get little satisfaction from most of social media. Even worse than a lack of satisfaction is the subconscious anxiety social media generates. I realized I was constantly comparing myself with others. If I saw a photograph I liked, I had to go there and capture it myself. Every cool hack of a Scamp trailer was added to my to-do list. Likewise, with gardening ideas, etc. I was never as good as the cumulative wisdom of the entirety of the internet. It’s only recently that I feel confident in the necessary life skills that speed me along my journey of discovery. I know what I want to photograph, we can articulate our own necessities in the Scamp, I can research from more credible online sites when I need help problem solving. And so, here I am, once again yearning to write about my travels and sharing my photographs along the way.

A mighty giant of the redwood forest at Jedediah Smith Redwood Grove.

We spent almost six months of 2021 on the road living out of the Scamp. We would go out for a month and then return home for a few weeks or so. While home I would work feverishly retooling, tweaking, and fine tuning our life in a small trailer. And then, back out onto the road we would go. We spent a month in Arizona because that’s where people go in winter, only to be slammed with a bitter winter snowstorm at the south rim of the Grand Canyon. We then traveled to California for a month, a month in Oregon, a month in Montana and Washington, various trips across Idaho, a month in Colorado and New Mexico, and finally another trip to Arizona to spend the Christmas holiday. We put a lot of miles on the 4-Runner and the Scamp, keeping mostly to US highways and avoiding Interstates. I only drive 60mph max because the Scamp has little wheels. We’re not in a hurry anyway.

Incoming tide at the Samuel Bordman Scenic Corridor, Oregon

We read a lot of books while we are out. I discovered Jack Kerouac this year and wish I had read his works as a younger man. I read classics from Greek and Roman philosophy, great murder mysteries of Raymond Chandler from the 1950’s, I’m working my way through a list of 100 books “every man should read”. As we travel, we often visit thrift stores where we find piles of books to add to our library. One of my favorite finds this year is a book titled The Art of Pilgrimage (maybe I’ll write more on that later). It was gifted to me by my daughter in law, who found it at a thrift store. Perhaps the greatest advantage to retiring is finding time to read. Actually, I’ve discovered two benefits of retirement, reading and sleeping. Our days on the road easily synchronize with the rhythms of the sun and I regularly get 8-9 hours of sleep each night when I only got 4-5 hours while working in the theatre. The Scamp is a restful setting for two aging road warriors.

Sunset at Bandon, Oregon

I’m including a few of my favorite photos from our travels in 2021. I’ve already begun a collection for 2022, and I hope to keep up with the writing as the weeks and months pass. I hope you enjoy the content and leave a comment if you feel inspired. I don’t want to succumb to the pressure of feeding a beast called “Blog”. My job is not to entertain you. I only want to share. Each of these posts and the accompanying photographs are pasted into my personal journal. So, more than anything, the blog is a tool I use to record our travels, the journey, the discovery, and the growth. I’m happy to share the experiences with our family, friends, and occasional stranger we pick up along the way. Happy travels to all of you. Set your sights on retirement and plan your journey.

Cascades, Going to the Sun Road, Glacier National Park, Montana

We were not dry for even five minutes while camped in Olympic National Park, Washington.

Mount Hood sunrise, Lost Lake, Oregon

Morning light at Palouse Falls, Idaho

What We Learned After a Month on the Road

For years, Virginia and I have dreamed of life after retirement. That dream included travels across the country to visit our national parks and monuments. We also have plans to travel internationally. In preparation for our cross-country adventures, we purchased a small travel trailer called a Scamp, (we named her Betty Lou). We knew there would be a learning curve associated with this new life. Other than a few weekend trips here and there, we never attempted long-term living away from home. This last month has been a major shake-down trek to see if we can function comfortably and sanely together. Like the image above, this trip was an arch, or a bridge, between an old life and new. Along the way we met minor failures and discovered many weaknesses. But more importantly, we learned that this is a lifestyle we can easily embrace. In some ways, it is unlike anything we ever attempted before. In this blog post I will share some of the main areas of growth.

Sometimes it’s hard not to compare ourselves to other campers.

We chose a Scamp trailer because it fits our ethos. We are not hard-core minimalists, but we tend to resonate with simple living on a small scale. A Scamp trailer has everything we need and not too much more. Sometimes we pull up next to a big rig like the one above and wonder what we would do with all that space. For over 30 years we camped in a conventional tent and slept on the ground. It’s a luxury to now have a bed to sleep on (even though it is only 44 inches wide) for the two of us. We enjoy the warmth the Scamp provides in winter and the ability to shut out the noise of the campground. We do most of our cooking outdoors. We will boil water indoors, but not cook. We don’t want the oils and smells of food imbedding in everything around us. On this trip, we visited several early American ruins like the one below. We learned that each room was a dwelling place for one family. It dawned on me that our Scamp has about 75 square feet of living space. 2-3 of our Scamps would fit into one of these rooms. We are living in about the same spatial abundance as an ancient family in the Southwest.

Tuzigoot National Monument, Clarkdale, Arizona

It has been almost two weeks since we’ve had a proper shower. We’ve learned that we can keep ourselves clean with disinfectant wipes. Before we left home in early January, I built a simple shower from a pressurized garden sprayer. It works great for washing hair, and on occasion, we even made it work for a full body shower. Virginia uses it every day to rinse dishes. It’s a keeper.

Sunset at the Grand Canyon from Yavapai Point

For the last month, Virginia and I have been together for nearly the entire time, 24/7. We’ve talked to some couples entering retirement who ask how we can spend so much time together. My response is always, how can you not spend time with your best friend. About the only time we’re apart is when I leave for a few hours to make photographs. I prefer to be alone when I am with my camera. I need that time to think and process my surroundings. Other than those few hours here and there, we spend our time together. For entertainment we enjoy streaming British murder mysteries. Several times we found ourselves without cell service and not able to hotspot. In those instances, we embraced the isolation and quiet, and spent more time reading books we brought along. We have even spent several evenings playing card games. In the coming months we’ll likely look into purchasing a cell booster to improve our connect-ability.

Stormy skies over Sedona, Arizona

While we’ve traveled, we’ve kept lists of things to change or improve. I’ve purchased items on Amazon and had them sent home ahead of us. When we return home, we’ll have about two weeks to catch up on business, restock the Scamp, make some critical changes to our camping environment, and then we’ll be returning to the road. Each time out we’ll fine tune it more and more until we have this thing dialed in to our satisfaction. A few of our enhancements include:

• Improving our solar collection by adding an additional panel and making it possible to recharge our solar battery while we drive

• Adding more storage for clothing

• Changing how we stock food supplies

• Reconfiguring the 4Runner and making more efficient use of its space

• Adding storage pockets here and there and better organizing “stuff”

• Improving our outdoor cooking station

• Relamping the interior of the Scamp with warm LED lighting

4 image panoramic stitch of storming skies over Southern California

Into Stormy Weather

As much as possible, when we travel, we try to make our journey on the US highways and avoid the Interstate Freeways. When pulling the Scamp, 60mph is our maximum speed. I don’t have a strong desire to move faster. Our tires are small, and I don’t want to risk a blowout at high speed. I’m also not in a hurry. Most of the US highways have a maximum speed limit of 65mph. We’re learning that it’s not the destination but the journey that is important. The old highways follow the contour of the land. The road rises and falls with the topography and winds along rivers and valleys. The big Interstates seem an attempt to conquer the land. We want to see America, the small towns and rural places. We’ve been reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac as a family. At Christmas, we decided to start the Handley Family Reading Group. On the Road is our first novel. Virginia and I are not in search of a hedonistic lifestyle or have a desire to revert back to our teenage beatnik days and a counter-culture way of life. What resonated the most with me from Kerouac’s tale was the pull of the open road and a desire to learn what lays beyond…

Wukoki Pueblo at Wupatki National Monument, Arizona

We exited Zion National Park on the east side and returned to US89 bound for the Grand Canyon. In this instance, it was the faster route instead of the Interstate through Las Vegas. I had forgotten what a beautiful stretch of land lay between Kanab, UT and Page, Arizona. The Vermillion Cliffs were stunning in their banded cake-like layers. I didn’t have great lighting and I knew we had a long drive that day, so we enjoyed our passage without taking time to stop and photograph the scenery. I’ll be adding that area to my bucket list of places to revisit. I want to stay overnight in order to photograph the mocha-colored hills in sunset/sunrise lighting. On our way to Flagstaff, we stopped at Wupatki National Monument and Sunset Crater Volcanic Monument. Both monuments offered great viewpoints and short hikes.

Wupatki National Monument, Arizona

The Grand Canyon is beautiful in winter when crowds pressure is much lower. We camped at the Yavapai RV Village because winter storms were forecast. We wanted electricity so we could use a space heater to help keep us warm through the night. I figured with the storms we wouldn’t have enough solar rays to recharge our batteries. The standing air temperature wasn’t bad, but the wind chill was bitter cold. Still, I managed to be out for sunsets and sunrises every day. I’ve always wanted to photograph the Grand Canyon under winter conditions, and this was my chance.

A winter mantle of snow on the Grand Canyon at dawn

Sunrise from Mather Point, Grand Canyon, Arizona

Hoar frost and Pinyon Pine, south rim Grand Canyon, Arizona

We initially planned to remain at the canyon for five nights, but the weather was looking worse and worse. Not wanting to get stuck for an indefinite time, we decided to drop lower to sit out this storm cycle. We passed through Flagstaff and then descended to the Cottonwood area where we have been camped at Dead Horse Ranch State Park for the last week.

Tuzigoot National Monument, Arizona

Montezuma National Monument, Arizona

While in Cottonwood, we’ve visited Tuzigoot and Montezuma’s Castle National Monuments. These were great locations to learn about the early inhabitants of this region and see the structures they built and how they lived. The storms have come in wave after wave and we have ducked in and out of cover and sometimes hiked in the rain. One of our challenges this week is learning to control the condensation in the Scamp. The windows weep constantly, and our mattress is damp on the bottom where it contacts the cold fiberglass. We purchased a set of Dri-Deck rubber tiles, a product made for boats. We interlocked the tiles and cut them to match the rounded corners of the trailer bed platform. The tiles raise the mattress 9/16ths inch and allow air to pass under and the mattress so it can breathe. We uncovered our roof fan and programmed it to outflow at 10%. We also have a dehumidifying bag hung inside to help pull moisture out of the air, and most of the windows are covered with insulation. This is keeping the inside much drier. Tomorrow we drop down to a lower elevation further south where we should find warmer weather.

Red rock and approaching snow storm in Sedona, Arizona

Last light before the storm, Sedona, Arizona

A New Chapter, A New Journey

At the first of this year, I ended my lifelong career working in the theatre. Now begins a new chapter in our lives. Several years ago, in preparation for this time, we purchased a 16’ Scamp travel trailer. We’ve been learning the ins and outs of life on the road by going on short trips. Now we have embarked on our first major trek. We left our home in Orem, Utah a week ago and drove to Zion National Park. From here we travel on to warmer climate in Arizona. We plan to be gone for four weeks. When we return home, it will only be a short time before we head out once again.

Preparing the Scamp for our first month-long journey. We’ve made numerous trips on a long weekend and even for 5-7 days. This is our first time on the road for a month.

This will likely offer me an opportunity to devote more time to the blog as I find more time and vistas to photograph along the way. I also want to share my experiences in retirement and how we’ve learned to adjust from living in a four-level split home on a quarter acre of land to the 70 square-feet of space the Scamp offers us. So far, we’ve found that we are surprisingly comfortable.

Winter in Zion is a unique time. The leaves have mostly fallen and there is often ice to be found along the shores of the Virgin River. The crowds are largely gone during midweek and there is a beautiful serenity in the park, especially at this early hour.

Usually when we visit a National Park, we feel rushed to maximize the time we have and fill every minute with hikes and activities. With no schedule to keep, our days are long and slow. We pass the afternoon sitting in camp reading a book or visiting. I usually wake early and drive up the canyon to shoot. After an hour or two, I return to camp where Virginia has a hot breakfast waiting for me. Bedtime comes early once the sun goes down. One of the first advantages to retirement I noticed was that I began sleeping better, longer, and deeper. Where I used to get by on 4-5 hours of sleep a night while under the stress of production work, I now sleep a good 8-9 hours, and even get a nap in at times.

All seasons are beautiful in Zion. Winter allows one to see the structure of the park that is often hidden at other times of the year.

Sundays are a day of even greater rest as we tend to our church worship. We may take a walk in the afternoon, write letters, catch up with our children’s lives, or other family matters. This is a wonderful time for us.

I wonder if this stately gentleman feels much like I do at this stage of life called retirement.

Ice Blocks on Utah Lake

We’ve been under an inversion for a few days and I haven’t felt much like making photographs. There wasn’t nice light to chase and it was too cold to stand out in a field otherwise. I’ve been out a few times since Christmas, but there hasn’t been anything blog worthy. Yesterday, the air cleared, and the inversion lifted. I took the opportunity to visit Utah Lake State Park to see the ice mounding on the eastern side of the lake. It’s been building for a few weeks now and I’ve seen a lot of photographs on my social media feeds. I wanted to venture out onto the lake surface and shoot isolated fragments of ice. I took one step out and immediately broke through and sank to my ankle. Not otherwise prepared with waders, I was confined to shooting from shoreline. It was precarious for a 62-year-old man tottering around on the slick ice blocks with a backpack full of camera gear and flailing a tripod in the air. Other than breaking through the lake surface, there were no other mishaps. It is rare that I find an occasion to use my ultra-wide lens. Since it was the ice blocks I was after, I chose to drop as low to the surface as possible and emphasize their mass and grandeur. The setting sun created a nice focal point and the contrasting colors of the warm sunset and cool shadows made nice compositional elements. These are great winter scenes to add to my portfolio.

Utah Lake ice sculptures

Sun setting in the southwest sky at Utah Lake State Park

Refracted light in ice blocks at Utah Lake

Seagulls on Utah Lake

Autumn Returns to the Wasatch Mountains

Fall has arrived in the Wasatch Front of Utah. It’s a beautiful time of the year, especially in a year fraught with so much stress and turmoil. My blogging has slowed to a crawl over the course of the summer. While I’ve ventured out on occasion to make photographs here and there, mostly I’ve stayed put at home, waiting out the passing of the pandemic. I’m anxious for a vaccine and for life to return to a more normal state. I don’t believe we will go back to what it was before. I think that would be a sad situation, to not have learned from one to the great trials of our time. I expect a new normal and a better life. I have an itch that is getting harder and harder not to scratch. I have a deep yearning to be on the road and exploring new worlds and photographing what I find. Over the summer, we continued working on our travel trailer. We christened our home on wheels, the Betty Lou, after my mother. Soon, we’ll be rambling over blue highways and traveling the backroads of America, visiting as many National Parks and Monuments as we can string together. I hope you will join in our journey as you read my blog and look at the photographs. Please share with us your favorite outdoor hangouts so we can add them to our ever-growing bucket list of places to visit.

Mount Timpanogos from the Ridge Trail Complex. Hazy skies are due to the smoke drifting in from the west coast.

To acquire the image above, I began hiking at 6:00am Friday. I would have left sooner, but years ago I had an encounter with a moose in the dark and it scared the bejeebies out of me (I’m sure he was a carnivorous moose). In the dark, that same moose could be hiding behind any tree along the trail. With the sky turning grey and getting lighter every minute, I felt safer. Of course, leaving that late I would miss the first warm rays of sunlight striking the peak of Mount Timpanogos. As it turned out, we were under a heavy layer of smoke, presumably from the terrible wildfires in California and Oregon. I was skunked out of a sunrise anyway, so there was no point in getting to this magic spot any earlier.

The maples are the first to turn color and turn the hills to rusty oranges and reds.

I love the fall colors here. Before the aspen turn, we drift into a patchwork of oranges and reds as the maple, oak, and ashes begin their change. The hills are a patchwork of brilliant colors that remind me of nature’s quilt block. It’s like a blanket that lays across the hills and up the slopes of mountains.

Wildflowers still bloom in late summer on the Wasatch Back.

Last year, we didn’t have stunning colors. An early freeze fell across the state and stopped our autumn showcase long before it ever began. I wasn’t expecting much this year because it has been a long hot summer. Utah is officially in a severe draught. The colors seem a bit muted over prior years, but I won’t complain about the vivid colors I’ve enjoyed this weekend.

Provo Canyon color with trees backlit with the morning sun.

We have trips planned in the coming weeks and months, so I hope to return to a stronger pattern of blogging, writing, and mostly photography. If you live in Utah, now is the time to get and enjoy that drive across the mountains. Enjoy!

It has been a few years since we’ve seen these rich fall colors. Glad they made an appearance this year.

Spring Runoff

It is late spring in Utah, and the rivers are running high as usual for this time of year. There is a decent snowpack, but the last three months have been mostly dry. We’ve had a lot of rain this weekend and that will raise the level in the annual rain bucket. When you live in the arid southwest, you appreciate every storm that passes by. I’m venturing out more and more as the restrictions loosen with the virus and the weather permits. I went on a few hikes in the local mountains and canyons this week hoping to capture the feeling of the value of moisture in our desert landscape. It may seem like I am contradicting myself when I write of hikes in the mountains and the effect of water in our desert environment. The mountains and their snowpack are our primary reservoirs. These rivers and waterfalls eventually flow to the valley floors and feed into Utah Lake and then the Great Salt Lake. Before they reach the desert floor however, they enhance the mountain landscape with their fluid beauty. The deep rich green of the forest canopy and the lush meadows are teaming with wildlife. Soon the wildflowers will be in full bloom. I hope you enjoy these images of our current season.

This is a closer image of Upper Falls. The concrete collection structure can be seen at its base.

Down river 1/2 mile from Upper Falls is Bridal Veil Falls. This is a favorite walk for families throughout the year.

The snowpack on Mount Timpanogos drains from all around the mountain. Numerous falls and cascades flow down from the upper reaches of the mountain. This cascade is found on the Aspen Groves trail.

Provo River is the main drainage through my part of the valley. This water will eventually end up in Utah Lake about 8 miles away.

A soggy weekend in our state as a cold system has moved overhead for the last three days. This image is from the top of Rock Canyon, east of Provo City. In the upper right corner, are the vertical beds of rock marking the Wasatch Fault.

A fresh dusting of snow up above and a light drizzle of rain in the hills below. The fresh spring green dresses out the forest canopy. Soon the meadows will fill with wildflowers.

In Search of Toquerville Falls

I had to make a quick overnight trip to St. George, Utah yesterday to help my in-laws get their swamp cooler running in preparation for a big heat up coming this weekend. I haven’t done much hiking because of the virus situation and so I thought I would take the opportunity to explore a bit in the desert landscape of southern Utah. I’ve seen pictures on the internet of Toquerville Falls for several years and I’ve wanted to see and shoot it. The problem with this particular waterfall is its remote location and difficulty accessing it. I did a little research and found conflicting information, but in general, it didn’t seem overly hard. I got off I-15 on the Toquerville exit, drove into town and turned off on Spring Creek Rd. At the end of the pavement on the edge of town, I encountered a sign warning of the “Extreme Rough Road” conditions. I was driving my Toyota 4-runner, but I didn’t want to risk damage to my vehicle if it wasn’t necessary. A local informed me that it was only a two-mile hike. I figured I could easily do two miles, even if it was in the middle of the day during a building heatwave in the Utah desert. I parked my car on the side of the road, put on my pack, grabbed the sunscreen, and started walking.

Always be aware of extreme warning signs, especially when they are topped with razor wire!

My two-mile hike stretched to three miles, and then to four. It was a tough climb up a gnarly dirt road. After a while, another local drove past on her way down the mountain and stopped to show me a shortcut on an even worse jeep track off to my right. She assured me I would save lots of time and enjoy an easier path. Without a map in hand and not really knowing where I was going, I took her direction and began my descent down the mountain towards La Verkin Creek. It was a rough trail of scree rock and powdered dirt. Another mile passed underfoot, and it was getting hotter in the early afternoon sun.

Another view of my lonely surroundings

The landscape was desolate and beautiful, but I found it hard to enjoy as my concern grew that I was in a remote area of the state with no one around me, and no one knowing I was there. I only had one bottle of water and no indication of where this waterfall was.

I finally reached the river and began threading my way upstream crossing through the water several times as I continued up the old jeep track. Checking my cell phone, I noticed I still had a weak signal to the outside world. The thought occurred to me that perhaps my wilderness guide daughter might be able to help me out. I wondered if it would be possible to send her my GPS location and have her tell me if I was nearing the waterfall. Sadly, the signal wasn’t strong enough to get to her in a timely manner. After I figured I had gone 5.5 miles on a 2-mile hike, and I was hot and tired with 5.5 miles to go on my return 2-mile hike, I was ready to concede defeat. The last thing I wanted to do was be the headline for another search and rescue effort.

By now my feet were feeling sunburned because I chose to wear my Chaco sandals for the first time of the year. I was hot, dirty, and tired, and I had a mountain to climb on my way out. I was disappointed to not find the waterfall on my first attempt at Toquerville Falls. When I climbed up out of the canyon, I had enough signal to exchange numerous texts with my daughter and her husband. They could see exactly where I was on the map and I enjoyed a nice conversation with them about my adventures. I think on my next attempt to find this falls, I’ll take two seasoned guides with me ; )

Luckily, I parked near Ash Creek. When I finally returned to my car after my jaunt through the desert, I enjoyed a much deserved soak in the cool water to wash the 10 miles of dust off my feet and legs.

Farewell to Social Media, Hello Strawberry

In the time of covid-19 with so much uncertainty swirling around our lives, many are unemployed, or in my case, I’m employed, but my employer is having me stay home. I have several projects I work on from my personal computer, but I still have substantial portions of my day at my disposal. We practice social distancing as asked, and for the most part, we are good citizens who remain at home. Luckily, I have a backyard and garden where I can spend much of my leisure time. Last week, I spent an hour considering the accomplishments of my day, or days (or is it daze?), and wondered if I’m making the best use of my copious amounts of spare time. The sad realization is that I was spending (or squandering) hours of my time each day on social media; five minutes here and a half hour there. I always took time to check in at night before going to bed and it was usually the first thing I did in the morning. I would come in at lunch and make a salad, and while I ate, I scrolled through more feeds; Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. Even with all this extra time at my disposal, I was horrified at the realization at what I had become. I was following feeds that were borderline corrupting my thinking. In fact, I began asking myself the question several weeks ago about several feeds, “Where is this leading me?” It was time to disconnect. I’ve deleted accounts before, usually arriving at the same place I was at on Friday. It only took about ten minutes to disconnect myself from Facebook and Instagram and delete those accounts. I kept YouTube because I do get a lot of enjoyment watching photography and gardening videos, and also America/Britain’s Got Talent. I didn’t feel they were leading me into “darkness”. After that 10-minute purge, I immediately began feeling relieved and happier. I no longer had anyone to keep up with. No compulsion to sink back into the mindless vortex of digital babel. The best part of the whole deal, I now have an extra two hours of each and every day back.

The Aspen forest at Strawberry is just beginning to emerge from winter and pushing out tender young leaves, once again forming a forest canopy.

The restrictions have begun easing a bit in Utah. We still need to practice social distancing, but if one is creative, one can still get out and see the beautiful world around us. Our son has been living fulltime in an RV with his family and they move around the state boondocking on federal land. The maximum stay is 14 days in one location. This week they moved to Strawberry Reservoir, only an hour away from our home. Since they were secluded in their campsite, and the maximum gathering group size has been raised to 20, we figured we could venture out in our Scamp and spend a few nights with them and see our two grandkids. It was wonderful to expand our horizons after two months of lockdown at home in Orem. Of course, I took my camera with me. With kids going to bed at 8:30 just at sunset, I grabbed my camera and took off for the nearby aspen forests to shoot. I also made it out each morning for sunrise while everyone else slept in. By the time I returned to the Scamp, grandkids were beginning to stir, and my wife had hot water ready to make a cup of tea. It was a wonderful way to break up our week.

In the lower washes, willows, ashes, and boxelders glow in the light of a setting sun. The willows in particular are beautiful with the smooth yellow bark catching the last rays of day.

The skunk cabbages are beginning to emerge in the meadows. Rendered in black and white, these plants make beautiful studies in soft tones and highlights.

The aspen forests are just beginning to wake up around our 8,000’ elevation campsite. The newly emerging leaves are soft velvety green and the flowers, when backlit, set the forest ablaze almost making it seem it was covered in frost. I’ve decided that an aspen forest has many faces. By far my favorite look is in the fall when the leaves are glowing in autumn colors. Winter is nice to see the thin spindly branches and the tall slender trunks. This time of year is also interesting as a green glow seems to hover over the forest.

When backlit by the morning sun, the Aspen forest takes on a quality reminiscent of fall. The new leaves sparkle and shine in light yellows and greens. This is another three image panoramic composition.

Shooting directly into the rising sun, which is just out of frame on the top, the backlit Aspen flowers almost look like frost in the atmospheric light.

Another three image panoramic composition stitched together, looking directly east into the rising sun.

A lot of snowmelt will be coming down from the higher slopes, watering the meadows and giving life to the wildflowers that are soon to follow.

What to Do During a Pandemic

Like most people these days, I am in self-imposed isolation, socially distancing, and confined to my ¼ acre bit of space called home. I pass my time while waiting for this evil virus to pass with reading, writing, gardening, and now a bit of photography. I seem to have more time on my hands than ever before, so why not put some time into the blog? I’ll not likely be making images of grand landscapes in the near future, although I may venture into the hills nearby on occasion. For now, I’ll share a few scenes I found around my home this morning and hope you take a few moments to enjoy the beauty of this season. It seems the earth isn’t threatened by the virus. We have storms passing through this week washing the landscape clean and encouraging bulbs to break forth from winter hibernation.

These Daffodils were planted in the fall. Several years ago, I came across a miniature variety called Tete-a-Tete. They only grow 6-8” tall and sport a small flower amid a grassy stem. I’m unsure why I’m drawn to this variety. It naturalizes well and will continue to spread through my garden in the years to come. It is one of the first flowers to bloom in the spring and a welcome sight at the end of a long and cold winter.

The fairy that watches over the waterfall.

I also found a garden fairy. Actually, we found the fairy at a local thrift store along with numerous other knick-knack fairy-like objects. The idea was to generate a playful imagination environment for the grandkids to play with when they are over. We hide the fairy objects around the yard and under plants in the hopes the grandkids will take hold and explore the yard more. We don’t care if the objects break, they only cost 50-75 cents each.

20 square feet of salad garden planted in January.

Lastly, this is my salad garden I planted in January. We were still blanketed in snow and quite cold overnight. The secret to this little patch was building a cold-frame lid for the garden bed. The area is four ft. by five ft., so I have 20 sq. ft. of salad garden. It contains a half dozen varieties of winter lettuce that survive the cold well (Landis, Black Seeded Simpson, Forellenschluss, Red Salad Bowl, and Parris Island Cos), spinach, tatsoi, mizuna (Japanese greens), claytonia (Miner’s Lettuce), arugula, kale, parsley, radicchio, red-veined sorrel, and mache. One day in February when the air temperature was in the 30’s, under the lid of the cold frame, the temperature was 103°f. I had to vent the garden bed on any day the sun was out in order not to cook my tender plants. With so much time on my hands, many more of the beds are also planted. The beets, radishes, turnips, peas have sprouted, and the cabbages, collards, broccolis, kales, and onions have been moved from under my grow lights in the basement to the garden beds. I’m currently hardening off four rhubarb plants and four thymes that will soon be in the ground.

I hope your days of hunkering down are happy and fulfilling. Best wishes to you all at this odd set of circumstances we are under.

When Your Eye is at the Waterline...

For years I wanted to coin a quotable phrase of philosophical insight; the kind of phrase like Murphy’s Law, “If anything can go wrong, it will”,  or “Don’t put off tomorrow what you can do today”, or even “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’. I wanted to have my name attached to some memorable quote that would be known perhaps as Handley’s axiom. I pondered on this for months with no satisfying results. As hard as I might try, I couldn’t formulate an original phrase. And then one day right out of the blue, there it was, the result of an extremely trying situation, which had engulfed me. I was under tremendous pressure at work. I was feeling stress at home because of work. Nothing seemed to be going right and I felt I was sinking. The pressure was so intense in fact that it impaired my vision of seeing the end to my problem. I was not able to make an offensive plan because of my defensive position. My outlook was grim because my perspective was shallow. I couldn’t “see the forest for the trees”, and there was “no light at the end of the tunnel”. And that is when the words fell- “When your eye is at the water line, your horizon is not very far off” - what an odd quirky thought. I kind of liked it, and even though I was still stressed and “going under for the third time”, I had to take a few moments and think- when your eye is at the water line, your horizon is not very far off. I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself because I knew I had it. I remember at the time that it didn’t really help me out of my then current situation, but it did bring me some degree of satisfaction knowing that I finally had the long sought quotable quote. So, what was I thinking and feeling at the time, how have I developed this thought? Honestly, it did nothing for me at the time except create an image of myself bobbing in the water, head half submerged in a great pool of stress and self-pity. I wrote the thought on a sticky note on my computer screen at work and there it sat for many years. Most of the time I don’t see it because I am used to it being there. But every once in a while, I will clear off my workspace or rearrange my desktop and there I find it and I remind myself, I really ought to figure out what it means.

In the early morning without a breath of wind, the surface of the lake creates perfect reflections of the distant mountains.

How does one establish a horizon line? Once in an art class I learned that the level of the viewer’s eye determines the horizon. In other words, if I am six feet tall, the horizon I look at on a flat plane is about six feet high.  My grandson Gunnar, on the other hand is only about three and a half feet tall- his horizon is about three and a half feet high. How can I change my horizon, to increase my perspective? I can climb a ladder, go up a mountain, or fly in an airplane. From the top of Mt. Timpanogos, I can see from the Salt Lake Valley over to the Uinta’s, down south to Mt. Nebo and over to West Mountain and beyond. By physically raising the level of my eye, I am able to increase my perspective. What is the opposite of this perspective? What is the lowest level I can place my eye and diminish my perspective? I guess it would be to place my eyeball on the ground- not a very easy or comfortable thing to do. That is where I developed a more plausible method to diminish that perspective, by placing myself in the water and sinking my eye down to waterline.

As the sun begins to rise, the sky ignites with beautiful steaks of color.

As with each of us there is a physical body with physical parts and physical limitations, so there is also a spiritual body with spiritual and emotional capabilities.  The perspective I enjoy at my six-foot physical stature may not represent my spiritual perspective at any given time. Indeed, as I get older my kids constantly remind me that I’m shrinking. My boys tell me my spine is collapsing, that I am “over the hill” and on my way down the other side. As my perspective may diminish in one way, I have long felt that it is growing in another. The challenges I face in life, including those my children give me, provide an ever-increasing perspective of the landscape of life and my purpose here. Perhaps my spiritual perspective is ten feet high, or maybe even thirty feet, or even a hundred. How would one quantify a spiritual and emotional perspective?

Perhaps my favorite image of the shoot, the reflection in the water creates a wonderful abstract impression.

As I stood on the shore of the Great Salt Lake Friday near the Bonneville Salt Flats, thoughts of my physical and spiritual perspectives came flooding back to me. Here I was on the edge of a vast sea of water with a distinct horizon in the distance. How could I use my camera to capture the feeling of my eye at the waterline? Try as I might, I couldn’t achieve the perspective I was after without placing my camera physically in the water. I knew the ice-cold briny saltwater of the Great Salt Lake would be devastatingly corrosive to my camera body. The only way to truly capture the idea of sinking would be to half submerge my camera below the surface of the water. I’ll have to return someday with a sealed underwater housing to truly see what that would appear as. In the meantime, I’ll always know what I felt emotionally when my perspective has left me bobbing for the vista when my eye was at the waterline and my horizon not very far off.

Winter Photography

I’ve mentioned this before in previous posts, probably almost any time I’ve written in winter; this is not my best season for photography. I’m not ashamed to say I’m a warm weather kind of guy. But I live in Utah and that carries with it some measure of frosty weather. It’s difficult to balance appropriate dress for the climate with the functionality of managing photographic equipment in the outdoors. I hate operating the controls on my camera with stiff and numb fingers. I purchased a great pair of Vallerret gloves this season that allows the fingertips of my index fingers and thumbs to pop out. My fingers stay warm, but it still adds bulk to work around and I invariably still need to put my hand in my pocket to retrieve something and the glove is still bothersome. Also, photography is not necessarily an active sport. Setting my camera on a tripod and waiting for the light to emerge doesn’t always keep my circulation flowing. It’s cold standing on the edge of a frozen lake before sunrise when it is 16°f, even when I’m wearing 4 layers of high-tech insulated clothing.

Winter sunrise from the shore of Utah Lake

There are advantages however to this time of the year and they will likely continue pulling my lazy butt out of bed long before sunrise on a February morning. Often, landscapes are simpler under a blanket of white snow. An otherwise chaotic scene is rendered cleaner with less distractions. There is less competition in a brilliantly colored sunrise sky when played against a landscape of white snow or ice-covered lake. The warm colors of sunrise and sunset also contrast with the cool tones of winter in a pleasing manner. If nothing else, those warm tones somehow in turn warm my shivering bones.

Late afternoon along the Provo River between storms.

This past week, I managed to be out for several sunsets and sunrises, and each turned out rewarding experiences. Saturday morning, I was tempted to visit the Bonneville Salt Flats, but instead opted for a nearby shoot across Utah Lake. I wasn’t disappointed in our local landscape. There is so much beauty in our valleys and mountains. The best aspect of shooting at this time of year is the convenience that sunrises and sunsets occur at reasonable times of the day. I often arise at 3:00am in the summer to catch a sunrise, but then, I only have to dress in shorts and a tee-shirt. There are always tradeoffs.

Fire and ice along the shore of Utah Lake.

While I was photographing the image of fire and Ice, I began hearing odd and eery noises in the lake. I detected that the ice was beginning to shift and burp. Within about 15 minutes, the ice buckled up and created this mass of ice plates.

Perhaps my favorite image of the day. The sun lifted above the mountains on the southern end of the lake first and lit a band of mist rising from the lake. The reflection of the clouds in the ice and water was fascinating.

It's Cold Outside

And so, it is winter, my most difficult season. It’s as though I’m out of practice using my camera with little motivation to leave my warm home and venture into below freezing temperatures. The best images are at the beginning of day or the end, never when the air is slightly warmed by the low hanging sun. This weekend I pushed against the comfort zone and forced my lazy butt out the door. I drove up Provo Canyon to Deer Creek Reservoir to photograph the backside of Mt. Timpanogos at sunset. I dressed moderately warm and parked by the meadows on the northeast side of the lake. When I stepped out of the car, I faced a cold brisk wind coming off the water. Despite the chill in my bones, I trudged through the snow to the shoreline and set up my tripod. It wouldn’t have felt bad had there been no wind.

Deer Creek Reservoir looking north towards the Provo River drainage

It was a lovely evening and I rather enjoyed watching the sun set for over an hour. I made many images, but my favorites came towards the end of my time when the mountain was rimmed in warm glowing clouds. Because of the wind, the surface of the water was choppy and contrasty. The later I waited, the lower the light level, which allowed me to slow my shutter speed considerably. I added a three-stop graduated neutral density filter to hold back the sky and a six-stop neutral density filter to slow the overall exposure. Holding back that much light, allowed me to use shutter speeds of 15 and 30 seconds. That trick smoothed the surface of the water and gave a silky quality to the clouds. I’m pleased with the images I made.

Deer Creek Reservoir, looking towards Provo Canyon. The southern shoulder of Mount Timpanogos is on the right.

Saturday morning, I awoke early and left my home at 6:30. I drove to the north shore of Utah Lake in the hopes of capturing a brilliant sunrise. Unfortunately, a storm front moved in overnight and obscured any chance of a sunrise. I waited an hour for the clouds to part, but it never happened. With flat and dull lighting, I worked on several compositions of reeds in the water and ice in the distant background. I like the simple Zen-like quality of these images. I’m glad I made the effort to leave my warm bed and walk in the brisk air and enjoy the beauty of my natural world in Utah Valley.

Utah Lake in Utah Valley. This image is from the north shore looking south.

Utah Lake in Utah Valley.

Farewell to 2019

I’ve been off from shooting for almost 2 months. Between being ill, minor surgery, company, and the holidays, my camera has gathered dust in my basement office since November. Sometimes it’s hard restarting after being idle for so long. I had an idea to end the year with an image of the final sunset of 2019 paired with the first sunrise of 2020. But, since we had a snowstorm move in overnight, there was no sunrise today. Maybe when the snows clear out in another day or two, I’ll be treated to beautiful skies once again and I’ll get my sunrise shot. It snowed all day and its quite beautiful now.

Looking northwest across Utah Lake, Utah. Sorry about the jet trails. Depending on the winds, we’re either under the approach to Salt Lake international or under the departure path. Tonight the planes were departing to the south. Sigh!!!

The opening image was made on the eastern shore of Utah Lake last evening, looking south. The lake has a thin layer of ice on top, almost strong enough to support me, but not nearly thick to trust. In a few more weeks I’ll be venturing out once again to capture the beautiful ice shots where the forces of nature push up ridges on the western shore. I wish you all a happy new year. I look forward to the grand adventures that await us in the coming year.

Autumn in Zion

I’ve made three trips to Zion this fall, and maybe with a little luck, I’ll get one more visit in during the Thanksgiving break. This is a lovely time of year to be in the park. During the second half of October the number of park visitors drops significantly. Zion is one of the most visited national parks in the state. I’ve managed to get around the crowds by either visiting in remote locations or accessing the main canyon via bicycle instead of riding the shuttle. One of my favorite parts to explore is on the east side, beyond the Mt. Carmel Highway tunnels. There are many side canyons and washes that offer hours of wandering in secluded areas. I can setup my tripod and concentrate on a single vista without hordes of people mingling in the scene. I discovered a set of slot canyons this fall that I have never hiked in before and they are amazingly close to the highway.

Deep in a wash on the east side of the park.

Utah was hit with a wave of very cold arctic air early in the season. It was cold enough to arrest the usual slow transition into fall colors. Some trees jumped from lush green to dry and brown almost overnight. The maples fared better, and I still found patches of brilliant red and orange. I spent most of my time photographing intimate scenes and sometimes midground subjects. There were few grand vistas that caught my attention. I was mostly in the park during the middle of the day and while the light was good for tighter subjects, it didn’t work as well for the bigger landscapes.

Fall color in Zion wash.

I welcome your feedback if you have thoughts or ideas on what I might do differently to capture the beauty of this magnificent national park.

Vibrant red of big tooth maple in Zion wash. Roots reaching long distance to capture moisture.

Vibrant colors found in Zion wash.

Slot canyon on the east side of the park.

Not a square inch of landscape is wasted in Zion National Park.

Backlit tree and meadow in main canyon of park.

Beautiful fall day in main canyon of Zion National Park.