In October, I drove out before sunrise from Bluff, UT to Monument Valley Tribal Park to see the land as the sun began to brush it's hand over the rocks. The landscape was breathtaking as usual and I asked the nearest tourist to take a photo of me. Isn't it ironic that after a lifetime of the tourists insisting on capturing the 'disappearing natives" in their native habitat, that I am the one asking a fellow traveller from Vermont or somewhere, to "capture" a stoic photo of me against this most photogenic image? It was interesting anyway. I should have streaked some yellow war paint on my cheek bones for added realism. I might have started a new look.

Someone mentioned that my blog seemed a bit lonely at times. It could all be very true, a writer does have that duty of spending thousands of hours in seclusion governing over wadded-up papers, dog eared books and a hypnotizing computer screen, that sometimes . . . talks back. It's a kind of struggle to live in both worlds with all bases covered. I do admit that part, but I do have a sense of humor about most things.

I do laugh twice a year.

Once I was in a department store in Flagstaff, and I believe I was talking on the phone and I suddenly felt the sensation of joy and let out a laugh as rare and as small as the spotted owl. It was a truly weird feeling. Not more than a few minutes later, my cousins and my sister, both not knowing that other were in the same store, came rolling down to the aisle that I was in, laughing that they heard me from across the store. And this was no Greasewood Trading post by any means! I hadn't seen them in months and it was refreshing that an atrocious laugh such of mine had drawn the invitation to a surprising re-encounter. We did the usual tribal ritual of hugging each others like brown beavers and then sitting cross legged in the video aisle over a smoldering fire to talk of the spiritual concerns of gas and milk prices, then we went on to shopping again.

A small hope for man kind, this thing called humor.