The fluidity and resilience of seaweed. The stability and non-reactivity of bamboo. One teacher spoke about letting the hands arch back gently as though the palms were seedlings opening to the sun. Another speaks of cutting through resistance, like water trickling down through rocks. 'Small movements with big effects.' The vivid analogies are powerful.

The title of this blog comes from the old saying, ‘4 ounces deflects 1000 pounds’.

The human body has so many hidden gifts, abilities to perceive, small moves that extend and expand one's reach and impact.

We're not the only critters with picnic tables...

Sacagawea's Cemetery
Fort Washakie, Wyoming













There is wild beauty,
and a sense of community,
even in the afterlife.
Pale grasshoppers sail across the dusty paths.
Clouds soften the summer daylight,
and a persistent wind
rattles the leaves
of a break of tall trees,
the whisper of music and dance,
of times not so long past.
The fluttering poetry
of ribbons and flowers
and plastic toys
on mounds of raw earth
bear witness to
bonds among the dead and the living.

School in Denver:



I’m not the best seamstress, but during my years parenting young kids, I did keep the needle and thread handy, not wanting to toss out clothes just because there was a small tear, or a button missing. Repairing a tear like a knife cut is relatively easy: you just sew the two sides together. But holes in the fabric can be more challenging because you have some missing material. Sometimes a patch does the job. Another technique (darning) is to take the thread and needle in a very relaxed way, and sew back and forth, from side to side, as though the needle were meeting the different numbers on a round clock face. So you take the needle, say, from one to seven to eleven to five to ten to four. You don’t tighten up the thread too much because it will get into an unappealing scrunch. Instead, you make a stitch with a gentle run of the needle from two to eight, and up to twelve, and another, and another and at some point the hole is sealed and healed. The crisscrossing of the threads across the gap creates new fabric of its own.

From a small bridge on a hike near String Lake, I took a picture of the majestic Tetons. The light wasn't great, but the mountains were, and it's almost obligatory to photograph them. I walked on and stopped, looking down from the bridge. There! This was a photo I really wanted.

Catching light at the right moment can be more satisfying than subject matter. The rock in the water was beautifully lit.

I was leaving Rawlings, Wyoming, packing my stuff into the car. There was one more thing to get from the motel room. My usual tactic is to have the camera with me at all times, but that seemed ridiculous. I was only going upstairs and right back.

But inside the motel, down the hall, the housekeeper’s cart with the white bottles of cleaner and white towels draped on one side, was glowing against the backdrop of the dark passageway. It looked beautiful, as though the housekeeper’s work were noble. I flew down the stairs, got the camera from the parking lot. Just as I stepped back into the hall, a couple dressed like housekeeping staff, a tall, lean, authoritative man and a slender, assertive woman, came out of the room to the cart. They noticed me, and turned aside, becoming shorter, less visible.

The moment had passed.

Leigh Lake
Grand Tetons National Park

My tent got skunked below the rear window near sunset at Teton National Forest. I tried to sleep in it, but took it down as the gibbous moon set over the Tetons, and departed in the night to Jackson. I disposed of it near a Snake River tour place. The drive was rather magical, little field mice darting out from the flats before the headlights, the only car on very dark backroads of such a wildly magnificent place. My hands smelled of skunk all day, despite many washings.

Adieu dear little tent.

"For most of my life I had operated under a simple schematic of winning and losing, but cancer was teaching me a tolerance for ambiguities."

"If children have the ability to ignore all odds and percentages, then maybe we can all learn from them."

Lance Armstrong (It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life)

see the man
in the tall chair
across the room
staring staring
we are only
nerve endings
in one great organism
resting state
to firing
not alone
no matter how lonely
chain linked
pause
to impulse
one to the other
originating nothing
creating creating
only through the firing
of one man's eyes
to yours

pond inhales
mountain's sweet breath
sky's clouded brow -
then exhales reflection

pushed and pulled and pushed and pulled
among the cars in scorching heat
until you choose
a road less travelled.

tent art

road delay pleasures
windows down, engine off
time stretches so softly

From GUINNESS World Records 2000: Millennium edition

Irus Guarino, who started work as a chorus girl at age 18, was still performing at age 90.

In his 90s, Arthur Cook rode his motorcycle every day.

Charles Ruijter was windsurfing in the lakes of Netherlands in his 80s.

Oscar Swahn won an Olympic silver medal at age 72 in a shooting competition.

Hildegarde Ferrera made a tandem parachute jump at age 99 in Hawaii.

Sylvia Brett parachute jumped solo at age 80.

Eddie Hill was working as a professional sports car racer in his 60s, at speeds over 300 MPH.

Minnie Munro got married at age 102.

William Ivy Baldwin walked a tightrope across South Boulder Canyon, Colorado, on his 82nd birthday. The wire was 320 feet long and the drop was 125 feet.

Baba Joginder Singh won a gold medal for discus at the Indian National Athletics Meet for Veterans in 1998 at age 105. In his teens, he had represented India in discus at an international meet in Germany.

Dripping Springs Public Library






Satellites. Shooting stars, he said.
Northern lights or screech owls.
Noodles.

feel the focus and speed
taste the road dust
your heated car
eats the miles

One chuck-wills-widow was calling, and this is late in the season. The electric company street lights are out in the neighborhood, offering the gift of a dark night sky. A fireball of blue and green gracefully swept down the northwestern horizon to a bank of clouds below. The clouds broke into lightning, as though responding to the meteor's fall.

Washington Park, Denver, Colorado

The next morning, before dawn, Orion stretched out above the highway, shining brightly, then fading for the day to the rising of the sun.

In beautiful Colorado...supper with number one son...

Lightning flickers. The car tears down the highway toward the great scorpion. The constellation dims as lightning quivers and branches into sharp light below. A great meteor bursts through Scorpio's stars, arching like an arrow, an early Leonid. The car keeps flying forward, into the happiness of the dark.

From St. Anne's church:




The ocean was still. Mountains became whale-like rocks, islands reflected by the shimmering water. The smooth-surfaced water stretched out for miles, as far as I could see. Only there was no water, only the sun-bright white salt flats remaining from some prehistoric sea. Only a beautiful, trembling mirage.

When the raven comes around, be prepared for gifts or mischief, and that sometimes you won't be able to tell the one from the other.