They Leave

"They Leave"

18" X 24" X 1.5"

Free Flight: Paragliding and Hanggliding

Please Watch and Share: Gliders vs. Miners

The mining company purchased the property behind the houses in the 1990's when there were already houses.  This mining company will devastate the neighborhood and quality of life if they are allowed to mine "Phase 2".

I find it interesting that one neighbor cannot change his adjoining property (house and land) in a manner that negatively impacts mine without at least a massive effort to prove the need and to then hear opposing views. How can a different neighbor be completely exempted when their intended use of the property includes the words "total disturbance"?

Please sign the petition https://www.change.org/p/salt-lake-county-government-save-steep-mountain

Dear Friend - Part 2

Dear Friend,

Just over a week ago, I laid on the warm grass in the back yard, idly playing with your fur around your shoulders.  You were 'giving up' the last couple of days. You who love to run up and down the mountains, chase squirrels and tennis balls, swim in creeks, rivers and oceans, explore parks, camping and crazy long road trips (California, Wyoming, Utah and more)... 

Your last few pleasures are becoming impossible... getting in and out of the car, walks in the neighborhood, coming upstairs to bed.  This was a good day but as I watched you watch a bird in tree, the sunlight in the grass-  I knew I was watching you let go and it was time to ask myself to also let you go. 

I last wrote to you in April (http://acarnamedkatie.blogspot.com/2014/04/dear-friend.html). I am writing to you, again here on the internet, not for you but for other humans.  I hope they read this and know that to be in balance with life, we need balance with the world we are born in.  Animals were once a common part of our time on this planet. Now they are often not and we are losing something important as we lose this connection.  

Animals teach us lessons in real friendship. For all our logic and thumbs, we share the same longing for family, safety, adventure and play.  Dumb in our world, they are unable to articulate their feelings and needs with our words.  To truly bond with an animal, we learn to listen, hear, see and feel differently than we are taught to in our human interactions and this brings us into focus with our own natures. 

We humans tend to live in the past, regretting and second guessing what is done.  We tend to live in the future, worrying and planning for what we cannot predict or change. Animals live right now and living with them, we are brought back to the present.

And to you dear friend; It is all right that I am grieving for you. Ohhhh the lessons I have been privileged to learn because of you!  You know all my looks and I know yours.  I know your moods, your inclinations, your signals and you know mine. You accepted me and I learned to accept you. I have hated watching you become limited with age, I am sympathetic to your depression and frustration. I miss you on every run, walk, every excursion of shared "grocery store/ oil change/ park" we had together!

You have been my child, my sister, my friend.

And I promise, because I value you and our friendship, that I am letting you go too.  In tribute to our friendship I will not ask you to keep you going anymore.  I, and my best friend, we will let you go in the next few days, we will pick a day that is beautiful and we will let you go with peace and dignity.