I was cleaning house when suddenly the day outside was perfect

I hope this one doesn't offend you. I saw millions of grasshoppers today. I wish it were an exaggeration. It was a beautiful day regardless of your species.

I need to return to this spot for better pictures. The bus is abandoned much like the swing set, much like many places along the rural roads anywhere on the plains. Something about the openness and the exposure that is familiar. It's so quiet, but in the stillness is the searching for lost laughter.

Camp Kinney or Finney County Game Refuge. I thought you might like to see the place with a little bit of water collected below the dam.

I can't help it. Calves are adorable. There was a lot of mooing associated with this stop.

Cleaning

Betsy helped me organize my spare room, which is a task that I never did. Not when I moved into my house, not ever. So you can imagine what becomes of a room neglected like that.

During this task I ended up with several random sheets of things that I had written, not for public consumption, but because I try to get things out of me by writing, but I tend to be a pack rat.

I had a couple of untitled lists which after I write this blog entry will likely be shredded. The lists had no explanation or title, which makes one wonder what united the items, 24 on the first list and 7 on another. I figured out what the list of 24 was and I thought I would share a few of them. This one has to do with things that I had learned that year:

9. Things that I considered risky aren't really all that risky.
12. Friends of friends are awesome.
15. Babies are a good way to mark time.
17. I really am a pretty girl.
19. Most people will never realize that I am not telling what I think.
20. Hope requires more work than despair.
24. My personality can be overwhelmed.

The list of 7 for which I have not figured out a uniting theme:

1. I really like the taste of breadfruit.
3. When I bought my purple couch, I was looking for a red one.
4. I pretend to be less paranoid than I am for fear of being accused of being paranoid.
6. The most fun I've ever had dancing was with a cowboy who spoke no English.

I've heard some requests that I blog more regularly, but I haven't really had much to say. I may cheat for some blog entries this way. Sharing what I found on little scraps of paper so that it feels acceptable to pitch that scraps of paper. (Thank God for my new Molskine.)

Pictures from my summer vacation

Jedidiah Smith Redwood Forest. August, 2009. That's me at the end of the Boy Scout Trail.

This is what I feel like inside when I'm worrying about things. These trees are old. Some are over a thousand years old. Despite the vast age difference, this tree and I found that we had a lot in common. I gave the tree my email address and he said he would find me on facebook.

I waited an hour for this creature to quit hogging the trail and I finally just went around him like all of the rude Californians were doing. I asked him if he needed any help and he acted like he didn't hear me. Anyway, I hadn't met too many snails in my life and this guy made me glad. He was pretty, but he could have at least acknowledged me.

This picture is a little bit dark, but I'm sure you see the face in the tree too. Every time I tried to get someone else to look he would go back to being just a regular tree. He laughed at me for a long time, but I snapped a picture without him knowing. Ha, ha Stick-Boy. Everyone knows about your face.

So if you didn't know, Jedediah Smith died in Kansas near the Cimarron River. There's a marker at Wagon Bed Springs near Ulysses. The historical kiosk at the Jedidiah Smith Forest said that he died near Fargo Springs, Kansas. I had never heard of Fargo Springs, but I found it through the ridiculousness of the internet.

Hello? May I ask who's calling?

I stopped to take pictures of the phone in the highway. I left it there because I felt it was a sign, but that it wasn't my sign because I hadn't asked for any sort of sign. I was not contemplating something important when I came upon the phone receiver. I imagine someone in the future coming upon the telephone in the road and changing the course of his life. It is possible.
Should I call her back? Should I answer the phone next time he calls? Should I call about that kitten? If God exists, shouldn't he leave phone receivers around when you need to talk to him?

Limitless possibilities of what it might mean, really. And maybe it was my sign, but I won't recognize its meaning for a long, long time.

Sunday skipping church

Some Sundays are better than others. On this particular Sunday, I ate breakfast with some house guests at a restaurant. The breakfast was not spectacular. My plan was to attend church with my friends, but we had been talking about nature and what not and I decided to go hiking in a new spot instead. So they dropped me off at my house, I packed a quick lunch and headed east.

I try not to let myself get in the habit of finding alternative activities on Sundays since I ought to go to church and worship. But, some Sundays it feels like I've skipped worshiping to go churching, so I suppose it all evens out in the end. And Quivira was awe-inspiring, and I'm pretty certain that God intended that awe and that the awe was as good as singing and listening and shaking hands.

Some things that I learned:
1. I need to get a gazetter, especially if I decide to enter parks from the back way. I wrote the road name in the book I was using so I can enter the back way in the future without the hourlong side trip.
2. The grid system only works if you remember to keep counting.
3. Thank God for "Welcome to Rice County" signs that let me know I was on the wrong road.
4. Selected Shorts is a terrific podcast. (though I admit that not having kids in the car probably allows me to listen to things that my child-rearing peers must forego for a season. The Canoeists by Rick Bass. Wow.)
5. I would really like someone to drive me home after these days so that I can sleep in the car.

If you go, give me a call and I'll bring the insect repellant.

Quivira

The grass was a beautiful color. And soft. Wetlands are a strange surprise in the area. It seems unfair the way trees take over at any sign of adequate moisture. I was glad the grass won here. Wicked droughts, drowning seeds, random fires. I am sure one of the kiosks explained everything, but I am not into retaining information when there is so much walking to do.
July is sort of the off-season here. These birds get all of the prime real estate without much competition. Zoom is a wonderful thing. They all flew away as soon as I took my next step.

This is interesting, but I do not have enough scientific vocabulary left to explain it. This is the dried mucky mossy stuff left from when the water recedes. When I walked on the grass it made a loud crunching sound under my feet. This stuff must have been underneath everything, announcing me as I walked near the water
I got to walk through all of this lovely teddy-bear fur grass. Crunch, crunch, crunching as I walked. I suspect that Quivira is made for a bicycle. I hope to return with one in the fall. I will always prefer walking, but there was so much to see that much of the time there is spent driving. It would be impossible to walk, but maybe if I give myself two days I could do both.

Glint

I could not capture it in color.

Jacob's Well

It's one of my favorite places in the world: a cool hidden pool underneath the shade of the cottonwoods, surrounded by grassland and a buffalo herd. The sky feels like it is a part of you.

a link to an article complaining of blogs.

An article on blogs versus poetry which has to be linked on a blog.

What is the importance of connectedness? There are days when Facebook and blogging make me feel more connected to humanity and there are days when they make me feel a wide gulf between myself and everyone else. They are valuable for both of those feelings. Yes,this thought is merely a first draft from someone whose thoughts are only valuable to a few. (makes me sound a little bit angry about the article. I'm not. Most of what she says is true, but we assign our own value to things. So in that, she can't possibly quantify the value of either medium for me, and it is for me.)

On the other hand, it's great to express yourself through poetry, your own and others. It's true that there are feelings and events that need expression that won't find it outside of the poetic. So, maybe if you share poetry through blogs and Facebook, you connect on a higher level.

Connections are what they are. Sometimes we wish they were more, sometimes we wish they were less.