Ooooo!

Sometimes mountain sunsets are missed because all the glory goes on behind the mountain, leaving a funny twilight in the valley. And sometimes the mountain sunsets are surprisingly gorgeous, rare and precious.  This was one of the rare and precious ones, after a rain....

Go Big!

I dig kitsch. 

Not necessarily to live with (although I seem to have gathered up plenty as I look around the room), but just...

It always amazes me that you can walk into nearly any old gift shop in the U.S. and find plastic tourist junk that ordinarily practical people wouldn't buy in a million years but after spending half a day at Mount Rushmore suddenly HAVE to have the refrigerator magnet/thermometer with George Washington's badly done rubber countenance leering away at them. Truly! There's just something in humans that compels us to take home awful, useless mementos of our experiences. And lest you start feeling all self-righteous about "those people", dig deep into your heart of hearts and admit to yourself that, yes, there was that ONE time you bought the rattlesnake egg envelope in a moment of insanity at Wall Drug. You were tired from driving, the kids were whining....whatever!...you did, and you're one of US.  

That's just the little stuff. 

Recently, I decided that when I get old(er) and find a couple kindred travel spirits to join me, I'm going to take a tour around the continent and see the big kitsch. BIG-BIG, I'm telling you. Like....the World's Largest Armadillo (located in Buffalo Gap, TX, south of Abilene) 

and the World's Largest Garden Gnome in Kerhonkson, NY. 

(Side note: Who wouldn't want to send a postcard from a town with the name "Kerhonkson", giant gnome excluded. Isn't that just the greatest moniker?)

I'm telling you! 

The Grand Canyon tours have been done, Niagara Falls is stuffy and old, the cable cars in San Francisco...blah, blah, blah. But the World's Largest Concrete Prairie Dog? Not many vacation albums with the family crabbily standing in front of THAT. (It's in Cactus Flats, SD. Totally do-able)

Besides the sheer absurdity of humongous forks and ducks and teacups and badgers is how (and I'm not making this up) once something becomes the world's largest anything, its title must be capitalized in reverence of the achievement. It's not the world's largest cowboy hat; it's the World's Largest Cowboy Hat!

 (Which is curiously located in Seattle, WA. Not Texas. Texas has the World's Largest Cowboy in the town of Canyon. Apparently he lost his hat while on looking for the World's Largest Cow.)

Isn't that awfully great?! Or greatly awful?!?

Either way.

I have already been to the World's Largest Radio Flyer Wagon in Spokane, WA with my sister and our kids, as well as a huge milk bottle cafe downtown there. It was great! 

 And then there was the stunning red shoe in the mall that I wanted to bring home and put in the backyard next to the fence so I could take pictures of it with cows in the distance...

When I was in Abilene with my Aunt Bert and Grandma this winter, I found a giant flamingo, 

(Be still, my beating heart...)

 a dinosaur with a VW on top of a building, (Angus calls them VFWs and we don't correct him.)

 and a huge deer skull/antlers! 

It's a start! 

Next winter, when the walls start closing in on me (as they inevitably do), I'm going to get out a Rand McNally atlas and start planning a road trip. 

I know the important things in life are the little things, but sometimes the big things are pretty cool too, don't you think?

And now, it's a gorgeous spring morning so I'm off to pull weeds and soak up the blessed sunshine! 

 *The photos prior to the Radio Flyer picture were borrowed from Pinterest. The photos after that are all mine.*

It Was Beautiful....

One of the things I've started doing this winter is to actively look for beauty. After being such a frumpy grump for days on end, I thought it would help. Like a little assignment that I could keep in my head and work on every day. 

Eastern Montana is NOT filled with great beauty for the vast majority of the winter. Don't get me wrong, I think I live in one of the most glorious places in the world. The first few lines in the song "America the Beautiful" are quite obviously about Montana. ("Oh beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain. For purple mountains majesty above the fruited plain...") But in the depths of winter, it's pretty grey and cheerless. EVERYTHING is grey and cheerless, even the people for the most part. We're like bowls of day old oatmeal....cold, bland, lacking color. 

Anyway, my plan was to find one beautiful thing every day, with no repeats; meaning, of course, that I have to work a little at it, seek with new eyes, be observant and present in the moment or I might miss that one, new, beautiful thing of the day! 

The strangest things are lovely when you start looking with the right "lens", so to speak.

One such strange, beautiful thing I saw last week and I'm still pondering it. 

When I go to Miles City, I usually have an intimidating "to do" list and a deadline....school bus time. In order to meet the bus in time, I need to leave Miles an hour ahead which means no later than 2 p.m. It's always hurry, hurry and sometimes I don't even eat lunch because it takes too much time. 

I had to drop off a box of books at the St. Vincent Thrift store before I left town, so I zipped to the back of store to take care of it. 

The back of St. V's is next to an alley, o-l-d motel parking lot, and it's pretty tough looking. As I was getting back to my car, I looked down the alley/parking lot and saw what appeared to be a scruffy old-ish homeless guy with a big convenience store go-cup of coffee. I don't know that he was homeless, but he had that look about him. Perhaps his home was a cardboard box or he was just traveling through. (Being homeless in Miles City in January would encourage a body to travel through, that's for certain.) He was wearing baggy grey and tan clothes that hadn't seen much care for a long time, had long hair and a long beard in the same shape as the clothes.  

I almost missed it.

He was shuffling along, there, careful not to spill the coffee or whatever was in the cup, eyes to the ground. But in an instant, as though someone had called his name, he looked up at the top of the building where the pigeons were. You know pigeons....dirty, grey and tan, homeless or near to it.  As he looked up, a bunch of them took to the sky in a very un-pigeou-like swirl of grace, silent except for the sound of their wings. For a small minute, he and I both watched them, mesmerized by the abrupt bird dance in the air. When I finally looked from the sky back to him, he was smiling. 

I am still unsure what was so beautiful...

The dirty grey/tan man watching dirty grey/tan birds in a dirty grey/tan alley.  It really shouldn't have been, you know? But every day I've thought of how lovely it was, just that moment that no one else saw. 

I hope you find some beauty every day too, this weekend. Keep your heart and eyes open!

Snowmen and Hedgehogs

Winter is HARD.

It just is. 

I think it's less hard for people who live near ski resorts and can afford to buy season passes and all.

And I think it might be less hard for Floridians. (Except those Floridians who are waiting on spring training in Ft. Meyers. Winter's pretty hard on them, too.)

Part of the reason you haven't read anything on the Chronicles is that after Christmas, I tend to roll up like a frostbitten hedgehog in my "burrow" on the prairie, waiting, waiting for sunshine and warmth. Hedgehogs don't have a lot to write about, really. And if they DO somehow come up with something, it's likely to be grumpy, so better to grumble to one's bellybutton than publish it, right?

You know what else makes a grumpy hedgehog?

Ridiculous, overly ambitious goals to accomplish in January. It's the longest year of the months, my friends, and it's made much, much longer by strenuous workouts, protein shakes, purging of cupboards, sobriety, increased fruit and vegetable consumption and so forth. Any fault I found with myself in 2016 will be eradicated in January. At least, that's the determined plan on December 28th. 

Grumpy hedgehogs are anti-social, too.  Not because they don't like people necessarily but because socializing requires an enormous amount of positive conversation (remember, the hedgehog has nothing to talk about), wearing clothes that are not stretchy athletic wear (nothing fits right after the holidays), and polite declining of refreshments unless it happens to be raw carrots or unsweetened hot tea. It's much easier to watch 3 seasons of Death in Paradise while snuggled down in the burrow, trying to pretend it's not -20 degrees right outside the window. For the 7th straight day in a row. Amen. 

So, I'm trying to open myself up to embracing certain things about winter. Such as the idea that it's perfectly acceptable to have some sort of soup three times a week and no one bats an eye. It's a good time to sew and knit and paint if one is into that sort of thing. Reading is encouraged; to disappear into a book is basically required in winter months, isn't it? Winter sweaters and layers are very forgiving to holiday bodies. (The one that will be brilliantly toned by March if all goes according to plan.) People play cards in the winter; I don't, but those who do seem to find it great fun. And for my friends who ski and dogsled and snowmobile, it's a glorious time! 

That was me trying to be positive.

I know. 

It was a feeble, trite attempt and nobody bought it, least of all this grumpy frostbitten hedgehog who is sincerely thinking of going back to wine in the evenings and just getting through to February.

To be continued... 

Prairie Hike

We had a beautiful prairie hike before the rains and snow hit this week.

Looking to the east from a high butte.  Tessie explored as hard as she could, saying (I'm sure) "This is the most GLOOOO-RIOUS day of my life!"

Twilla, on the other hand, is not high energy. We were a long ways from her couch. She still had fun, but it was probably not the most glorious day of her life. (She is a glamour girl stuck in a redneck world. Very trying...)

Loved the feeling of being on top of the world!

See those little white buildings off in the distance?  That's the shop, my in-laws' house and garage! We spent a lot of time looking for distant buildings, like the pellet mill in Jordan, which you can actually see from this point!

You're going to get plant pictures. That's all there is to it. Everything is about to turn grey and tan, so I am soaking up the little bits of color!

Angus found big mounds of clay and would climb up on them to make clay balls which he DESPERATELY wanted to chuck at someone, but no one would let him. Shocking.

I'm always fascinated by the lichen on the rocks. Isn't it stunning?

And the currant bushes echo the same colors...

A muddy, gunky, yucky little reservoir to swim in!  Talk about stinky dogs after this!

A whole day spent with Dad, just exploring, is a big treat.

Oh! Check this out! My Gramps used to tell us to always look at anthills because they excavate all sorts of things like Indian beads and shells. This little anthill had a couple sea shells...see the white one next to the ant? I was kind of astonished that my camera was able to focus and clearly shoot this.

I think sagebrush is beautiful.

We found another reservoir and the kids went to frog hunting. 

See the little swirl in the water? That's a frog. Angus totally missed them, and was dejected after half an hour of amphibian-less efforts.

The sand rocks are sculpted by the weather; rain and wind hollow and shape them, unlikely artists but faithful. 

We always look for initials and carvings in the rocks. It's irresistible, scraping one's name and date into these stones! I don't know who P.M. is. Nature is wearing away the details...

The grasses are graceful in their last days, aren't they?

The Farmer found a wee pile of purple glass and porcelain chunks scattered in the grass. 

I always wonder about who lost precious things out here. And they WOULD be precious, because it would have been so very far from any town, hauled out by rough wagons or carts. 

On our way back home, we checked salt'n'minral and jumped a little bunch of mule deer. This picture was taken from the moving side-by-side Honda and is not the best.  The deer were in good, fat condition and they didn't run very hard.  

COWS!

We stopped to look at tipi rings, too, but the crew was pretty played out by that point.  It was hot. We were dirty. The dogs smelled. The tween girl was barely able to tolerate another minute with her brother and mother. 

So we went home. 

Today it's cold and wet and grey. There's snow in the air and we're pulling out the winter clothes, sadly. I'm grateful we had a day of sunshine together before this hit!

Just a Moment...

Maggie's getting to the age where she's very self-conscious and often says, "NO PICTURES, Mom!" so these are precious, rare moments of time, little bits of realness and freedom.  They take my breath away...

I Might Have to Move to Australia...

...just so I can meet the people who put together and are featured in this magazine.

I was packing my "bag of wonders" as the kids call it for the trip to Billings and was just about to put these magazines in when I thought, "OH! I haven't blogged about THESE!" So everything came to a skidding halt so I could tell you about this incredible publication that my friends Myron and Ada subscribed to for me...

I know.

Focus.

But this is really, really special.  You'll be glad I'm a flake when you look a little closer...

The periodical is called "graziher" and it's about/for/of women in Australian agriculture and LIFE. It's independently published and is one of the most gorgeous things I've ever seen. The paper is thick and sturdy, good quality, so it can bounce around in a farm truck or have a pie set on it to cool and you'll still have a good read. The photographs...oh, it's like they took my camera and captured the images I would have, except probably more professionally. Either that or they have amazing photo editors who spiff up the scenes.  

I love the fonts.  Yes. Even the typography is well done!

It shows women making a difference in their communities and branching out to impact world culture...

It portrays the tricky beauty in ranching. Not everyone appreciates a good cow picture, but I do! (And I think you all are starting to as well, as much as I inundate you with them.) Even the sheep in this magazine look good. I'm not a sheep person at all, so that's saying something big here.

There are recipes, too, but only a couple and they're really practical and fresh. Nothing with frou-frou ingredients that would be hard to get your hands on or keep in the pantry. (I'm going to do this tart, but I need to convert the measurements!)

Poetry (and book reviews)...

FASHION! But just a little. It's almost an afterthought....as though the editor said, "Well, we'd probably better have SOMETHING fashion-y..."

This particular ensemble is one that i'm going to try to copy, somehow, for this fall/winter.

There's art, too....not just photographic art, but watercolor and pottery and metal and screen printing art! 

One of my favorite features is the article they include in each issue (so far...all two that I have) about the "pioneers"; the women who preceded them in Australia, those who you look up to and say, "Someday, I want to be like HER." 

I wish a magazine such as this existed for women in Montana. 

Nothing political or with an agenda, but a good strong read that encourages and motivates us, that portrays us as we really are. 

If you'd like to look at graziher in person, you're welcome to drop by and have coffee (and perhaps the tart), look through and have a visit! 

Due to the fact that they're from Australia and basically irreplaceable, I'm not going to lean them out but I WILL share them here. 

(Yep. That's the way to get company!)

Myron and Ada, thank you so very much. 

When I opened the first issue and leafed through about 10 pages, I got tears in my eyes because I thought, "Finally. Someone 'gets' it. Someone made a magazine for us..." 

And then "But I'm not AUSTRALIAN!!!!"

Even so, I love it and it DOES encourage and inspire me here.

Okay, NOW I'll finish packing...

But not to move to Australia. 

I'm just going to Billings.

(Grandma came through surgery fine, as of noon today and now we can tease her about being into heavy metal because she's got a plate in her hip and a rod in her arm.)