Having drifted through another desert town, where a heard of sheep ravage the vegetation outside of the local Taco Bell drive through window, the road less traveled leads us to a deep canyon somewhere off in dusty old Arizona.  Here, with a little time and patience, two meandering rivers,  joining at a Y, have eroded a beautiful sight of bare naked sandstone rock.

            "Why, if I were a canyon," I think, "I would want to be just like this one.  My five-hundred foot beige-khaki walls would be filled with caves, arch-shaped alcoves, and overhangs, polished smooth by wind and water, exposing layers and layers of pressed earth, sometimes red, sometimes orange, sometimes yellow.  My walls would be littered with Anasazi ruins, while my interior would host fallen rocks the size of office buildings and pinnacles the size of twin skyscrapers.  My valley floor would be a forest of trees, meadows, and sandbars.  About my rim would be a forested blanket of sweet-sap smelling pinion pine and slowly twisting juniper trees.  Juniper, Native American for ‘Berries smell like gin.’"

            Sitting here on the edge of one such canyon, allowing my mind to engulf one million years of geologic history, I am water.  Sometimes I am a trickle, sometimes I am a torrent.  Forever I function with searing persistence.  Once upon a long long time ago I ran where you sit now.  I am a taker and I am a maker.  I take with me a speck of sand here, a speck of sand there.  I take with me pebbles and dislodge rocks.  I cause sections of cliff to break away and carry their debris where I may.  You see the empty space below your feet?   I made this canyon.

            Many miles we drive along the rim of the duel canyons, from scenic overlook to scenic overlook.  A dusty trail through the low standing forest leads us to the beginning of a steep wash, where I sit in a pool of dry sand overlooking the canyon, smelling out its many features.  Pondering the meaning of my overly creative personality, I wonder why in my mind, it seems that I am always performing for some kind of imaginary audience.  Doodling my thoughts into the 5x7 notebook, I write down an astonishing realization.   “I’m an entertainer.”  Always have been, always will be.  Maybe that’s why I feel that I am constantly performing for somebody, me.  Hey, I’m my own best audience.  Why, it seems that my sole purpose in life is to make myself laugh.  Hardy harr harr!  I love laughing, and this developing habit of writing sure does the trick, for I sit here writing rap rhymes too silly to ever repeat.  'I am most ill when I’m walkin wit a stick.'

            Pock marks, baby pools, small craters, some filled with water, five and ten feet in diameter, dot the sandstone landscape, the large bubble we stand on, sloping suddenly away to absolute vertical and beyond. 
            
            “Eureka!”  I have a bright idea, and so say to myself, “Hey, Oscar, what a bright idea.  You have a green pen, you have a blank drawing book, your sandstoned beyond belief, why not draw some canyon; if she’s willing to pose that is."
            
            ”                        “, not a word, is her only reply.  Ok, I guess that means yes.  Let’s get busy.

            First, I make use of thumbs and forefingers to frame what I’m going to draw, so that I don’t go drawing off the page and into thin air.  Ok, so with EFA,  Electronic Framing Analysis established, I hold the drawing pad before what I’m looking at, and in the thin air trace the base of the canyon wall, where rock meets sand and trees, just to get a feel.  Holding that angle, its now time to draw that same angle onto paper.  Bingo!  Now do the same for the rim of the canyon, only now, look less at the paper, learn to trust mind/hand coordination.  Yes, that’s it! That’s it!

            The green pen I hold in my fingers feels that it has been made by the designer of Italian sports cars.  Its smooth tip, seemingly cushioned by air, is capable of applying broad powerful strokes or of instantly flashing down micro fine lines, texturizing large sections of paper in mere seconds.  Alakazam!

            On our paper computer screen infused with slick green ink, the canyon floor bubbles with outlines of treetops, geometrical shaped crumbles of large blocks fallen from the canyon wall, and one slithering line for a river.  Sand eroding sandstone, the rock of the eight hundred foot canyon walls has been subject to wind erosion, leaving horizontal-parallel ripples, the contour lines of a topographical map wrapping about every curve, corner, cove, alcove, dimple, peninsula, or mushroom shaped bubble-dome in sight.  Water erosion, on the other hand, is vertical.  Wherever having made contact with the rock face, water has created descending streaks of algae, green when wet, black when dry.  Due to the freezing of water, blocks of rock have broken away, leaving freshly exposed sections and overhangs of untextured white canyon wall, temporarily unaffected by wind or sun or water.

            Drawing into the evening brings a flood of golden light across the canyon landscape, and onto my green and white paper canvas.  Beyond the canyon rim, above the plain, draping dark curtains of falling rain and purple clouds of lightning mix with the distant sunset.  A spiritual mist of orange light floats through the air, casting itself onto the two towers, Minus Zenith and Minus Nadir, duel pinnacles standing hundreds of feet above the canyon floor, while one nautical space mile in the distance, above one of the canyons far rims, is the ghostly presence of a colorful rainbow.  Everything on our papers living picture, of course, is flavored luscious green, the best fragrance on color earth...