Searching for cool
Slithering, hunting
Transforming
beauty
Hiking in the Heat
For several weeks I noticed big bright white blossoms on tall stalks as I looked across the canyon in the evenings just before dusk. While it was still hot even at 8 during this latest heat wave, I hiked across the canyon for a look, taking various photos as I strolled along.
When it rains, water drains into this arroyo and crashes over the cliff near my bedroom.
Never bulldozed or cleared, this land allows ancient junipers to continue to thrive.
No water dropping off the cliff on these hot, dry days.
The flowers I could see from my house across the canyon. My wildflower book tells me these are a type of Stickleaf. To take a photo of the other flower, I had to climb up an incline covered with gypsum.
My dog, Athena, and I continued our hike along the canyon edge.
It was beginning to get dark as we headed back to the house.
I can also see this bush from across the canyon. I see no others like it and do not know what it is.
Headed back home along the canyon’s rocky edge.
The Churches of Lalibela
Last night part of 60 Minutes featured these churches. Several years ago I went with friends from Ethiopia to see them. We spent almost an entire day hiking through around and up and down all eleven of them. I decided to travel back a few years and relive my experiences there and share it here.
800 years ago these churches were carved from the top down out of solid stone. They dug a trench deep all around what is now each church and then worked from there. Everything is stone, including the interior columns and spaces.
There are areas around all the churches and drainage canals so they do not flood in the rainy season.
The inside of each church is decorated with carvings, frescoes, and wall hangings.
Because 800 years of wear and tear and especially rain was beginning to take its toll, they covered them several years ago. Now, according the the architect on 60 Minutes, they are experiencing the opposite problem. The stone is getting too dry and contracting. They are teaching local people how to preserve the stone so it will last hundreds more years.
Dino, my Ethiopia friend, and the guide, in white.
Why the ridiculous looking socks? Fleas are a problem. Many of the churches have old carpet on the floors, thousands of people still workshop in them regularly. We were told to spray our ankles, tuck our pants inside out socks, spray our socks. It worked.
And here is probably the most photographed of them from up above. Yes, you do get to climb all the way down there if you want to go inside. We did. The story goes that the king went to Jerusalem and wanted to create an Ethiopian Jerusalem. There is a river nearby which they call the River Jordan. As you tour, they explain every detail and how they match passages and stories from the Biblical Jerusalem. How did they build all of these out of solid stone? With the help of angels.
Oh, What a Beautiful Morning
Azure sky beckons
Bees hum
Birds carol
Peace pervades
Spring–Wild Flowers in Canyon Country
Nature ignores the stresses humans suffer these days, renews, brings beauty, joy. Luckily, I live in the country, can work online, and take walks to escape and renew. Recently, after feeding the horses in the morning, I took a walk and captured photos of all the wild flowers in bloom and some photos of the canyon where I live. Relax, observe, breathe deep, enjoy.
See if you can find the bee.
Chocolate flowers.
Covid19-5-Spring Beauty
In the midst of being home for about a month now, it is spring most of the time. Saturday was 80 something. Now it is snowing. When it was 80 plus, I walked around outside and took photos of some of the wild flowers and the orchids blooming in the window above my kitchen sink.
I had planned to post several days ago, but I am so busy teaching English and Spanish online, I hardly have time to do much else. I did mow for several hours Saturday morning, did some gardening, cleaned horse runs, let them out to run. My students are studying the works of John Steinbeck, reading Animal Farm, The Odyssey, and Oedipus Rex–I teach four different levels of English. Designing lessons they can do online with little assistance takes forethought and planning. I thought I would hate it, but there are some things I really like and when we go back to class, I probably will continue. In the meantime, I will read, think, garden, care for my horses, hike my canyon, teach, write, and dream. Take care. Be safe.
Covid19–4
The cases and deaths rise; yet I see positives in all this mess. People are posting photos of food they are cooking at home for the first time in years, families sitting down and eating together. Neighbors are keeping their distance but talking to each other. People call friends to check on them. Others are using the Internet to communicate with friends they rarely see or cannot see now, in some cases people they are too busy to connect with on a regular basis. Some work on the stack of books they never had time to read before. Several of my musician friends are posting concerts online.
Many of us who teach may be learning new skills like using all aspects of Google Classroom, searching the Internet for innovative ideas to use in our online classrooms. I used to play the piano daily, even competed in high school. Then I quit. My current goal is to relearn a piece, Fuer Elise, that only ten years ago I could play from memory effortlessly. The music I am using is the same I used in high school, decades ago. It is discolored, edges torn.
I do know how to sew but rarely do. This weekend I will get out the sewing machine my parents gave me more than four decades ago and make a mask. I printed out a page of directions yesterday. To be safe, I work from home, rarely leave my property except to go to the mailbox at the end of a long drive. Luckily, I live in the country, have horses, and a lot of space. It is easy for me to get out and exercise. Added to that I joined an online Zumba class with an invitation from someone I met years ago, a horn player in a mariachi band in San Antonio–I love mariachi.
Going to and from work took 1.5 hours each day so now I have all that extra time. In the last three weeks I have read two books and started a third, caught up with magazine reading, and started FaceTime with my college roommate and her husband in California and also my daughter and grandson who live nearby but I cannot visit now. I have gardened, mowed, hiked, and photographed spring flowers and sunsets.
Yes, living in the country with space makes this easier I rather imagine, but I feel confident if people really search, they can find new and interesting adventures inside themselves and around them.
Be safe, take care, dream.
Covid19–3
Internet and modern technology make quarantining easier. Today is my birthday and for the first time in my life I am alone on this day. It could have been a lonely, sad day I suppose but it has been good; modern technology has enabled me to FaceTime with my college roommate and her husband in California, to exchange messages with three of my former exchange students scattered across the world, France, Italy, Thailand, receive birthday wishes on Facebook from around 80 people I know from everywhere, and message family and friends. Some of them and I have exchanged little conversations, catching up on who is doing what where.
This morning I almost finished all the work I need for Google Classroom this week. This afternoon I have spent a sizable chunk of time outside watering, fertilizing bushes, chopping down some weeds. After I finish writing this, I will go back out and complete the watering. Mostly I have plants for our dry climate and water only what is necessary.
Yesterday was the perfect sunny weather for taking some wild flower photos. Everywhere yellow flowers carpet the land. Here and there white ones appear as well.
Inside an orchid that resisted blooming for two years has changed its mind and several other plants are in full flower. All this beauty makes hanging out at home so much easier.
Stay home. Be safe.
Desert
Give me the long view
the endless space,
let my bones gleam white
beneath a desert willow
where a diamondback seeks shade.
Let me walk through red rock, climb to eternity,
stretch arms into the azure, crystalline air,
laugh out loud.
Give me the long view,
let me laugh out loud,
look down the Kaibab
Plateau into eternity.
Let me sing songs to emptiness,
to stark, open, free,
dance in sun, moonlight,
laugh out loud.
Give me the long view.
Student Poems-Three
Three poems follow:
Nature
Nature is
a beautiful place
so start
kicking that
can all over
the place
we will
we will
rock
you
Ethan Singletary
As I am laying at home
I hear a loud thunderous noise
The sound startled me out of my seat
I looked out the window
There was a giant funnel
I heard the tornado siren
As the trees were coming out of ground
I run downstairs to take cover
The storm was ruling the land, but
I was safe from the natural catastrophe.
Makenna Byrd
The Grip
As the wind blows and the storm flows through this
Desolate wasteland
As you wonder the numbing thunder puts you at peace
As the wind whips and the storm grips the desolate ground
As it whirls and twirls bringing wreckage
to the sky
Someone brings a tractor to clean up
this decay
For this storm may bring sorrow but all through
the hollow the great sorrow is met with a great
peace
As the family sifts among the rubble and
finds on this trouble at least they are in
one piece
Corbin McKinney
