• clouds,  leaves,  natural areas,  nature,  quotes

    The Strength of a Touch

    September 23, 2025
    Cottonwood leaves
    Cattails and reflections
    Clouds over Big Bass Pond

    The healing of our present woundedness may lie in recognizing and reclaiming the capacity we all have to heal each other, the enormous power in the simplest of human relationships: the strength of a touch, a blessing of forgiveness, the grace of someone else taking you just as you are and finding in you an unsuspected goodness.

    Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom

    I sit on a rock bench looking out across Big Bass Pond at Arapaho Bend Natural Area. It’s about 1:57 pm. I feel the warmth of the 77 degree temperature but accepting the grace of relief provided by the cloudy skies. I notice the small world of life all around me that I so often overlook. Bees, butterflies, and beetles feasting on the nectar of the rabbitbrush. Ants, spiders, grasshoppers and unnamable bugs scurry or jump around me. Cottonwood leaves become intricate works of art as the autumn equinox arrives. And the cattails showing the golden tips of their swords. I am grateful to slow down and experience the healing given by being present to this world. It is a gift that has much to teach me. Now a rumble of thunder gives notice for me to move on. By the time I reach the car, raindrops have begun to fall. (Entry from my journal.) So here are three images from the afternoon.

    This morning a steady, gentle rain falls. It began just after I got up, around 4:30 am. My weather app predicts it will continue until mid afternoon. I have my front door open so I can hear and take in the fragrance of this refreshing rain. It’s a good day to journal, read and work on this blogs transformation. Thanks for being here and have a great day!

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  • natural areas,  reflections

    Connecting through communicating

    March 21, 2025

    I have come to realize how poor a communicator I have been in the past. How well I may think I have expressed a thought is always limited and I need to accept that fact. How well I think I have listened and understood is always going to be limited and I need to accept that fact. In my experience learning to communicate in these later years of my life has been a wonderful adventure. I find it enjoyable to converse with someone who is also willing and open to learning the craft of communications. It is at these times we connect, come to understand each other and find our differences may be gifts rather than obstacles.

    Cattails along the edge of Big Bass pond at Arapaho Bend Natural Area

    “Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.”

    Hermann Hesse
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  • cattails,  Plants,  quotes

    Learning to let go

    February 7, 2024

    We let go of what we have been told to believe about ourselves. We listen to a different voice, one that comes to us from deep within our own soul. That is the voice of love. It is the spirit telling us we are worthy and that we can overcome our problems, even if those problems seem as overwhelming as darkness.

    Steven Charleston

    I believe Charleston is correct because over time I am learning to let go of what I was told about myself, what I told myself about myself and listen to a different voice. Some of those voices, including my own, were telling me things through a lack of understanding and knowledge while some were lies to control and manipulate. I have found it easier to tell someone “I believe in you” rather than say that to myself and believe it. However, I’m learning to listen and trust this voice of love that resides deep within me. I believe in this voice of wisdom. And, because I’m listening and trusting this voice, I’m beginning to experience life and all of creation in new and enriching ways. I see with a new set of eyes and see more each day. Life is much more beautiful when I began to understand how connected we all are in the many threads and fabrics of life we are. I wonder if love could be the thread that binds us? I kinda like this voice of love!!!

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  • Avian,  quotes

    Faith

    May 30, 2023

    Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings while the dawn is still dark.

    Rabindranath Tagore

    There is a marsh along Weld County Rd. 13 that I like to visit for bird photos. I park the car in a pull off area then walk along the edges of the marsh with my tripod and camera looking for Red-winged blackbirds and Yellow breasted blackbirds. I watch and listen. Bird photography requires a lot of patience, something I need more of, in all areas of my life. So it’s a good practice for me. The agility of birds fascinates me, especially the smaller ones. They are quick and mobile so getting an image in focus is a task all by itself. Thus the need for patience. Once this female red-winged blackbird landed on the cattail and graciously pose for me, I needed to wait for a few seconds to let the cattail stop bouncing. Had to have some faith that would happen.

    Have a great day!

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  • fog,  landscape,  Plants,  trees

    Silent Waves of Fog

    July 15, 2021

    low lying clouds
    sea of suspended water
    silent waves of fog

    ms

    Had a short night of sleep but slept sound for most of it and feel rested. Headed out early and discovered a bit of fog on the eastern plains. A world of clouds and haze until the sun burns it off. Very humid and cool morning with 96% humidity and 57 degrees. It is fascinating to watch fog as it changes and moves like a wave ever so silently and quickly. Fog does not hang around for too long. It is a cloud at the earth’s surface. A wave moving over bales of hay.

    A touch of pink in this image as the sun is about to rise behind the low clouds in the east. We are seeing fields of both the ripening wheat and three foot tall stalks of corn. Farmers are irrigating the fields of corn so lots of surface moisture to generate the fog. Where I’m standing is a ditch full of gurgling water, almost like having my own little stream. Have a great day!

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  • cattails,  haiku,  John O'Donohue,  natural areas,  Plants,  trees,  writing/reading

    Along the Trail

    December 8, 2020

    along the trail
    cattails aflame in sunlight
    field of candles

    mws

    John O’Donohue in his book Beauty asks a couple of questions about landscape that cause me to smile, to pause and wonder. He asks the following questions: “Could it be possible that landscape might have a deep friendship with us? That it could sense our presence and feel the care we extend it?” These questions may never enter the minds of some, especially for those who ravage the landscape for profit. To them landscape is an object to consume that has no reasoning, intelligence as we do. These questions may seem like a waste of time because our ego has convinced us into believing we are the ultimate of all creation, and for many are playing god themselves.

    I have not always believed in having a friendship with the landscape as something more than an object. Maturity, drawing closer to the end of life, and experiencing the landscape with more than my physical senses has brought on this change. Sharing in this friendship with the landscape is the reason I have spent more time within it. I want to protect, respect and care for this friend of ours. I like how O’Donohue is asking us to be open, moving beyond our finite thinking. How different would our world be if we treated the landscape as our friend that wants to be our friend?

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  • cattails,  landscape,  natural areas,  Plants

    … and journaled

    April 7, 2020
    Cattails at Red Fox Meadows natural area

    This morning I walked to Red Fox Meadows because there is a grassy area where I like to sit and journal. But, this morning I found a soft place to sit near a marshy area with cattails and red-winged blackbirds. The red-wings were putting on a free concert while snatching flying insects. A woodpecker was working on a cottonwood behind me.  A red-tailed hawk sat perched on a distant tree scanning for rodents or a pigeon. I watched, listened and journaled. 

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  • landscape,  Plants

    Can’t See Where I’m Going

    September 21, 2014

    Boardwalk and Cattails
    Boardwalk and Cattails

    There is a popular saying that the “destination is the journey.” However, most of us have some pre-visualization of a destination and not much of the journey. We’re focused on the dream home, the career, the perfect family, a life of travel, status, money, whatever it is. Then, after all the planning and starting out on the journey we find we are unable to see the destination. All we’re experiencing is the journey. We thought we know where we’re going, but this is not what we had in mind.

    Well, we started out on the dirt path and before long we found a fork in the road. Where did this come from? It was not in our plans. We decide to go left. Before long we find ourselves on a rickety boardwalk surrounded by cattails rising above our heads. We begin to question our decision to go left. There is no destination be seen. We’re not sure about this boardwalk or where it’s leading us? Will we run out of boardwalk? Should we turn back?

    But, you know what, we made the choice to make this journey so let’s see where it leads. We just might enjoy the journey more than we expected. After walking a short distance we begin to realize the cattails are providing shelter from the heat of the day. We notice the dragonflies zipping in an out of the cattails and a sunflower plant rising above the cattails. Even though we can’t see him, we hear a Red-winged blackbird singing somewhere among those cattails. He is soon joined by a chorus of croaking frogs. And, we imagine they are encouraging us to move onward. A spider scurries to get out of our way. We realize we are not alone on this journey. Before long the boardwalk makes a curve and we enter into an opening. A bench awaits us and the clouds join the setting sun to makes today a beautiful journey. As much as we plan, the journey may not be exactly as we planned or expected but we feel inside we’re on the right boardwalk. Wonder where the rest of the boardwalk goes? It does go right.

    photocrati gallery

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  • sunrises,  writing/reading

    Writing

    April 2, 2013
    Morning Sunrise

    “Writing is not just jotting down ideas. Often we say: “I don’t know what to write. I have no thoughts worth writing down.” But much good writing emerges from the process of writing itself. As we simply sit down in front of a sheet of paper and start to express in words what is on our minds or in our hearts, new ideas emerge, ideas that can surprise us and lead us to inner places we hardly knew were there. One of the most satisfying aspects of writing is that it can open in us deep wells of hidden treasures that are beautiful for us as well as for others to see.”

    Henri Nouwen
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  • Avian

    Yellow-Headed Blackbird

    June 10, 2011
    Yellow-Headed Blackbird

    These birds make their presence in our western wetlands. They usually breed in loose colonies and build their nests over water, attached to cattails and reeds. Along with its cousin, the Red-winged Blackbird, they seem to pose for me on my walks around our lake.

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