Landlocked Pirate

If you are a Creationist and believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old, give or take, this is not meant for you. Your beliefs are founded in faith and I won’t argue with you. If you fall into this category and continue to read, keep your comments to yourself.  To everyone else, read on, if you wish. The Earth was formed 4.6 Billion years ago, plus or minus a few million years. 4.6 Billion years is pretty freaking old.  Until around 2,050,000,000 years (2.05 Billion Years, I just wrote it out like that to impress you with the number of zeros) ago, the Earth had an Oxygen deficient atmosphere. That means for much of the planet’s history, Oxygen dependent organisms couldn’t have existed. Over time, as life evolved and turned Carbon Dioxide into Oxygen, the atmosphere became oxygenic. Are you still with me? I think this stuff is interesting, it’s probably why I became a geologist. Another 1.5 Billion years goes by (give or take a few million) and voi...

Last year on October 2nd, I left Las Vegas in a daze. Our hotel was just around the corner from the concert venue and the Mandalay. I made a conscious effort to not look in that direction, I did not want to see that building and the broken windows of the shooter’s room. I was tired, there had been no sleeping that night. Every time I started to drift off, I heard gunshots, loud, like they were in the room and they jerked me awake. I took my time on the drive home. I love th e drive between Kingman and Vegas, I think it is beautiful and the geology is cool. I stopped at the dam and walked up the road, so I could take a photo of Black Canyon and the bridge (something I often thought of doing, but never actually took the time to do.) It is the first photo. This visit to Vegas changed everything. I stood outside the concert venue at 10:00pm with thousands of other survivors. We hugged, we drank, and we had a good time. I made new friends. I remembered that Vegas is fun. ...

On the drive from the Salt Lake City airport to my aunt’s house in Soda Springs Idaho, I spent a lot of time reflecting on all of the times I have used her house as a stopover when I was on a journey. When I was going to college in Billings Montana and my family lived in Arizona and Nevada, my brother Darren  and I would drive my little Mazda pickup with Apollo and Lobo (my cat and dog). We made the trip every summer and Christmas break and would stop there on the way to where we were going, and on  the way back.  I got married and my husband Jack started joining me on my trips, then my daughter Jordan came along and we moved to Nevada and our trips became less frequent. Then Jack got sick and we didn’t make the trip for a few years and when they started again, it was just me and my girls on our way to our summer vacation. In 2017 I made the trip for the last time with Jack on my way to Montana with his ashes.  I have stood on the edge of my aunt’s lawn and ...

#FTG On Oct 3, 2017,  I went to the Route 91 Harvest Festival with my friends Patty and Letty. This was our third year at the Festival and we looked forward to it for months. We found a great place to stay, a condo within walking distance of the venue and this was our second year staying there. We all arrived on Friday and that night we saw Brothers Osborne, Lee Brice and Eric Church. During Eric Church’s performance there was a guy in his early 20s next to me. He was singing and dancing and he tapped me with his elbow me a few times and said “This is awesome!! I love Eric Church.” Later during the performance, he asked if I thought it was his last song and I said “no he hasn’t sung Springsteen yet, he won’t end it without singing Springsteen” and he elbowed me again and said “that’s right! I love F’n Springsteen” and he started yelling “Springsteen” over and over at the stage. I wish I had taken a photo of the Springsteen guy, I hope he made it out ok. Sat...

http://www.greatoutdoors.com/published/across-montanas-beartooths https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78HnNT689ac The Beartooth Mountains are one of those places for me, kind of mystical and magical and always breathtaking.  Charles Kuralt called the Beartooth Highway the most beautiful drive in America, and my experience so far is that he is right.  My favorite drive starts in Soda Springs Idaho and follows back country roads to Jackson Wyoming, north into Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone, exiting Yellowstone’s northeast entrance.  I was lucky enough to be able to make that trip twice every summer while I was going to school, once on the way to Nevada, and once on the way back.  The highway gets up above the treeline onto the Beartooth Plateau and flattens out and you are driving on the top of the world on rocks that came from the basement of the world.  It crosses Chief Joseph’s Trail and you can detour south and follow the Chief Joseph Highway...

To: Jim and Chuck From: Sandra Subject: Recycling Recycling and Acid Trips Occasionally I have these moments of incredible perspective that make me feel infinitesimally small and amazed at the same time. Last night it was one that made me feel smaller than usual. I was thinking about the beginning of everything, the big explosion that started it all and the idea that those things happen over and over. It started with me reading this quote from Carl Sagan that I posted on Facebook last year “Anything else you’re interested in is not going to happen if you can’t breathe the air and drink the water. Don’t sit this one out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet.” I am an environmentalist at heart, but I recognize that it is really all about the impact it has on humans. People who say we are destroying the earth drive me crazy. We may be changing it, but we are not destroying it. Our environmen...

TO: James and Chuck From: Sandra Subject: Crazy Train (of thought) This morning I was lying in bed, thinking about how irritated I used to get at Jack when he would harass me because I didn’t take my turn on a game fast enough. There is this app called “Words with Friends” and it is basically an electronic version of Scrabble. Jack played with a lot of people and it would take me a day or two to remember to open the app to make a play. He would send an email reminding me that it was my turn and lay this big guilt trip on me because I didn’t play quickly enough and it would piss me off. This morning I felt guilty about being irritated with him and said out loud, “I’m sorry Jack, I should have been more patient with you.” Then I wondered if he was actually out there somewhere listening or if things are actually as he believed, when you die you are simply gone. It is a scary thing to contemplate because that means we only exist as long as people who remember us exist. It ma...