A young Amish boy on his way to work at 4:30am looking at the light show on Fuller Road in Easton, Maine. The image was captured by 61-year-old photographer Paul Cyr
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Somewhere south of Duluth
English: John Muir (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“There is a musical idea in every form. See, hear, how sharp, loud, and clear-ringing are the tones of the sky-piercing peaks and spires; and how deep and smooth and massive those of the swelling domes and round-backed ridge-waves; and how quickly the multitude of small features in a landscape suggest hurrying trills and ripples and waves of melody. We not only see the forms and colors of the mountains, but hear them. Plants and animals also seem to be music both in form and color. Everything breaks forth into form, color, song, and fragrance – an eternal chorus of praise going up from every garden and grove, a wide range of harmonies leading into the inner harmonies that are eternal.”
Signature of John Muir (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Tiny thing
Yes. Another frog. This little guy posed for me this morning while I was gathering wild blackberries.
(Courtesy note: no new Forrest Fenn/Thrill of the Chase Treasure Hunt clues in here. Just frogs and flutterbys….)
By the time I put the last batch through the juicer to take out the seeds on Tuesday, I ended up with only 9 half-pints of jam. Not enough for Christmas gifting and a year’s supply for us. Not a problem. There are plenty more out there.
Blackberry thorns are meaner than the wild raspberry’s, which ripen in June. So, I armored up, grabbed water, my phone, and my camera. Ready or not, I still missed a shot of the deer and fawn getting a drink. And darn it—the butterflies just won’t sit still for me.
I’ve seen several black and blue swallowtails, very large yellow butterflys, small ones, a tiny blue one, but only 3 monarchs fluttered by this year.
English: Photograph of a Monarch Butterfly. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The monarchs are in some distress.
milkweed
I’ve got plenty of milkweed plants for them (want some seeds?), but I heard they’re not making it past the Texas drought area. There are several generations per summer. The final generation flies all the way back to Mexico to winter in a particular area.
The bigger disaster for their population was 2 winters ago. I remember hearing that a hailstorm hit their winter haven and decimated the flock.
Another issue is the ubiquitous use of pesticides which don’t discriminate between life forms based on desirability. Don’t you wonder what they’re spraying up there? Fungicides, pesticides, herbicides, peoplecides. And why, if the biotech transgenetics are so wonderful?
US distribution of Japanese Beetle, (This map is not entirely accurate. Infestation is established much farther west at least to the Oklahoma line.) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
About the berries. I don’t pick along the fencelines where the neighbors are raising corn and soybeans. So, yes. There are occasional bugs in the bucket. But, I’d rather remove them myself than pollute my food.
Still. I’m really not happy with the voracious Japanese beetles who moved into the neighborhood 3 summers ago. First it was the grapevines. Then the rosebush. This year the orchard. The bright side? The chickens come running when I shake them out of the trees.
Japanese beetles foraging on grapevine
The greenest Badlands I ever saw
It’s been a little quiet on the western front. Maybe the searchers have boots on the ground. Only so many weeks before the snow flies again. . . .
Color Plate A from Favorite Flies and Their Histories – Mary Orvis Marbury, 1892 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
So, until the next Today Show clue from Forrest Fenn, you might want to visit Dal’s blog and see the latest video interviews he did with Mr. Fenn. There are several under the heading “Gone Fishing”.
They are not all related to the sport, but I especially enjoyed watching Forrest tie a Woolly Worm. He made it look easy.
I have, rather, will have, some of the raw materials, when this guy and his cousins grow up.
Junior Hackles
I’m just not sure how (or IF) it’s going to go from A to B, so to speak.
Okay.
Spiderwort.
Coneflower.
Brown-eyed susan.
But, help me out here, what the heck is that “home of Brown”?
First fish?
When I was a child, the 4th meant an outdoor fish fry at my grandparent’s and a contest for the biggest fish caught in the backyard pond. I won once with an ugly bullhead.
I went on to bigger and better fish stories. One, How Not to Catch a Muskie. Short version: I caught one, but was by myself without a camera. (My husband agreed to watch the baby so I could get out early.) It’s a good thing, however, that no one in the far off boats had a video camera. It might have shown up on America’s Funniest. I had it in and out of the boat a few times while I looked up the regulations, tried to measure it, put it back. A bit excited, I started the motor to roar back to the cabin before I remembered to pull up the anchor.
That was a while ago. Later on I found fishing a bit frustrating. I’d be baiting hooks for one child or untangling knots, while the youngest, (Intrepid, remember her), would be tossing toys, and then the worms, over the side of the boat to watch them disappear.
And then, oh, joy, in Minnesota, my husband got a fish finder. After he’d get tired of criss-crossing the lakes and complaining about the lack of fish biting, I’d suggest a spot to stop and drift across.
“No, hon, please don’t even use the trolling motor.”
It kinda bugged him when I would then pull in a northern or two. {Not complaining. Really. He’s a keeper!}
Lewis and Clark but not in the Rockies
That picture at the top is my dad and grandpa, and my grandma’s shadow. I come from a long line of fishermen. Some of my earliest memories are of camping in an already ancient army umbrella tent, and having to pee in the minnow bucket when our family of 5 was way out on a big lake in a rowboat with a tiny Johnson outboard. Those were my mom’s years of untangling kids’ fishline.
I’ll have to look for a picture of the tent. It’s one my great-grandmother used when she went to Traverse City to escape the pollen down here. I remember the smell of the old canvas. One of my first memories is of lying on the floor of that tent during a dark and stormy night watching my mom hold the center pole upright in the wind, thunder and lightning. I asked her later where Dad was. Out watching the storm, she said.
Misty morning in Glacier National Park
He knew things. Like, “Put your back to the wind. The storm will come from the left.”
I mentioned the Nimrod in an earlier post. It occurs to me that many readers might be clueless, so here is a photo when it was 8 yrs old. Out west. You pull out the sides, prop them up, and pull out poles and snap the tent to the sides, and Voila! The boys got one side, my folks, the other. I got the convertible bench seat/dining table/bed that my carpenter father built in.
Hmm. The Utah side of the park is out of the Thrill of the Chase search, but that leaves the Colorado side. . . .
That was it’s second trip out west. There was one big loop out east, swinging through Detroit, Canada, Maine, Niagara Falls, and back to a great beach on the Canadian shores of Lake Huron. Still a great site. About the only place my husband will camp. (Cabins are okay, but someone has to do housework…..People pitch in when you camp.)
Oops. I mentioned a couple of my favorite places. At least I didn’t put too fine a point on it. That’s one reason I never wanted to be travel writer—didn’t want to attract a crowd and spoil the peace and quiet of special places.
Columbine
The Fisherman
Not a long post. Just wanted to mention the 2 new pages on this site: Flywater, filed under The Book, and Idaho, filed under The Diagrams. (A great and future destination.)
Okay. I have mixed feelings about crossing Idaho off my top three TTOTC list, but that’s okay.
Raspberry Trove
There’s so much to be done.
Count all the bees in the hive.
Pick another batch of berries.
Pit the cherries.
Water high!
Even though it was only six feet deep, this unfortunate canoeist got trapped by the power of the Jefferson River. She was pinned against a bridge in the frigid water for four and a half hours.
Rivers in Montana generated by National Atlas, a United States government agency and then annotated by poster in March 2007. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Thankfully, she had quick thinking partners and teams of emergency responders who rescued her.
Not that she was a Chaser, but, as others have cautioned, be prepared and respect the power of nature if you’re out there, water high or not.
Can she see me?
No, not that discovery. Sorry.
This little guy surprised me. He was hiding under a basket. Sort of in plain sight. Like the chest?I think he would have turned green if he’d had time.
Check out the toes. Do they remind you of a certain bronze jar?
Something Old
We just celebrated a 90th birthday in the family. One of the “Fennster’s” has a newborn. Treasures all.
Get a new hat, custom fit.
If you head west in search of the chest this summer, remember to enjoy the sights along the way—just in case you don’t go home with the gold or bronze. Find some other nuggets or gems to share.
At least take some pictures so when you approach 90, you’ll have something to jog your memory.
Old barn in an ancient valley
The most beautiful birdsong is that of the meadowlark. I miss them. I’m a hundred plus miles distant from where I grew up. Even twenty-five miles away from the farm, and twenty years later, the song was not the same. It was truncated, not as sweet somehow.
I can’t imagine they’d make very good eating, but I won’t judge what hunger necessitates. (See the TTOTC book and One of These Things is Not Like the Other.)
Lewis and Clark, other early explorers, traders, and the emigrants that followed, even contemporary travelers, have found themselves in dire straights in cold mountains and hot deserts.
This image was selected as a picture of the week on the Malay Wikipedia for the 1st week, 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I know a woman who didn’t learn until she was nearing fifty that her father had spent a year in Stateville for stealing a chicken. Four kids to feed. Had lost a farm and home due to fire before the Depression hit. Even so.
She remembers at four or five overhearing adults discussing an eviction. One of them saying, “Well, I can’t kick them out in the cold.”
Purple Prairie Coneflower
Summer always returns. Here we have Indigo buntings, hummingbirds, cardinals and vultures. Prairie flowers and butterflies galore. (At least, until the chemicals and transgenics get them.)
I’ve never known hunger. Not like that. And I hope our children never do. It’s so much nicer when they can enjoy and observe the “flutterbys”.
English: USGS map of Yellowstone Caldera showing earthquake locations. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The first earthquake I experienced was the Yellowstone event in August of 1959. Maybe I was 5. All I remember really is seeing my mother upset in the middle of the night. We had passed through Yellowstone that day and were in a motel room just west of there. She thought a semi had rumbled off the road just outside but couldn’t see anything.
We returned to Yellowstone when I was ten, camping in our brand new Nimrod tent trailer. I do remember that trip, especially the bears banging the trash cans outside in the dark. We climbed our first mountain, Mt. Washburn. Gazed in marvel at
Morning Glory pool. I took some shaky black and white photos with a small square camera.
The Mountain That Fell
The devastation from the earthquake was apparent. A highway disappeared into a lake. A house/cabin sat half-submerged. Giant boulders rested across the valley from the mountains where they rolled down from. Huge.
Rolled down the mountain, across the valley and up the other side
In time, I made sure our kids saw the park, too. Our youngest was ten. I just looked at the photos; there’s a camera around her neck. I used to hear them whine about being the only kids who’d never been to Disney World. I pointed out that they had climbed a mountain, camped on an ocean beach, and seen every waterfall and cave that we’d ever been close to. They got it. I still don’t think they’ve been to Disney World.
My second earthquake (4 of the 6 have been in Illinois) was in the 70’s when I awoke in the night with my bed bouncing up and down. No. I didn’t do drugs. {And now, #7. Italy again. Poolside.}
The third was in the 90’s. I was sitting in the car during Intrepid’s dance lesson when the car started a slow up and down, very subtle bounce. Sustained. I looked at the railroad tracks: empty. Hmmm. I listened to the news that evening. A deep quake had occurred in South America but had been felt in skyscrapers as far away as Toronto. I was excited so I called the US Geologic guys out in Colorado to report it. I’m not sure if they made a note of it, but I thought they’d want to know.
The fourth was ten years ago north of Bologna, and the bed was flying sideways in the dark. Giant headlines in the paper: TERREMOTO. (I learned a couple other words that trip, including “andiamo”–what John Wayne yelled every time he jumped on his horse to go chase the bad guys–and “basta”–what the waiter kept asking. I thought he was saying “more pasta?” “No, no. I’m stuffed. No more.” He just wanted to clear my plate.
The most recent two were in central Illinois. Again, a bed shook, but first the windows rattled. Then, later that morning, the aftershock. I was in the upstairs of a barn. It swayed.
Interesting that the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12 rang a bell in Philadelphia. An eye witness said the land rolled so much that trees rocked horizontally. The Mississippi was re-routed. They say the fault is due to slip again. Maybe overdue. The VA down that way took the top six stories off its Hospital and reinforced the lower twelve stories. Just in case.
There is chatter about how the Yellowstone caldera is heating up/acting up/lifting up. Last time she blew, there was ashfall all the way through Nebraska. If my search for Forrest Fenn’s TheThrill of the Chase treasure takes me out that way, maybe I’ll tarry scant if the earth moves.
English: “At Yellowstone and some other volcanoes, some scientists theorize that the earth’s crust fractures and cracks in a concentric or ring-fracture pattern. At some point these cracks reach the magma “reservoir,” release the pressure, and the volcano explodes. The huge amount of material released causes the volcano to collapse into a huge crater—a caldera.” From nps.gov (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Like Jimmy Buffet sang, “I don’t know where I’ma gonna go when the volcano blows.”
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