Sailed Ships

Reason tells me the boats that once docked here are now in storage for the winter, but I like to imagine that they have set sail for warmer seas.

Gray Days

Solstice

Greeting the sun.

 

A short-lived daylight.

 

The days begin to lengthen, starting now.

Harvest

Arboreal Days

It has been since Easter that I visited the arboretum. You may remember that then I found it false, a tree museum in the heart of pseudo-urban sprawl that smacked of the Lorax.

The seasons have changed.

The arboretum cannot compare with the remoteness or the cool, peaty air of the farther flung state parks. Here the highway runs adjacent and even in the middle of 1000-plus acres of groves and gardens you can hear traffic. But the arboretum staff and volunteers are on a mission to restore endangered species of trees and prairie grasses, and the results are beautiful. 

 Perhaps it is just that I love fall, and all it takes is to surround myself with its evidence to win me over. Or that I have become more accustomed to this place, and can be happy in its highs. 

This last photo is not very good; the lighting is not quite right. But I wish that I could be as these leaves, aloft on a breeze, lifting my face to the sunlight, furling and unfurling all the day long.

One Thousand Words



Driftless Region

They call it the Driftless region, the southwest corner of this state where the glaciers didn’t drift. It's a name that suggests absence but the geography is a proclamation of presence in an otherwise razed Midwest.

Left to the whims of wind and water, the land plummets and plunges, thrusting upward before disappearing into clefts created by forces no longer present.

This canyon? Once it was an ocean. The water receded and the bare beaches became stone. Centuries of flood waters surged over the sandstone flats, forging rough valleys out of the sea bed. 

Here trees grow from rocks, long trunks surging upwards until a profusion of green meets the endless blue. If you climb to the top, you could be there too.

Or so it seems.

The hard verticals and sudden shifts in altitude take my breath away.

(If only you knew how literally I mean that.)