These two clouds are giant dragons- heavy, dark bellied, and fast. They sit on the world. They hasten toward each other, dragging their mile long bodies through the sky. They shake their legs and shed unwanted scales which land on the ground at my feet, wetting the path with small, inconsistent droplets.
The sun is straining against these monsters, trying to let its light shine on the world a little longer, trying not to get jostled below the horizon by things it should be able to control. The dragon, realizing Helios’s weakness, slams into the sun again and again. Helios’s white glow illumines the beast in protest and tries to give battle. But the dragon pushes on, relentlessly, toward its friend and their home in the garden of the Hesperides.
Helios succumbs to the power of these Titans, and slips behind their black bellies, his white light winks, and fizzles, abandoning me to Boreas’s chill wind and the twilight of the Hesperides.
Naiads gurgle in the canal behind me, displeased by the cold. Their long tangles of soft green hair float carelessly behind them, strung along by the black current. Ducks float along, trying not to tangle their webbed feet in the algae. Three of them waddle out of the canal, two mallards and a regal lady who doesn’t belong in these waters. There’s not a feather out of place. Each of her latte brown feathers lies smoothly against her plump body. A few streaks of pure white feathers highlight her curves. She stands apart from the mallards and watches them in their menial labor. This must be a Naiad, she’s too beautiful to be anything else. She eyes me and waddles a little further away. Perhaps she knows I’ve discovered her secret. But she’s not concerned about me, she is above such things.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Blog Prompt #3 (The Wombat of my Life)
“Oh my gosh! How cute!” I squeal.
“That, mates, is a common wombat,” says our guide through this Aussie nature preserve.
“It’s like a mini teddy bear!” I point to an adorable specimen just beyond the wire mesh.
“That it is.” His accent is amazing. I’m a sucker for great accents.
We’ve fed kangaroos, watched Tasmanian devils attack their prey, chased emus (even though we weren’t supposed to), and held koalas. But the wombat has stolen my heart.
She follows the sound of my squeal with her tiny cat ears and turns her large brown nose to sniff the air. Her mottled chocolate fur is short and puffy. Her eyes are wide open, black pools of obsidian taking all of us in before she waddles over to get some carrots.
Wombats reach about 40 inches in length and hit somewhere around 55 pounds. Their claws are extremely strong, and most wombats are able to curl their paws into fists to pull up the grasses they like to eat. Like the marmots or ground squirrels to which they are compared, they live in burrows underground.
They are the second largest marsupial, kangaroos being the first largest, and are extremely strong diggers. The wombat’s pouch faces to the rear so her babies don’t get faces full of dirt when Mom decides to go digging. Babies live in the pouches for about five months, until they are strong enough to venture out into the world. But for two months afterward, they still retreat back to the pouch for food, warmth, and comfort. I want to see a baby wombat, but our guide says that all the babies they had are grown up now.
Wombats are mostly nocturnal, but zoos have a way of changing some natural habits. This one toddles slowly around her enclosure, sniffing leaves and examining our faces. She is cute. She is serene. She is unassuming.
“Can I take her home with me?” I ask.
“That would be a bit hard,” our guide says. “Wombats are an endangered species. In fact, most Aussies have never seen a Wombat in the wild.”
My face falls. I've lost my heart to a creature I may never see again. If I want to have a pet wombat, I’m going to have to move to Australia. I'll have to think on that one.
http://www.wombania.com/wombats/wombat-facts.htm
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/wombat/
“That, mates, is a common wombat,” says our guide through this Aussie nature preserve.
“It’s like a mini teddy bear!” I point to an adorable specimen just beyond the wire mesh.
“That it is.” His accent is amazing. I’m a sucker for great accents.
We’ve fed kangaroos, watched Tasmanian devils attack their prey, chased emus (even though we weren’t supposed to), and held koalas. But the wombat has stolen my heart.
She follows the sound of my squeal with her tiny cat ears and turns her large brown nose to sniff the air. Her mottled chocolate fur is short and puffy. Her eyes are wide open, black pools of obsidian taking all of us in before she waddles over to get some carrots.
Wombats reach about 40 inches in length and hit somewhere around 55 pounds. Their claws are extremely strong, and most wombats are able to curl their paws into fists to pull up the grasses they like to eat. Like the marmots or ground squirrels to which they are compared, they live in burrows underground.
They are the second largest marsupial, kangaroos being the first largest, and are extremely strong diggers. The wombat’s pouch faces to the rear so her babies don’t get faces full of dirt when Mom decides to go digging. Babies live in the pouches for about five months, until they are strong enough to venture out into the world. But for two months afterward, they still retreat back to the pouch for food, warmth, and comfort. I want to see a baby wombat, but our guide says that all the babies they had are grown up now.
Wombats are mostly nocturnal, but zoos have a way of changing some natural habits. This one toddles slowly around her enclosure, sniffing leaves and examining our faces. She is cute. She is serene. She is unassuming.
“Can I take her home with me?” I ask.
“That would be a bit hard,” our guide says. “Wombats are an endangered species. In fact, most Aussies have never seen a Wombat in the wild.”
My face falls. I've lost my heart to a creature I may never see again. If I want to have a pet wombat, I’m going to have to move to Australia. I'll have to think on that one.
http://www.wombania.com/wombats/wombat-facts.htm
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/wombat/
Saturday, February 11, 2012
An entry that has nothing to do with blog prompts or place entries but does deal with nature
The weekend camping trip that lasted a night
Our first clue that this camping trip wasn’t going to go well should have been the fact that our city slicker Honda Accord was having issues navigating the deep ruts into Horsethief Reservoir. If I subscribed to the Ancient Greek belief that there were omens to be seen in every bird wheeling overhead, I would have read the omens in every mud caked, heavy duty truck towing a trailer that rumbled past us. But we bounce happily along in our little blue car, nine months into our marriage and excited about showing off the camping prowess we had developed as kids.
When I was younger, my family went camping every summer with my grandparents (who had all the camping stuff). Grandpa and Grandma did most of the preparation. They also had the tent trailer, which was the only way Mom and Dad would go camping. Gram would have breakfast hot and ready by the time my brother and I rolled out of bed and we would spend our days hiking, splashing in the lake or reading and our evenings playing cards, roasting marshmallows, watching meteor showers and listening to Dad teach us all about the stars and the constellations. This is what I had envisioned for our camping trip that June, and it is exactly what didn’t happen.
“Well, we can’t go any further,” Brian says, pointing to a sign that said “No Trespassing.”
“Looks like it,” I say, frustrated. He hadn’t turned down any of the roads we’d passed that had signs promising camp grounds. He always has to explore everything and I hadn’t figured out how to handle that yet.
After a very long time and a rather tricky turn around, bookended by two large trucks waiting for us to quit trying to turn around so they could roar past us, skimming over holes we kept trying not to sink into, we head back to the campgrounds.
The Horsethief camp ground we finally bound into isn’t at all like I remember. It is a small, flat plain of grass populated mostly by campers and tent trailers, with a few tents sprinkled in for good measure. Where are trees? I remembered a forest populated by fir, hemlock, pine, and spruce. But all I see is grass and a few token trees scattered here and there.
We snatch up the last camp site available. A campsite entirely devoid of trees and backing up to a large camper.
“This is Horsethief?” I ask, getting out of a car that is more brown now than blue.
“Yes, ma’am.” Brian bounces out of the car. “Do we have any food?”
Do we have any food? I laugh. Of course we have food, I personally packed the food. I am so good at food packing that I have enough food for a very long weekend. Well, actually, Gram told me what to pack and gave me her “camping kitchen” box with all the stuff I could possibly need to make meals. But I like to think I’m good at it. I even packed steak for dinner.
I toss him some trail mix. “Shall we put up the tent?”
We break out the tent we got for our wedding, the tent we haven’t opened yet. The only thing I know about any tent is that it has to go up. The only other thing I know about this tent is that it’s bright green. It wasn’t until that night that we realized it is a summer tent and not meant for keeping in warmth at high altitude early in June.
I unzip the tent bag, forgoing the instructions because I have to look like I know what I’m doing, and dump out the contents.
“So, we stick the poles in these holes?” I ask, awkwardly poking a still disassembled pole at the green canvas. Maybe I should have read the directions.
Brian’s blue eyes are twinkling and he’s trying not to laugh, “Something like that. How about we lay the tent out first and then stick the poles in.” He then proceeds to wander over our camp site, sitting or laying down at intervals rather like a dog. I just stand there holding my limp tent pole.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to find the best place for the tent. We don’t want our heads on the down side of a slope and we don’t want a place with lots of holes. Or rocks,” he adds as he tosses a few into the gravel road. “Let’s put it here.”
We put the tarp down over a patchwork quilt of wild grasses and tiny wild flowers-blue and white and pink.
Not long afterwards a lime green tent sprouts from the ground. Looking at it, I realize that I’ve never actually slept in a tent before. This could be interesting.
Brian wants to go fishing off the bridge. I hate fishing. When I was a kid, I went with my grandpa once or twice and only ever succeeded in catching logs, sticks, algae, or myself. But I go fishing with Brian because he wants to and I want to make him happy. We take our poles and join a few other couples on the edge of the bridge. Brian tosses me a worm.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I ask. I’m sure my face registers my disgust.
“Stick in on your hook like this.” He sticks his worm on his hook and casts, very nicely I might add.
I stand there with the worm in my hands, looking very grossed out.
“Here, let me get that for you,” he leans over and hooks the worm for me. “There you go. Now you cast.” He kisses me on the nose.
“And how do I do that?”
He laughs.
“What? I haven’t been fishing since I was, like, ten, okay? And I almost hooked Grandpa!”
He laughs some more and shows me how. I have to concede, he knows way more about camping than I do.
I mostly just sit with my line in the water until Brian tells me to reel it in and stare at the beautiful, welcoming trees across the reservoir. That must be where we camped when I was a kid. There’s five times as many trees over there as over here.
Night falls quickly in the mountains, as does the temperature. At night fall, we toss our Walmart brand firewood onto the fire, hoping for a raging one like our neighbors have. We get a few small flames. That’s it. It isn’t even enough to roast marshmallows by, let alone stay warm. There is a sign that tells us we aren’t allowed to gather firewood here, which is unfortunate since there’s a huge pile of wood down by the water from a dismantled dock. I shake my fist in protest at the sign. Next time, we’re chopping down our own firewood and not letting Walmart do it for us. In the mean time, we huddle by our almost nonexistent fire and shiver until we can’t take it anymore. We didn't play cards, we barely read and we didn't go on a hike. We did look at the stars, and there I did know more than Brian. But they didn't look like the warm, happy stars I remembered. They looked like cold points of light, shivering in the frigid and airless void of space.
But that may have been because I was freezing.
We decide to crawl into bed where it will be warmer. Or so we think. Unfortunately, we neglected to bring sleeping bags. We have a pile of blankets and sheets to throw over our split double air mattress, but as we find out later that night, none of them were warm enough or big enough for two frigid persons at three in the morning.
I wake up from my half dream state to find Brian trying to share my side of the mattress-which is only barely big enough for me.
“Wha?” I ask. I think I’m trying to ask what he’s doing, but it doesn’t come out that way.
“My side deflated,” he moans. “Can I share yours?”
“No,” I mutter. He squishes closer anyway. At least he’s warm.
As an added comfort, we are serenaded all night by a generator huffing on and off, despite signs that tell people not to run generators at night. The inconsistent growl keeps lurching me out of my sleep and my wonderful dreams about Grandma and Grandpa coming to save me with their tent trailer.
We leave at eight the next morning. When I'm unprepared, nature is not my friend.
Our first clue that this camping trip wasn’t going to go well should have been the fact that our city slicker Honda Accord was having issues navigating the deep ruts into Horsethief Reservoir. If I subscribed to the Ancient Greek belief that there were omens to be seen in every bird wheeling overhead, I would have read the omens in every mud caked, heavy duty truck towing a trailer that rumbled past us. But we bounce happily along in our little blue car, nine months into our marriage and excited about showing off the camping prowess we had developed as kids.
When I was younger, my family went camping every summer with my grandparents (who had all the camping stuff). Grandpa and Grandma did most of the preparation. They also had the tent trailer, which was the only way Mom and Dad would go camping. Gram would have breakfast hot and ready by the time my brother and I rolled out of bed and we would spend our days hiking, splashing in the lake or reading and our evenings playing cards, roasting marshmallows, watching meteor showers and listening to Dad teach us all about the stars and the constellations. This is what I had envisioned for our camping trip that June, and it is exactly what didn’t happen.
“Well, we can’t go any further,” Brian says, pointing to a sign that said “No Trespassing.”
“Looks like it,” I say, frustrated. He hadn’t turned down any of the roads we’d passed that had signs promising camp grounds. He always has to explore everything and I hadn’t figured out how to handle that yet.
After a very long time and a rather tricky turn around, bookended by two large trucks waiting for us to quit trying to turn around so they could roar past us, skimming over holes we kept trying not to sink into, we head back to the campgrounds.
The Horsethief camp ground we finally bound into isn’t at all like I remember. It is a small, flat plain of grass populated mostly by campers and tent trailers, with a few tents sprinkled in for good measure. Where are trees? I remembered a forest populated by fir, hemlock, pine, and spruce. But all I see is grass and a few token trees scattered here and there.
We snatch up the last camp site available. A campsite entirely devoid of trees and backing up to a large camper.
“This is Horsethief?” I ask, getting out of a car that is more brown now than blue.
“Yes, ma’am.” Brian bounces out of the car. “Do we have any food?”
Do we have any food? I laugh. Of course we have food, I personally packed the food. I am so good at food packing that I have enough food for a very long weekend. Well, actually, Gram told me what to pack and gave me her “camping kitchen” box with all the stuff I could possibly need to make meals. But I like to think I’m good at it. I even packed steak for dinner.
I toss him some trail mix. “Shall we put up the tent?”
We break out the tent we got for our wedding, the tent we haven’t opened yet. The only thing I know about any tent is that it has to go up. The only other thing I know about this tent is that it’s bright green. It wasn’t until that night that we realized it is a summer tent and not meant for keeping in warmth at high altitude early in June.
I unzip the tent bag, forgoing the instructions because I have to look like I know what I’m doing, and dump out the contents.
“So, we stick the poles in these holes?” I ask, awkwardly poking a still disassembled pole at the green canvas. Maybe I should have read the directions.
Brian’s blue eyes are twinkling and he’s trying not to laugh, “Something like that. How about we lay the tent out first and then stick the poles in.” He then proceeds to wander over our camp site, sitting or laying down at intervals rather like a dog. I just stand there holding my limp tent pole.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to find the best place for the tent. We don’t want our heads on the down side of a slope and we don’t want a place with lots of holes. Or rocks,” he adds as he tosses a few into the gravel road. “Let’s put it here.”
We put the tarp down over a patchwork quilt of wild grasses and tiny wild flowers-blue and white and pink.
Not long afterwards a lime green tent sprouts from the ground. Looking at it, I realize that I’ve never actually slept in a tent before. This could be interesting.
Brian wants to go fishing off the bridge. I hate fishing. When I was a kid, I went with my grandpa once or twice and only ever succeeded in catching logs, sticks, algae, or myself. But I go fishing with Brian because he wants to and I want to make him happy. We take our poles and join a few other couples on the edge of the bridge. Brian tosses me a worm.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I ask. I’m sure my face registers my disgust.
“Stick in on your hook like this.” He sticks his worm on his hook and casts, very nicely I might add.
I stand there with the worm in my hands, looking very grossed out.
“Here, let me get that for you,” he leans over and hooks the worm for me. “There you go. Now you cast.” He kisses me on the nose.
“And how do I do that?”
He laughs.
“What? I haven’t been fishing since I was, like, ten, okay? And I almost hooked Grandpa!”
He laughs some more and shows me how. I have to concede, he knows way more about camping than I do.
I mostly just sit with my line in the water until Brian tells me to reel it in and stare at the beautiful, welcoming trees across the reservoir. That must be where we camped when I was a kid. There’s five times as many trees over there as over here.
Night falls quickly in the mountains, as does the temperature. At night fall, we toss our Walmart brand firewood onto the fire, hoping for a raging one like our neighbors have. We get a few small flames. That’s it. It isn’t even enough to roast marshmallows by, let alone stay warm. There is a sign that tells us we aren’t allowed to gather firewood here, which is unfortunate since there’s a huge pile of wood down by the water from a dismantled dock. I shake my fist in protest at the sign. Next time, we’re chopping down our own firewood and not letting Walmart do it for us. In the mean time, we huddle by our almost nonexistent fire and shiver until we can’t take it anymore. We didn't play cards, we barely read and we didn't go on a hike. We did look at the stars, and there I did know more than Brian. But they didn't look like the warm, happy stars I remembered. They looked like cold points of light, shivering in the frigid and airless void of space.
But that may have been because I was freezing.
We decide to crawl into bed where it will be warmer. Or so we think. Unfortunately, we neglected to bring sleeping bags. We have a pile of blankets and sheets to throw over our split double air mattress, but as we find out later that night, none of them were warm enough or big enough for two frigid persons at three in the morning.
I wake up from my half dream state to find Brian trying to share my side of the mattress-which is only barely big enough for me.
“Wha?” I ask. I think I’m trying to ask what he’s doing, but it doesn’t come out that way.
“My side deflated,” he moans. “Can I share yours?”
“No,” I mutter. He squishes closer anyway. At least he’s warm.
As an added comfort, we are serenaded all night by a generator huffing on and off, despite signs that tell people not to run generators at night. The inconsistent growl keeps lurching me out of my sleep and my wonderful dreams about Grandma and Grandpa coming to save me with their tent trailer.
We leave at eight the next morning. When I'm unprepared, nature is not my friend.
Place Entry #3
The moon is being eaten by the sky. One fourth of this lunar Oreo has been swallowed by the endless blue sea that stretches above the earth. There is nothing in the sky to defend the waxing gibbous, not even the merest wisp of cirrus clouds.
Canadian geese can be found year round in Southern Idaho. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Canadian geese enjoy open spaces with short lawns, not only because they love eating grass, but also so they can see any potential predators.
Brian points out a flock of geese incoming from the north. They alight on the meticulously groomed grass of softball field two, thinking and munching and in general ignoring everything around them, including the three teenage guys on bikes three sizes too small. We must not pose a threat to them because they bounce and chatter, their hoarse voices carrying across the fields.
I have a long standing fear of geese. When I was a kid, Mom used to take my brother and me to feed the ducks in the Boise River. We would bring a loaf of fluffy bread and shred the pieces for the various water fowl that waddled our way, smiling and quacking and thanking us for the food in their ducky voices. I loved ducks. But invariably, halfway through the feeding, the noisy, smelly, messy, huge geese would catch wind of the Wonder Bread and overrun the place. I always dropped my slices and ran away because the geese were as big as me and because one of my good friends was once pecked by an overprotective mamma goose.
Today, there is a goose missing a leg. He hobbles around as well as he can, hopping awkwardly from place to place. None of his friends seem to notice that he’s different. They treat him just like any other member of their family. How I wish people were more like this.
We watch skateboarders trying to show off for the girls they like in the small skatepark near the parking lot. But the girls aren’t paying attention. They’re flirting with other boys or glued to their iphones. On the other side of the parking lot, parents push small children in swings or chase them around the playground. I wish kids didn’t feel like they have to grow up so fast. Too often, we can’t enjoy the phase of life we’re in because we think that the things we don’t have are always better. We can be so fickle.
Apparently the geese agree. They lift off to explore another area, to see new people, to find new food.
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Canada_goose/lifehistory/ac
Canadian geese can be found year round in Southern Idaho. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Canadian geese enjoy open spaces with short lawns, not only because they love eating grass, but also so they can see any potential predators.
Brian points out a flock of geese incoming from the north. They alight on the meticulously groomed grass of softball field two, thinking and munching and in general ignoring everything around them, including the three teenage guys on bikes three sizes too small. We must not pose a threat to them because they bounce and chatter, their hoarse voices carrying across the fields.
I have a long standing fear of geese. When I was a kid, Mom used to take my brother and me to feed the ducks in the Boise River. We would bring a loaf of fluffy bread and shred the pieces for the various water fowl that waddled our way, smiling and quacking and thanking us for the food in their ducky voices. I loved ducks. But invariably, halfway through the feeding, the noisy, smelly, messy, huge geese would catch wind of the Wonder Bread and overrun the place. I always dropped my slices and ran away because the geese were as big as me and because one of my good friends was once pecked by an overprotective mamma goose.
Today, there is a goose missing a leg. He hobbles around as well as he can, hopping awkwardly from place to place. None of his friends seem to notice that he’s different. They treat him just like any other member of their family. How I wish people were more like this.
We watch skateboarders trying to show off for the girls they like in the small skatepark near the parking lot. But the girls aren’t paying attention. They’re flirting with other boys or glued to their iphones. On the other side of the parking lot, parents push small children in swings or chase them around the playground. I wish kids didn’t feel like they have to grow up so fast. Too often, we can’t enjoy the phase of life we’re in because we think that the things we don’t have are always better. We can be so fickle.
Apparently the geese agree. They lift off to explore another area, to see new people, to find new food.
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Canada_goose/lifehistory/ac
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