Central Illinois

10/21/10 – Central Illinois – There is a feeling of fall in the air. Most leaves still hold fast to their trees but enough have fallen to give a crisp rustle underfoot. Our walks are now mostly among deciduous trees… maple and oak, catalpa with its vanilla-bean like seed pods swinging in the breezes, sumac just turning fiery orange, and occasional fuzzy juniper. Campgrounds built for hundreds of families in the summer are occasioned by 3 or 4 rigs, placed as far from each other as possible. The quiet of the morning sun, its warmth on the back, and fresh air feel hopeful even as the leaves unveil their rust and gold and burnt orange among their green neighbors, and fall lightly with the breeze.

We stopped yesterday in Springfield, IL to visit the Lincoln Home and the Presidential Library. A thoughtful afternoon contemplating the time of his Presidency, the tragedy of slavery and the Civil War; the Union of the States and the death of so many souls. There was nothing pretty about that time. It got me thinking about the nature of leadership… What is the difference between a leader and an ideologue? Could it be that they are the same… that a leader is only a person with whom we agree. Lincoln was far from universally liked or supported. He acted when he didn’t have the country behind him, but he had faith that he did the right thing. We revere him now as a great leader… but many thought of him as an ideologue. Worth thinking about in the controversies of our time.

We talked with Heather and Pete last night. We’ll be arriving at their place in Pennsylvania on October 31. I’m looking forward so much to seeing Nathan again. He’ll be almost 10 months when we get there. The last time we saw him was in July. As we move closer to the east coast and family on this side of the continent, I think our homing instinct is growing. When we reach Maine in mid-November we’ll be ready to settle in a bit.

For now our journey continues. We head south today to the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers and then start northeast along the Ohio until we reach western PA.

Southern IL has been a treat of rolling farmland, frequent small nestled villages, very wide flood plains, and the return of deciduous trees. Days sunny and warm, sky so blue it seems to burst with joy, nights crisp and sometimes just cold! We are very pleased to have the propane furnace in our little rolling home! Our journey continues to unfold treats of wind, air, water, rock, sun, earth, and people before us. We are thankful for each day.

10/15/10 For the past three days we have started traveling, thinking this would be the day we leave South Dakota and begin our eastward journey in earnest. We do, after all, want to be back in Maine by mid November… that’s a month away. We’re still in South Dakota! Oh well, we find ourselves wonderfully content on our very slow eastward trek. We will make it home, ambling in a nomad style.

Tonight we are camped in a South Dakota State Park near the Iowa border, having spent the day driving through big, open, and windy prairie land and flat farmland where crops (corn, millet, and moil) were being harvested. Hugh combines dumped their loads into tractor trailers in the field for transport to bin storage and trains. As we moved from west to east thru the state, the black hills gave way to dry grass land dotted with black beef critters and then slowly transitioned to slightly rolling cropland, mixed fields of green winter wheat and dry golden-brown corn. Now tonight we are camped in a wooded area, green, moist, and delightful. It has been a long time since the land we passed thru was other than dry and Spartan.




Our time spent on the high prairie and deeply carved mesas’ of the Badlands was special. The eroded and water-carved landforms that cut into the prairie captivate the imagination. Walking among knife-edge sharp landforms, looking across the great expanse of prairie, I was taken with a sense of the sacred. Much related to the Wounded Knee tragedy happened in the Badlands. That event punctuated this already sacred area… We were glad to be visiting in October, a time of few tourists. It was possible to stop, walk on the land, sit and listen to the silence, feel the wind and the sun, and be present with the Spirit of the place.

We traveled on the “Loop Road” thru the Badlands. Rounding a corner we were treated to the sight of ‘yellow mounds’, a formation of brilliant yellow clay and rock, weathered to rounded mounds, capped by a stripe of purple and topped by soft gray sandstone. Startling in its simple beauty, it was so unlike any area we had been through. Mother Earth’s color pallet is indeed broad!

I guess tomorrow we will actually leave South Dakota, glad to have spent a week here and ready to find our way thru Iowa, Illinois, and on east.

Custer State Park

10/12/10 The bison moved silently thru the campground, 30 or 40 of them, first one way and then another, seeming oblivious to anything but their own path and the movement of the herd. Just as silently campers emerged from all manner of rigs, camera flash, awe, watching – holding children and dogs. Everyone and everything silent as these enormous animals came and went.

South Dakota Black Hills – Four days of unanticipated gifts…

-Descending 200 ft into a cave at Wind Cave National Park – Mother Earth surrounding and holding us…

-Finding the original opening to the cave where the earth breathes… touching her breath.

-Attending Black Hills Pow Wow with over 1000 native dancers and drummers;

-A day of biking out of Custer on the Mickelson Rails-to-trails Trail, thru ranch and hill land, past rock outcrops glistening with specks of mica;

-Native American Day celebration at Crazy Horse Monument..

And now waking to Bison in the campground… Gifts continue to unfold and draw us deeper into this amazing land.

Colorado

10/8/10 We woke last Sunday morning, parked behind a Shell station in Frisco, CO, between a big rig flat bed which had come in overnight and a Budget Rental truck that had been brought in on the hook just before we went to sleep. We wondered if the mechanic would work on our vehicle and get us on the road on Sunday… he had found a new radiator for her on Saturday afternoon but Sunday isn’t exactly a great day for repair services in the Colorado mountains! A bike ride, brunch in town, and a few hours reading outside the garage and we were on our way again, heading north and east toward Rocky Mountain National Park.

We wondered about the accommodations we would find. On the previous Thursday we camped in Cimmaron in a National Park Service area which was closed and locked on Friday; on Friday we camped outside Leadville, CO in a Forest Service site which had already been buckled up for the winter… someone forgot to tell the rangers that it isn’t winter yet… well, the night temperatures did affirm the need to shut down the water and declare summer over.

Leaving Frisco at 3:00 PM, we headed for the Park about 60 miles away, climbing in altitude as we went, thankful for the good work of the mechanic, and glad to be back on the road. Route 40 took us thru Grand County where Aaron had worked and we had visited on several occasions. As we drove we could see smoke from a large and growing fire billowing in the hills ahead of us. We were dismayed to learn that the fire was in National Forest Service land behind the YMCA of the Rockies facility outside Fraser. Our family had spent a wonderful Christmas there a few years ago. As of 10/7 the fire was 100% contained. http://www.inciweb.org/incident/2137/

Arrived at an open campground in Rocky Mountain National Park just before dark in time to watch elk graze in the meadow campground right next to our vehicle. Their bugling was the symphony which decorated our sleep that night.

Our journey on Monday took us up Trail Ridge Road, from west to east thru the Park. Leaving the meadow which was at 9,000 ft we climbed above tree line to 12,000 feet, winding and twisting as we went. A hike on the tundra trail at Rock Cut… wind and sun were intense, oxygen was limited, and 360 degree views of mountains, tundra table land, rock outcrops, and elk in high meadowland… what could be better! The fleece lined jackets we bought in Silverton were a blessing. Our day’s journey ended at Moraine Campground on the east side of the park, a place where we decided to stop for 2 nights.

The ‘layover’ day gave us time to be still, sketch, work around the RV, and take the Park Shuttle bus to Bear Lake for a delightful afternoon hike.

Wednesday morning we left the Park, headed for breakfast and groceries in Estes Park and then on toward Wyoming. After a few false starts we finally found the one place open for breakfast, had brunch enough to last the day, and were on our way again. The road from Estes Park to Loveland goes down thru Big Thompson Canyon… forever and ever, down deeper and deeper, walls closer and closer - Thank you, Mother Earth. You were distant and beautiful in the mountains at 12,000 ft. As the canyon lead us to 5,000 ft, you were still magnificent, close, solid, and raw. What a treat!



Eastern Colorado, Wyoming, and western South Dakota have offered new land forms… open grassland that rolls flat and low for miles, dry prairie, beef critters clumped near windmill driven wells, sun and sky so wide and big it seems never to end. If the mountains defined the land we have been thru, the sky and clouds define this area. We travel back roads, avoiding the fast traffic on Interstates, and following isolated pathways. A full tank of gas and lows of water gives confidence but the possibility of breakdown in a remote area always plays in the back of the mind.

Again we have been drawn to the beauty of this land and the strength of the people who love it. Today we head to the caves at Wind Cave National Park and then eventually on to the Badlands and our journey across South Dakota to Minnesota.

Aspen Gold

October 2, 2010

Dear Nathan,

You will never believe who we met here in Colorado… well you might guess because you probably have noticed that Wonderful Wooly, who weaves lovely dreams into your sleep, has been on vacation. He’s here in Colorado, visiting his cousin Pinion Painter. Wooly was delighted to see us and assured us that he left a hugh supply of dreams with Keton, the cat, asking him to sprinkle them into your sleep each night while he is away.

Pinion Painter is in charge of colors here. Wooly and he have been working at one of the most luscious jobs of the whole painting year. You see rabbitbrush spends the summer wrapped in glorious gold flowers. Pinion Painter is very partial to gold and loves those rabbitbrush plants so much that he saves his best gold paint bucket especially for them. You can see them smiling in their fluffy clumps of gold right at the edge of trails and over the mesa top hills.

Well, just like you, Nathan, they grow and change. They loved their golden glow. Pinion Painter did a scrumptious job coloring them. In fact he did such a good job that as they grew their flowers burst out of their color and became lovely tan and brown seed pods… the kind that Swirly Canyon, the Windkeeper, loves to send parachuting on their way over the hills.

The most amazing thing happened. Pinion Painter and Wonderful Wooly, seeing that rabbitbrush didn’t need its gold anymore, went right out and gathered all the gold color, mixed it carefully with sunshine dust, and painted all the aspen leaves in the valleys and on the mountain sides with that glorious gold. They really did a fine job at their work. Wonderful Wooly used that twitchy tail of his to fling the paint about, while Pinion Painter, a bit more precise in his work, tucked golden glow under each Aspen and even on the sides of big canyon walls. Wooly had such a fine time flinging his tail about that he zipped some fiery orange color from the mountain sandstone and painted half the aspen on the hillside with it. Pinion thought it a bit strange but did say he liked it.

So now the gold of the flowers and the fire orange of the mountains adorn the trees, seed pods catch the huffs and puffs from Swirly Canyon, and Wooly is ready to return to you and dream weaving, having been filled with buckets of lovely golden dreams, just for you. Keton will be glad to let Wooly sprinkle dreams again and you, dear Nathan, can snuggle off to sleep with swirling rainbows of color dreams, sent by Pinion Painter, to help guide you in GrowingBoy Land.

Lots of love,

Grammy Kay

Little Molas Lake, CO

9/29/10 Traveling north thru the San Juan Mountains in Colorado, we stopped early yesterday at Little Molas Lake NFS campsite, just past Molas Pass, elevation 10,900’, almost at tree line.

The lake, more like a deep mountain pond, is wrapped on all sides by 13,000’ mountains. The Colorado Trail, a hiking trail from Durango to Denver, skirts the side of the pond. Spruce, fir, and pinion pine scatter in the campground and on the near hills as they climb to tree line. Hillside mountain meadows fill in around and under the trees.

In the quiet of the morning the pond reflected hills and mountains, trees and sky with absolute, pure, still precision… two worlds – the same and wonderful. Back lit feather tops of grasses floated above other vegetation in the open meadows. Ground level blueberries, leaves turned vermillion, irradiated the ground cover while tall seed stocks of lupin-like plants stood straight and tall in the mornings sun.

Walking on the Colorado Trail, slowly while still adjusting to altitude (that’s altitude adjustment, not attitude adjustment), I was blessed with the intense quiet of the awakening day, the feeling of the sun penetrating the night’s cold and warming me thru layers of fleece, and the colors of fall, yellows and reds, which have entered our journey.

We may stay here one more night, a time to again see the brilliant pin point stars of early dark, the late night half moon that dulls the milky way, and the morning rise of daylight, returning us to a world of color and form and reflection.

There is a lot of Colorado and the west yet to travel, but right now nothing seems more complete than this tiny pond in its immense mountain hollow. Time stands still here. One has only to breathe the air and watch the moon settle down to the west against the clear blue sky of day. Hallelujah!

Natural Bridges National Monument

9/25/10 Working our way east thru southern Utah, we camped the night of the 23rd at the north end of Lake Powell, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Hite, UT. We left early the next morning, headed for Moab and Arches National Park. That was not to be. A side trip to Natural Bridges National Monument was supposed to be quick. We should have known differently when we talked with the intern at the Visitors Center. She had volunteered there and now was back interning and radiating a love for the place. It was infectious.

The three natural bridges in the Park were formed as the forces of uplift and erosion cut thru a white sandstone formation, creating the White Canyon and leaving the bridges behind. To get to the park, we had driven along the rim of the White Canyon, looking down into an ever deepening cut thru the sandstone. The Park roads and trails took us into the Canyon itself.

How could we be blessed to find ourselves at yet another magical place on this earth’s surface? Through the day of hiking and sketching and writing and looking I found myself developing a love for this beautiful sandstone. Unlike the sharp, raw and vertical walls of red sandstone canyons, we were now in a place where the rock weathered round and soft. I loved her bulbous rolls, cut and smoothed over the eons by the river way below; I loved her overhanging sides, rounded cliffs that shaded and cooled our trail hikes; I loved the way her crannies supported all manner of plant life… spiky cactus, scrubby pinion pine, mountain juniper and dry yellow rabbitbrush. Her vegetation, taken together, was a full green rainbow, set against the pink/grey of the sandstone… deep blue green, yellow and brown tinted green, grey blue green, bright yellow green, light green with red highlights, the variations go on (and change with the changing light). It was spectacular.

We camped that night in the ‘overflow’ campground associated with the Monument, a large open area accessed by a partially washed out road, offering space, views of the setting sun blazing off red rock formations in far mountains, and a glorious full moon… a lovely place to stop.

In the morning we decided to keep our compass bearing headed east toward Mesa Verde rather than Moab and Arches/Canyon Land area. That will have to be another trip.

I was sad to leave Utah. We had been treated to a journey through geologic time and outrageous land forms that could only be seen and touched, felt and walked on. The timeline of this land defies human imagination but her bold faces, raw and deep cuts, jutting mountains, long vistas, and twisting canyons enticed us, invited us in, and ultimately captured something deep in the soul.