About the Blog

This web-log or journal started-out as a place where I shared thoughts of thoughts and other sundry things, pieces of my mind, if you will. Most of the postings in the archives from 2009-2010 are in essay or story form.  Family members and closer friends might recognize some of these reflections, as many of them will recount my perceptions of experiences that I’ve had over the years in my work with the health department as a communicable disease investigator working with sexually transmitted diseases, my volunteer work as a member of an Arizona State Supreme Court foster-care review board, and in more recent years as a police 9-1-1 call-taker, dispatcher, and supervisor. My formal education centered on sociology, with a bit of psychology and cultural anthropology thrown into the mix, so related essays, reflections, or observations relative to those studies may appear in the postings as well. Some of them might also touch on my childhood experiences and how they have contributed to who I am today. While much of life can be humorous, my writings likely won’t reflect much of the lighter side of life. The weightier elements of our human existence seem to come out more in my writing, so I hope you will not see the work as dark, but maybe just more internal, representing what is in the places where even you keep your more serious thoughts and reflections.

Shortly after moving to the Salt Lake City area of Utah, USA, in the later part of 2010, the blog morphed into an electronic display-case with photographs of the things and places that I found on my hiking adventures in the local canyons and mountains.  There were still occasional writings on certain observations and reflections, but they became less frequent as I spent more time in the out-of-doors and surrounded by the beauty of our natural world. 

As fate would have it, and as you might have noticed already if you’ve been browsing or scrolling through the blog, we returned to Phoenix and are living once again in the pan of desert that is often referred to as “The Valley of the Sun.”  Life is still as challenging as it was when we lived here before moving to Salt Lake City, but I am hoping to keep the blog focused on the out-of-doors where I am intentionally looking for the beauty that can be found in the Arizona Sonora Desert…and in the more mountainous regions that are north of the Phoenix metropolitan area.

I hope you’ll enjoy what you find here…if you’re looking for reflections on life, dig into the archives of the first two years of the blog…if you’re interested in captured images of the natural world, you’ll encounter those in the more recent posts.  Finally, if you do like what you find here, please leave me a comment so I can thank you for visiting.

Take care, and thank you for sharing your time with me.

Scott