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Show THE ZEPHYR/DEC-JAN 2008 PERFECT MOMENTS From Readers of the Canyon Country Zephyr CLARK PHELPS...SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH I was born in 1950 and as a youngster was trained to duck and cover under a wooden school desk in the event of Soviet nuclear attack. The Russians were feared as the Godless enemies that could bury us. I was part of a federally funded Russian language class in the 4th 5th and 6th grade. We were taught to the language and to be afraid. During the Cuban missile crisis 1 was convinced of Armageddon but was comforted by my Dad. He suggested that people have been predicting the end of the world ever since they invented the crossbow. TAMMY FARMER...BEATTIEVILLE, KENTUCKY Back home there is a beautiful spot wp on the hill where you can see for miles. It’s as close to heaven as you can get in Kentucky. The field is covered with tall grasses that just sort of dance with the mountain breeze and there’s just a sprinkle of daisies mixed in to give a bit of color. Early on in my life I started going to this spot any time I got mad or sad. It was my little spot away from the rest of the world, my hiding place. I became involved as a volunteer in the drug and alcohol recovery community in 1983. In the spring of 1989 I hosted a man and woman from Soviet Leningrad [now St. Petersburg] that had been freed On a normal day in the Farmer household there was always a bit of an argument going between someone in the house. Everyone as- | sumes we are always fighting, but through the | years we figured out we must have some Ital- from addiction. Coincidentally, while they were my guests, we watched the revolt in Tienanmen Square | ian in our blood, cause that’s just the way we acted around each other on a daily basis. If you _ didn’t get a good spat going with someone in he house, you just weren't doing your duty. On one particular day, my father and I got a on my TV. In the 3 weeks they were here I showed them around in my plush and puff $700 1972 Cadillac. We saw treatment and detox centers, gun stores, pawn shops, porn shops, wrecking yards, Zions and Bryce National Parks, a rodeo, automatic es, ATM machines, Gordon B. Hinckley, hinese food, Wendover casinos, farmers utcher shops, shopping malls, yard sales car washdelivered markets, and other bit out of hand with a spat over what, I don’t even remember. He ran out the front door _ with a loud slam. I ran for my room and my shoes, so I could head to my favorite spot up on the mountain. It was a hot summer day and highlights that proved our wretched excess in contrast to their oppressive scarcity. We bonded. The “Perfect Moment” came in kind of a sappy “We are the World” kind of a event. We were in a municipal park with a live band. The air, light and mood was heavenly. The soloist in the band suggested holding hands and circling up. With a new friend on each hand We joined in with the singer and sang John Lennon’s “Imagine” That’s what did it for me! I saw that fearing the evil Rooskies and Soviet domination, like all fear is temporal. A waterfall of gratitude for freedom, bounty, and love washed over us. Imagine there are no countries, It’s easy if you try. I am changed. I don’t dwell on Soviet domination, crossbows, contaminated spinach, bird flu, West Nile mosquitoes, Muslim jihadists, terror alerts, global climate change, cell phone cancer, SARS, and most other real and/or imagined threats. I prefer to concentrate on love, gratitude, beauty, kindness, hope, service and continue to have great expecta- + Iwas sweating like crazy and cursing with every oe Icouldn’t wait tobred my saree and just lay down on the grass and gaze up at those white puffy clouds floating over my head. | didn’t have any idea what awaited me today. I reached the high spot and there stood my father. I drew in a deep breathe and said, “What are you doing up here?” He looked at me and said, “This is where | come when I've got something on my mind. It feels like God lives here and I can forget all my problems here.” I couldn’t help but laugh, and I guess for a moment he thought I was making fun of him. ThenI said, “This is where I come when I need to find some peace”. Well, then we both started laughing. He walks over and gives me a great big hug and at that point whatever we were arguing about was long gone from both our minds, and even today, I can’t recall what the argument was about. Of course through the years we have had plenty more arguments, but we always remembered where to find each other again. tions. Imagine that. ROBYN SLAYTON-MARTIN... DEVIN VAUGHAN...MOAB, UTAH FLAGSTAFE, ARIZONA I was on my way back from...?.. somewhere going north on 191 a few miles past the A few years ago I was exiled to inland North Carolina. I stayed for an eternity: eleven months. turn off to: The Needles... almost home.... and it was raining...... well not just raining.. but one of those canyonlands gully washers when you can’t hardly see to drive cause the wipers can’t keep up.... and the roaring excitement of it all is punctuated with.... with the strobe like flash and crash of constant lightning. I learned one thing —a thunder storms so I was in heaven and I couldn’t see to drive played on my anyway... so I pulled off on a side road to watch prince’s plume and cottonwoods with the blue bowl of sky curving overhead brought me home to the Southwest. I fixated on the image. No caption made the real location difficult. I framed the image on my desktop and lived in it till I returned home. Some years later on a trip to Southern Utah my husband and I stopped at a random trailhead to hike. Having no agenda, we flipped a coin for direction: heads, up-trail; tails, down-trail. Heads won. Two miles later I stopped, shocked. It was an unbelievable, perfect moment. I found standing inside my desktop photo, the one that had saved my life through eleven months of gray skies and urban sprawl. I could have written about my perfect run through Three Fords Rapid on the Green, but that’s another story. LANCE CHRISTIE...MOAB, UTAH I’ve never experienced anything I recognize CRISTA WORTHY...SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA en I was 9, my mother’'s friend Rosmalike my second mother, One un-captioned im- a small clear stream bordered by sandstone cliffs, but the lightning keeps up a steady call and response.... and that’s when I hear this sound unlike anything I’ve heard before or since... A bit like bacon frying.... lots and lots of bacon... or maybe like the sky was made of canvas... and God was tearing the sky apart.... and a micro second later...before I could even think, “ what the....???” the tearing hicupped into a simultaneous blinding flash and kick in the chest expulsion of sound.... Followed immediately by the explosion of laughter from me.. . I think I might have peed my pants a bit... But it was soooo worth it..... 1 was a grinnin ‘idiot all the way home...... 1 don’t know how close it was..... but it was close.... VERY!!! Maybe even closer than that time that my hair stood on end and the tree across the street exploded and caught of fire.... but that’s another story... but this story ... this moment... for me...... was perfect! was computer. age looked exactly like heaven to me. The photo, the show.... there weren't any pine trees around so I just sat in the car........ time passes , the rain slows... rie, who lifelong high desert rat has no business living in a place that averages 50% humidity on a good day. I book-marked a webcam trained on the Mountain just north of Flagstaff, my hometown, and checked in daily. 1 googled images of southern Utah and loaded them into a slide show that Well I used to climb the tallest pine tree at my parents house during thunder storms when I was a kid, just to watch the show.... and you know??... they never did tell me to get down???... anyway I love as a PARTICULAR “perfect moment.” Philosophically, 1 experience all moments as perfect, even if they're perfectly awful ac- gave / me some Easter Lily cactus plants. They first bloomed 20 years later, on my 29th birthday, | June 3rd. The flowers last one day, and they all _ bloom on the same day. Every year since, they _ bloomed once a year, on my birthday, until | 1997 whenI got married and they bloomed on | our wedding day, May 1st, and then AGAIN on my birthday. For the last 10 years, they bloom twice a year, on our anniversary an = my birthday-unbelievable, but true. I was finally able to visit Rosmarie, who the transcendental experience are universal among members of homo sap because of the way our brains are wired. In the “individuated” (Jung), “self-actualized” (Maslow), or “enlightened” (Buddha) individual, the individual is said to experience reality on both the mundane and transcendental levels at the same time - having a sort of binocular consciousness in which the transcendant perfection in every moment is experienced even as moved back to her native Switzerland, in 2005. At 75, she’s very fit so we hiked in the Alps daily. Alone, we wandered down to an alpine lake, reflecting snow-covered peaks. Then, two elderly men ambled over, each carrying a 10-ft long alpenhorn, and began to play. They played for themselves, for the joy of it, the notes sounding sweet and long over the lake. It was your quintessential Swiss moment. Rosmarie turned to me and said, ““See, it’s nice to know that in one place, everything is still all right with the world.”” one takes care of mundane business like keeping the cat box clean, the dishes washed, and the garbage taken out. -Lance Christie 14 |