Category: Landscape
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Toltec Mounds | Scott, AR | September 2019 Travelogue #5 | The first thing to know is that the Toltec Mounds are definitely mounds but not Toltec. They were built by the Plum Bayou native peoples about 1,200 years ago and were erroneously labeled “Toltec” by landowners in the mid-19th century. (The real Toltecs constructed…
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Fishing | Heber Springs, AR | September 2019 Travelogue #1 | Mist rises from the Little Red River, one of Arkansas’ top trout streams and a great place to hang out until our favorite catfish shack opens for lunch. That’s my brother wetting his line in pools below two landmark boulders. Not many bites, however,…
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Up There | Wenatchee, WA | September 2019 At ground level | I often look up and am surprised (yet again) that airplanes can fly. It’s a miracle I take for granted nearly everyday. Heavier than air with no-flap wings, planes skim the skies almost undetected. Well, except that their hushed whoosh from 30,000 feet…
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Altocumulus | above Grand Junction, CO | September 2019 Window Seat #3 | Explanations of how clouds float undermine the glorious mystery of levitation. Science asserts that gravity has little effect on a cloud’s micro-droplets, upward air currents offer lofty support, and a water particle’s shifting shape and mass determine if it becomes a raindrop.…
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Sunrise | above Pilot Rock, OR | September 2019 Window Seat #1 | Sun, clouds, jet wing — the combination can befuddle a smartphone sensor and, similarly, my brain. The sight brings to mind other situations of sensory overload: Aurora borealis shimmering against starlight, a seabird flock spiraling like a living tornado, wind-whipped snow falling…
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Mountain Light | Cashmere, WA | September 2019 Incandescence #2 | “Most of us exist in worlds that are humanly arranged, themed and controlled. We forget there are environments that do not respond to the flick of a switch or the twist of a dial, and that have their own rhythms and orders of existence.…
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Big Rock | Mansfield, WA | September 2019 “What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in the ground underneath a giant boulder you can’t move, with no hope of rescue? Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn’t been good to…
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Chalk Hills | Leahy Junction, WA | September 2019 Geologists appear restrained, but their writings on the Chalk Hills have a “hot diggity!” feel about them. The Hills’ blazing white pyramids and stepped ridges are the eroded sediments of a glacial lake from 10,000 years ago. They’ve been exposed in the last millennia by wind,…
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Child’s Grave | Mold, WA | August 2019 Cemetery Visit #3 | Statuettes of lambs, signifying purity and innocence, have marked children’s graves since the Civil War. Sadly, the Lamb of God peeks all too frequently above the wind-blown grasses of the Mold Cemetery. On a recent visit, I thought I heard children’s laughter riding…
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