Shanandy

My Almost Criminal Past February 19, 2008

I’m haunted by my past.

One picture, so much praise, so much trouble.

This picture hung at SUU for an Art Week, my mom was proud.

To this day it hangs on my police record as well. I haven’t asked, but I doubt she’s proud about that.

The morning I took this picture I was reported as a suspicious person, possibly a terrorist. I wish I was kidding. Cedar City Police Department eventually started an investigation into who I was and what I was doing. At the time I was attending SUU in Cedar City, but I still lived in St. George.

Cedar City Police couldn’t find much on me, and passed the case down to St. George Police a couple of months later. St. George Police apparently mentioned my name in a briefing to see if anyone had ever had any contact with me before. No one had, but one of my friends John Heppler now a police officer with the department said he knew me and would check it out.

John realizing I wasn’t a terrorist, called my parent’s to see if he couldn’t get my phone number. He told my parent’s about my suspected terrorist behavior, with my camera and tripod. My mom laughed and told John that I was in a photography class, and that my picture was on display at SUU. Eventually John hooked me up and closed the file, but to this day it’s still listed in the police database as an “Agency Assist” Which strangely makes me look like I somehow assisted the Police Department with something.

Saturday I went for a ride along with another Officer friend of mine, and we pulled up my contacts with the police, I wasn’t surprised by any of it but this. As I told the story, my friend said, wow that’s one for the journal, I hope you guy’s like it as much as he did.

It’s always what surprises you that counts though isn’t it?

Snow Patrol February 11, 2008

In a continuing effort to improve on stale blogs I present you with post number two in under a week.

Shan and I spent the weekend with my parents at their cabin in Strawberry Valley. The main reason for our trip was to remove snow from our humble summer abode. See in the summer we reside in a very small trailer that’s been fitted with some kind of homemade roof to help keep the snow off. It doesn’t.

My Dad and I went up Friday morning and by the time we finally got on the snowmobiles and made it over to our trailer it was about an hour before dark. Instead of seeing a crushed trailer, or some huge snowy mess we’d have to work on for a couple of hours to clear we were surprised to see this.

I was pretty excited that I escaped one of my allergies, manual labor. I did however don those snowshoes and trek around a bit for these pictures. Look how excited my dad is to get out and ride snowmobiles.

My dad came up with a genius plan a few years back to put future floor wax diluted 50/50 with water on the roof, in essence waxing the roof. Well I had some extra time this year as we were closing up the trailer for the winter so I put two coats on the roof to make it extra slippery.

Next year I think I’ll even wax the roof of our bunkhouse, since it looks like this right now.

The rest of our weekend was spent playing with the fire, lounging around and having a swell time in the forest. Shan and I went for a very long snowmobile ride, Strawberry Valley up Broad Hollow, across to Navajo Lake and then back through Duck Creek. It took us just about 3 hours to make the journey, it was cold but really fun to see the mountain covered with snow.

Late Saturday night we noticed our security light came on, and caught some wildlife in action.

It’s kind of hard to see, but there is a salt/corn lick there for the deer during the summer. This rabbit was out in 14 degree weather to clean up the scraps. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a rabbit on Cedar Mountain actually.

-In a desperate bid to get some blog posts flying, I’m going to commit to updating at least twice a week and see if I can stir some family members with shame and awe into following suit.

Andy out!

Gone baby gone February 6, 2008

Life itself if pretty remarkable sometimes, lately I’ve become increasingly aware that life, or time seems to speed up exponentially (I stole that word from my economics days). As we progress through life everything around us seems to speed up, time never seems to slow down anymore. There is always more to do, more to see and less time to do it in.

During the summer when I’m on the mountain I notice that my life drastically changes for the better. By that I mean the distractions fade away, time seems more fluid and nothing seems to demand the attention or thought that it does when I’m in the city. I feel a palpable amount of stress just being in town, it weighs me down and makes me tired.

I’m actually curious to see what others think of this. I usually imagine that having a family aka children would seem to make this effect even worse (one among the many reasons that I’m currently childless)

On the children note, some of my best friends Mark and Christine had a beautiful baby girl Elizabeth Ashley, the other day. I couldn’t be happier for them, I know they will make great parents. Mark has a couple of abilities I’m so jealous of, He’s easily the most empathetic and patient person I’ve ever met. If your interested you can check out their blog here.

I started running again this year, and frankly it’s been a lot of fun. I run with a neighbor every other morning at 7am. It’s really cold, and really early but the more I get up and get going the more fun I’m having when we run. I talked with my running partner tonight and we’re both to the point we think we can take on a 5k and do just fine, then again confidence has never really been my problem so maybe we won’t do fine.

My older brother is in town this week and it’s been fun hanging out with him. I love spending one on one time with my siblings. The older they and I get the more I cherish them. It’s fun to see how people change and progress and how the bonds we share seem to stretch and pull in different ways over that time.

A quick note about John, he once took me fishing below Navajo Lake on Cedar Mountain. The stream that comes out of Navajo Lake ends up being the North Fork of the Virgin River. Well that river has some natural cutthroat trout in there, they aren’t large, but they’re so fun to catch. Anyway I was probably 13-14 at the time and I remember that John pulled off at an overlook and just sat there and said I can’t believe how beautiful this is. I just didn’t see it yet, and remarked that it was nothing special. John said you wait 10 years, you’ll grow up and realize how beautiful this is.

I think it’s been more than 10 years, but literally everyday when I was working on the mountain I would look around and almost be in tears at how beautiful it all was. I make it a point to see something beautiful daily, if your ever on Valley View drive, headed north around 5pm while the sun is just starting to set, take a look at Pine Valley mountain with the red cliffs at it’s feet. It’s so stunning that it makes me want to stop in the middle of the street and soak it in. If you hurry you can see it while there is still snow on Pine Valley.

Well my time to write is over oh so painfully quick, I’ll try to make it back this week.

I’ll leave you with one picture that I’ve titled “Forget Hugging” this picture was taken on the Cascade Falls trail, which happens to be the start of the North Fork of the Virgin River.