"In the American Southwest, I began a lifelong love affair with a pile of rock." 

-- Edward Abbey

My Sojourns magazine arrive this week in the mail!!!
I love this publication!!  Everything about this periodical is divine. The feel of the paper on which it is printed and the photography it contains is all beautiful and ??unique and beyond compare. Even the weight of it in my hands is perfection!!! The graphic design is eye-catching and the essays are always thought-provoking and enthralling!! Im just sorry it only comes a few times a year!!!

This printing is all about "portals."
Im sure you're asking as I did, what "portals" have to do with National Parks and preservation and natural history......
Well... it goes something like this-
the very first article is a strange and diabolical thing about the sun and life on Mars and, strangely enough, also about desert varnish. (a distinct black coating on our rocks in this area...it looks as though the  rocks have been burnt on the surface)

The sun: a portal of life
Mars: is there life?
desert varnish: what is life?

Did you know that the sun has PMS on a celestial scale?!!  Our glorious sun powers down, looses it zeal and its umph at times, so to speak. (and...nobody can tell it to snap out of it!!!) The sun is cyclic too!!!
Next the article asks us to  think about the ancient Anasazi and the Hopi and Navajo nations who were and are highly concerned with all things celestial and whom are cognizant of what goes on in the heavens.
And then comes the interesting and fascinating segway into having us think about the phenomenon of desert varnish.   It is on these silky brownish black surfaces that the Anasazi  'wrote' or pecked away on to communicate and leave messages.  Some folks believe as Michaelangelo did, that the Indian nations were there to 'let the story out' of the stone, for the world to see.
We are asked to think about the ever present question- "what is life?"


"If the tiny life forms associated with desert varnish have the "know-how"--
the genetic ability and chemical wisdom- to survive extreme environments,
who's to say they arent intelligent in their own mysterious way?  In an era
in which biological studies regularly reveal marvelous new layers of 
existence (plants can think and remember! Slime molds can solve a maze!),
clearly we have a lot to learn about both "life" and "intelligence."  For
looking at the worlds around us, curiosity has always been our wisest portal."
-Maria Melendez
Sojourn Magazine

So...maybe there is "life" on Mars as well??



Please become a friend of Zion National Park, and then you too can enjoy this semi-annual stellar publication!!

These amazing Anasazi writings are in my "own back yard!!!"