Thirty years plus a few weeks since the original visit to the Center of the Universe. What does it reveal?

and hardly anything to be said about this place. no textual naming enough. walking the riparian canyon with clear running water. not too much, but enough. not too cold, but enough. harvesting a few spring fronds of sage. not sure exactly why, but just to have, perhaps for future blessings. climbing to the smallish cave that overlooks the end of the access canyon at Echo Park. turns out it is not really a cave, but a hole into a face to a whole slice of open fracture plane. open to the sky. the whole small canyon follows a massive fracture plane cutting across the formation. these energy configurations. we are so used to, so comfortable with, pre-configured energy packages. that the raw flow on all scales, at all levels, under all conditions, is just too much to bear. while the wind blows across skin. and the skin is raked by the radiative solar flux. and this machine starts its own fan. the environment too harsh for it. couldn’t take outside into the wind and dust, that’s clear. soft device. needing the feed of electric energy to keep it functional. at all. or it becomes a paper-weight only. to fight the wind.

Twenty-two years since the first visit. Spring Break. Bit of a rough night, to be sure…

re-arriving simultaneity: with a black and ragged squall line ripping across the wide San Luis Valley, dark, bigger than most summer thunder storms that migrate east across from the San Juans to the Sangre de Christo Range, and much closer to the ground. a fast, obligatory slow-down at the Center of the Universe, one of the fastest visits yet.

and by the time we arrive at the Sand Dunes campground, well, it starts snowing right about when we start setting the tent up. setting up on two feet of packed snow. hard as heck to get the pegs in firm. thinking of getting a stand-alone tent these days. though the North Face I got way back, well, 21 years ago is still doing quite well. seen action all over the West. Sierras, Rockies, Mojave. and so on. what else. hadn’t tested the stove yet, either, so, no warm food. warnings from the ranger about the mountain lion that had been recently sighted. rendezvous with the ranger later to get some firewood. Loki and I are alone except for one other pair of hardy campers. cold night’s fitful sleep that brings an additional foot or more of snow on top of the tent, yikes!

so much stimulation. skunks, 8-point bucks, fish, minnows, crayfish, bats, Mormon Locusts, lizards, snakes, sage grouse, sagebrush, the Yampa, the Green, Steamship Rock, the sandstone, the sky, storms, swimming in place in the river, hiking Sand Canyon, waiting for rain. two days in Echo Park is a lifetime of regeneration. will definitely bring Loki here. 14 years ago I was here last. it has changed. the broad park with 20 or so huge cottonwood trees is half gone, consumed by the river, the trees lying like skeletons of monstrous beasts in the low water. that whole area is now closed for camping, and a ‘regular’ campground established at the point where the road exits the canyon on the way down. nicer that way, gives the wildlife a better chance in that area. strange how much the topography has changed, though, I had not expected it. not to mention the colonization by tamarisk. that has changed the shoreline. watching the stars last night, sleeping in the back of the truck, head on the tailgate, waking at regular intervals, seeing the sheer wall above and behind me, changing color, shade, as morning approached. and the rotation of stars silhouetted by the massive cliffs in every direction. no bugs to speak of, but tonight there seems to be many.

Sand Canyon, a long hike starting rather late in the morning, so that when I reach as far as I feel like going, it is in the peak of the heat and Light radiation bath. early on, there were plenty of cool shady spots to catch, resting in the silence, but on the way back down to the river, the heat and Light was searing the eyeballs. pressing down on the head. and making everything stand out in etched presence. (find edge). convolve the edge with a Dirac Delta function to send it to infinity. and it becomes the key value in knowing, at least in the moment. for each manifestation of energy in the universe, the critical point is the edge. how to maintain the energy right to the edge. but not beyond. (an aura is the inability to stop energy at an edge — it suggests a permeability, or that energy permeates everything. spreading to infuse the next manifestation. intertwining with and loving the Other.

a raptor harries me from above: death from above (the calling-card moniker of the Charlie Company 1st Battalion 8th Cavalry), rapacious cawing, echoing off the walls of the canyon, its yearling young joining in short flight or resting on a ledge far above me when I stopped to watch from under a cottonwood tree. I am not a welcome addition to the area. later I covertly watch the same raptor giving the same abuse to a passel of ravens that were coming downriver. ravens are everywhere that I have lived in the last years. there was one raven in Iceland, a huge one, who would come into town in the winter, I would cross his path in the crisp and dark mornings outside the house on my way to the bus stop at the top of the hill. he would greet me in a gutteral “craaaaaaawwwwwk.” I would look up, and wish for the best that spirit can offer to another being. and recall the ravens of Kehlsteinhaus, Hitler’s “Eagles Nest” near Berchtesgaden in the Austrian sub-Alps. the place looking like the home of the Nazgul in Lord of the Rings, in a greasy fog. while down below in the valley, American military officers relaxed and played golf. spoils of war. carrion.

a day so full of unspoken in-press-ons (no other human contact save for a few limited conversations) that spirit simmers at the surface. want to keep it there. will be here again in the near future. even though it is not so easy on the car, but if this is the main thing I do with the car, well, it will be worth it.

drone of trucks coming from and going to Russia on the highway near the house. combined with a very high-pitched almost-but-not-quite continuous whine of the hot water pipes makes for a very bizarre environment in the flat/room. I can work with the whine, although it is quite loud, sleeping I do not even try, just start with ear-plugs. sensitive hearing and loudness. noise. how is it that I can trace, identify, and enjoy the well-flowing energies/works of others, yet cannot make such works myself? I have an instinct for Others whose energies flow less turbulently (more laminar flows, cogent, read-able, absorb-able?) than mine (I think!?), meeting them, speaking with them, enjoying their presences and their products. and engaging in energizing dialogues.

an old place I used to camp back in the 80′s. but first some hanging out in Medano Creek in front of the dunes, keeping covered as the sun is already blazing at 0900 in the morning.

then a short stop at the Center again on the way out.

early in the blazing day, a walk around some of the constructions of Chaco — the Grand Kiva is marvelous. then launching north over Wolf Creek Pass, across the San Luis Valley.

arrival at a camping site a Sand Dunes is preceded by an early evening visit to the Center of the Universe. what are words?

two sketches from the Center of the Universe…

The next morning. Slow. With some warmth. Sunday in Georgia. The party last night downstairs limited sleep. Morning. Chilly with the dampness of the seaside pine groves. The river. Winter. Late October. Bet it gets really cold here by February. The exhibition last night was by one Bernie Casey, a painter. Work titles ran like Strong as a Tree, Missing Thumb, and Land Stories . Stories that openly the Land can tell. History speaks with a partial tongue.