About This Website

Sometime during the long Canadian winter, I begin to dream about southern Utah's canyon country. I visit during the spring, April to May, and fall, September to October – times of moderate temperatures.

This website contains some of the writing about my experiences that has been published in various poetry journals along with photographs to give you a visual feel for the canyon lands.

The places I frequent are mostly in southern Utah and include Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, Natural Bridges National Monument, and the great canyon systems of the Cedar Mesa (Grand Gulch, Slickhorn, Owl, Fish, Road, and Lime, to name a few). The Colorado and San Juan Rivers form the northern and southern boundaries of this area. I'm only an infrequent visitor to some of the other great parks in the region, including Bryce, Capitol Reef, Zion, and in New Mexico, the astounding Mesa Verde National Park and Chaco Culture National Monument. I've preferred being on foot and knowing a few places well rather than short visits and car touring or four-wheeling through the many landscapes in the region.

The urge to wander about in these canyonlands has to do with more than the primitive and almost untouched beauty of the canyons themselves and the lovely spring and fall weather. The ancient residents left records of their experiences and visions in the form of rock art and of their presence in the form of ruins made of stone and mud that served as shelters and food storage bins. Some of these structures look as if they might have been built yesterday. These people from canyon country's prehistory, formally known as Ancestral Puebloans, deserted the area a thousand years ago, likely due to a severe drought. The Hopi, who are most likely their direct descendants, call them "Hisatsinom," and the Navajo, who were latecomers to the region, call them by the term most commonly used today, "Anasazi." Anasazi has a lovely ring to it. I've read that the term translates as "Ancient Enemy," although the Navajo who migrated from the north didn't occupy these lands until centuries after the Anasazi had left them and thus they were never enemies.

Today's visitors enjoy this area in a variety of ways, including hiking, rafting, biking, four-wheeling, photographing, ruin and arch visiting, and driving on the paved roads to see the grand vistas. Apart from a few relatively small protected areas, much of the land is privately held or is federal public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. In my view, too much of the land in this area remains unprotected and much of it continues to be subjected to intense cattle grazing and weak management by understaffed and underfunded Parks and Bureau of Land Management organizations.

I recommend that people who enjoy these areas support the groups that do their best to secure protection for these precious lands. This includes the Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, and the Southwestern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

Haiku, Tanka and Haibun

Haiku is the world's shortest and most practiced form of poetry. A haiku consists of an average 13 syllables, most often presented in three lines and consisting of two distinct phrases.

Haibun is prose plus haiku. The prose is different than fiction in that it most often relates to the writer's personal experiences. It's different than free verse poetry in that it's arranged in paragraphs as opposed to a series of phrases with line breaks. The prose tends to be clipped and focused on descriptive detail as opposed to philosophizing.

I write haibun because I find it a good way to share my experiences with friends and family and with whatever readers happen on it in the various publications and websites where the writing appears.

Haibun and Haiku Journals

If you've enjoyed this style of writing, you might explore some of the online journals that offer a variety of themes: Contemporary Haibun Online, Haibun Today, A Hundred Gourds.

Dedication

To the friends with whom I've enjoyed hiking these many years including the Utahans (Dave, Peggy and Lori), Midwesterners (Lickety-split, Shard Lady, Deerslayer, GPSman, Larry & Kathy) and Canadians (Sunny, Wendy, Joyce, Gary, Chris, George K, George N, Florence, Kathy, Peter and Jeanett), and Coloradans (Cory, Bill and Peg). And to my daughters, Terra and Teal, who were kind enough to spend time with their dad on a number of these adventures. And to my then wife, Sandra, with whom I took my first backpacking trip to the Needles in the 1970s. And to the two Jims, B. and K., so alike, one might think them brothers and who so generously shared their knowledge of off-trail routes and the natural history of the region. And most of all to Huck, without whom we'd not have gotten through some of those extra-cold Cedar Mesa, olive-oil freezing nights. Laughter, it turns out, is like a warm blanket for both body and spirit ... laughter along with one of Dave's extra fine campfires and a dose of Chris' poetry.

Special thanks to copy and content editor Joyce Hildebrand without whose help there would have been too many erroxs (see there's one!) to count and who wants you to know that she's not responsible for any errors made after her proofing which includes all of them. Her services can be found at Speargrass Communications.

~ Ray Rasmussen