Thursday, February 28, 2008
Weather has improved dramatically and with the warmer temps, we are getting out more and hiking. The other morning while we both rested up from a nice walk, I saw the beat up shoes sitting in the sun and wrote the following .
Old shoes, new lives.
They lie there in the warming sun. Resting from a long day of walking through muddy fields. Looking for eagles. Looking for cranes. Just looking.
Laces entwined as our lives have become.
Worn and tired, as we are, but with tread and a few good years left on their soles…and our souls?
They are friends. As we are.
Soon, we will slip them on and they will feel good.
And we will head out on another road together.
Again, they will get muddy and wet.
Again they will walk down a new path.
A new path with us. Side by side, hand in hand into the future.
A little more worn everyday but happy to be together. Happy to be moving ahead.
Then, to lie entwined on another floor, in another place warming in the sun, content and comfortable to be with us as we are to be with each other.
Not thrown into the trash, because,…after all there’s a few good miles left in them and us.
Old shoes, new lives.
They lie there in the warming sun. Resting from a long day of walking through muddy fields. Looking for eagles. Looking for cranes. Just looking.
Laces entwined as our lives have become.
Worn and tired, as we are, but with tread and a few good years left on their soles…and our souls?
They are friends. As we are.
Soon, we will slip them on and they will feel good.
And we will head out on another road together.
Again, they will get muddy and wet.
Again they will walk down a new path.
A new path with us. Side by side, hand in hand into the future.
A little more worn everyday but happy to be together. Happy to be moving ahead.
Then, to lie entwined on another floor, in another place warming in the sun, content and comfortable to be with us as we are to be with each other.
Not thrown into the trash, because,…after all there’s a few good miles left in them and us.
Cranes Arriving on the River 2/24
Enjoying a break in the weather sunday afternoon, Ev and I decided to take in the sunset from one of the refuges' blinds. Spur of the moment we brought no cameras or binoculars. The sunset was magnificent; molten fuschia tones reflecting off the ice, snow and opening channels of the Platte river. Several deer were cavorting in and out of the channel on the far side of the river enjoying the promise of returning Spring. Savoring all that we began hearing not only the chorus of ducks and geese flying by and settling on the various braided river channels, but also the distinct calls of Sandhill Cranes circling above. The combined sounds of cranes and geese was astounding. Before darkness enveloped the river, more than a thousand had roosted on the sandbars across from the blind. Wow - what an introduction to crane migration! SN
Sunday, February 24, 2008
We’ve been working at the Rowe Audubon Sanctuary along the Platt River near Kearney NE for almost two weeks now. The temperature roller coaster continues. Today is a deliciously blue, sunny day in the low 50's. Our lake is thawing - and I apologize to my sister in CO and Erv’s mountain friends in CA that find photos of ice and snow bedecked landscape interesting mostly for comparison to how much deeper and colder it is in their locales - but I’m attaching a photo of the view from our “summer” house earlier this week anyway!
Birds are beginning to arrive. I’m enchanted by the waves of geese - mostly Snow, Canada and White Front - that undulate and cris-cross the broad skies of these plains like schools of fish, rank upon rank of an endless army, or small clouds. Locals are heartened by these sights and sounds of spring ( the noise of these quackers and honkers is amazing) after enduring a long, hard winter. To a person, however, they remind me that I’ve not seen anything yet - the Sandhills are beginning to arrive and that’s the main event.
Thus far, Erv and I have been involved in manual labor as we spring clean the grounds and buildings; add plywood to blinds; build sheds, etc. I’d forgotten I had some of these muscles!
There’s plenty of time for exploring, however and we’re getting to know the surrounding countryside and small towns. Yesterday we spent the afternoon birding along the back roads with a local teacher and Rowe volunteer. We saw large flocks of wild turkey (eat your heart out, Jerry!), whitetail deer, raptors including hawks and bald eagles- at least a dozen eagles yesterday alone, two of whom were sprucing up and old nest for this season’s chicks. (that photo from apx. 1/4 mile so as not to disturb the birds.) The smaller songbirds - robins, bluebirds, horned larks, goldfinch and sparrows- are now in evidence as well. Lovely to see the earth awakening to Spring!
Birds are beginning to arrive. I’m enchanted by the waves of geese - mostly Snow, Canada and White Front - that undulate and cris-cross the broad skies of these plains like schools of fish, rank upon rank of an endless army, or small clouds. Locals are heartened by these sights and sounds of spring ( the noise of these quackers and honkers is amazing) after enduring a long, hard winter. To a person, however, they remind me that I’ve not seen anything yet - the Sandhills are beginning to arrive and that’s the main event.
Thus far, Erv and I have been involved in manual labor as we spring clean the grounds and buildings; add plywood to blinds; build sheds, etc. I’d forgotten I had some of these muscles!
There’s plenty of time for exploring, however and we’re getting to know the surrounding countryside and small towns. Yesterday we spent the afternoon birding along the back roads with a local teacher and Rowe volunteer. We saw large flocks of wild turkey (eat your heart out, Jerry!), whitetail deer, raptors including hawks and bald eagles- at least a dozen eagles yesterday alone, two of whom were sprucing up and old nest for this season’s chicks. (that photo from apx. 1/4 mile so as not to disturb the birds.) The smaller songbirds - robins, bluebirds, horned larks, goldfinch and sparrows- are now in evidence as well. Lovely to see the earth awakening to Spring!
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
straw houses
The weather here on the Platte is like the stock market of late. Yesterday was a balmy 50 degrees, today it reached a high of around 8. Tomorrow is predicted to be 35. We spent last evening in Lincoln, the capital (which neither of us realized until we saw the state house!) at a lecture by Richard Louv, author of “Last Child in the Woods”. A sadly true book about this generations’ disconnect with the outdoors. It was a sellout crowd and he was able to instill a little optimism about the future in some. I reserve my right to be a pessimist. Today Sandra and I worked outdoors under a sky full of thousands of Snow and Canada geese, angrily honking their opinions on the sub-freezing weather. So far, there is only a smattering of cranes. It’s easy to separate their saxaphone-like call from that of the geese. We were putting the final touches on a straw bale viewing blind on the river’s edge for people to view the cranes when they do arrive. The bales are good insulation, but the tours are before dawn and sunset and require sitting quietly in the unheated dark for hours so as not to disturb the birds. This is what we will be leading and, believe it or not, loving starting next week. By the way the weather in Homer today was 20 degrees warmer than here!
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Thoughts on the way to Nebraska
2-14-08
I write today form a lakefront (frozen in for now) summer house near Rowe Sanctuary in Nebraska. Getting here has been a series of full and varied days... Traveling northeast along blue highways in New Mexico we saw lots of Pronghorn and Raptors and discovered a lovely State park, Villanueva, along side the Pecos river just south of Las Vegas. Our two mile hike there led to beautiful vistas and was good decompression from the last minute details and poignancy of leaving Socorro 2/9.
In Las Vegas where Erv’s well received Condor program was standing room only, we relaxed in Jan Arrott’s log house and enjoyed her showing us the sights including a meditation center of “light”- fractured rainbows from prismoid reflectors in it’s many windows. We also sampled some of the several ecosystems that meet in the area. Jan’s home, for instance, is on prairie grasslands; the meditation center nearby is in pine forest adjacent to natural hot springs; and not far away are rugged desert canyons we drove through just for the adventure and variety of it! In the Las Vegas area we saw migrating Sandhill Cranes, ducks and geese, a Ferruginous hawk, Meadowlark singing their hearts out in welcome of the milder weather, and our first flocks of Western Bluebirds.
On to Kansas, we crossed the border near Clayton, NM where we paused for lunch in an historic hotel and checked out the bullet holes in the saloon’s tin ceiling where a patron once celebrated Garfield’s election. Southern Kansas is predominantly flat and dedicated to cattle and corn, the stubbled fields occasionally punctuated by slowly pumping gas and oil rigs. Next stop, Garden City, Kansas. This city, as much of the state, revolves around cattle/beef. We couldn’t bear to tour a slaughter house but did visit one of the many feedlots, this one housing 20-30,000 cattle. (Within 30 miles of Garden City there are over a million cattle in feed lots - more cattle than the population of the western half of the state.) The cattle are trucked in from Texas, Mexico, and Nebraska as well as Kansas. Many arrive as calves and live the next 250 days of their lives on diets formulated for a 2-3 lb/day wt. gain before being trucked over to the slaughter house where 5-6000 are processed daily. Most of the rest are yearlings who are “fed up” for about 180 days. The multi-corralled lot was a clean (relative, of course, to the “natural” smells and mounds of manure) efficient, meat making factory - the meat developing on the hoof until ready for market. The lot we toured - with a nice gentleman, Jim Price, who has been involved in some aspect of the cattle business all his life (as have many in my own family) - housed only steers. A separate lot houses smaller numbers of heifers who receive hormone suppression along with their feed so that no calories are expended in estrus and related “agitation.” I can not fault the men and women who work hard and as conscientiously as they can in the beef business but I do question the value judgement inherent in our huge outlay of resources for an end-of-the-chain food source
( the crops raised to fatten cattle could feed millions of people instead of the relatively few who consume beef products) and I must also ask whether it is justifiable to “use” creatures in this way. The calves in these corrals are born, trucked to feed lots, fattened and processed - they are simply living beef “machines.”
Continuing north we took another side trip to a small art gallery/fossil museum and chatted with the owners, amateur archeologists as well as artists - an interesting couple who directed us on an off-road loop to see Monument Rocks - calcerous limestone towers (chalk-like formations made up predominantly of shells of microscopic animals that lived in an ancient sea that covered most of central North America over 80 million years ago - and you can really sense that here). We were equally amazed by their odd presence in this grassland and by a small herd of ponies and llamas we passed at a watering hole along the way! Later that day 2/13 we arrived at Rowe Sanctuary - cold, beautiful landscape.
I write today form a lakefront (frozen in for now) summer house near Rowe Sanctuary in Nebraska. Getting here has been a series of full and varied days... Traveling northeast along blue highways in New Mexico we saw lots of Pronghorn and Raptors and discovered a lovely State park, Villanueva, along side the Pecos river just south of Las Vegas. Our two mile hike there led to beautiful vistas and was good decompression from the last minute details and poignancy of leaving Socorro 2/9.
In Las Vegas where Erv’s well received Condor program was standing room only, we relaxed in Jan Arrott’s log house and enjoyed her showing us the sights including a meditation center of “light”- fractured rainbows from prismoid reflectors in it’s many windows. We also sampled some of the several ecosystems that meet in the area. Jan’s home, for instance, is on prairie grasslands; the meditation center nearby is in pine forest adjacent to natural hot springs; and not far away are rugged desert canyons we drove through just for the adventure and variety of it! In the Las Vegas area we saw migrating Sandhill Cranes, ducks and geese, a Ferruginous hawk, Meadowlark singing their hearts out in welcome of the milder weather, and our first flocks of Western Bluebirds.
On to Kansas, we crossed the border near Clayton, NM where we paused for lunch in an historic hotel and checked out the bullet holes in the saloon’s tin ceiling where a patron once celebrated Garfield’s election. Southern Kansas is predominantly flat and dedicated to cattle and corn, the stubbled fields occasionally punctuated by slowly pumping gas and oil rigs. Next stop, Garden City, Kansas. This city, as much of the state, revolves around cattle/beef. We couldn’t bear to tour a slaughter house but did visit one of the many feedlots, this one housing 20-30,000 cattle. (Within 30 miles of Garden City there are over a million cattle in feed lots - more cattle than the population of the western half of the state.) The cattle are trucked in from Texas, Mexico, and Nebraska as well as Kansas. Many arrive as calves and live the next 250 days of their lives on diets formulated for a 2-3 lb/day wt. gain before being trucked over to the slaughter house where 5-6000 are processed daily. Most of the rest are yearlings who are “fed up” for about 180 days. The multi-corralled lot was a clean (relative, of course, to the “natural” smells and mounds of manure) efficient, meat making factory - the meat developing on the hoof until ready for market. The lot we toured - with a nice gentleman, Jim Price, who has been involved in some aspect of the cattle business all his life (as have many in my own family) - housed only steers. A separate lot houses smaller numbers of heifers who receive hormone suppression along with their feed so that no calories are expended in estrus and related “agitation.” I can not fault the men and women who work hard and as conscientiously as they can in the beef business but I do question the value judgement inherent in our huge outlay of resources for an end-of-the-chain food source
( the crops raised to fatten cattle could feed millions of people instead of the relatively few who consume beef products) and I must also ask whether it is justifiable to “use” creatures in this way. The calves in these corrals are born, trucked to feed lots, fattened and processed - they are simply living beef “machines.”
Continuing north we took another side trip to a small art gallery/fossil museum and chatted with the owners, amateur archeologists as well as artists - an interesting couple who directed us on an off-road loop to see Monument Rocks - calcerous limestone towers (chalk-like formations made up predominantly of shells of microscopic animals that lived in an ancient sea that covered most of central North America over 80 million years ago - and you can really sense that here). We were equally amazed by their odd presence in this grassland and by a small herd of ponies and llamas we passed at a watering hole along the way! Later that day 2/13 we arrived at Rowe Sanctuary - cold, beautiful landscape.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
On the road...finally!
We got off to a good start with the car loaded to the max on Sat. morning. A 4 hour drive on blue highways brought us to a beautiful park along the Pecos river. Weather was warm and windy. A little further, and we were in Las Vegas... the natural one. Las Vegas NM where I am speaking on Sunday about Condors. Jan Arrott's house where we are staying is a beautiful log house ajoining the refuge and surrounded by birds and grasslands. An early morning walk produced the photos you see. It's day 2 and so far so so excellent.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Sandra's thoughts
Transitions............. I wasn’t sure it would all come together but it has and on Saturday 2/9 we bid farewell to Socorro and start off on our very excellent adventure!
First stop Las Vegas, NM where Erv has been invited to give a program on the California Condor. We will be staying with Jan in her lovely log home and look forward to some downtime on the adjacent refuge; touring the Armand Hammer “castle,” a landmark associated with one of the international high schools he sponsors around the United States; and perhaps soaking in one of the hot springs nearby. After all the stress associated with leaving my job, wrapping up our volunteer activities at the Bosque and Sevilleta wildlife refuges, and attending to the business of income taxes, medical checks, insurance matters, subletting my condo and Erv’s selling his motor home, down time and a good soak would be divine!
Community is important to me and transitions are never easy. It has been especially hard to leave the patients I’ve become close to after a year of home visits. One dear gentleman - still quite spry - will turn 101 in March, and others may succumb to illness before my return. It has been a privilege to share their lives and I shall miss them. I will also miss the fabulous home health/hospice team I’ve been a part of. It was also difficult to leave our fledgling Unitarian Universalist congregation - an innovative “branch” ministry of First Unitarian in Albuqerque utilizing cyberspace technology to facilitate services and ministerial/administrative supports for our development in Socorro over the past 6 months. Our start-up wasn’t easy, and I struggled to gain a small measure of comfort and poise as a lay minister, but it has been a gratifying experience of personal and spiritual growth. And, finally, I shall miss my condo, the little nest I’ve created here with it’s lovely view of Socorro mountain and the subtle beauty of our desert landscape. I have been fortunate in the sub-let, however, and yesterday was delighted to meet the Chilean couple who will be taking it over. They are here to work on an international radio telescope project, an antenae of which will be located in Chile. What culture shock for them transitioning from cosmopolitan Santiago to rural Socorro!
Soooo - more transitions and on the road again. I’ve realized I’m a nomad at heart, however, because it feels terrific to be off on a new adventure of discovery - discovery of our land, new people and places; discovery inherent in Erv and I making the commitment to go on this most excellent adventure together; self discovery. Hope you’ll come along for the ride! Sandra
First stop Las Vegas, NM where Erv has been invited to give a program on the California Condor. We will be staying with Jan in her lovely log home and look forward to some downtime on the adjacent refuge; touring the Armand Hammer “castle,” a landmark associated with one of the international high schools he sponsors around the United States; and perhaps soaking in one of the hot springs nearby. After all the stress associated with leaving my job, wrapping up our volunteer activities at the Bosque and Sevilleta wildlife refuges, and attending to the business of income taxes, medical checks, insurance matters, subletting my condo and Erv’s selling his motor home, down time and a good soak would be divine!
Community is important to me and transitions are never easy. It has been especially hard to leave the patients I’ve become close to after a year of home visits. One dear gentleman - still quite spry - will turn 101 in March, and others may succumb to illness before my return. It has been a privilege to share their lives and I shall miss them. I will also miss the fabulous home health/hospice team I’ve been a part of. It was also difficult to leave our fledgling Unitarian Universalist congregation - an innovative “branch” ministry of First Unitarian in Albuqerque utilizing cyberspace technology to facilitate services and ministerial/administrative supports for our development in Socorro over the past 6 months. Our start-up wasn’t easy, and I struggled to gain a small measure of comfort and poise as a lay minister, but it has been a gratifying experience of personal and spiritual growth. And, finally, I shall miss my condo, the little nest I’ve created here with it’s lovely view of Socorro mountain and the subtle beauty of our desert landscape. I have been fortunate in the sub-let, however, and yesterday was delighted to meet the Chilean couple who will be taking it over. They are here to work on an international radio telescope project, an antenae of which will be located in Chile. What culture shock for them transitioning from cosmopolitan Santiago to rural Socorro!
Soooo - more transitions and on the road again. I’ve realized I’m a nomad at heart, however, because it feels terrific to be off on a new adventure of discovery - discovery of our land, new people and places; discovery inherent in Erv and I making the commitment to go on this most excellent adventure together; self discovery. Hope you’ll come along for the ride! Sandra
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Gettin' our act together and saying goodbye
It's getting down to the wire. We leave next Saturday and little by little things are coming together. All and all it's a happy time for the two of us, but last night I said goodbye to a dear friend and was feeling a bit down. Bobby McGee is what I affectionately called my home on wheels for the last 2 years. As Janis said, "From the Kin-tucky coal mines to the California sun, Bobby shared the secrets of my soul." Sandra's going to miss him too. We shared a lot of cold winter nights snuggling under the electric blanket in that spacious bed over the cab listening to the sounds of the mouse scurrying along the counter top below looking for crumbs. Bobby was also home to the biggest spider I ever saw down in Sedona. A Wolf spider as big as my hand who wanted to share my bed before I met Sandra. He moved to New Mexico with me last year and moved on to another life after he crawled up my leg as I was using the bathroom one night. Bobby never gave me a moments trouble as he hauled my Tracker behind him all over the southwest. Sure he was a bit tired, but he was, after all 34 years old and in motorhome years that's an eternity. I feel certain he'll be happy in retirement, he'll have a nice permanent home on 23 acres of land in northern New Mexico where a pleasant young man will be living in him and I 'm sure will develop the same affection I felt.
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