Well Eight Miles in the Rain is Certainly No Stroll Down Broadway...but Safer Maybe

 Today was the day for my annual hike in Dogwood Hollow. It sounds like a forested adventure, but out in Western Oklahoma, it's more of a clamber over rocks. This morning it was a clamber over wet rocks, but thankfully, the misty, moisty morning quit drizzling after a mile or two and we enjoyed perfect hiking weather. This picture was taken toward the beginning of the hike when the fog was palpable.

 These are my energetic sophomores. They are great kids, fun to be with and not a speck of any trouble...well not usually anyway.

These two had suffered basketball-related ankle injuries earlier this season, so I wasn't sure they could make the whole hike. We planned to stop and turn around if they got tired. Fortunately, one of them just got braces yesterday and was on pain medicine, so nothing hurt. The other one was determined...so we actually made it through the entire hike, even finished ahead of the other group.

 To be fair, I'll have to explain that they took a few stops to play in the water and catch crawdads and frolic, running up and down the hills.

 And then...one of them ran into a cactus and the spines got him right through his tennis shoes. It took them a little time to clean those out.

 Unlike the last two years, there has been abundant water this year. Last week they got about six inches of rain. What a difference that made! There were little creeks and waterfalls everywhere. I had trouble recognizing the trail a few times and we had to climb up onto the mountain and scan the countryside for it.

 I had to take a picture of this little island. I don't know why. It just looked whimsical.

 And here is the old Civilian Conservation Corps Dam from the Depression Era. This time, though, it actually had water spilling over the side.

 Sometimes we climbed...no actually...lots of times we climbed. Only once did we collapse to catch our breath after a particularly hard climb.

One of my charges had never hiked before. She's from California and has been raised mostly in cities. "So this is a hike," she murmured softly after stepping in the first mud puddle and slipping off the first creek rock. Thankfully, she was the one on pain meds. for her new braces. There she is, peeking out from behind Tori.

Tori used to ride with me every morning to school...back when she was a boisterous seventh-grader. Sometimes she took the pictures I didn't have time to stop for. Today, she took her own, because the weather was perfect and the colors bright.  The grass was green, the water blue-gray, and the rocks as red as Oklahoma dirt.

 I really liked the look of this cactus mound, next to the cedar brush with the spiky bare branches of a winter tree in the background.

It was really even more beautiful there. Wish you had all been along for the day.

 We climbed and clambered and kept our cameras in hand. We enjoyed the scenery, but had to watch our feet too--lots of little rocks---and lots of big rocks too, come to think of it.

 Here are some flowers I captured for my granddaughter Mim's collection.

 And this one was taken while looking down from a forty-foot overlook onto a little creek far below.

 There were lots and lots of clear creeks like these. If it had been warmer, we would have cooled our toes, but it was not too tempting today.

 Even the fish and crawdads seemed to be hiding, and the snakes and lizards were snug in dens.
No frogs. No turtles. That's quite unusual for this time of the year, but the unseasonal cool weather may be the explanation for that.

We saw a few wild turkeys in the distance, and one lone goose in the water, a few buffalo, two deer, crossing the road right in front of us, a few long-horned cattle in a pasture, and a multitude of prairie dogs.  If you look at this picture, you can see the turkeys, right about the center, in that little clearing.

We ended the day by going to the "Holy City" for a picnic lunch. It's an interesting site where a permanent backdrop for a yearly Easter pageant makes another great place to stroll around. I climbed up a hill for a final look and took these last shots for the day.

Until next year...and next...and as many years as I'm able...I'll hike the hike...but right now, I'm just going to rest my feet.

Sudden Spring Storms that Remind the World of Winter

Even sunshine will never suffice.

To erase their encounter with ice

They hang down their heads

in despair on their beds

Oh that weather was not very nice! 

Spring Tulips

 

The tulips I planted last fall
Were brown-skinned and shaped like a ball
Except for the name
They looked just the same
Identical? No, not at all.

They tremble and bob in the light
Fresh-born from their underground night
Such transient shading!
It's already fading.
And I'll have to remember this sight.

Aspirations

Whenever I travel, I keep my eyes open--not just because I don't want to run into something on the road, but because I invariably run across whimsical things. On my recent trip to Missouri, I found these three scenes so close together that it only took one back-tracking on a side road to capture them all.

What caught my attention first was this old red barn. It's difficult to see in the picture, but there's a tree growing inside the door--a large tree, not a recent sapling. I noticed as I whizzed by on the four lane highway, but, fortunately, there was a feeder road running alongside so I was able to turn onto it and backtrack to capture the shot.

Since I was now stopped at the side of the road, I was able to fully appreciate the scene on my left, clouds chasing a windmill in the morning.

Further on I passed this silo with a tree growing up through it--what is it about Missouri trees? Western Oklahoma trees would only have grown knee-high and settled contentedly into the darkness, happy with the slit of morning light and the one golden circle at high noon. . It makes me wonder what I have missed seeing in my life, just by being in too big a hurry to pull off onto a side road and look around. I also wonder how many times I settled for the small sunshine instead of climbing up into all-surrounding light.

The Plague Letter

I have this letter from my grandson posted on the fridge. He and his sister have been studying the bubonic plague in history and they knew I'd understand their using it for a letter topic. Still. It's funny.

Dear Grandma,

Hello there. Are you having a good time?. We are studyng the bubonic plague in history and here are some facts.  First, it came from China. Second, it bumped off one third of Europe's population. Its most noticeable feature is black boils under the arms.  Are you feeling well now?  I miss you very much.
              
                                                                                                                                    Love, Zaya

Morning Waves

Morning clouds roll in

Like cold waves tossing the sun

Onto the dry sand

This haiku works a lot better if you look at the pictures upside down.

Promises and Hope

The sun gives life to the daffodils
and they trust the promise of spring.
I"m listening to Handel's Messiah.
Tomorrow we will sing the Hallelujah!
Handel's Hallelujah....
yes the one that comes just before
I Know that my Redeemer Liveth!
and after Isaiah's moving prediction
of a suffering Lamb, our sacrifice for sin.
 Isaiah knew--somehow he knew--that this life is not the end of all things. This life is winter; next is spring.
That Handel also knew, I have no doubt
Although he must have lived through
Many a winter, many a snow, and in old age, a blindness that seized him with dismay.
I wonder if he ever feared that he would never live again
To see his own Redeemer on a resurrection day
It was on Good Saturday that Handel died, just in time for Easter awakening....All over England they sang his songs.

They sang the tune he gave to the immortal words of Job, another strangely-hopeful man, who lingered at the edge of death to say with amazing prescience and an intrepid hope:

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand in the later day upon the earth.
 Isaiah!
Handel!
Job!
 Countless more, a line that stretches around the world and back--to the opening curtain of our fragile, one-act play.

Yet in my flesh, I will see God.
And like the daffodils, I seek the sun
I turn my face to the light
And trust His promise.
My Redeemer liveth!
Hallelujah!

Stoic Trees

I've always admired the bones of trees
Dark in the winter against the sky
Bowing stiffly before the breeze,
Scratching the wind as it brushes by.
They long for leaves, I'm sure of that
But they stand in silence, aloof and gray
Enduring the cold, and the bare, bald shame
Waiting for resurrection day.

Schoolhouse, Treehouse, Apothecary

I don't think my grandchildren realize what a wonderland they live in. This is their schoolroom--the wall not showing is completely full of books and educational games. The deck is for wildlife watching, and their classroom boasts a microscope with slides. The drawers hold at least twice the curriculum they need. They love it--school at home that is. Carina teaches most of their subjects and Art fills in with engineering and math, science experiments and some of their P.E. They are rather advanced in all their classes, but don't realize that, since they've not had a lot of opportunity to compare.

Since their main coursework is over by noon they are allowed to play "games" if they finish their chores. The games are all educational games like Khan Academy, SAT vocabulary, and Dragon Box-(a fantastic little app for the i-pad that teaches algebraic equations and the balancing thereof without ever saying that's what it's doing.)
Real video games--like Lego Mario and Pokemon are restricted to week-ends, and they don't watch regular television--just pre-approved netflicks.

So they play a lot, imaginative play like building with legos and circuitry boards. They practice piano, and guitar, read lots of books, jump on the trampoline, and catch tadpoles in the creek. Sometimes they see a deer in their backyard, and every morning, a groundhog waddles up from the creek to nose around the flower bed.

They have a rope swing that sails to the top of the world, and a hammock for naps at the edge of the horizon.

Their papa is in the process of building them a treehouse. It spans two trees and uses a third for a natural ladder. It's easy to climb. I was able to scale right up. The roof is half shingled, and the outside just lacks siding. They will probably paint the inside themselves. Mim calls it her castle.

If you look through this hole in the floor, you can see how the spokes of the tree serve as handgrasps and footrests.

This is Mim's apothecary/rockshop where she grinds grasses, flowers, and herbs and where she cracks rocks open to examine their anatomy. She's proud of the counter and all the little spaces where she stores smashing, grinding and cleaning tools.

The trampoline is Zaya's favorite place to be outside. He spends hours jumping and playing imaginary games, saving the world from villains and dreaming up new inventions.


The neighbors' dog  has adopted all the kids in the neighborhood and wandered over to inspect this grandmother and make sure she was not a rabid groundhog. Either I passed the test, or the dog was morbidly afraid of rabid groundhogs but clever enough to appear nonchalant.

Fort Scott Adventure

While I was visiting the grandchildren, my daughter and I took a chance on a very cool day to travel into the little town of Fort Scott. There were a couple of attractions there which held great promise for the young ones and, I'll confess, the older ones as well. First, we explored a used book store on the square. It was a musty place--all scented with old pages of adventure. Carina and I went through all the Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, and Helen McInnes, hoping to find any new books they had written...but, of course, they hadn't, so we contented ourselves with finding a few we didn't currently own.

The children each bought a couple of treasures as well, choosing from a huge selection of youth-oriented books. I showed Zaya "The Forgotten Door", and "Ozma, of Oz". Mim was happy with Berenstain Bears--"Go Fly a Kite and Life with Papa".

We puttered around for quite a while, waiting for a clerk to show up, but he never did. There was a discussion among the shoppers over whether we should look for him, but nobody wanted to go down the rickety stairs into the dark, dank dungeon of a basement, lest we stumble into the opening of one of our books.

Still. The guy didn't appear. Finally, we found a sheet of paper, made an invoice of our purchases and left the money to cover them on the desk. He called later and apologized for being gone, saying that he had been quite sick and had stepped out for a moment.  So we avoided the flu.

Mim is a history fanatic like her grandfather Turtle, so she talked us into visiting the Fort. We roamed around every building looking at exhibits and getting our exercise for the day.

Thankfully, the sun shone brightly, warming up what had begun as a cold, cloudy, cheerless day.

Every building on the square was either a restored original, or a replica with authentic furniture.

What surprised us the most about the barracks was the size of the bunk beds. They seemed shorter than usual, and were about twin bed width, but two soldiers were assigned to each level, so they slept four men. There were around fifty men assigned to each of the two rooms upstairs, and four officers slept in a small room in the middle. Even they had to sleep four to a single bunk bed.

The sign said the barracks had to be cleaned regularly and the mattresses re-stuffed with fresh prairie grass every week to control the population of bedbugs which feasted on the soldiers every night.

There was a bakery, a guardhouse, an ammunition building, and cannon garages. The officers' houses had backyard gardens, garages for the carriages, and even a little storage shed; it looked like an ancient version of backyard suburbia.

The stables were huge. Dragoons need horses.

Their stalls were empty, but a large wooden horse on the wall gave the children some idea of the animal's size.

Mim insisted we watch the video in the main museum's mini auditorium, but that proved too much for two of us. (Zaya didn't mind sitting for another thirty minutes). Not that the film wasn't well-enacted, but it was more history than we wanted to endure in one afternoon, so we dragged the younger ones away and headed back to the house, where we thoroughly appreciated the central heat, running water, and mattresses without bedbugs.