Photos Soon To Be Available for Purchase

On September 7, 2014December 20, 2014 By Donna F. G. HailsonIn Arts and Culture, Grand Canyon, Photography, Wilderness, Wildlife and EcologyLeave a comment

Crossing Temple Butte, Grand Canyon National Park

Fluffing Raven, Grand Canyon National Park

I’m delighted to announce that my photographs will soon be available for purchase at Grand Canyon National Park and via an e-commerce site I will launch later this month (I’ll post a link when the site is good to go)!

The Grand Canyon Association, the park’s non-profit partner, features only a handful of photographers and my work was chosen from more than 400 submissions. My website will not only have Canyon photos, but also images from Yellowstone, Craters of the Moon, Death Valley, Chimayo, Pearl Harbor, Santa Fe, San Antonio and many other locations around the country. The site will also feature photos of wildlife and scenes from “the road”.

Featured photo: Sunset at Navajo Point, Grand Canyon National Park

National Historic Landmark To Be Dedicated July 8 Recalling 1956 Collision of Airliners Over the Grand Canyon

On July 6, 2014July 28, 2014 By Donna F. G. HailsonIn Grand CanyonLeave a comment

On Monday, the National Park Service marked the 58th anniversary of the mid-air collision of two commercial airliners over the Grand Canyon with wreath laying ceremonies at the United Airlines Memorial in Grand Canyon Pioneer Cemetery and the TWA Memorial in the Flagstaff Citizens Cemetery.

On Tuesday, July 8, a new National Historic Landmark will be dedicated and I’ll be heading out to that memorial service with fellow instructors from the Grand Canyon Field Institute.

The disaster led to the formation of the Federal Aviation Administration and the air traffic control system that we use today.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/58133268-78/canyon-crash-twa-united.html.csp

Featured image: Computer rendering of aircraft involved in the 1956 Grand Canyon air disaster by Anynobody.

God’s Winds that Lift Us to Higher Levels

On February 4, 2014April 3, 2014 By Donna F. G. HailsonIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth (Isaiah 58:14).

Those who fly through the air in airships tell us that one of the first rules they learn is to turn their ship toward the wind, and fly against it. The wind lifts the ship up to higher heights. Where did they learn that? They learned it from the birds. If a bird is flying for pleasure, it goes with the wind. But if the bird meets danger, it turns right around and faces the wind, in order that it may rise higher; and it flies away towards the very sun.

Sufferings are God’s winds, His contrary winds, sometimes His strong winds. They are God’s hurricanes, but they take human life and lift it to higher levels and toward God’s heavens.

You have seen in the summer time a day when the atmosphere was so oppressive that you could hardly breathe? But a cloud appeared on the western horizon and that cloud grew larger and threw out rich blessing for the world. The storm rose, lightning flashed and thunder pealed. The storm covered the world, and the atmosphere was cleansed; new life was in the air, and the world was changed.

Human life is worked out according to exactly the same principle. When the storm breaks the atmosphere is changed, clarified, filled with new life; and a part of heaven is brought down to earth. –Selected

Obstacles ought to set us singing. The wind finds voice, not when rushing across the open sea, but when hindered by the outstretched arms of the pine trees, or broken by the fine strings of an Aeolian harp. Then it has songs of power and beauty. Set your freed soul sweeping across the obstacles of life, through grim forests of pain, against even the tiny hindrances and frets that love uses, and it, too, will find its singing voice. –Selected

Be like a bird that, halting in its flight,

Rests on a bough too slight,

And feeling it give way beneath him sings,

Knowing he hath wings.

From L.B. Cowman’s Streams in the Desert

Featured photograph of the Grand Canyon by D.F.G. Hailson.

Learning Condor Monitoring

On January 21, 2014February 4, 2014 By Donna F. G. HailsonIn Grand Canyon, Wildlife and EcologyLeave a comment

I came to the Grand Canyon to learn, to experience and to become better equipped to serve as an advocate for wild places and wildlife. Now that things have settled a bit and I’ve been able to establish a workable studio and writing schedule, I’m ready to dig in. Next week, I’ll start learning how to do condor monitoring (telemetry and more) and will likely devote a late morning every week or every other week looking for activity. As I write this, most of the condors are at the canyon’s river or in Utah (where it’s warmer) but a chick did fledge a few months ago and, yesterday, a ranger told me he thought he’d seen a condor floating just below Kolb. California Condors are the largest land bird in the U.S. (nine-foot wingspan!) and their numbers had gotten down to just two dozen. They’ve been brought back from the brink of extinction and now number in the hundreds. I am SO delighted to have been offered this opportunity to work with the park service and am eagerly awaiting my first glimpse of a condor!!!

Juvenile California Condors. Photo by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Of Mice and Ringtails

On December 4, 2013 By Donna F. G. HailsonIn Grand Canyon, Nature, Wildlife and EcologyLeave a comment

Deer Mouse. Photo by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A couple of posts ago, I wrote about having been visited by a deer mouse. The little one had taken up residence under our refrigerator and had demonstrated extraordinary boldness, approaching me one morning again and again. Until…

Mac and Molly, our two Old English Sheepdogs emerged from the bedroom, raced toward me and tussled to capture the “prize” that had positioned itself under a stool on which I was seated. The mouse escaped and I am delighted to report it hasn’t been seen since. There’s no evidence of its presence anywhere in the RV and it hasn’t peeked out at me from any possible ports. Mac and Molly, it would seem, scared the daylights out of the mouse. I am relieved this is so but we do remain on guard. Deer mice are found throughout this region and have been identified as carriers of the hantavirus which is conveyed to humans through contact with the animals’ feces and urine. The first sign of infection is a fever that appears within 7-10 days of contact. I’ve learned that two persons had been infected with the virus here at the canyon. One died.

Around the same time of my deer mouse encounter, I discovered that a ringtail (the state mammal of Arizona) had shown up at Kolb Studio. A woman first alerted me to having seen it peering out of a dormer window. A humane trap was set out for it in the attic and, one morning, the young ringtail (which seemed quite docile and curious) was taken out and released at Desert View.

A River of Fog Fills the Grand Canyon

On December 4, 2013January 24, 2014 By Donna F. G. HailsonIn Grand Canyon, Nature, WeatherLeave a comment

The day started with a white-out with the canyon completely obscured from view. Then, in–what seemed to be just moments–the fog dropped and settled below the rim. As noted on Twisted Sifter: “The phenomenon is known as ‘temperature inversion’ where warm air acts as a lid to seal cool air near the ground, trapping fog in the canyon and preventing it from rising. According to the National Weather Service, the atmosphere’s temperature profile is most prone to inversion during the winter, when long nights allow for air near the Earth’s surface to become unusually cold.”

Some of the best photographs of the inversion were taken by Park Ranger Erin Whittaker and are found here: http://www.twistedsifter.com/2013/12/grand-canyon-floor-filled-with-fog-november-2013/.

Another fascinating phenomenon made possible by this weather event was the Brocken Spectre with Glory which my husband experienced. With bright sunshine behind him, his shadow was projected onto the fog and a rainbow encircled his shadow. Neither Gene nor I had our cameras with us so we were unable to record what happened but a friend at the canyon (Mike Buchheit) did capture his own experience of this. His photo can be found at: https://www.facebook.com/grandcanyonassoc.

Another experience of the Brocken Spectre with Glory in another part of the world is depicted in the featured photograph (details below):

Glory with Brocken Spectre created by the author’s shadow on a rising cloud at a South ridge of Peak Korzhenvskaya during a summit day on August 14th, 2006, classic route from Moskvina glacier. Part of a photo collection of Pamir 2006 expedition led by Dmitry Shapovalov.

Grand Canyon National Park on Day Nine of the Government Shutdown

On October 10, 2013October 22, 2013 By Donna F. G. HailsonIn Grand CanyonLeave a comment

Following a week of mishaps and misadventures on the road, we arrived at Grand Canyon National Park on September 23. We’ll be spending the next several months living in and exploring the park and surrounds.

As most every reader will know, the shutdown of the U.S. government on Oct. 1 forced the closure of the park and I have a front row seat to what this means for the community of 2,000-3,000 that is Grand Canyon.

Sign on Route 64 as one approaches the town of Tusayan from the south.

Once the park reopens, I expect to be working part-time in the Kolb Studio while my husband serves at Verkamps. The Grand Canyon Association, the park’s non-profit partner, operates these facilities and has been expending tremendous efforts to keep its people employed during the shutdown. The GCA’s Board of Directors, CEO Susan Schroeder and her management team are to be commended.

Thanks to Verizon (which appears to be the ONLY WiFi company able to provide Internet service here), I’m able to resume blogging and will be posting stories on a number of topics relative to the park’s closure.

My husband and I spent a good bit of today walking the South Rim and engaging in conversation. We chanced upon Lance Diskan, founder of the Flagstaff Dark Skies Coalition, near the (now closed) El Tovar Hotel (I’ll be reporting here on the Dark Skies project). Lance’s wife has been working on reintroducing native plant species to the park (I’ll have more on this as well). I had another conversation with Caitlyn Shaw, a young woman from Utah (a Red Sox fan!), whom I met as she was walking up Bright Angel Trail behind a mule train led by a wrangler and a park ranger. Caitlyn had traveled up Bright Angel after running the rapids on the Colorado (she’d put in on October 1) and the mule train was bringing up materials used by rangers in the canyon. I’ll have more on her story and more about those still running the river.

St. Mary's Food Bank in Phoenix shipped up 600 boxes of food to be distributed to those in need at Grand Canyon. Each box was filled with a box of corn flakes, cans of fruit and vegetables, pasta, tomato sauce, and rice. — St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix delivered 600 boxes of food to be distributed to those in need at Grand Canyon. Each box was filled with a box of corn flakes, cans of fruit and vegetables, pasta, tomato sauce, and rice.

In the Maswik Lodge Cafeteria, I chatted with folks who are distributing boxes of household staples to those in need. Ten pallets holding 60 boxes each were provided by St. Mary’s Food Bank of Phoenix. A number of these 30-40 lb. boxes were also dropped at the North Rim and at Tusayan, a small community that sits just outside the south entrance of the park. St. Mary’s will return on Oct. 11 with fresh produce and bread to be distributed from the Backcountry Office Parking Lot.

Keep watching this space for updates.

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