Dan Allison
allisondan52@gmail.com
775-997-4937
3100 Imperial Way, Apt 10
Carson City NV 89706-0809
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Previous: none Next: Winter Solstice 2000
This is a post-dated newsletter, actually put together on Christmas eve of 2000. I decided to do a quarterly/seasonal newsletter in an effort to keep my friends up to date on my life, but I realized that I've not been in touch with many friends since early summer or before and I wanted to catch up with the exciting summer I had. I'll even stretch this season back to early June so I can include my high school reunion.
After my last day of work for the spring with WOLF School, I flew to Las Vegas and met my high school friend Larry at the airport. The occasion was our 30th high school reunion, for Western High School in Las Vegas. We had talked each other into going, thinking it would be a little (or a lot) weird, but it was a good chance for us to get together as well, Larry living in New Hampshire and us not seeing each other often. The reunion was at the Nellis Air Force Base officers club. We arrived early, immediately recognized a few people and struggled to put names with the faces. The organizers had made name tags with our high school yearbook pictures and names, but the names were in small print and we were all squinting to see them. We were all amazed at how healthy and happy everyone was, but the one thing that tied us all together was our inability to read small print with aging eyes. It was fun to reconnect with people, most of whom I'd not seen since graduation (I had not made it to the 10th and 20th reunions). Some people were scattered widely to the winds, but others had been in Las Vegas the whole time or had come back. Almost everyone was very happy with the life they were leading, their families, their work, and that is cool. I especially enjoyed seeing Kathy and JoEllen and have kept in touch with both of them since. On the afternoon before the reunion Larry and I stopped by the high school, mostly to look at the tile mosaic designs that have been made by every class since the school opening in 1965, which are hung all around the quad. Very few teachers were still working there from our day, but the school secretary Gretchen is still there after all these years. Our reunion was organized in part through Classmates.com, and if you have wondered what ever happened to those folks from the old high school days, I recommend you check out that web site.
After the reunion I flew to Albuquerque and drove to Denver to assist a Teen Insight I seminar. Assisting these personal growth seminars for teens has been one of the most rewarding activities of my life. In this seminar I got to work with several teens that had started their own path through the seminars in 1998 and 1999, and were now assisting, and met several new adults and teens.
From Denver back to Albuquerque and Las Vegas and then briefly home in Santa Cruz before heading up to the Camp Ross Relles in the northern Sierra to work a week of Camp ReCreation. This camp is for developmentally disabled children and adults. I was honored to work with both the participants and the counselors who support the campers on a one-to-one basis. I was the naturalist for the week, signing songs and sharing animal costumes and teaching a little about the earth. I was amazed by how the participants live so much in the present, more so than do most people, and how much they loved to dance. On the way up to ReCreation I spent a day with my friend Steffani and a day with my friend Lea, and got to contra dance in Auburn.
After a visit to Westminster Woods where AEOE is holding its spring conference and an wild afternoon at the tide pools at Natural Bridges State Park in Santa Cruz, I took the train to Denver. I'd not been on a long trip on Amtrak in years, and it was a lot of fun. I met some really neat people of different ages and backgrounds. I love trains because you can get up and walk around, meeting many more people than one ever would on a plane or bus. The tracks follow a number of rivers on their way from San Jose to Denver - the Truckee, the Humboldt, the American Fork, the Price, and the Colorado. The sections along these rivers are spectacular, particularly when the tracks follow the rivers instead of the highways.
I was back in Denver to assist the Teen II seminar. Another good seminar, working with friends both old and new, and many of the same teens that had taken the Teen I earlier in the summer. I drove the seminar equipment back to Santa Fe, where Life Education Network of the Southwest, which offers the seminars, is based. Phil and I spent a wonderful day soaking at San Antonio Hot Springs in the Jemez Mountains west of Santa Fe. I also got to see a lot of Santa Fe friends.
From Santa Fe back to California on Amtrak, though it was not nearly as much fun because the train was late and stopped several times to toss people off, and we got bussed past the part of the trip I was really looking forward to, from Santa Barbara to San Luis Obispo. Then to southern California to assist the Teen III seminar with Martha. This was the first Teen III to be offered in many years, and it was an amazing experience. We camped out in the San Bernardino Mountains near Lake Arrowhead. A number of the teens attending this seminar had started in Santa Fe in 1998, so this was the culmination of their journey. There was so much good energy resulting from the Teen III seminar that there will be another one in 2001 in Colorado, and there are a number of Teen I and II seminars in the southwest, California and Boston.
You'd think three teen seminars would be enough for the summer, but I headed back to Santa Fe to assist an adult Insight I seminar in August. I find that I get as much benefit from assisting these seminars as I do from taking them. It's a lot of work assisting, but also a chance to be in the seminar room for free and to give back to the organization and seminars which have meant so much to me.
Whew! Take a breath. We're almost to fall.
From Santa Fe I headed to Natural Bridges National Monument in southeastern Utah. This is one of my favorite places in the whole world, and I've spent time there the last six years helping to control tamarisk (an invasive plant from Asia that takes over riparian areas and pushes out the native cottonwood and willow). I caught up on the work of removing tamarisk from the portion of White Canyon above the national monument (I had missed getting there last year, so the tamarisk was thicker), and made a small dent in my new project of clearing Birch Canyon, which will take years. Though I really enjoy the work of clearing tamarisk and seeing tamarisk free canyons, my work there is in some ways just an excuse to go hiking and explore the canyons. Thunderstorms gathered every day, but strangely enough it only really rained at night. Though it was only mid-August, there was a sense of coming fall in the air with the shrubs up on Elk Ridge starting to change and a very cool and fall-ish feeling morning.
From Natural Bridges I went to Kanab UT and visited with my friend from Humboldt State days, Ruth. We had not seen each other in about twelve years, so it was exciting, fascinating and awkward getting to know each other again. We hiked in Zion NP and up on the Kolob near Duck Creek. I especially enjoyed sitting with our feet in Duck Creek and talking all morning, and then lying under the aspen trees watching the end of the day and the stars coming out as the leaves trembled in the breeze.
Then Las Vegas for a few days of seeing friends and family, and then to Flagstaff on Labor Day for the Mountain Dawn Dance. Back in July at the Teen III seminar I had tweaked my knee playing volleyball, and I was not sure if I could dance all night, but I handled it by dancing every other dance, and in the morning my knee felt tired but good.
From there I headed back to California and started to work again at Web of Life Field School. Just before the equinox I week down to Hi Hill Outdoor School in the San Gabriel mountains for an AEOE board meeting which was very successful in clearing out a backlog of issues and talking about the future of the organization.
And that brings us to the Autumnal Equinox, September 22, 2000.