Desert Poetry

I've been home to the ranch for a few days and I had my camera out tonight.  Some of the pictures I took gave me some poem ideas, so hopefully these sound good.

Starting Fires, Starting Over


Something very soothing about striking a match
and letting it drop

on gathered piles of memory

Times when pencil scratchings afforded the most comfort
When the slice of spoken words
Or the dagger of harsh looks
Only ever covered by my blanket of silence

On the remains of such times
Graying photographs, yellowing yearbooks
Bleeding ink on glossy pages
Conveying insincere sincerity

Crumpled birthday cards, written in a cheery hand
Cannot cover cardboard boxes soaking in the rain
I still haven't gotten the smell out of that blanket

The match takes it all

Into the peace of the night sky
Peace broken by the cat mewling at my feet
Glowing eyes watching the smoke rise
Leaving only piles of clean ash

The smoke refreshes my life
The fire blinks out
the dry dead memories
leaving room for piles of good things.

***

Skyline

The sun set hours ago, but my skyline still glows.
Broken mountains - shapes carved by history
Untouched by time

One lone telephone pole reminds me
Home is not far
  warm bed
  clean shower
  good food
  electric lights

One lone star reminds me
I will leave soon
   for the city
   where stars
   don't shine
   but freeways do

I came back days ago, and my desert is still
Repaired heart - a soul mended by time
Ready to go create my history

***

That's what I've got for tonight. Hope you enjoyed - these were just rough, off-the-cuff lines, so if you have any feedback, I wouldn't mind hearing it.  It's been a while since I tried to write this kind of poetry and I'm out of practice.

Oh My Hell, Vegas - GO AWAY ALREADY!

They're like roaches, I swear.  No video embed, but here's a link to a recent news story about this.

A little bit of background - My family lives on a cattle ranch in Utah's West Desert.  That's the other side of the state from Moab and all those fancy national parks in Eastern and Southern Utah that people from the big city come in with their Birkenstocks and mountain climbing gear and think they're becoming "one with nature."  I don't begrudge them that - everyone needs a hobby.  Plus, it helps people in those little towns that exist because of the red rocks and Lake Powell.  Even tourists need to eat.

Western Utah is vastly different.  We're the sagebrush-and-scrub land that nobody - and I mean NOBODY wants.  Oh, we get the history buffs who want to see the old Pony Express (it goes right through our town) and a few other more adventurous types.  However, our main industry is livestock.  It is a little-known fact that cattle and sheep actually thrive on the various kinds of sagebrush out in the West Desert and aren't bothered by the military running aerial practice fights.  Plus, if you irrigate the land properly, you can grow a pretty respectable crop of hay and corn and other sundry things.  Irrigation is possible because of an underground aquifer that runs under land in Eastern Nevada and Western Utah and keeps our mountain valleys green and lush and yummy for the cows (which we then fatten up and sell so you city folks can have your Grade-A Angus T-Bone steak at Sizzler).  That water and those cows put me and my siblings through college and give my family and our neighbors a decent living.  For me, this isn't some "Oh la la la - I'm communing with nature and I feel so FREE!" weekend in July - this is home.

Enter Las Vegas and the Southern Nevada Water Association (Agency? Assholes?).  Or, as I like to call them, Those Rat Bastards That Keep Voting for King Rat Bastard Harry Reid (he's part of the problem since he owns a crapton of land in Vegas with little-to-no water rights).  Apparently, Vegas used up all their other water sources, so they keep going further out for water sources.  And guess who they've tapped to provide them with their next water supply?

If you said Middle of Nowhere, Utah - you would be correct.

This fight has been going on for years.  It started... oh geez... my sister who is now a freshman in college was in sixth grade (I think) when this really blew up.  It made the news and got the governor (who was then Jon Huntsman) to come out to West Desert and talk with the community.  That was a big deal because the rest of the state typically ignores us (we're like the Shire - insignificant and piddly until The Big People drag us into their issues).  Gov. Huntsman basically told Vegas to go pound sand, but then he got called off to be the Ambassador to China and Gov. Herbert (who I like quite a bit otherwise) still hasn't really decided where he stands, though he is reasonable.  For a while, I thought SNWA had taken their ball and gone home, but the above news report says otherwise (dammit).  And now they're making Lake Powell an issue.  I've never been to Lake Powell and never had a desire to go there (boating, tourists, city peeps out sunbathing - that kind of thing), but who do you think will win that fight?  City people love their boats and they could care less about a town with more cows than people.  Besides, horses smell funny.

What gets me (and I wrote about this on Facebook) is that when it's national forests and parks being threatened, you get all kinds of hippies and environmentalists crawling out of the woodwork to tie themselves to trees and protest that the sainted forests and bunnies and deer are at risk and how dare you evil humans come here with your ATVs and campers and we must respect nature!!  But when it's a piece of scrub desert land that people actually live off of and raise their families there and take care of - well, we're just a bunch of dumb rednecks who need to move to the city and don't you know that meat is bad for you anyway?  Never mind that if Vegas drains the Snake Valley aquifer, it's going to be a dust bowl like the rest of the places that Vegas has taken over.  And where does that leave your precious ecosystems, bucko?

I'll be the first to admit - I have an bred-in dislike of environmentalist policy on principle.  And they have a natural dislike for farming, ranching and hunting, which are all things that I grew up doing, so it's a mutual thing.  But I would think that there would be some common ground in this issue.  I (and my family and friends out west) want the land to continue to be useful so we can continue to make a living doing what we love to do.  Environmentalists (I would think) don't want the water sucked dry so it ruins the desert ecosystem (that flourish when the land is farmed, I'll have you know).  But if they don't want to help, that's fine.  We'll beat up on Vegas anyway.  We've done it for at least six years now and it's going to continue.

Since I have a platform (of sorts), I thought I'd devote an entry to this.  It's just nice to feel like you have a way to get the word out and influence people.  Also - do you know how much fun it is to type GO TO HELL LAS VEGAS!!! in all caps?

VEGAS - GO TO HELL!

(I like that variation too ^_^)

Holy Risotto, I'm Tired! or Snark Reigns Supreme!

(Thanks to the joys of Wikipedia, I finally found out what risotto was. Now this video makes a bit more sense - and is even more funny ^_^)

This was the first weekend after I've been working for a full-on week and then I went to church in Delta.  I love the singles branch in Delta.  I have a bit of anonymity (not a whole lot, but a bit) and I can be my own person there (whereas in my branch in Callao, everyone knows my family, everyone is in everyone else's business, etc.  You know, the real reasons people go to singles wards/branches - not that stupid excuse that it's the only place they can go to get married.  I spit in the eye of that excuse).  But this driving back and forth... it's exhausting.  I am fully aware of how crazy it is to do so much driving, but I don't know that I have a choice in the matter.  Well, actually I do.  I could find a job in Salt Lake or Delta or Logan or Outer Mongolia and move away... oh wait... I tried that one already.  We're in a recession and nobody can afford to hire any new people (and here's where I would usually be inclined to make a snarky political statement, but I just don't feel like dealing with the fallout right now.  You can pretend I said something if you like, 'kay?  Maybe I'll just randomly link to HillBuzz.  Good enough).

Anyway, where was I?  Oh yeah - the only place I could find to hire me was at West Desert High School.  Beggars can't be choosers.  And it's not so bad as it could be - at least it's in the general ballpark of what I want to go into anyway (Youth Services Librarianship - yay masters degree!).  It just requires that I live in the outer reaches of nowhere, which is coincidentally where my family lives, which is nice because I don't have to pay rent (I help keep the house and do a bit to help out the family business, though).  But the driving!  All the driving I have to do!  I shouldn't complain - it's not like I'm not used to it.  One day, perhaps, I will live somewhere that I live a block away from work, school, the grocery store and Barnes and Noble.  Maybe even a place where I don't have to give the US Postal Service one ZIP code and UPS a completely different one.  Maybe even a place where both Verizon and AT&T will have painted on their maps (what is that like, anyway?)

Then again, if I lived in a place like that, I'd hate all my busybody neighbors who have to know all the cackly beauty salon gossip ("Oh my GAWSH - she did WHAAT???" - please kill me) and live on top of me and call the cops when my dog craps on their lawn.  My house would look just like everyone else's house because that's what the Homeowners Association (i.e. Hitler) told me to I had to do just to live here (I hate HOAs, in case you couldn't tell.  I think it's a stupid idea, selling me a building lot and then telling me what I can and cannot do with it.  It's my property - I'll do whatever the freck I want).

Just goes to prove that nowhere is perfect.  Everywhere has things you love about it and everywhere has things you wish would go far far away.  As it stands, I love being in Callao and I wouldn't move for anybody.  I don't mind going to the city for a visit (but I also wouldn't be opposed to friends coming to visit me out here, hint, hint.  Come on, all you wussy city-dwellers - it's not that far to come.  Some of you probably make weekend trips to Lake Powell or Wendover without blinking an eye).

("Wussy" here is a term of endearment, by the way)

This post is all over the place - I don't even know where I started.  Goes to show how tired I really am, I guess.  I make random comments.