Dying: Mudlick Mountain Trail and The Cloud of Unknowing

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belden C. Lane
Keyword(s):  
Colorado River ◽  
The West ◽  
Technological Society ◽  
Managerial Skills ◽  
Cloud Of Unknowing ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
Rational Control ◽  
Sandstone Wall ◽  
The Town ◽  
Desert Landscape

Everett ruess disappeared in the redrock canyons of southeast Utah in November 1934. The twenty-year-old artist, poet, and vagabond had left the town of Escalante a few days earlier, setting out with his two burros along the Hole-in-the-Rock Road toward the Colorado River. He was no stranger to wilderness, despite his youth. He had wandered the West for years. But he was never seen again. Searchers found his two burros by his campsite in a remote gulch, his footprints leading nowhere in particular, and a word recently scratched on a sandstone wall: “Nemo . . . 1934.” No one. How could the desert have swallowed him alive without leaving a trace? Was he killed by rustlers? Had he run away with Navajo Indians? What could erase him so quickly and completely from the desert landscape? The previous year he had written his brother about the irresistible joy of wild country, saying, “I’ll never stop wandering. And when the time comes to die, I’ll find the wildest, loneliest, most desolate spot there is.” Apparently that’s what happened. There was no hint of suicide, no sign of violence. The mystery has never been solved. The story’s grip on the imagination is more than that of a cautionary tale, warning of the dangers of backcountry travel. You stand a better chance, anyway, of being killed on city streets than on the far reaches of the Colorado Plateau. Wilderness wandering is no more inherently life-threatening than driving home on the freeway every night. What makes wild terrain seem so menacing (and yet captivating) is the deceptively comforting character of our technological society. It gives us the illusion of being in control of our environment. Wilderness, by contrast, lies beyond the reach of our managerial skills. It challenges the ego. Its threat of death is more psychological and spiritual than physical. Unfrequented canyons broach the possibility of our dying to what we’ve known in the past, losing rational control, encountering a wonderment beyond understanding. Everett Ruess perceived this potential of “dying before one dies” as something to be welcomed.

scholarly journals Productivity of Ospreys, Pandion haliaetus, Affected by Water Levels Near Loon Lake, Saskatchewan, 1975-2002

2010 ◽  
Vol 124 (3) ◽  
pp. 219
Author(s):  
C. Stuart Houston ◽  
Frank Scott ◽  
Rob B. Tether
Keyword(s):  
Breeding Success ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
Lake Levels ◽  
The West ◽  
Canadian Data ◽  
Human Use ◽  
The Town ◽  
Western Half ◽  
Eastern Half

Between 1975 and 2002, diminished breeding success of Ospreys was associated with drought and falling lake levels in the western half of our study area near the town of Loon Lake, west-central Saskatchewan. Only 46% of nest attempts were successful in the west compared to 72% in the east, producing 0.88 young per accessible nest in the west and 1.42 in the east. Breeding success was greater in the eastern half, where water levels were stable, in spite of increased human use of the resort lakes there. Our unique long-term Canadian data base results support Ogden's 1977 prediction that Osprey productivity may decrease when water levels drop and fish populations are reduced.

The Politics of Sacred Lineages in 19th-Century Central Asia: Descent Groups Linked to Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi in Shrine Documents and Genealogical Charters

1999 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 507-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devin DeWeese
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Religious History ◽  
The West ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Town

Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi, the celebrated saint of Central Asia who lived most likely in the late 12th century, is perhaps best known as a Sufi shaykh and (no doubt erroneously) as a mystical poet; his shrine in the town now known as Turkistan, in southern Kazakhstan, has been an important religious center in Central Asia at least since the monumental mausoleum that still stands was built, by order of Timur, at the end of the 14th century. While Yasavi's shrine, owing to the predilections of Soviet scholarship, was extensively studied by architectural historians and archeologists, its role in social and religious history has received scant attention; at the same time, Ahmad Yasavi's legacy as a Sufi shaykh has itself been the subject of considerable misunderstanding, resulting from two related tendencies in past scholarship: to approach the Yasavi tradition as little more than a sideline to the historically dominant Naqshbandiyya, and to regard it as a phenomenon definable in “ethnic” terms, as limited to an exclusively Turkic environment. Even less well known in the West, however, is one aspect of Ahmad Yasavi's legacy that is of increasing significance in contemporary Central Asia, as the region's religious heritage is recovered and redefined in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse—namely, the distinctive familial communities that define themselves in terms of descent from Yasavi's family, and have historically claimed specific prerogatives associated with Yasavi's shrine.

scholarly journals ‘Polish-Lithuanian’ archaeological materials from the excavations of the town of Tara

2021 ◽  
pp. 83-90
Author(s):  
S.F. Tataurov ◽  
S.S. Tikhonov
Keyword(s):  
Western Siberia ◽  
Cotton Fabrics ◽  
Outward Appearance ◽  
The West ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
Archaeological Materials ◽  
The Town ◽  
Coats Of Arms ◽  
Special Category ◽  
Over Time

In this article, the authors analyse materials from the excavations of the Tara fortress (Omsk Region, Wes-tern Siberia), founded in 1594 by Prince Andrei Yeletsky and functioned as the main outpost of the Russians in the Middle Irtysh region to counter Khan Kuchum, the Kuchumovichs, and then the newly-arrived population from Dzungaria and Kazakhstan, until construction of the Omsk fortress in 1716. The aim of this research is to identify amongst the finds the articles of Polish-Lithuanian origin, in outward appearance similar to Russian ones. Having studied the collections formed during the excavations of the fortress in 2007–2020, the authors came to the con-clusion that such items are definitely represented by the signet rings with nobility coats of arms, coins, and bap-tismal crosses made according to the Catholic canon. Potentially, Polish-Lithuanian origin could be assigned to some types of fabrics and leather goods, such as a travel compass case with images of French fleur-de-lis, some types of shoes, and handgun holsters. The presence of Venetian glass ware and plinth bricks in the layers of the 17th c., according to the authors, is also associated with the arrival in Tara of the population that had previously resided in the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or on the western borders of Muscovy. The owners of these items ended up in Tara (and in Western Siberia) because they were taken prisoners or sided with the Rus-sians during the Russian-Polish wars. Over time, they formed a special category of service people called ‘Lithuania’. This is evidenced by numerous written sources. The basis for this conclusion is given by particular characteristics of Tara's trade relations established, primarily, with China, Lesser and Greater Bukharia, and the Uzbek Khanate, i.e., with the south in the 17th c., from where Chinese porcelain, silk and cotton fabrics, and some types of smo-king pipes came to Tara. At that time, weapons, bread, coarse fabrics, money for salaries of the servicemen of the Siberian garrisons, and cheap beads were imported to Tara from the west through Kazan, Kungur, and Lozva. In the 18th c., the main trade of the Russians began to concentrate in Troitskosavsk (Kyakhta since 1934) on the border with Mongolia, from where tea, silk, and porcelain were exported, whereas a flow of Russian-made goods, as well as European wines, sugar, some species of nuts, and spices, was established through Kazan into Siberia. Instead of ’Lithuania’, Germans started coming to Siberia. In the 19th c., Poles reappeared en masse in Western Siberia. However, those were no longer residents of Lithuania and Western Russian principalities, but ethnic Poles exiled to Siberia for participation in anti-Russian uprisings.

Wherein Nicholas at length encounters his Uncle, to whom he expresses his Sentiments with much Candour. His Resolution

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Dickens
Keyword(s):  
Monday Morning ◽  
The West ◽  
The Town

Little Miss La Creevy trotted briskly through divers streets at the west end of the town, early on Monday morning—the day after the dinner—charged with the important commission of acquainting Madame Mantalini that Miss Nickleby was too unwell to attend that day, but hoped...

IV.—Stratigraphical Note

1907 ◽  
Vol 4 (12) ◽  
pp. 537-538
Author(s):  
T. C. Cantrill
Keyword(s):  
Geological Survey ◽  
The West ◽  
The Road ◽  
The North ◽  
North Side ◽  
The Town

The fossils which Mr. V. M. Turnbull has collected from supposed Slade Beds on the “roadside near St. Martin's Cemetery, Haverfordwest,” were obtained along the north side of a road leading westward from St. Martin'ls Cemetery to Portfield House, on the west aide of the town. About half-way between the Cemetery and Port-field House the road is crossed by a by-road known as Jury Lane; one of the fossiliferous localities lies 110 yards east of Jury Lane crossing, another is 100 to 150 yards west of it. The area in question is contained in the Old Series one-inch Geological Survey map, Sheet 40, the New Series one-inch map, Sheet 228, and in the six-inch map, Pembrokeshire, Sheet 27 N.E.

Water and the West: The Colorado River Compact and the Politics of Water in the American West

1976 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert W. Durrenberger ◽  
Norris Hundley
Keyword(s):  
American West ◽  
Colorado River ◽  
The West

scholarly journals XI.—Notes on the Geology of the Eildon Hills, in Roxburghshire

1853 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-217
Author(s):  
James D. Forbes
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
The Other ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Eastern Slope ◽  
The West ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
South West ◽  
North Bank ◽  
The Town

The following remarks, being the result of a careful examination of a small district of country characteristic of the relations of the trap formations, are perhaps worthy of being recorded; although the general features of the county of Roxburgh have been very clearly stated in a paper by Mr Milne, published in the 15th volume of the Edinburgh Transactions.The outburst of porphyritic trap forming the conspicuous small group of the Eildon Hills, may be stated to be surrounded by the characteristic greywacke of the south of Scotland. It forms an elongated patch on the map, extending from the west end of Bowden Muir in the direction of the town of Selkirk, and running from west-south-west to east-north-east (true) towards Bemerside Hill, on the north bank of the Tweed. The breadth is variable, probably less than is generally supposed; but it cannot be accurately ascertained, owing to the accumulated diluvium which covers the whole south-eastern slope of this elevated ridge. On this account, my observations on the contact of rocks have been almost entirely confined to the northern and western boundaries of the trap, although the other side was examined with equal care.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document