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Last week I had a conversation with some women about people’s attitudes towards life, living, and longevity. I expressed my developing realization that I don’t really have a lot of time to do all there is I desire to do! This was at first taken as a negative mentality so I had to explain that it is a positive thing for me because I keep discovering more and more things I want to learn and do.

It’s positive for me because it keeps me hopping – or “kicking” (as my grandma used to say) and continually striving to learn and do and set goals.

Now….if I can just figure out some timelines for myself to do all these things…..

🙂

I started backpacking just a few years ago on my 43rd birthday. I was hooked immediately and love going backpacking whenever I can!

Tomorrow Tom and I are leaving for a 4 day backpacking trip to the beautiful Upper Calf Creek Falls in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Wilderness of Southern Utah. The area where we will backpack to is just below about a mile of slickrock into a paradise of all sorts of wonderful plant and animal life. The trail is the stream where fish skirt around your ankles as you hike through the beauty of the canyon.

This experience will be my “education” for the next four days as I remind myself of the beautiful surroundings in which I am fortunate enough to live.

I’ll be sure to post photos upon my return.

Here are two photos from our trip there a few years ago:

….oil, that is.

Today’s Deseret News reports that 13 Utah permits issued without public comment, as part of an aggressive push by the Bush administration to open more public land to oil and gas production.

BLM deputy director Jim Hughes stated “We don’t think there will be any environmental degradation,” Hughes said. “It’s basically going into areas where you’ve already got stuff happening, where you’ve got existing NEPA work that had been completed. We think in many cases this is just duplicative work.”

Uh, that makes it o.k., then.

But Dave Alberswerth, public lands director for The Wilderness Society, states, “They have to have a fairly recent analysis of the impacts before they can apply these categorical exclusions. If they’re planning to improperly apply these exemptions . . . in places where there are old land-use plans that are out of date, then they are asking for legal trouble.”

A southwest regional representative for the Sierra Club, said it’s “absurd to suggest that we need to weaken environmental oversight to help the industry. Where you have land that ought to be protected, (drilling) it is the difference between the Garden of Eden and the post apocalypse.”

There is no mention of the support or lack thereof by our public officials of this issue in this article. I’m fairly certain, however, that Orrin Hatch is a proponent of drilling for oil in Utah.

The top headline in the online version of the Salt Lake Tribune reports thatBush is most popular in Utah, according to a recent poll. While 60 percent of Utahns (according to the poll)”approves” of Bush, most Americans do not, with only 38 percent approval. (NOTE: The SurveyUSA poll questioned 600 adults in each state. Conducted Friday through Sunday, it has a margin of error in Utah of plus or minus 4 percent.)

“The people of Utah have a long-term vision of what this president stands for,” said Ron Fox, who was the vice chairman of Bush’s 2004 campaign effort in Utah. “The people of Utah understand the president’s agenda and his focus, the necessity of a war on terror.”

“The people of Utah”? Wait a minute. I am a “people of Utah” and I don’t like being included in that statement above. Perhaps Mr. Fox was misquoted and he really said “many people in Utah”.

Rep. Pat Jones (D) stated, In looking at the long-term, I can say that most people’s lives are not better today than they were before his administration.”
She attributed Utah’s high marks for Bush to the state’s heavy Republican tilt and the relatively low number of minority residents.

Jones also stated that many Utahns do not understand the long term impact of the nation’s budget deficit.

Meanwhile, in Utah: