Big Sky Country

I drove downstate among thunderstorms and rain generated by enormous thunderhead clouds, storm cells, the most dramatic I've seen, yowza, and realized they were so impressive because I was on a plateau and could see horizon to horizon -- as I don't at my home in the hills. Pelted by rain that covered my car like a tarp I stopped in Phillipsburg, Mo., home of the World's Biggest Gift Shop and waited for someone to bring me my gift. With God all things are possible, right? No, really, next door was a huge candy store where I bought cheddar popcorn and coffee, in line with my standard on-the-road menu of junque. And greedily ate it, and watched the clouds.

Every Storm is Different

It's May; spring storms are many, but I've learned from my up-close-and-personal point of view about how very differently nature cooks up each storm, no two alike. This one started overhead, with cumuli. Others approach from a distance, gray as a dull knife blade, on the western horizon. That usually means a storm lasting one day. Blue-gray means a thunderstorm, much more intense. South-western horizon, the very dark gray looks bad on radar but often peters out before it gets to foothill country. North-western horizon, cold, spattering rain. Greenish-gray, very serious conditions are approaching; unplug electronics, batten hatches. A storm coming into this part of Missouri from the east is very unnatural, usually the backlash of a Gulf or southern hurricane, and the wild animals get frantic.

Seduced by Pink Light

These warm and cloudy days create a world of pink light between 5:15 and 6:15 p.m. "Pink light" is a woo-woo thing you imagine when you want to send people long-distance love and protection. Always enraptured and outdoors to see it, I was seduced into thinking about spring and summer. Before I knew it, I was:

1. finding the gardening gloves and the trowel.
2. raking and weeding, and saying hello to worms.
3. fertilizing and then paving a small area with old shingles to smother the grass and weeds to prepare the earth for planting.
4. at Lowe's buying seeds (hard to find!) for collards and turnips, two hardy vegetables that my bunnies and deer won't eat. And buying a garden hose.
5. contemplating the Totally Tomatoes catalog and circling about 20 different tomatoes I want to grow, to be narrowed down to two with three plants each. (Totally Tomatoes sells both seeds and plants.)

This is either patently insane behavior or it's human. Thanks to the wildlife, of the tomatoes borne on these plants I will probably actually get to eat only one or two. I'm not a gardener. I'm kind of a make-believe gardener. That is okay. It's the journey, not the destination. . .

So Humble

There's a full moon on this my birthday, signifying an exceptionally full and rich year ahead. I already know how busy I'll be, so I'm glad I've got my home all comfortable and familiar, everything stocked and in its place, and a newly-filled propane tank--a recipe for peace of mind. It's easy to write off January as a total waste. But daylight is growing longer (it's no longer pitch-dark at 5:30 p.m.; the sun set at 5:14 p.m. today) and after November and December, I've grown to appreciate more the tricks and pleasures of light. It recently turned colder and this is our only snow of the season so far, about three-quarters of an inch. It's already begun to thaw; when it's thawed, I'll resume digging at my site. Here's a January sunset over a happy and warm Missouri home. I'm older, but only lucky people get older.

Cirrus

To get a photo of this magnificent cloud that looks so much like the spirit that rose from the remains of this cornfield -- knowing that cirrus clouds are in fact formed of ice crystals -- first I stopped the car and stood in the middle of Highway 109, and then in case I didn't quite get the cloud, I drove to this rise, got out of the car and knelt in the field. Then I drove a ways down and took photos of the cloud from a slope overlooking a farm, and was barked at by a lady's dog, all jowly from fat. The lady came outside, of course, and I explained before she said anything, "That cloud is so beautiful I want to take its picture." "It is beautiful," she said, and she and the dog went back into the house. I wondered if they were the sole occupants of that house, and if they had only each other, and if so, how beautiful and how sad that was at once.

September Morn, Part 2

Hearing the sizzle of cicadas and call of the owl, I gazed up through the tent's ceiling screen, my heart beating fast, at the ample sky in the black arms of the tall oak and hickory trees, and at the stars, individual little suns pocking the dark like diamonds, and I thought: It's all so beautiful. What a marvelous Creation. And (it hit me) I am part of it all. I am part of it all! We are all part of it! I felt utterly certain, and marveled.

There is no want! There are no limits! I thought. That's what it's all telling me! Why fear? Why hang back? Why not aim high? Go ahead. Why hate and cower? It only takes you farther from your true source and origins. We are one with the infinite. If only we all knew that, and had the patience of trees, which are rooted to one spot, standing there as witnesses until we "get it."

I was so thrilled I couldn't sleep. I didn't want to. I wanted to feel ecstatically certain forever. But eventually I slept, and the moonrise with its crown of light dawned -- a moon dawn! -- woke me about 2:30 a.m., and then I slept again until the sun's dawn.

Comet Lovejoy

skyandtelescope.com

 

A friend said "Follow Orion's belt up to the Pleiades" and to their right -- with binoculars or a telescope, because this rare visible-to-the-naked-eye comet is at its brightest right now, today, at magnitude 3.8. That's not very bright; the North Star is much brighter at magnitude 1.97. About 11:15 p.m. last night in the marvelous 99 percent darkness we have here (except for the headlights on passing cars) I searched with my 8x binoculars. Didn't find the comet.

Back in the house I consulted the Google Sky map. It's not on there! Googled it, learning its name -- Comet Lovejoy, how wonderful! -- at skyandtelescope.com, and their map showed the comet's location and trajectory for every day of January--currently to the right of the Pleiades, just as I was told. The page had wonderful astronomers' photos of the comet, which is bright green. Out again but did not find it. Kept looking to the right of the Pleiades. Now I'd been looking for an hour. I knew it was out there. Back indoors, looking at the same map.

The temperature, above freezing, was tolerable, so I went out again because I hate to give up on anything. Carefully, carefully I  swept the sky with its shovelsful of stars. This time I recalled that the sky is a curved shell and "to the right"--as the stars progress westward--will also mean "downward." At last, at last: I found it. A smeary little wad of light, no tail, not visibly green, but rather the color of Vaseline. Beautiful, to me!

I Don't Hate Winter Anymore

The winter solstice, the day the daylight begins to lengthen, specifically Sunday, December 21, 5:03 p.m. Missouri time, is one week away. I read that the solstice was also once the day of Saint Lucy, Queen of Light. John Donne wrote a poem about it, which begins:

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
    The sun is spent, and now his flasks
    Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
            The world's whole sap is sunk;

I raised a cup of cocoa to John Donne and to central heating.

Hating winter meant hating a quarter of life, so I had to change my approach. I've posted about caulking, covering windows, and clothes. Daily I push myself out the door, saying as I drive, walk, or feed birds, "Is this really so bad? I dread this all year? It's not bad at all." I gave myself things to look forward to. They cost money, but I tell myself I'm stimulating the economy. This mild December in  eastern Missouri has also helped me toward acceptance. I still hate below-zero temps and icy roads. On today's walk, as rainclouds made an exit, I tried capturing the bald light from the low-slung sun. This is what it truly looked like, without filters or anything.

The Blue Angels Were Here

Last year because of government budget cuts they did not appear, and in fact there was no airshow at all, disappointing thousands, but now the annual airshow is on again, and even at the sparsely attended first local farmer's market of the season, at 9 a.m., people were talking about going to see the Blue Angels exhibition that afternoon, clearly a point of pride. I wasn't planning to go -- the show attracts huge mobs and creates giant traffic jams -- but a friend offered his hillside, which has an excellent view. With a bottle of chocolate milk and a blanket I lived the life o' Riley on a perfect afternoon in May and watched stunt pilots looping, barreling, flying upside-down  and diving, and two slow-dancing helicopters. Then we all clapped our hands over our ears as the Blue Angels team roared over, scaring the daylights out of every creature within hearing distance.

Curious, I looked them up, and learned: The crafts' wings are just 18 inches apart when they fly in close formation. The Blue Angels exhibition team, affiliated with the Navy, dates back to 1946. The pilots' average age is 26. Yes, there are female pilots. The Army's exhibition team is called The Flying Tigers and I have seen them perform as well.

All highways and byways were jammed for miles with cars all trying to get near the airport and watch, so folk just got out of their cars where they were and watched the show because they weren't going anywhere.

Cloud-of-the-Month Club

People talk about storing their music and photos in "the cloud," about sharing their files in "the cloud" and getting "cloud certification" in"cloud architecture." They explain that "the cloud is software as a service." And today, in the city, I saw the mighty cloud that they must be referencing. It was 102 degrees Fahrenheit in the parking lot where I stood, and within an hour the sky was raining and booming and steam rose from the sidewalks. July in Missouri? You betcha!

Explaining to the Aliens

I was whisked to another planet last night (that's okay; I wasn't working on deadline) and its inhabitants asked me to describe life on Earth. So I tried:

"Where I'm from, the whole world changes four times a year. There's a rainy time when the landscape is all greens and yellows, with pink flowering trees; then the days grow warm and sunny and colorful, and tiny glittering birds fly around randomly and drink from flowers, and Earthlings play, and plants extrude the most desirable kinds of foods: berries, tomatoes, scented herbs with all sorts of powers, some of them so secret that our scientists spend lifetimes studying them...

"Then fields and trees turn red and gold and orange, and vines bear grapes, which are little sweet meaty orbs in sheer skins, purple, red or green; and many kinds and shapes of squashes, hard-shelled and expressive like sculptures. Those sell for very cheap...Next comes a very quiet, chilly gray period when things, we call 'em snowflakes, weightless and no bigger than a nailhead, sometimes fall from the sky by the trillion and pile up in tons and tons and cover everything. And, get this, each one is a tiny six-sided geometrically perfect design and there are no two alike.

"And these four times repeat over and over, like magic; we just sit there, and the whole world changes all around us. The daylight changes, the constellations shift, and we have this huge perfectly spherical white rock floating in the sky called a moon, and everyone loves it, and it gives silver light and controls all the Earth's water..."

Ring Around the Moon Tonight

Usually the atmosphere is full of ice crystals, but at times some do line up to party, and moonlight reflects off their hexagonal bodies at a 22-degree angle, causing a 22-degrees-diameter iridescent ring around the moon. Majestic!! Rare here in Missouri, but it happened Tonight, with a first-quarter moon. When clouds began to drift in, the ring vanished. Why do I never think about the beauty of ice rings until I see one? It's always a surprise gift! Hardy migrating birds such as flickers and sapsuckers may appear any day now.

Floodplain in Autumn

This floodplain is in Allenton, Mo., a tiny ghost town between Pacific and Eureka. When I moved here eight years ago Allenton was still a town, but it's across the freeway from Six Flags, and development -- the enchanting idea of a retail paradise -- has threatened to flatten it ever since. The post office closed about three years ago. But people still live and farm down the back roads and on the Meramec River floodplain where nobody can develop. Oct. 1 was my eighth anniversary on the Divine property and I thank God. Of all the things I have ever done, I love living here the most. I love this land, hills and floodplain and whatnot. They will remove me from this property feet first, if at all.

Rural Rainbow

This morning, another miracle:

Japanese Print

After 2.5 inches of rain in the last few days, there's fog in the early morning. This morning's eastern sky looked like this; ink on paper. Exactly like this, colors and all. There was no photoshopping.

Full Moon in Libra

Life here is so fun. I come home in my suit after 12 hours' work and see the full moon rising over the woods to the northeast. Run to get camera and tripod. Go out into the field & shoot photos for half an hour. Then have seven marshmallows for dinner. That's the way to wind down. I wish you had been with me. Maybe you'll be here for next full moon in Scorpio, and I'll obsessively make us addictive s'mores?

Dear Diary (March 21)

Frosty Morning

I'd dislike January if I didn't get divine gifts for my birthday, like this one: A frosty morning. I got a morning, imagine that. That's more than some have. One birthday I got a yellow-bellied sapsucker. Sometimes it IS all good.

January Stars

So I'm looking upward at burning winter stars and the pale stripe of the Milky Way running from east to west, right at the zenith, and I think to myself: "That's infinite creative power."

Lately I've been thinkin that I'm not all I should be, that I lack that last ounce of creative power that would put my work over the top. Well, that can't be. Because there's infinite creative power. If it's infinite, I can take some, or channel some, or ask or pray, or somehow get at it. More and more (I'm gettin' philosophical because another birthday is coming up) I see that I set and can break my own limitations.

Hail, Hail

Screwy late-April weather, even for the Midwest: 75 degrees. Then 35 degrees overnight. Then sunny. Then big clouds. Then pea-sized hail (pictured, in the grass); within 10 minutes it's sunny and all gone. Now 60 degrees, partly cloudy, with strong chilly wind. Never a dull moment.