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.

Indian Blanket Flower

After I found the bridge I went to Cimarron Grasslands which was filled with flowers, especially blanket flowers. The hiking there is always funny because you lose the trail as often as you find it. I stepped on a cactus and I got a thorn in my toe. The trail I took is about 10 miles long. The only real places to stop are when a service road intersects the trail which happened once (and did not happen as soon as I would have liked after the thorn in my toe). I hardly made a dent in the ten miles-- I took about 2 miles of the trail before turning around and hiking the same two miles back. The weekend I went it was between 75 and 80 degrees. As usual I didn't see a soul. My one regret about these photos is imagining what they would look like with the dawn's light. I'm going to have to wake up earlier someday.

WPA bridge

This is the WPA bridge in Morton County. I decided to find it a couple of weekends ago. It spans a fork of the Cimarron. Next time the Cimarron floods we should drive down to see it.
There is a sign marking the bridge so that you know you've found the right place.


This is not the right sign.


This is not the right road. I loosely copied the directions off of this website (my ineptitude should in no way reflect poorly on the website. What I wrote for directions read like this "N. Rich 4 W. 6 then N. Turn at a bridge.") It would be easier if I had GPS, but where would be the fun? This pictured path actually gets worse. Much worse. I wasn't taking pictures during the drive time when I was nearly high-centered. This may prove the point that I ought to have an exploring companion to read signs like NO VEHICLES BEYOND THIS POINT. When I'm alone I completely miss them.

North

It's been a strange spring. It never seems to be warm on the weekends, but I decided that the spring time hike was necessary. So despite temperatures that were not as warm as I would have liked (though very pleasant) and clouds, I found my way to Scott Park. I posted pictures a couple of years ago with a more detailed account. This time the pictures are for fun, and it's less of a tour.

The yellow flowers are from the top of the little path I climbed. Below is the path I climbed to the
top of the ridge below the top. (Hopefully that makes sense.) You can't really tell from the picture, but the climb was a little bit steep. I don't usually have a desire for the steep climbs, but last weekend I wanted to feel my feet slipping out from underneath me. I wanted to flex my calves and force my feet to stop when all of gravity was against me. I wanted to scrape my hands on the rocks as I searched for my next foothold. It felt good.

Spring

I'm not sure if I go to Scott Park at the wrong times, but it's never as green as I think it should be. Nevertheless, there were some sweet bloomy moments on the path. I know my hand looks gigantic in the picture, but it's just a regular sized hand next to tiny daisy-like flowers. Aren't they adorable?

Black and White in a Grey World

There's a bird in the last one. I spent a little bit of time writing. I spent some time getting wet. I took a picture of the dead yucca (which I thought was beautiful) because there weren't any live blooms.

a segue from poetry to hiking photos.

I went to the grocery store tonight. I brought a list. I brought two tote bags and filled them with lots of produce. I even bought a rotisserie chicken. They apparently go on sale after 8:00 pm or something. I haven't a clue the price of a fresh one, but a manger's special whole chicken is $3.99 if you are willing to wait until it's nearly not edible.

I got home with my items and made some potato-tomato galettes from a Martha Stewart recipe. They were yummy with the cheap chicken. And especially yummy with Shiner's Bohemian Black Lager, which is a favorite at the moment.

So amazing that I've eaten supper including a side from the oven and am now drinking a yummy beer. I think this might be the first successful night of adulthood I've had in several years.

Hopefully I'll be posting some hiking pictures soon. I went to Scott Park last weekend and may go down to Cimarron for the next. I'd like to go a bit farther for Memorial Day weekend... I want to drive a little farther and hike a lot longer. Any suggestions?

Audio

There are many that argue that poetry is more properly enjoyed aloud. My geographical circumstances have somewhat deprived me of the joy of hearing authors read their own work with any regularity, but when I'm reading something and the words start singing, I read it out loud to myself. I think Shakespeare really sold me on this. There are moments when you read Shakespeare and the text demands to be heard. I thought maybe you would like to listen to a few read by the authors. (The first two may require that you close your eyes and concentrate.)

Friday's Child by W.H. Auden
Riddle by Charles Simic
Forgetfulness by Billy Collins

Sometimes they give awards

This year the Pulitzer prize for poetry was won by poet W.S. Merwin for his book The Shadow of Sirius. Something that I haven't mentioned because it seems like you should know, is that poets publish books. I keep a journal in my office drawer so that I can write down poets I would like to explore when I have time. Sometimes I go on-line and order a book from a specific poet. When I visit the big cities or small cities, if they have a nice book store I go to the poetry section and look for a new book. It takes a pretty special bookstore to carry a good selection of poetry, but when I find one it's such a joy.

Here's a list of the the Pulitzers for poetry books over the years. And here's a poem from this year's poet:
Native Trees by W.S. Merwin

I was listening to Bookworm on the way home

Tonight on the radio was a little conversation about Whitman. Here's one of the poems they read:

The Learn'd Astronomer

some of my girls

Sometimes you find random poems. You will read a "poem of the day" and think to yourself, "I really like that poet." Then you spend the rest of the afternoon reading other things that they've written. These are some of my girls:

A Favor of Love by Molly Peacock
The Enigma by Anne Stevenson
The Riddle of the Shrink by Nuar Alsadir

In translation

If I started over, way over, I would learn a foreign language at a very young age. Then I would read poetry and translate into English... or whatever language I chose.

When I lived in KC someone loaned me a copy of Garcia Lorca poetry and I had to return it when I left. (There's a side story to that which I wrote and deleted... if you want an odd little quip ask me about it sometime when you see me). I was actually using a lot of Spanish in my job at the time and reading the Spanish poetry sort of helped immerse me more in the language. Mostly, I learned a lot of impractical Spanish words. Practicality was never my thing anyway.

Arbole, Arbole by Federico Garcia Lorca ( I never learned how to do accent marks on the keyboard... sometime someone should show me how).

It's nearly the end of Easter today. I hope you rejoiced.

Some poems take a few readings before their meanings are clear. Because poetry is a shorter literary form it allows several re-readings. So I give you one that I am still thinking about:

A Dirge by Thomas Merton

one holy one unholy

A Holy Sonnet from John Donne: At the Round Earth's imagin'd corners
An Unholy Sonnet from Mark Jarman: Unholy Sonnet 11

And here's one for Holdie

In undergraduate, my creative writing teacher in poetry said once that he would like to have an entire year to teach the poetry creative writing class. First semester the class would memorize poetry and second semester he would let us begin writing. It's been a long time for most of us since we've memorized a poem (though if Ted is your father, I think that isn't so true). It might be a good month to try it. It's good for your mind to challenge it every so often.

Others, at fancy places like the New York Times, are suggesting that you do the same. I'm not sure that memorizing poetry will suddenly make jogging pleasurable, but I am confident it will improve your writing.

So here's the poem my mother made us all memorize:
Fire and Ice by Robert Frost

And here's one for Holdie:
How to Play Night Baseball by Jonathan Holden

A classic

Who spells Tyger like that? William Blake, that's who.