... broke something that I need to do my writing. Once I get it fixed to the point of functioning I'll write more.

Sorry for the delay. In the meantime some bits and pieces,

"I know that you believe you
understand what you think I said,
but I'm not sure you realize that
what you heard is not what I meant."

- Robert McCloskey

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." -Rumi

peace,
d

Yesterday I shot another great interview here in Moab which fills me up to a large extent and quells any feeling of purposelessness, which is always good. Then after some sewing (mis)-adventures with the crew at the Moab Youth Garden they invited me over for dinner and birthday celebrations for Katie.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATIE!!!!

Anyway... today... there's no doubt that I'm a lightweight... I had three beers and a glass of wine last night.. and today my head is pounding like Thumper's hindquarters! Hunh wha? You know Thumper, Bambi...ughh... brain not is function...

Only solution, COFFEE!

So I head to my usual spot inside Red Rock Bakery to refuel, check some email, and drop these lines. Bob the owner of Fresh Moab Coffee (which seems to be the Moab coffee supply mainline) was kind enough to throw me one of his t-shirt's after my inquiry, since they're adorned with a dragon. Free t-shirts work well for a poor guy who lives in a van! I'm very grateful and figured the least I could do was throw out an acknowledgment of that gratitude. On the hard days like today, coffee is inspiration in a cup for me. I can be lost, dazed, confused, depressed, but after a cup of jo I'll be recharged, refreshed, refocused, infused and inspired.

So things are falling into place here. I'm wary of finding too much comfort and hence complacency since I know many places can quickly become home, and the more I feel at home in places along the way... the longer it will take to get home... although I'm not what that even means anymore.

With every place there are cracks that lead us beneath the facade, and until we find those cracks I think we're just simple transients. But in finding the cracks in a place, we change the place and I think we change ourselves. I think so many travelers can say they've been places, but never really know a place. I think to know a place it takes time and patience. I think we have to sit in a place and give it time to open up to us and I think places like people are shy. We also bring our own inhibitions to the table and I think we are often afraid of those attachments that make a place special, but it's those attachments, that while we can never fully hold onto them, fill us up, provide depth in our lives, and make life beautiful and worth living.

ughh, I tried to express myself through the mental fog ;-)
Thanks for the inspiration in a cup Bob!

peace,
d

October 5, 2008
Moab, Utah

I’m jeopardizing my sleep-spot by writing this, the glow of the computer shining through the curtains, but I had to write this!

Life is so funny sometimes. I was depressed, actually not depressed just not in the zone. When I get like that I tend to soak it up, tend to feel it all the way through, try to get outside myself and be the observer and not take it too personally, although that’s exactly what it is. Anyways that’s the place I’ve been in for the past two days.

My solar panels seem to be on their last legs, and I’ve been literally out of energy. My battery bank in the back of my van is dead and thus I haven’t been able to charge my cameras, laptop, phone, make tea (except with a burner)… nothing. On top of all this it’s been raining steady, the van is a complete disaster, I haven’t been eating write because I’m living on the ultra-cheap, and Moses stuck his head into a bee’s nest today! (don’t worry he’s fine)

Anyway… all of this gets you into a funk, until you do something about it.

I was going to plug into the Moab Youth Garden and recharge but I think the rain has kept most of the peeps laying low over the weekend. Plus this was only a temporary fix. SO… I go to Napa on Saturday and buy 20ft of wire to run from the battery under my hood to a switch by my seat, through the van, to connect to the battery bank in the rear. This way everything should charge off my alternator when the van runs.

So I tinker, toy and tuck wires away, get the whole thing set up, and turn the key. Nothing. My batteries in the back haven’t increased at all. So I mope around for the rest of the day and watch the rain fall until Sunday morning.

Sunday (today) I talk to my friend Vonda who is an osteopath up in Canada. We talk mostly about energy. She is talking about taking care of the self and how when we do so we balance our energy, and in being balanced we become conduits for healing vibes from the outside. I believe in this idea and it reflects a lot of what Morris and Betty Ann Littlewolf taught me while up on the Reservation. “The first round is always for you! Take care of yourself first, then creator can work through you.” I have been doing anything but taking care of myself this past week… just slipping a bit for some reason… getting caught up in the ego and feeling pitiful. Vonda’s advice is to ground myself.

So then I talk to my father, I explain the wiring I’m doing and how it’s not working. What does my father say, “Well are you grounded?”

Exactly… so I install a ground wire off my battery bank going to the frame… BZZZZZZZZZ I’m back on track. I can drive, flick a switch, direct juice to my bank, flick it back, sit down and plug in! And it’s funny because ever since my electrical system is back on track things are lining up again in perfect harmony. I’ve just driven to my sleep-spot and I feel like I’ve hit a state of grace, there’s this beautiful song playing on the radio (Moab KZMU) and I just had to take this picture and drop a few lines.

Because I guess it’s true, when we lose our stride, it becomes a time in which it’s really important to ground ourselves.

peace,
d

I've been thinking and having conversations about loneliness and isolation quite a bit lately. I always say that I've made a deal with loneliness, "I let it in, it keeps me company." but it's not always so simple.

I relate to what a close friend of mine was saying recently about how you can feel so completely alone at one moment surrounded by people, in the middle of a crowd, while at another moment feel completely connected while physically alone, say in the middle of the desert. I have good days and not so good days out here on the road. I never really get to that deep place of loneliness but there are days when talking to Moses just doesn't cut it. I can talk to him about bones, sticks, treats and walks.. but he gets this queer look in his eye when I delve into the subject of quantum physics.

My friend Ken Williams has given some great insights into our thoughts and feelings of isolation.

On loneliness in a crowd,

"Alone in a crowd, you are alienated by features of that crowd that you don't share: mood, intention, values, etc. Connected to 'people' when by yourself, you are connected to 'humanity' -- yours and theirs, what you know to be in people, in theory. An example is when you stand back and recognize your absolute and total love for your mother or father, only to be irritated by them when face to face on a given day, dealing with a particular issue. The thing to remember is that both are realities: the theory and the day to day practice. The one you can love and the other be irritated by. " - KW

Then we get into the realm of vulnerability, we've all had those moments where we see people exchange glances, do a little dance, but due to our egos and/or insecurities we don't engage. We let people slip by without acknowledging the commonality that has just passed between us, be it large or small. We let people go before we have even let them in. I think this is not only due to ego and insecurity but also frankly overpopulation. In a world approaching 7Billion there is no shortage of human interaction, and people seem to be lackadaisically perusing the human connection aisle of Earth Inc. And I think the reason we tend to not always engage comes down to energy and personal investment, and I think we're all afraid we won't get our monies worth.

Franklin Seal in the interview I just did ended by talking about fruit trees saying how it's interesting how humans have consciousness and the ability to make choices. Fruit trees on the other hand keep producing flowers and seed-filled fruit regardless of whether or not the seeds take root. They continue to put themselves out there because there is no ego involved just nature doing it's thing. And this comes to Ken's point on vulnerability and ego versus spirit,

"Closing off: ego. But I'm not sure about true connection being vulnerable. Egos are vulnerable. Egos can't really connect, because it is their nature to be distinct and apart. True connection is relaxing ego and letting spirit take over. If spirit takes over, it's not vulnerable. Only ego is vulnerable I think.

Ego is alone always. It works to achieve it, but suffers from it too. But Spirit is always 'connected', always one with all, which is why finding our spirit is finding an end to our isolation. We find (with spirit) what we always were but couldn't see (when seeing with the perceptive organs of ego). The work of spirit, I think, recognizes that perspectives are just that: perspectives. But that's ok. That's all we've got, and it's ok.

I think we are naturally spiritual, naturally connected, but trained, educated, practiced and grown up to be lonely (ego-driven, ego-shaped, ego-dependent). We go back and forth: when we forget our egos, we return to the state of 'childhood' innocence and playfulness: we feel connected. When we regain our egos, we claim our 'identity' and lose our connections, and invite the loneliness." - KW

I have to agree. HA! For me it all comes down to faith in spirit and letting go of ego/attachements. I was sitting with Moses the other day on Moab's main drag feeling lonely, actually I was more watching myself feel lonely from an outside perspective, watching the feeling flow through me, and being witness to my being. And in that moment I looked down at Moses who was looking up at me, I said, "It's all good buddy, it just is, and tomorrow will be another day, but the point is, this isn't permanent and in the end what we do and how we act affects the reality in which we live. And there will be times when we feel One and connected and other times when we feel alone and isolated, this just comes with the territory, we're human, well I'm human and you're a dog, but in any case, we gotta roll with it."

Yeah, see, dogtalk...

Anyways in the end I think it all comes down to ego and vulnerability, we have to let go, be ourselves in all our quirky, silly, brilliance and enter the doors open to us and accept those that remain closed. In the end, we have to accept ourselves as we are, connect to this universal interconnectedness that IS there, and accept the reality that we've created or been given. And as my brother always says, if we're having a hard time, that's good because it means we're probably growing.

To end with Ken Williams because he so often says it so well,

I just grabbed this off one of my interview subjects blogs http://moabyte.blogspot.com/. Did the interview with Franklin Seal yesterday and already the information is flowing.

This is a good one!

peace,
d

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/08/31/eaarctic131.xml

October 3, 2008
Moab, Utah

I’ve been reading this great book by John McPhee entitled Encounters with the Archdruid. I’ve never read John McPhee before, but yesterday I was in the Arches Book Store drinking chai in exchange for free wireless when a customer and the owner began an exchange about Glen Canyon Dam. My ears perked up since I have recently been to that dam and filmed it, and have spoken at length with my interview subjects about the pros and cons of the dam being constructed in the first place. After the customer had gone I delved into my own discussion, and henceforth I’m now reading this fantastic book by an amazing storyteller.

Man… I’m having a hard time finding the flow of my own writing these days.. and was about ot explain the books contents to you.. but figured I’d let the back cover do the work for me.

“The narratives in this book are journeys made in three wildernesses – on a coastal island, in a Western mountain range, and on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. Four men are involved: Charles Park, a mineral engineer who believes that our economic well-being rests on finding metals and extracting them from the earth wherever they are found; Charles Fraser, a resort developer who regards all conservationists as druids (religious figures who sacrifice people and worship trees”; Floyd Dominy, a builder of gigantic dams, who grew up in dry Western country and deeply believes in the impoundment of water; and David Bower, the most militant conservationist in the world. In turn, Park, Fraser, and Dominy encounter Bower, whether in rapids, in forests, on mountain trails, on a raft, in a jeep, or on foot – now reserved, now friendly, now fighting hard across a philosophical divide.”
-Encounters with the Archdruid, John McPhee

I have to tell you… I haven’t been really sleeping since I’ve been back in Moab. There’s a hum here. This place is a gateway. People are flowing in from all over the world. Jeeps, RV’s, Campers, and Big Rigs regularly roll down main street, and I’m beginning to think I liked Moab better ten years ago. I’m sure it’s not just the affect of the Archdruid who I am relating to more than ever, it’s who I am, and what this place has become.

Now it’s not fair to slam Moab. This place is amazing! I LOVE this place; I wouldn’t be back otherwise. The people here are just my kind of quirky cool, similar to the people of Dawson City in the Yukon… and to be honest, I rather enjoy Moab on a relatively quiet Tuesday morning.

Then after some superb interviews with locals, and some great personal encounters, Friday rolls around, and with it the influx of people.

I remember back the owner of Bushtakuh (my main gear sponsor located in Ottawa) saying, “There are two kinds of people who enjoy the outdoors. There are those people who respect and work to preserve the environment; viewing it as sacred… and then there are those who view nature as a playground for their sole enjoyment. I aim to educate the latter and support those who already tread lightly.”

As I soak up the exhaust fumes watching trailers roll by loaded with dirt bikes, atv’s, and everything but the kitchen sink… I can’t help but feel that Utah has become a playground… I can’t help but feel Moab is simply being used! And I don’t know why, but I feel protective of this place, and I’m actually a little pissed.

“Population is pollution spelled inside out.” – David Brower

Now this other part of me simply marvels and says, “MAN… Amazing! Humans are pretty incredible! And this is how they’ve decided to spend their time. Rippin’ around the countryside and havin’ a hell of a time. So be it. It is what it is. It exists. It has come to pass, and who the hell am I to judge the master plan of this whole thing…”

But mostly I just feel there has to be a better way. This town is booming, creating jobs, growth, development, which in turn is feeding families. People are smiling as they blow cash, and that cash is flowing in on some level, but what are the costs… I do love this place and it’s people, but I think I could have actually lived here ten years ago, I’m not sure that’s the case anymore.

I think Moab is the perfect place to view not only the desert, but also to catch what I feel is the main show these days; the final moments of what has been a really fabulous party.

And unlike Brower, I agree to a large extent with Park, nature will reclaim that which was disturbed, and natural order will prevail. Here, the desert will balance things out.

It IS the desert after all, and only that suited for adaptation and/or survival will one day remain.

peace,
d

P.S. But I am glad people are having fun, I just share a different definition of what fun is… I’m more of a quiet campfire and solitary hike kinda guy.

Minds are like parachutes; they work best when open.
- Thomas Dewar

Just a pic sent to me from the Arctic from my friend Miki who I met while up in the NWT... this photo from our meeting on the Nahanni River. Long time ago now.

peace,d

October 1, 2008
Moab, Utah

My birthday is coming up and I guess it signals a new start. I did some banking today and realized just how broke I am. I made some calls to my investment firm and told them to move some money out of my retirement savings for me. They gave me the low down on withholding tax, which I may get back based on my current Zero $$ Annual Income, and either way, it’s not all that bad. So come next week, my debts will be paid and I’ll have some scratch back in the coffers to keep this thing alive. Should be just in time for my birthday, when I think I’ll buy myself a real dinner, instead of beans from a can.

Being broke is also like time and space; it’s relative. And thanks to the real job I used to have, I’m still doing all right. Good lesson to not knock real jobs, since they sometimes serve a real purpose somewhere down the line.

Oh and considering I’m broke but not broken, I bought a new digital camera to ensure more blog visuals. Enjoy!

peace,
d

September 30, 2008
Moab, Utah

Pulled into Moab and straight into a Napa Store to talk about my van. Veronica’s been having a harder time starting these days and I suspect her starter may be on her way out. So I talk to the Napa guy and he sends me down to a garage to test the starter, and sure enough it’s drawing too much power which means the bushings are probably going and about to be gone. So time to replace it.

Back to the Napa Store, drop some $$$ for a new starter and off to a gravel parking lot to do the job.

It’s about noon and I figure I can get the job done by night fall, so I crawl underneath her body and start tinkering away. I’ve helped a guy do this before but have never done it myself, but hey how hard can it be… let me tell you… it can be shitty-ass hard!

First thing is figuring out what’s what, then I’m taking off the old starter and got it all free except for one wire, a big, I’m assuming important, wire. When I try to take off this big wire (Plan A) the nut strips on the post head… completely strips!

So I figure, Plan B: Hacksaw, then after 20min of arm-in-a-shit-load-of-pain-hacksawing to go to Plan C: Tin Snips, then back to Plan B, then Plan C again, then finally Plan D: Hammer the hell out of it! Nope, Plan E: Get Out the Drill and a Kind of Grinder Attachment Thingy That’s Probably Not Built for Metal Grinding. Hmm, kinda worked, the nut doesn’t look like a nut anymore, so there goes any remnant of Plan A. Finally Plan F: F for Fuck all the Other Plans for Now and Stop, Relax, and remember that Everything is Moving and it’ll all work out sooner or later, so might as well enjoy the process.

In the end I go back to an A-F Combo Plan and get that big important wire free. It just took some time and determination, which the same can be said for the new starter installation.

I won’t bore you with the details, but let’s just say, two hours later, after a series of new plans and a few calls to my mechanically enlightened brother, and a meeting with a crow bar, I got the new starter installed. And Veronica is happier for it! She starts like a newborn babe and purrs like a kitten. And I am a better man for it, grease n’ all.

peace,
d

So as you'll read in the next post, I have a new digital camera, but not in time for this post.. so I improvised. This is basically how I looked all day yesterday.

September 29, 2008
Somewhere East of Hite, Utah

In considering Everything Is Moving: No matter where we are in this world, no matter what our background or future direction, if we haven’t learned to relax, we haven’t learned a damn thing.

Seriously, this world/universe/reality is an extraordinary place, and if we haven’t found the time to sit back and marvel at it, I think we’re missing the point.

I’ve been places and I’ve met people, haven’t we all, and some people are more caught up with ‘doing things’ than others. It always blows my mind how self-important we all are sometimes, and how all the ‘things’ we have to do have become so important to us. I’m no different for the record. But this attitude is utter nonsense, there is very little that is actually all that important, aside from maybe saving a life, saving yourself, or maybe just making someone smile. All the rest is just hamster-wheel-circle-running-nonsense! Ha ha!

But I would say some things are pretty relevant, these being consciousness, awareness, stillness, simplicity, presence. (Now this is also only another opinion and we’ll see in one hundred years, let alone one week, where this opinion is.) These are the things that make life worth living, these are the things that allow us to simply LIVE… instead of that other thing we all call living, which is mostly just dying. We’ve all had our crises and our upsets, we’ve all had our hard times and breakdowns, but one sure-fire way to process all of these in my mind, is to simply stop. Stop. Don’t try to stop, just stop. Sit down, breath, look at the world around you, marvel, allow all that energy to flow through you, since it all going somewhere anyways so you might as well give it some direction, and ground it out. Stop and give it time to flow down into the ground.

I think this is what the other night was about for me, and the few days since. I was driving way too much that day and I arrived in a sleep spot just before dark, I was anxious, tired, tense and a ball of ‘bad’ energy. I had to make dinner, I had to write, I had to figure out what was wrong with the van, I had to, I had to, I had to… Stop.

So I did… and I sat under that endless expanse of night sky and realized that everything was moving. So I might as well just relax, and enjoy the show, instead of getting caught up in my own self-actualized pattern of energy.

peace,
d

September 28, 2008
Burr Trail, grand Staircase, Utah

I’m in the middle of nowhere, where I seem to have been spending more and more time lately, looking up into the night sky. I heard a stat recently that only something like 10% of North America is able to see the Milky Way Galaxy from their homes. This is due to light pollution; all the energy that we’re projecting back up into a night sky that’s probably confused by our actions. As if it were saying, “I’m trying to show you something, and you’re ruining the show’, we’re like somebody in a movie theater with a spotlight pointed at the screen.

Some six thousand stars are visible to the naked eye, but there are a hundred billion or so in our galaxy alone. And keep in mind that there are billions of other galaxies out there each containing billions of other stars. Mind boggling to say the least.

Anyways sitting here staring at the night sky I am thinking that everything is moving.

Light is traveling at 186,000 miles per second and everything we see is only a product of the reflected light bouncing off it. The Earth is spinning on its axis, as we altogether (Humans, Earth, the Moon) are traveling around the sun at 18 miles per second. So nothing is sitting still. And then if we look into the deeper layers of the here and now we observe that we are all growing older as are all living things around us. The subatomic particles that make all of us up are constantly being rearranged and exchanged with the world around us, and supposedly it takes 7 years for all the cells of our bodies to be exchanged and/or replaced with new ones.

Yet to me here in this moment looking around, things are quite still, relatively speaking. But this is far from reality. We as humans build reality based upon our perceptions, and in fact, according to quantum physics, our perceptions may actually determine the nature of reality itself. In observing reality we are constantly measuring it, and the measurement itself is what determines the reality before us.

“Who is looking at the universe? Put another way, How is the universe being actualized?
The answer comes full circle. We are actualizing the universe. Since we are part of the universe, that makes the universe (and us) self-actualizing.”
– The Dancing Wu Li Masters, An Overview of the New Physics, Pg 87

What I’m really thinking about right now is geological time. I’m thinking about how our lifetimes are just a pinpoint of reality in a vast expanse of time and space. The question becomes, if I were to live for let’s say 100,000 years and experienced that duration relative to that lifespan, would the mountains and desert buttes around me appear to be moving. Would the landscape appear like waves in a geological ocean? If we were to live a vastly different timeframe, we would witness our geological surroundings in a way similar to how we currently witness plant growth. My point is that everything is moving.

And what’s the point of my point? I’m not quite sure, maybe that this universe is a pretty magnificent place. And next time when you’re stuck in traffic or at a job you hate, consider that everything around you is moving, life IS short relatively speaking, and the world that you enter tomorrow, although maybe not apparent, is vastly different from the world of today. Oh and the universe and time, waits for no one, so get on with what you came here to do, or at least try and be happy doing it.

peace,
d

Read the US geological Survey press release here,
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911

And my friend Grant Buffett's response. Grant is a contributor to SFD you can read his blog HERE!

This is why I have friends who are earth scientists.

peace,
d
__________
Hey Dan,

I just read the report. Not to be too pessimistic or anything, but 3.645 billion barrels is a drop in the bucket in terms of world oil consumption rates. The world consumes at a minimum, 84,000,000 barrels a day (the US, 25% of that). So, assuming we can extract 100% of the technically recoverable reserves:

3,645,000,000 barrels = 43 days
84,000,000 barrels/day

Or, if the US used it all, 174 days.

So, that buys us some time, but doesn't solve our problem of limited oil supply with regard to rising demand. Not to mention that this is "technically recoverable", so that means, that the assessment has been made but they haven't drilled any wells yet to prove it. So, if they started now, they would likely do seismic next to pinpoint exactly where to drill. That would probably take a couple years to design the survey, acquire it, process and interpret the data. Then they would go into the drilling phase, which would take a few more years. They would also have to manufacture a pipeline to transport the oil. So, given all that, the oil wouldn't likely come online for about 5-10 years, and it would only then give us another 43 days of world supply. Of course the well will produce for more than 43 days, because no well can pump 84,000,000 barrels per day. It would probably operate for decades, trickling slowing into the main pipeline. Then, there is the question of what grade oil this is. Light crude, (or sweet crude), needs little refinement and can be turned into gasoline, diesel quite quickly. But, if it is heavy crude, it could take more processing.

My overall feeling is that this is a a decent find, but doesn't solve peak oil problems. If I were to speak from a practical point of view (that is, being dispassionate about environmental issues, which of course, I am not), I would recommend drilling off all coasts of North America, including the Arctic. If global warming trends continue (this year the ice cap was just a little bigger than the record smallest last year), we could see an ice free Arctic in a decade or two. If this is the case, there is high motivation to explore in the continental shelf off North Canada and in the Canadian Islands, as well as off the northern coast of Russian, Norway, Alaska, etc... But, exploration up there has really never begun in earnest, because of the ice shelf. We would be talking decades after the icecap melts before any of that came online. As far as the Alaskan reserves go, in ANWR (Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve), there are only 10.4 billion estimated technically recoverable reserves. So, that gives the world another 4 months, assuming current consumption rates. But, of course world demand is going up and and up. All this, would only buy us time to make the necessary, massive change to alternative energies.

The long term solution is to "get off" oil as much as possible and switch to alternatives, as well as make a quantum cultural change to proceed to living more locally and frugally, restoring the rail system, making it electric and high speed as well as restructuring our cities to be more walkable and to transform suburbia into little semi-independent enclaves.

Peace,
Grant