In the western United States are many towns which have nearly disappeared, or are much smaller than they were in their thriving years. This is due to several reasons.
          Many of these towns grew up with mines or lumber camps, and the ore or timber has either been mostly, or totally, used up in the surrounding areas. A second reason is that, with the construction of the national highway system in the 1950’s, and the increase in ownership of automobiles, people could drive farther to make their daily purchases, and so many of the businesses and shops of the small towns, died for want of customers. And a third reason was the mechanization of agriculture which led to larger farms and a much reduced number of farm workers. And so, for some forty years and more, there was been a continuing supply of abandoned buildings in the West, which have been a source of used building materials for those who wished to build, but were without financial resources to buy new material.
          Some thirty five years ago a couple of friends of mine and myself were in that situation, when one of us heard of an abandoned building in the small town of La Cross, Washington. It was a brick building which had been constructed back in 1906, and had once been the largest and most impressive structure in town, but had become property of Whitman County, due to non-payment of back taxes.
          So we three petitioned the County Commissioners to sell us the building for $5 or some such token amount, the advantage to the County being free demolition of the building. They agreed, and for two summers, we (with the help of some of our boys) worked dismantling the structure, denailing boards, chipping the morter off bricks, and transporting lumber the 50 miles or so to our resident town. I estimate that we took home about a quarter of a million brick among the three of us. I traded much of my brick for lumber, and the rest eventually ended up stacked in my garage, where most of it remained for twenty years collecting dust, taking up space, and providing a refuge for the cat when he felt he needed it.
          In the year 2007, I finally concluded that it was unlikely I would ever use it, and so offered it for sale. In the spring, a buyer appeared, who by chance owned the land around and including the summit of Moscow Mountain. His property is snowed in 5 months of the year, and by the time the roads had dried out sufficiently for trucking in brick, it was June. So it happened that only in mid-July, after my return from the June trip to Eastern Europe and Ireland, was I able to assist the new owner to truck his bricks up to Moscow Mountain.

          I had some years before opened a vortex on Moscow Mountain. It was a good vortex, though it lacked the strength of others in its vicinity, such as that on Steptoe Butte and that on Tomer Butte. On my visit to the mountain this time, I discovered why. I had not found the main vortex back in 2003: but a lesser one of easier access, and closer to the road.
          The owner Mark, took me up a trail to the actual summit, and not too far from the summit, was the main vortex. I happened to have one TB with me in the car, and so I buried it on the strongest critical point.
          Later, after I had returned home, I found that the vortex on Moscow Mountain had become considerably stronger, and now was, if anything, more powerful than that on Tomer Butte.

          People had asked me numerous times over the past several years, and I myself had wondered, what would happen to an opened vortex if the TBs were removed from the site some time after the opening. Always before the TBs placed had been too numerous, or the vortices too remote, for it to be convenient to make the experiment.
          Here now seemed a good opportunity. So in mid-August I drove back up to Moscow Mountain, and with the help of the owner Mark who had previously accompanied me, I found the single TB which had been placed on the vortex, and removed it, taking it back home with me.
          I observed the vortex from my window at home, some 15 to 20 miles away, and over the course of a week found virtually no change in its strength.
          However, with this more careful and exact observation, I found that there was some roughness to the qi , right where it emerged from the ground. The roughness bordered even on pain. Then qi was pure and positive below the surface, and up above the surface: only at or near the surface was there roughness. On the week of August 20 through August 26 I was away on a trip, and upon my return, I found that the vortex on Moscow Mountain was still strong, and the painful roughness still present.
          So I decided to drive up the mountain one more time to see what, if anything, I could do about it. I emailed Mark, and he gave me his blessing to come. He was putting windows in his new house, and after giving him a hand inserting one of them, I set out up the trail by myself toward the source of the pain.
          After a short hike, I found it -- not exactly where the vortex was, nor on the actual summit, but in a small grove of trees nearby. There was a quite respectable sheng being, some 15 to 20 feet tall, in considerable pain. My guess is, that it was the spiritus loci, which had responsibility for the region about the mountain. I have no idea how it came to be in such an uncomfortable condition, but in it, it was.
          My heart told me I should help, and I gave the sheng beinga qi -gong treatment, which lasted perhaps 20 minutes. Afterwards I was led up the trail some distance to give just a little help to something else up there, and that was the end of it.
          When I was back home several hours later, I looked again up at the vortex on the mountain. There was no more roughness and no more pain: just pure sheng qi swirling up out of the ground. And such is still the case when I wrote this, some day and a half later.

          My week-long journey had been to the Southwest. Some five and a half years previously, I had spent several days down on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, with my friend Steve Kelley.
          Except for motels along the road run by the Dines (as the Navajos call themselves), non-tribe members without special permission are not supposed to stay overnight on the reservation. However Steve had become close friends with a Navajo man Dale, had lived some years with Dale’s family on the "Rez" near Cameron, and so an exception was made for us.
          That is special country. There are four "holy mountains" which mark the traditional four corners of Navajo country. One of them is in the San Francisco Peaks group north of the city of Flagstaff. This group is holy to the Hopis as well, an older tribe, whose Reservation is a small enclave within the Navajo Reservation. Steve had taken me there back in 2002, when we were looking for pine pitch to prepare some traditional Navajo healing cloths.

          Back in early spring of this year (2007) Steve and I had decided to take another visit, but on the way to Ely, Nevada, where Steve was staying at the time, I ran into a bad snow storm, and had to give up on the trip for then. Now in late August, something told me that it was time to try again.
          I left on Monday afternoon (August 20), staying the first night near Twin Falls Idaho. Nearly a year earlier, I had visited Steve in Ely and had opened a latent vortex in the old Shoshone "City of the Rocks". On Tuesday, as I crossed over into Nevada, I observed that the sheng canopy extended strong and pure as far as the eye could see, in all directions. I had returned home from Nevada the previous year before the vortex had reached its maturity, and so had not appreciated its power at the time. Now I saw that it was of the strongest.
          I picked up Steve in Ely in early afternoon, and we continued south and east together, spending the night at Cedar City, Utah. It was only Wednesday morning, on the spectacular pass via US 14, that we drove out from under the sheng canopy . We continued on through southwestern Utah and into Arizona. A short distance over the State line, we stopped at a good view point, to have a look toward the south. There were several powerful latent vortices to be seen, but strongest by far was that on a jagged looking peak far toward the horizon. Steve told me that was probably in the San Francisco Peaks, which is the highest land in Arizona. We found later that he was correct.
          We reached Cameron about 2 in the afternoon. Dale was still at work, and I could see a latent vortex off to the west, so we decided to dedicate the remainder of the afternoon to opening it. It was up not far from the Grand Canyon. I had visited the Grand Canyon with Cesco back in 2005, but it was a different site, which had not needed any improvement. This latent vortex was somewhat back in the brush and not on the Canyon edge.
          That night I told Dale what we were up to, and gave him a nice HHg which I had gotten from cbswork several years before. Strictly speaking, the San Francisco Peaks, where we were headed the next day, was on Federal land rather than tribal land, but I knew something of the place the Peaks occupy in Navajo culture, and I thought it only common courtesy to run it by him before we did anything. He thanked me for the HHg and invited us to stay with him and his wife the next night again, when we returned from our outing.

          So next day we set out just after daybreak, since the weather was hot. We were able to drive about 2/3 of the way up, and the rest of the way required about a three hour hike. There was a spiritus loci on Mt. Humphries, the highest peak, but it came over to the nearby mountain where the latent vortex was located, after it was opened. It was beautiful climb, with deep blue sky, lovely aspen and spruce trees, and a cool breeze.
          When we returned in the afternoon, it was hot on the high desert, and we were tired from the unwonted exertion. I went to bed early, while Steve stayed up late with Dale and his wife Lula talking over old times.
          Next morning I awoke at dawn, and went out to examine the sky. The sheng canopy had arrived overnight, pure and sweet, and it stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction.
          We left for home about 7AM, and during the next two days on the road, there was no place that I could see not covered by the sheng canopy . At this point I estimated that the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada, were all covered; and that California, Montana, Utah, and Arizona more than half covered.