An intimate relationship with the landscape is a fundamental defense against loneliness . . .

"An intimate relationship with the landscape is a fundamental defense against loneliness. If you're intimate with a place and you establish an ethical conversation with it, the implication that follows is this: the place knows you're there. It feels you. You will not be forgotten, cut off, abandoned. Out of such intimacy may come a sense of belonging, a sense of not being isolated in the universe."

Barry Lopez

Photos: (Top) A pool in the Porcelain Basin section of Norris Geyser Basin; (Middle) Elk at West Thumb Geyser Basin; (Bottom) The Grand Prismatic Spring, Midway Geyser Basin. All three photos were taken in Yellowstone National Park, WY, on September 5-7, 2015

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I am available for spiritual direction / mentoring sessions via cell phone or Skype. The fee for each hour-long session is $65. If you are interested in inquiring about this, or would like to host a talk or workshop in your area, please contact me at canyonechoes@gmail.com .

In the desert, you must come with no intentions of discovery. You must overhear things instead.

"The land does not give easily.  The desert is like a boulder; you expect to wait . . . But you expect sometime it will loosen into pieces to be examined . . . You can't get at it this way.  You must come with no intentions of discovery.  You must overhear things, as though you'd come into a small and desolate town and paused by an open window . . . You have to proceed almost by accident."

Barry Lopez

Photo: Waterfall on Professor Creek in Mary Jane Canyon, Castle Valley, UT, April 21, 2012