this vanishing land

Central Florida in January

this vanishing land

is a magical place where

fall and spring collide

Crossing an unseen threshold into a world of incredible beauty

Gloss Mountain State Park - Western Oklahoma

A Winter Morning's Walk in an Urban Jungle Still Dressed for Fall

Stinchcomb Wildlife Refuge in Urban NW OKC

A Roadside Visit to the In Jesus Name Community Church of Faith, Hope & Love of Houston, Arkansas

Roadside Chapel - Houston, Arkansas

A delightful surprise on the Little Rock to Conway "backroads" route, this church was built at the turn of the last century and was originally home to the Houston United Methodist Church.  The building was added to the National Register of Historic places and is now called the In Jesus Name Community Church of Faith, Hope, and Love.

Sunrise on Paperwhites; Morning on the Farm

All images shot from P. Allen Smith's Garden Home Retreat

©trryan 2011

The Flame Trees of Perryville

In the Ouachita National Forest; with autumn's tight grasp on December, outside of Perryville, Arkansas

Fatal Beauty

The Sacred Way

The Sacred Way - Bear Butte
Near Sturgis, South Dakota

Morning Commute - Giudecca Island, Venezia

Room with a View - Giudecca, Venezia

View from Room 2 - Domino Home Hotel, Giudecca, Venice

I will be a Hummingbird

It's the little things citizens do.  That's what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.

- Wangari Maathai

The conservation movement is mourning the loss today of one of its heroes - Nobel prize winner Wangari Maathai died of cancer yesterday in a Nairobi hospital.  Best known for creating the Green Belt Movement which planted more than ten million trees around Kenya, Maathai's work centered on improving the lives of women and making the connection that when the land is sustainable so are the people.  She was the first African woman to win the prize.

In October 2008 Maathai spoke to a sold-out crowd at Oklahoma City University as part of the university's Distinguished Speakers Series.

She changed my life.  She showed me what a powerful woman's voice not only sounded like, but felt like.  And she taught me as we traveled through villages what interdependency is all about - environmental issues are issues of social justice.

-Terry Tempest Williams

Photo from Taking Root Website

RIP Wangari

Riding the Milky Way on the Edge of Dawn

Altocumulus clouds  over the southern Utah desert as seen above from seat 6E

About the Photograph:

This otherworldly photo was shot with my Iphone on 9-24-11, as the sun was rapidly setting behind the plane, from seat 6E on American Airlines flight #1528 from San Francisco to Dallas.  The photo was processed using Instagram. 

Baja Medley

About the Photographs:

The photograph was shot this morning while walking on the beach near San Juan del Cabo on the southern-most tip of the Baha Peninsula in Mexico just as the sun was rising out of a cranky Pacific Ocean.

Shot with: iPhone 4 Camera and processed using Instagram.  Some of my favorite photo apps for iPhone are found here.

To Stand in the Glow of that Translucent Cone

Sunrise on the Niobrara
July 2011

"Set wondered what it would be like to be inside, to sense the sanctity there, to stand in the glow of that translucent cone, inside the light, to breath the holy, medicinal air."

N. Scott Momaday - The Ancient Child

About the Photograph:

This photo was shot on a cool, foggy July morning at the Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge outside of Valentine, Nebraska just above the Niobrara National Scenic River with an i-phone camera.  Cool and foggy being the operative words this day as my home state of Oklahoma was in its seventh week of extreme drought and searing daily temperatures topping well above 100 degrees by noon each day.  This divine moment and its fantastically cool temperatures and its complete absence of any human presence was a heady load of paradise and I was pleased with the way the i-phone captured the feeling of the morning as I sensed it.   It was indeed like standing in the glow of a translucent cone, as Momaday so eloquently writes, breathing in holy, medicinal air.  

 I was on the third day of my "50 by 50" road trip (my quest to get all 50 states by my 50th year) having just passed through Kansas, a tiny, tiny slice of Iowa and across most of Nebraska on my way to the Black Hills of South Dakota.  Iowa and Nebraska became states #46 and #47 on the life list, #48 South Dakota would be within reach that same morning.

The Niobrara River is a breathtaking, gently-moving river and the equally stunning valleys and canyons it carves out of the Sandhills and the Great Plains are celebrated for  their ecological and geographical diversity.  A visit here is a must for any traveler wanting to experience the sublime beauty of western Nebraska and America's heartland.   For more information visit Niobrara National Scenic River, the Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge and the impossibly charming city of Valentine, NE.  And go here to "Like" the Niobrara National Scenic River on Facebook.  It's always good to show your appreciation for these last great places that are ever-more becoming rare.

The Ancient Child

Coming Full Circle
Blogger with Ed Young, fellow graduate of PCW High School '79
Walking the Sacred Hoop at Bear Butte in South Dakota

Medicine Wheel
Blogger with Roger Lasthorse, Oglala Lakota (Sioux)
Medicine Wheel, Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming
July 27, 2011

"I think he is about to be transformed....."

N. Scott Momaday

The Ancient Child

The God of Small Things

The wild overgrown garden was full of the whisper and scurry of small lives - rat snake, yellow bullfrogs, mongoose.

-Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things

Outrageously beautiful Coleus

Rabid Wolf Spider

Spicebush Swallowtail on Ironweed 

Ruby-throated Hummingbird on Cardinal Flower

Handsome Trig (bush cricket family)

Half the joy in life is in little things taken on the run.  Let us run if we must - but let us keep our hearts young and our eyes open so that nothing worth our while shall escape us.  And everything is worth its while if we can only grasp it and its significance.

-Victor Cherbuliez

Carpenter Bee

Carpenter Bee

Pink Gentian - the queen bee wildflower of Indigo Hill

Unidentified Cricket

Unidentified frog freshly emerged from the tadpole sanctuary

Milkweed Tussock Moth Larvae on Common Milkweed

We can do not great things, only small things with love.

- Mother Teresa

Pokeweed

Unidentified Grasshopper

Prairie Coneflower

Milkweed Tussock Moth Larvae on Common Milkweed

Pine pitch

Unidentified Hymenoptera

Spotted Apatelodes Moth Larvae

Spined Micrathena

Great Spangled Fritillary

Duranta erecta is a species of flowering shrub in the verbena family Verbenaceae, native from Mexico to South America and the Caribbean. Common names include Golden Dewdrop, Pigeon Berry, and Skyflower. In Mexico, the native Nahuatl name for the plant is Xcambocoché.

The God of Small Things is alive and well and living in Whipple, Ohio

Field Notes: The Definitive Answer to that Age Old Question.....

Ursus Americanus scat in blackberry season

The Ledges - Swift River Reservation

Petersham, MA - August, 2011

Yes, a bear "does that" in the woods!  And I believe this takes "poetry of place" to an entirely different level.

Thanks to Julie Zickefoose for the ID and to Debby Kaspari for a very "eventful hike" in the Massachusetts' woods where every snap of a twig in the deep, dark forest held promise of meeting the owner of this!  Hiking with a heart beat!