A Change of Seasons- Tales of the Knight Errant

Wind shrieks across the construction site next to the street, throwing huge sheets of red dust into the air, strewing trash and unsecured tarps across the cityscape. The bright morning sun has faded to a flat, steely light, as a hand-like shroud of mantle cloud races across Elden's summit, stretching out from the now-unseen Kachina Peaks with icy fingers that drop postage stamp sized flakes into the maelstrom as I navigate the unweildy box truck through the streets of Flagstaff on my morning run.

Wednesday, Cindy and I hiked through the boulders of the Fat Man's Loop to picnic on the shoulder of the mountain under sunny skies with temps in the upper 60s and low 70s. This morning, the temperature has fallen from an initial 10 am high of 52F to a current 38, with wind chill taking it down below freezing, a fact made obvious as the small SUV ahead of me fishtails in what was a puddle only an hour before.

One of my regular diners at the Food Center waves from the lee of an abandoned garage, his unruly beard whipping in the wind. I make a note to start a pot of coffee when I get back to the Center... many of my regulars will have spent the morning chilling down in this wind and many are diabetics whose ability to generate internal heat is undependable under these conditions.

Boxes of vegetables and pastries and lunchmeat, tubs of milk and yogurt and cases of day-old bread come off in a rush, the transition from the frigid wind into the humidity and bright laughter of the kitchen jarring after the solitude of my run. I try to remember names and find room as volunteers greet me and Wilson Picket wails from the sound machine on the shelf. Bob, the chef of the day, smiles and peers at me through his glasses, one hand resting on my shoulder in a brief squeeze of greeting amid the hustle and bustle of mid morning prep and triage. Big Jim nods and grimaces, rolling his eyes at the endless stream of conversations as he mechanically sprays and stacks metal trays, cutting boards, and food bins, loading and unloading the washer, moving through the kitchen with an odd grace for a man his size as he navigates the swirling currents of bodies and words to hang up pots and empty trash cans.

I start a five-gallon batch of tea and spend some time directing my day's Community Service workers in various tasks of morning set-up. One is a recovering alcoholic, slow but earnest, the other, an angry youth too full of his own angst to even try to care or operate with anything like efficiency or attention to detail. I sigh an inward sigh, remember my own youth, and assign them to tasks.

In the give-away area, I sort and hang clothes, set out loaves of bread and cans of vegetables and fruit and soup, and place the non-slip floor mats for the night's serving session. A glance at the clock shows I have exactly three minutes to gather my effects and hit the road for the next pick-up.

Driving snow greets me as I step through the rear door of the kitchen, double checking the lock of the truck and quickly climbing into the cab. The wind rocks the vehicle as Creedance Clearwater Revival fills the interior with "Bad Moon" and I pilot the big white truck out into Flagstaff traffic, just another errant knight on a mission of mercy.

A new website for natural stone and handcrafted jewelry lovers-

Check out Owl Feather Productions' new Facebook page, and look for the blogspot coming soon!

Cold Light

Cold light slices across the blue morning shadows of Flagstaff; compounded of one part fog to two parts morning rush hour. Fourth Avenue is a long stretch of fading hope and faltering enterprise; peeling restaurant signs and broken sidewalks and new names on familiar buildings, the words "AVAILABLE!" AND "FOR LEASE, BUILD TO SUIT" silently shouted again and again from darkened interiors filled with broken shelves and abandoned desks.

Behind a dumpster, I see a flash a wind-whipped flame above a dented can, quickly hidden by the angry, black-dyed, stud-pierced, Goth-struck sprite who glares back at me in a world-weary apathy that is far too old for her tender years. Natives standing huddled in a group, counting change outside the Circle K; two black-clad working girls fishing for the last customers of the night or just a ride back to whatever tiny apartment they share; a Glenn Ford replica real life cowboy striding along the street in denim and leather, hat pulled low over weathered features, eyes nested in a wrinkled tapestry of wind and sun, hard work and laughter and loss. Breath streams out in a ghostly banner from beneath the battered brim of his Stetson, fading like memories.

Clouds wreathe the top of the Kachina Peaks, the snow-draped shoulders below alive with moving shadows. Lines of cliffs draw my eye up away from the light as I sit waiting, and an impatient horn reminds me that I am still operating in the present.

Flagstaff holds so much potential, and so much promise, balanced against so many promises and lives broken and wasted on the way. Every day, so many battle with such determination to reach what may be an illusion, and so many more come face to face with the cold hard facts of simple existence. those who a handful of years ago dwelt in comfort and ease find themselves operating on a budget for the first time in years, sometimes in a lifetime. Those who once succeeded by dint of hard work find the water levels slowly rising, as they stroke for what seems like a receding shore.

But on every hand, generous people reach out caring hands to lift up the fallen, to shelter, feed or simply comfort the weary, the broken, the lost. Again and again, the greatest gifts, those of compassion and shared humanity, are given, freely and in abundance, by those who are themselves often struggling to make ends meet, no more than a single paycheck or whim of fate away from the streets.

The sun rises higher, and in the rising reds and golds of dawn, I see the glittering of a thousand ice crystals, and think of beauty, even in the cold light of truth.






Sorry for the long break, Gentle Readers... I have been busy trying to make a life and look after a lovely wife, as well as submitting a manuscript for a new guidebook to the crags and byways of Smoke Hole Canyon, the amazing locale where Cindy and I lived in West Virginia.

Stay tuned for further developments... we're headed south in a few weeks, to see the old stomping grounds of the Superstition Mountains; yet another adventure of Il Viejos Fuerte, to yet another Secret Crag!

Heading East

Busy, busy, busy...

We're planning a trip Back East, heading "home" before the mad crush and rush of the holidays. Traveling light, as always, and planning a week that will surely defy the constraints of just how much two humans can cram into a series of twenty-four hour days. Clearing out a storage unit, visiting with friends and family, maybe a bit of tree work, and eventually getting out to the crags to do a bit of climbing and fact-checking for the upcoming Climbers' Guide to Smoke Hole Canyon, for which yours truly signed a contract this past week with a publisher who seems to think 3,000 copies would be a good start.

Editing, planning, and musing on life... it's gonna be a busy week...

Stay tuned for more.

The Fat Man's Loop- Revelations of Craggage on a Bouldering Trail

We set out to find some bouldering close to the house... this is what we found...

From Mike and Cindy: The Flagstaff Adventures

Mountain Project Link to Little Elden and the Elyssian Buttress

Check out this link from Mountain project for more beta (info) on our latest "find"...

Getting PSYCHED!!!

Another Power Couple Adventure

We were spending too long inside, in the city. No doubt, we had done good things, were working on doing more. And I remain grateful for opportunity and income. But the groove had become a rut, the routine a Routine. While Cindy explored the city and met interesting people, I marched through the endless chain of 5-7 hours frying fish, slicing veggies, washing truckloads of plates and pans and either cursing or racing the clock under glaring lights in a kitchen alternating between hip-hop or mariachi for a soundtrack. When the end of my shift came, I usually found myself too tired mentally and physically to enjoy or join the nightlife and frenetic energy of the crowds negotiating the streets of Old Town Flagstaff. After months of epics and adventures, Life had devolved to predominantly sitting in our tiny apartment reading and passing time until the next shift of work.

We did not leave West Virginia and all that was home to fall back into the grind of 9 to 5, or the illusions of urban prosperity. Our visits to the local hot new climbing area had left us both with a yearning to do a few new lines and get out more tempered with a bad taste for Flagstaff climbers' insistence on taking their dogs EVERYWHERE, in packs that often outnumbered the humans at the crags, and their propensity for gathering in the middle of a silent forest to shout, pose, spray and socialize.

This was the Scene.

This is what we left behind, what we had never been a part of, what we had no wish to become.

We went looking for unmarked branches on the Path. Mount Elden's fire-scarred flanks sport a host of cliffs, many covered i routes and fairly active, especially as winter drives climbers to the sunny Southern slopes. Finding solitude now only to lose it to a crowd later had little appeal. We needed something with a touch of crazy.

With a hint and a nod from John Burcham, local photog and climbing guru, we followed a trail leading out of an unmarked parking lot beyond a sagging fence along Highway 89, a lost corner of Heaven with open meadows, owl calling in the dusk, deer climbing the steep hillsides, ancient junipers offering shade to weary travelers, and a mountainside covered in hundreds of feet of pinnacles, faces and slabs, two hours' hike from the car, three minutes from the city limits of Flagstaff.

After an initial hike to recon the road conditions and get a better look at the target, Cindy and I set out Early Thursday morning with snacks and water bottles, chalk bags and shoes and cameras, determined to break out of the box we had been slowly building.

Enjoy!

No Translation Possible

"No one chooses to be homeless."

These words are mumbled hurriedly between bites of hot lasagna and fruit salad in the common dining area of the Flagstaff Family Food Center. The speaker is a bearded man somewhere in his late 40s to early 60s... it's hard to tell, under the grime and the weariness and the bright red knit hat he's wearing to complete his ensemble of tweed jacket, blue jeans, and Arizona Diamondbacks sweatshirt. He has entered quietly amid the noise and haste of 150 people chatting, exchanging greetings or farewells in three languages, wringing out wet jackets and clothes and making their way through the food line as volunteers from a local church dish up school lunch trays of nutritious hot food and cups of Gatorade and tea.

I spot Israel in the line and wave a hello to the tall, thin black man, a refugee from Africa, who is in the midst of a two-year vision quest after a decade behind the blue rope, pressing the flesh with the movers and the shakers of California and the nation to start and raise funds for assorted non-profits. A few more familiar faces trickle in out of the still-thundering gloom of the afternoon, as Cindy and I tuck into our meal and listen to our newest encounter.

"A rough night for us all out there." Our guest peers out from under shaggy brows, shaking his head once in a gesture of frustration and sympathy and many, many other emotions that chase each other across his face like storm winds crossing a pond's surface. "Too many of us depended on the wrong things, I guess."

"True," Cindy answers/ "We have to depend on each other."

He nods, but continues as if unaware that she has spoken.

"Jobs, pensions, family, savings plans, religion..." His voice is fading, movement slowing as his eyes fall away through space and time, perhaps back to the edge of the Void into which his own future vanished.

"...tenure..." Silence falls and I exchange a sympathy-filled look with my wife, who squeezes my hand under the table.

I wish I could write to you of what it is to be homeless. Obviously, it is the state of having no fixed address, usually without consent. But there is no possible translation of the concept. Unlike writing about climbing, I'm not covering a topic which some of you may choose to explore or experience on your own. And while most of us know someone who has fallen on hard times, most likely they have a couch to crash on, or a spare room at a relative or friend's house to call their own, even if for just a little while.

But to be truly homeless, to have NO WHERE to go when the storms draw their black curtain across the skies and the lightning seems bent of incinerating every bit of God's Creation and the thunder washes over you like waves in an angry sea, is a concept that many people can only imagine in the same way they imagine elves and unicorns... nothing that is a fact in their own frame of reference. The thought of slowly starving in country with an obesity problem is simply counter to sanity and logic. It is unthinkable that, as churches across the nation send millions in aid and donations to Africa and as millionaires bequeath seven-figure estates for the care and feeding of their pets, families and grandparents and veterans are sleeping in parks and abandoned buildings and run-down cars, going to bed hungry again, tonight, within walking distance of restaurants that throw away hundreds of pounds of food every week and walled communities where the average pet eats better than the homeless in this city.

And yet these are the facts, cold and hard to digest as they may be. This is the reality so many live in and so many more are unable to imagine.

Until three weeks ago, it was my reality.

After spending two weeks at the end of July broke, out of gas, unemployed, living out of a tent and an S10 pickup, slowly starving in southern Colorado, I know the feeling of quiet desperation that is the life of a homeless person. I understand the despair and the anger and the hopeless helplessness, the shame of asking for help from strangers and the humbling of pride that is realizing that you can do nothing to prevent your spouse from sharing your discomfort. I understand these things with my flesh and bones, but there are no colors in my palette to paint them for you, no language that I know capable of translating cold thoughts and prose into intuitive empathy, comprehension and understanding. I can only pound away at ignorance with the blunt instruments of words, hoping against hope that those of you who know me or have come to know me can somehow get a glimpse, through this crack in the wall, of Life on the Other Side.

If only one of you sees, even for the briefest of moments, and if that sight leads you to care, and to act, to ask "What can I do, myself, to help someone DIRECTLY, today?", then the message is not lost.

No one chooses to be sick, or old, or unemployed, or homeless.

But we can choose to make a difference, even a small one, every day.

Last week, I handed a 20 dollar bill out of my first meager paycheck to an angel in an apron, serving dinner and faith and love to the homeless and downtrodden, to alcoholics and junkies, mental patients and families at the Jesus Project Sunday dinner at McKellips School here in Flagstaff. There were any number of things I could have spent that money on... but there was a greater need to pay it back to the people who fed us, who shared hope and joy and a smile when we were down and lost.

This week, Cindy and I volunteered at the same kitchen, spending my one day off working to prepare food for 200, trying to share just a little of our tale and a small measure of hope with so many who hover on the edge of despair and surrender.

Pay it forward. Our government and the leaders of our faith have abandoned us to political expedience and private agendas, big headlines and tax write-offs. All we have is each other, and God. As Gandhi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."

Angels, Unaware

There are prophets in our streets.

There are angels in our midst.

We stride a land long bereft of hope and opportunities. A land in which even the Children of God seem to turn a deaf ear to the lessons of his Son, who was homeless and unemployed and advocated socialism as a tenet of Christianity.

Who, when questioned concerning the multitudes of his day, said simply, "Feed them."

Who, when questioned on "What must I do to be saved?" replied "Sell all you have, give it to the poor, leave your home and wife and parents and follow me."

Who told the religious leaders "Even as you have done unto the least of these, so have you done unto me."

Jesus never had a savings account, a resume, a credit score, a 401k, a fixed address, or a political agenda. Every church and church member in the world would do well to remember that. those who ignore those facts are worse than hypocrits, and will no doubt someday hear the words 'depart from me ye workers of iniquity, you generation of vipers... I never knew you."

I stand in a dinner line with vision seekers and homeless families, with licensed psychiatrists and decorated veterans, alcoholics and rape victims and prostitutes and junkies, carpenters and plumbers and truckdrivers and waitresses. The Flagstafff Family Food Center feeds between 100 and 200 people daily using only donations of food from local grocery stores and bakeries and restaurants; a mission of mercy, preaching love and equality among people who are daily led to feel that they are the unwanted refuse of a society that refuses to accept responsibility for the economic and social abyss into which more and more of its citizens are falling. For while there are any number of long-winded defenders of hedge-fund managers and banking, Wall Street and its schools of parahna-like stockbrokers, no one can explain how people could choose to be homeless and poor and lost.

That somehow, somewhere, the homeless are responsible for the collapse of the markets and housing industry, and that the true victims are somehow the huge corporations who walk away from multi-million dollar defaults with a clean slate and a handful of government money; the stockbrokers and hedge-fund managers who erased a nation's savings in speculation, while most of them made money on the deal. These modern-day pirates are welcome at any bank in the nation, with money to spare to start the balloon growing again, while working class Moms and Dads cannot borrow enough for a tank of gas to reach the minimum wage jobs they have had to acccept on the verge of retirement. Parents are waging wars with prayer, but the churches they attend are busy trying to secure commitments from their members to keep tithing regularly, with the promise of overflowing riches from Heaven if they do.

Who would God bribe?

And in the midst of this, we rub shoulders with angels, unaware... feeding the hungry, giving hope and comfort to the lost, doing, even unto the least of these, as they would if the Son Himself had appeared at their door. Stretching shoestring budgets to work a miracle of loaves and fishes every week, week in and week out.

 Walking on water, and turning a storm of tragedy into the wine of human compassion.

River Song

Last days in West Virginia-


Cindy is laughing, watching tiny minks dart out of cover towards her floating line, as dragonflies hunt the shadows and shallows and gannets chase their own reflections over the flat surface of the South Branch. Huge catfish and an assortment of trout, minnows and perch cruise in solitary splendor and swift-moving schools beneath the huge boulders from which a dozen generations of Smoke Hole teens have dived and cannonballed, where more innocence has been lost and experienced gained than the most jaded nightclubs of the city. Broken glass winks like lost gems in the sunshine atop the biggest of these as I clear the dust from the last bolt hole at the top of our latest Entrance Wall route, Cindy's long-awaited River Song.

The last weeks have been a series of revelations and epiphanies; old friends who seem to have forgotten our names and faces, new friends with more gifts and kindness than we deserve or can quite grasp. Long-delayed projects completed or abandoned, explorations of a few places that have always been "somedays", and the not-so-surprising realization that, as expected, many of the most famous climbing spots here in the East have become so infatuated with their own "scene" that they have strangled the essence of what made them magical and rare.

Lessons learned, questions answered, hard truths faced, new opportunities embraced and unfinished business laid to rest.

It is in service of the last concept that I find myself hanging sixty feet above the ground, pounding in the last bolt, after having the previous two attempts on this particular placement fail in a particularly frustrating fashion. I eye the last hole and bolt, my depleted drill battery still arm against my ribs, and murmur to the 3/8" bolt in my hand.

"You screw me this time, and I'll put the damned thing up mixed." I grin and set the bolt in the hole, leashed hammer poised to swing. "I've done it before."

The bolt apparently heeds my warning and, just to be perverse, sets smoothly and cleanly in the hole with a half-dozen sharp blows. I position the hanger and give the nut three complete rotations, continuing to crank to the approximately 30 pounds of torque that is industry standard and is a feeling I know in my bones. I zip the ratchet back into my work pouch and brush drill powder off the nearby holds. With a Elvis-like pump of my hips, I release the Shunt backing up my rappel and slid earthward, as a raucous chorus of ravens fill the canyon with their squabbling croaks.