Michael's Chronicles: The Cliffs

I haven't had much time to do blog writing these days, as anyone who wanders onto this page will quickly notice. My brother Michael is a heck of a lot more prolific with the writing these days than I am. He travels all over the country selling hardwood drums and playable furniture at high-end art fairs. He's got stuff to talk about, so he's up and I'm not. Maybe that's for the best? Anyway, here's the newest from Michael Thiele, Hardwood Music craftsman. 

July 16
The Cliffs

I was out north of Marble Canyon today driving along the Vermillion Cliffs on my way toward Jacob Lake and beyond. The crosswind was blowing like hell. Let me address that one. I don’t know, factually, if Hell blows at all. I must admit I’m not even sold on the very concept of Hell and none of the assessments I’ve heard of from fire and brimstone enthusiasts have mentioned weather. Perhaps I haven’t been the best listener in those times at which the onset of that narrative has caused me to roll my eyes. But the words add flesh and inflection to the story, so I’ll let them stand. 

There were large rolling boxes with names like “Pathfinder,” “Wilderness” and “Forest River” going by in the opposite direction and visibly rocking and swaying to and fro in the wind. I’m grateful that I was not the driver of any of them and equally grateful that none of them lost it, came into my lane and altered the trajectory of my day or perhaps redefined my destiny. I can just see my gravestone: “Here lies Michael. Flattened by a rolling box. He was a nice guy” But alas, none of those RV things hit me so here I am, writing about what could have been but fortunately (in my view) was not.

I have more important memories of those red cliffs, which is why I chose that route to begin with. And no, I wasn’t even supposed to be here. Just returned from a two week show tour to Colorado to find out that I needed to head up to Salt Lake City- same day - to examine and perhaps purchase tone wood for our instruments. Three hour turn around. Decided to drive along the Cliffs.

During the early 1970’s I had learned an important lesson about the nature of silence: absolute silence, particularly that which occurs in natural environments can be deafening. Loud. I also find it quite grounding and for me, the experience can be emotional. I first heard it at Scarface, a rocky foothill area to the east of Mesa, Arizona. A friend with whom I was working, Chris, had taken me up there in his jeep.

We’d sit on the front edge of the escarpment, legs dangling over, blowing a doobie and looking out over the vast Valley of the Sun all the way to the White Tanks. We’d listen to the quiet. It’s one of the few times in my life when I sat next to someone else for extended periods of time during which no one said a word. There is a rush to that kind of silence and the only way to experience it is to sit still and wait for it to come calling. 

For sure, being stoned was an enabler but nothing more. I haven’t smoked the Yerba Buena for some fifty years, now, but the beauty and poignance of dead quiet has remained a friend. I experienced it on a different occasion years later when I broke down along 89A in the Vermillion Cliffs area. I hiked back aways into a little slot canyon away from the highway to cool off in the shade and stumbled into one of those dead pockets. Probably stayed there for a half hour, ingesting it all.

Such places seem to be few and far between. Maybe that’s as it should be. Then it was quiet. Today it was wind and dust. It’s a big tent, this earth thing. Glad I have ears. Glad I learned to listen.

Later