The hills are alive...bam! Ep.15
- juliemorrisonwrite
- May 6
- 2 min read
Two Arizona roads: First a section of 89-A with Lisa finding stillness inside workdays, then 83 near Sonoita making Julie wonder how many people can’t believe their eyes.
Mug: The Coffee Pot in Sedona
Screenshots: Lisa writing backwards
From “Chief Yellowhorse Lives On”
by Lisa Schnebly Heidinger
In our family, T.C.’s legacy includes the bromide, “Count the day lost you don’t draw blood.” I explain to a child staring horrified at a fresh scrape that T.C. meant you were at least doing something fun or useful, instead of sitting around.
The most evocative T.C. story tells of when a hailstorm flattened his crops in Boyero, Colorado. While the family sat stunned in the kitchen, contemplating the dire financial consequences of the battered fields, T.C. walked in and looked around at the doleful faces.
“Well, let’s not just sit here,” he urged. “Get some buckets – we’re going to collect that hail, and make ice cream!”
My father adored his grandpa, and remembers him as affectionate, encouraging and independent. We have a photograph of T.C. as an old man, busy at his desk. I wish we had a similar photograph of his son Ellsworth, who I remember also being busy at his desk a great deal of the time. And it isn’t too late to take that photograph of my father, using his computer instead of his father’s typewriter or T.C.’s fountain pen.
T.C. Schnebly was a man of graciousness and grit. He extended himself to those he loved and those he had never met before. A dawn-to-dusk worker, he measured life in conversations, not dollars.
The headstone in the pioneer cemetery says about T.C.: “He lives on in Schnebly Hill.” It’s a good legacy: the road is basic and without frills, but if you’re willing to put in the work, the payoff is in the driving skills and the view. If you decide to hike there, you might even get to draw blood.
Copyright Lisa Schnebly Heidinger, All rights reserved
A Place, A Part
by Julie Morrison
In places as moments and measures of time,
soul breathes in spaces humming with song,
apart from strain’s rasp, a part of joy’s rhyme.
Eyes and heart forward, burdens behind,
peace as panorama—nothing short—and held long
in places as moments and measures of time.
Enough as a guide, More made a mime,
bad company rest-stopped, What Next good as gone,
apart from strain’s rasp, a part of joy’s rhyme.
Rising horizon, hope just a hill climb,
Right just up ahead, no way to be wrong,
in places as moments and measures of time.
Worry lulled to sleep, Wonder backseat drives,
Daydream’s laughing stream roadtripping along
apart from strain’s rasp, a part of joy’s rhyme.
Like lucking into a carillion’s mass chime,
not deserved, nor discovered: Grace, period. Prolonged
in places as moments and measures of time,
apart from strain’s rasp, a part of joy’s rhyme.
Copyright 2025 Julie Morrison, All rights reserved
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