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Show OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2007 Tite CANYON Olio s TARE ix O LEAVE IT PO BOX 327 MOAB, UTAH 84532 JIM STILES, PUBLISHER eee ENS WWW. com vw tater net moabzephyr@yahoo.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ken Sleight Martin Murie Ned Mudd Barry Scholl Lisa Braddock Scott Silver Lance Christie Kathleene Parker Wendell Berry Danny Rosen Erica Walz THE ARTIST John Depuy HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPHS Herb Ringer (1913-1998) ZEPHYR PILOT & AERIAL RECONAISSANCE Paul Swanstrom ZEPHYR TRANSPORTATION FLEET SPECIALISTS Gene Schafer Tom Wesson WEBMASTER Gary Henderson spankme2times@excite.com SUBSCRIPTIONS & TRANSCRIPTIONS Linda Vaughan & Nicole Whitney CIRCULATION JA Bryan Lance Lawrence Jose Churampi Mark Anderson Kathy Aldous THE ZEPHYR, copyright 2007 The Zephyr is published six times a year at Moab, Utah. The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of its vendors, advertisers, or even at times, of its publisher. All photographs and cartoons are by the publisher, unless otherwise noted. There is nothing impossible in the existence of the supernatural: its existence seems to me decidedly probable. BY Jim siTLLeis LONGING FOR A MYSTERY Iwasa 10 year old Boy Scout, at the end of a long 16 mile hike in Brown County, Indiana when I saw my first UFO. It was a cold starry night in March and my buddies and I gathered in an open field for our Troop school bus to pick us up and drive us home to Louisville. Suddenly, someone yelled, “Hey! Look at those lights....what is that?” We collectively swung our young necks skyward. There in the northern sky, three lights hung silently above us. Imagine a pencil, dangling from a string, with small lights at both ends and in the center. Imagine those lights, I’ve lost my share of dear friends over the years; some of them lived long, fruitful lives; others were taken away from us years or decades before they should have been. In some cases, they were just getting warmed up for this thing called Life. Two of my dearest friends were Herb Ringer and Bill Benge. Herb died almost a decade ago, on my birthday, in fact, and lived to the ripe old age of 85. But Bill died just a few months after his 60th birthday, at a time in his life when he’d never been happier. But I would swear that both old friends paid me a nighttime visit, not long after they passed on, and I feel compelled to share those visits. I’d like to believe it really © happened. Herb Ringer’s health had begun to deteriorate in the summer of 1998. In August, he gave up his home of 46 years and moved into a retirement center; he was almost blind from macular degeneration and he felt he had no other choice. But I feared that he’d lose his identity, if he walked away from the old Smoker trailer he bought in 1952. And indeed, within weeks, he declined rapidly. For a man whose memory meant everything to him, Herb must have felt like an alien to himself, as the history of his life ebbed ae in darkness, without being able to see the pencil itself. That is the sight we beheld. We listened for the sound of a jet or plane, but there was no noise at all. It moved slowly across the sky...stopped...pivoted on its front axis, then slipped away from us until it disappeared over the trees. My friend Sammy Sullens exclaimed, “THAT was a UFO! I can’t believe we saw a UFO!” I'd never heard of such a thing. “UFO?” I asked. “What do you mean?” “A UFO!” Sammy said. “You know...an ‘unidentified flying object.’ A flying saucer!” “A flying saucer? Where do they come from?” Sammy shook his head. “You really ARE a dumb little kid.”(He was 12. I was 10.) “They're from outer space. From another planet! There are aliens in those UFOs!” Vd never felt so exhilarated in my life. Aliens from outer space? Flying saucers darting over my head in the skies above Brown County, Indiana? I could feel my heart pounding in a way I’d never experienced before. My introduction to the Unknown. I loved the mystery of it all. It's probably what drew me to the canyon country, a decade later, with its vast and unexplored open space and its strange and fantastic landscape. But why do we need a mystery to begin with? And do true, unexplainable mysteries even exist? As more of the natural world is explored and exploited, and mapped and gridded and Google-Earthed, and marketed and pack- aged, I think some of us find ourselves turning to the supernatural as a mystery of last resort. The Last Unknown is the place we're not sure even exists. Sounds like a safe place to be for the time being. As for true unexplainable mysteries? I’ll let you be the judge of that. For me the jury’s still out. As more of the natural world is explored and exploited, and mapped and gridded and Google-Earthed, and marketed and packaged, I think some of us find ourselves turning to the supernatural as a mystery of last resort WAS IT JUST A DREAM? If there is one inexplicable thing in our lives, it must surely be the dreams we all experience almost every night we lay our heads on the pillow and drift toward sleep. Often we forget them, sometimes we're haunted by them. Occasionally they're so intense, they wake us with a start. I have, from time to time, spent the better part of a day, troubled by some vague feeling of impending doom, wondering why I’m so unsettled. Then the memory of a previous night’s bad dream will return and the dread goes away. Some humans have dedicated their lives to dream analysis and others have buried their dreams so deeply, they refuse to even acknowledge the experience, much less the meaning. For me, it’s still part of the Great Mystery. Are dreams George Santayana 1863-1952 But two dreams stand out clearly in my mind; if they were “just dreams,” they are still unforgettable and will be there still when I draw my own final breath. anything more than a manifestation of our own subconscious? Do they mean anything? Are the people who inhabit my dreams mere images in my head, or are they truly paying me a visit? In times of extreme crisis, and especially when it involves death, we all seem to be more susceptible to the suggestion that our dreams carry a special meaning, or even a message from beyond the grave. For me, I’m a hopeful skeptic. I’ve turned to my dreams to give me comfort, but I’ve never been totally convinced my own brain wasn’t just trying to make me feel better. 2 In late November, I spent some time on the phone with Herb’s doctor. Though there was no immediate cause for alarm, it seemed to him that Herb had lost the will to live. I wasn’t surprised. Later that day, I described Herb’s declining health to my friend John Hartley. “You know,” | said, “I think Herb is going to die on my birthday.” John looked startled. “Why would| you. say that?” I shrugged. “Don’t know. Just a feeling, I gues But the feeling didn’t go away. The next Zephyr press day was December 11, and I'd already planned an issue called, “Then and Now—the way we were, the way we are.” On the cover were two pictures of Herb. The first was a childhood image, taken by his father in 1921. The second was one of my own, shot in August when I helped him move. On the morning of the 11th, I made the two hour drive to Cortez, Colorado, where The Zephyr was printed for 14 years. All day I was haunted by premonitions. In early afternoon, I loaded the last of the copies into the truck and raced back to Moab, convinced I'd find a sad message on my answering machine when I got home. But when I walked in the door, the blinking red mes- sage light was dark. I breathed a sigh of relief and walked up to Dave's for a cup of coffee. An hour later I came home to the blinking light I’d been dreading. Herb had died at 2 pm. That afternoon, I contacted the hospital and then the retirement home. A wonderful woman there, an RN named Patty who had taken a personal interest in Herb, helped me deal with all those “arrangements” that have to be made, when we are least capable of dealing with anything at all but our own grief. A few days later, I had the most remarkable dream.... I was standing waist-deep in a swift clear mountain stream, but safely in the shallows and out of the current. Floating on his back in front of me and looking perfectly serene was Herb. Only my firm grip on his shoulders kept him in the backwater. The banks were green and lush but mid-stream granite boulders disrupted the water’s flow and created eddies and swirls. It looked dangerous to me, but Herb wanted me to push him into the current. I argued with him, insisted it was too risky, but he just nodded and smiled. “Tt’ll be okay, Jim...just give me a push.” I hesitated again and he put his hand on mine and patted it. “Okay Herb.” I reluctantly released my grip and as he floated by me, feet first, 1 gave his shoulders one last push. The current grabbed him almost instantly and 1 watched Herb enter the heart of the stream. But as he passed one of the granite boulders, Herb was snared by an eddy and I watched with alarm as he spun in small circles near the rock. “Herb!” I cried out. “Are you alright?” |