Tomorrow’s blogging (your Sunday Sermonette) is about corruption.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against a spiritual wickedness in high places. (Ephesians 6:12)

But today it’s about walking in the Autumn in the Arizona highlands.

Because almost any path is bathed in color as trees shed their leaves in preparation to receive snow, forecast for next Thursday. Soon the male deer and elk will be shedding their antlers and some of them will migrate to lower elevations – however many remain above the 7,000 ft. mark through winter.
Some visitors to Arizona are taken back that the place is not a bleak and forbidding landscape of cactus and scorpions. But that’s not how it is everywhere. There are pools in streams that hold German Brown trout who are fattening themselves up for winter. And almost all of the people who live here strive to find an almost holy communion with the land and its bounty.
I had visitors from Greece yesterday and they brought the fixings for a feast, knowing of my genuine love for authentic Greek food. They’d never been to the White Wolf Mine, though they had heard the legends. Who hasn’t? Working up an appetite meant walking, listening and trying to become part of the silence, because that’s what country life in this place is all about.
Because if you didn’t turn on the TV or the computer, you’d never hear of school shootings, the policies that allow the slaughter of born and unborn infants for fun and profit, and the efforts to impeach a good man whose only wish is that America be Great Again. Traffic, the crush of humanity, the incivility of the city, and commercialism seems to be part of another planet.

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41 COMMENTS

  2. The old ticker only has so many beats. Then it's a six foot drop and a mouth full of dirt. It's important to enjoy what time we have.

  3. Paul writing to the church in Ephesus…some things never change – man being the common denominator.

    We [purposely] live where people go to camp. Peaceful here this morning (Wyoming has kept it's late Autumn "breezes" for the time being). A quiet walk might just be in order to clear the head and recharge the soul…chores can wait a bit.

  4. Very nice photos. Our forecast indicates a warm spell for the next week to 10 days. I intend to enjoy every bit of it before winter arrives.

  5. Living where people go to camp is a wise philosophy. It's November and while there are hunters here, most of the campers are gone. The Greeks arrived, cooked, and left. Living out of the way of civilization is not for the weak of heart, Camperfixer. And I have chores today that I put off yesterday that I want to complete before the snow hits later in the coming week.

  7. "Living out of the way of civilization is not for the weak of heart…"

    No it is not, and many who attempt it find that out, hence the springtime For Sale signs. For us it is intentional…knowing full well a trip to town for necessities takes most of the day, a Take-N-Bake pizza is a godsend, the burn barrel takes care of most of the trash, chores are part of the strenuous life that keeps one in good stead, and God's quiet is palpable (without the drive to a trailhead). Wouldn't trade it for anything.

  8. "The old ticker only has so many beats."
    That's why I don't waste them exercising.
    No use speeding up the inevitable.

  9. " I want to complete before the snow hits"
    I have leaves buried under inches of unexpected snow.
    And leaves on top of that snow.

  10. I await your corruption sermon. It is very frustrating to see absolute and total corrupt people like Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, Bruce and Nellie Ohr, Bill Clinton, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and others get away with murder. And theft. And bribery. And on and on and on.

    There is no accountability anymore in this country. If you are connected to The Swamp, you skate. If you are on the wrong side of the Deep State/Swamp and/or Democrat Party, you are screwed.

    Donald Trump was elected to drain the swamp. I see no swamp dwellers languishing in The Big House. Not yet, and it's been three years since The Donald ascended to the Oval Office.

    When is that day of reckoning coming for these crooks? It's these crooks who want to put the sheriff in jail, and that's just not right.

    Not right at all.

  13. God's country, LL. A world apart.

    I flew out to Oregon (Klamath Falls) last week for a funeral service for an aunt in my extended family. I managed to get out into the pine and juniper forest for a bit. The silence doth truly restore the soul.

    Returning home, I made it to the range to zero my new HOLOSUN HS512C red dot sight. Like it. I am also using my first ever electronic ear muffs. Like them too, however I find that when I am ready to shoot the incoming audio a distraction, so I turn them off. I like it here in my bubble.

    Heh. Today's ear worm–"Who can it be now?" by Men At Work.

  15. I was thinking about that this morning. Maybe I have.

    One thing is sure. I'm glad that so much of the crap that I've gone through is in the rearview mirror.

  17. When of thy earthly goods thou art bereft,
    And from thy slender store, two loaves alone to thee are left,
    Sell one, and with the dole,
    Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

  19. The same is true of diet. I try to be reasonable and I've never been a big sweets guy, but if you listened to the 'voice of progressivism', you'd eat nothing but dried turkey livers and drink forty glasses of water a day. What kind of life is that?

  20. Camperfixer – you wrote that going into town for supplies takes the better part of a day. Yeah, visiting the gun store and talking for two hours, visiting the hardware store and talking for one hour, visiting the airport and bringing a case of cold love in bottles for three or four hours, dropping by the grocery store for fifteen minutes…

  24. Nice photos; you are right, not usually what I think of when I think of Arizona. I am looking forward to tomorrow's sermonette.

    Thanks for the post.
    Paul L. Quandt

  25. theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/11/15/ag-bill-barr-speaks-about-the-damage-to-our-nation-from-the-resistance/

    Maybe things are moving apace. All is not lost, yet.
    Tom S.

  26. I think that there will be a surprise when half a dozen conspirators are indicted by a grand jury. But we've been waiting that for quite a while now. Maybe it's getting closer.

  28. Beautiful and tranquil, but carry what you need to protect yourself. You're NOT the top of the food chain up there!

  29. Sounds good. Winter still hasn't hit us yet. No snow and days in the high 60s. Getting some needed landscaping done around here.

  30. Corruption do seem to have one thing in common. Values, culture and tradition. The World Values Survey worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp and the data from Transparency International transparency.org/ makes you wonder if corruption also follow migration. Not all people seem to be loyal towards a state but put clan, family and ethnical group, and perhaps religion first. The Netherlands experience problems they must deal with occrp.org/en/daily/10214-the-netherlands-police-sinks-into-crime-cleanup-starts What made some cultures being less corrupt in the past is interesting. the trend seem to head towards more corruption.

    Something got lost on the way to the future.

  31. Indeed not. There are a number of options that include a CAR-15 (modified), a Benelli shotgun with a rifled barrel firing SST rounds, a S&W 460V handgun, a Ruger Super Redhawk Alaskan in .454 Cassul, or various handguns firing .45 ACP. There are other long guns, of course, but the CAR and the Benelli firing SST rounds are the most frequently carried.

  33. There are a number of futurists who believe that nation states will devolve into smaller units based on "tribal" values. The possession of nuclear weapons and the complex national infrastructure required to maintain and deliver them or to just hold them, providing a credible deterrence, may be the short term foil to that prediction.

    As you and I have discussed, the Lutheran values of Northern Europe and the other faith based values of nations helped to civilize the world. But those values are under great stress.

  36. If you "import" groups of people who only contribute to the benefit of their own clan and any effort to make them behave like the original group that took pride and honor to serve the country is considered racism, I guess the futurist will be correct. Sweden and California will be two countries that follows that path as it looks for now. But maybe there will be a reaction before it is to late?

    I guess when it comes to end it is the core values that matters and people want the progressive left to move to another planet.

  38. Yes, I use Hornady SST slugs. They're useful as a carry ammo in the wilds of North America because there is nothing that they won't kill. And if anyone asks, you're just carrying a shotgun.

  39. If you are to import anyone, it's important that they are not savages. Importing a million military age single male savages into your country, is always going to be a cultural train wreck. Unless you are simply importing the for target practice. Then I guess it's ok, but why a million, unless your people are bad shots and need a LOT of practice?

  40. I'll never forget the first time I fired one at the range.

    My 1100 sound like an artillery piece going off, and people came walking over to see what I was shooting.

  41. Well that was uplifting and the mention of trout puts me in mind to fish. Sunny and warm here, a bit like California but without Pelosi and her crew of corrupt mountebanks.

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