Inspired by my recent invitation to a Flickr group all about Ed, I created this collage....of which Ed himself would likely disapprove. The pics in this image were taken at the Amerind foundation where, as I've mentioned before, my dad lives and serves as the Exec. Director. We stayed there over Xmas this year, and I took over 1000 pics...including the one of Ed in the center that is actually a framed portrait on the wall in the complex where he stayed for awhile in retreat. He was working on his last book--"Hayduke Lives!"--a sequel to "The Monkey Wrench Gang." From clockwise upper left: The courtyard of the complex of rooms where he stayed. The view out the back. A cactus spotted in the rocks above my Dad's house. The view from where we stayed--a duplex on the property. My dad, benevolent ruler of all you see behind him ;) Another view of the mountains surrounding the foundation, this time sprinkled with snow. Though I never met Ed, and don't agree with everything he stood for, he has long been my hero. I began to feel, on our trip to AZ, that I was somehow following in his ghostly footsteps. I could elaborate on that for days--how he used to visit some of our old family friends in Bluff, Utah, and drink whiskey on their front porch (I, too, have enjoyed an admittedly smaller spot of the same stuff on that very porch myself)...his jaunts up to Muley Point, one of my fave places too, and how he wrote about a panel of rock art nearby....how I thought of him on my three trips to Havasupai, and wished I could see it as he did.... Perhaps there are more. It doesn't matter. What matters is that he left me with a deeper respect for both the wilderness and a more profound understanding of my own complicated and contradictive heart. I have long loved the following sentiment, and thought it appropriate to share a condensed version of it here: "Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am -- a reluctant enthusiast, a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for natural land and the west; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still there. ... Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound men with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards."

If you are in SLC, go to Ken Sander's bookstore. It's the best bookstore out west. He sells Monkey Wrench Gang Tshirts & some amazing, arcane books. .