I Swan, Toothsome Aspen, Ep. 13

Episode 13, Celebrating AZ

Lisa leads us into the Bradshaw Mountains to meet an indomitable woman who touched a lot of points in Arizona history, and Julie gives us a view at Aspen Tanks on the side of the San Francisco Peaks.

Mug: Crown King

From Chief Yellowhorse Lives On!

by Lisa Schnebly Heidinger

My favorite board game came at Christmas a few years ago: “Wild Women of the West Ride the Trail of Truth.”  It’s lots of questions on cards, with horses for game pieces and salty quotes from very self-actualized frontier females.

A decade later, a book called “Women Who Run With Wolves” made a splash.  Since then I’ve realized there are no new ideas, just new ways of presenting them – all art comes out of the same color wheel.  Untamed women have been with us always.

       I’m not talking professional dilettantes or party girls.  I’m talking about the woman in whom a spark of something burns a bit brighter; who maintains a perfectly circumspect life with the sense something electric may be on the brink of happening.

It’s that dual character that to me defines wildness in women: able to function in everyday affairs with efficiency and still indulge the burning impulse to range, to immerse in experiences and interaction. 

One is Cynthia Billings, who rafted the Colorado as a crew member and did exuberant cartwheels with her tsunami of multi-colored hair streaming behind her.  She scrubbed the dutch oven and hauled the boat to tie off onshore, but still wore long skirts preparing dinner.   Wild women don’t take the middle ground; they straddle the extremes.

       I imagine wild women are often exhausted.  There aren’t enough hours to dance every dance, meet every member of one’s tribe and still build an impressive resume without sacrificing rest.  But that’s the price of passage on the journey worth taking to wild women.

       They not always exercise the best judgment…but they leave nothing on the field.

Copyright Lisa Schnebly Heidinger, All rights reserved

Fall is…

by Julie Morrison

…the horsetail cloud in changing sky

as pictured in photos

beamed between summer lovers

on a porch

in a commercial for pizza delivery

flashing as background on the sitcom set

which, come October, is daily life in Arizona—

seeming, from June, to surely be empty, easy, relaxed,

and is now as packed as grocery candy aisles

bursting with Halloween, and Christmas pops,

stuffing itself still on Thanksgiving—

while the weather is a mother of teenagers

insisting we take that off, and,

moments later, put something else on,

because nothing is quite right in a sitcom,

or on delivered pizza,

or with summer lovers out of season,

and fall is basically an adolescent

alternately delighted and frustrated by change,

like the possibility that the overhead horsetail

swished from Pegasus, himself,

but, this is a school night, so, probably not…

Copyright Julie Morrison 2025, All rights reserved