"On either side, those dear old ladies,

the loosening barns, their little windows   

dulled by cataracts of hay and cobwebs   

hide broken tractors under their skirts.

So this is Nebraska. A Sunday   

afternoon; July. Driving along

with your hand out squeezing the air,   

a meadowlark waiting on every post.

 

Behind a shelterbelt of cedars,

top-deep in hollyhocks, pollen and bees,   

a pickup kicks its fenders off

and settles back to read the clouds.

 

You feel like that; you feel like letting   

your tires go flat, like letting the mice   

build a nest in your muffler, like being   

no more than a truck in the weeds,"

from This is Nebraska

    Ted Kooser

So after visiting with family in Saskatoon we are back 

on the road to the cabin and farm. It was still a brown 

landscape however in the week we are there the trees 

will leaf out for our green spring.

Helen took the following shots of White Pelicans as they

circled above the cabin. We have lots of positive memories of 

beautiful White Pelicans floating down the river when we

worked on an archaeological site in Nipawin Saskatchewan

so it was great to see these birds here.

"A wonderful bird is the pelican,

His bill will hold more than his belican,

He can take in his beak

Enough food for a week

But I'm damned if I see how the helican!"

I have seen this attributed to Lanier Merritt Dixon 

or Ogden Nash. I do know it was a favorite of my

father-in-law John who farmed this land for many years.

 

 

My pictures from the cabin were not great, but I wanted to

include this Bonaparte's Gull because they are fairly common

and I had always wondered were they nest I assumed it was

by the rivers. I finally looked it up and learned they nested in

spruce which we do have but they are not nearly as common

as poplars. So a goal to add to my list, see a nesting Bonaparte's.

 

 

Brown Headed Cowbirds were sadly common.

 

 

A Yellow Rumped Warbler, the only warbler I saw

but we did spend most of our time working on the

cabin or in the hardware store or driving back and

forth to hardware stores.

 

 

 

The Bufflehead by far the most common duck on our property on this trip.

Another Cowbird I think.

 

 

The Phoebes are nesting underneath the cabin, since it is raised

4 ft from the ground they have lots of room. 

 

You can see a few green leaves,

 

 

but it was still mostly a twiggy time of year when we arrived.

 

 

"She looks for wiggly fishes,

At least so it appears,

To stuff inside the suitcase

That's swinging from her ears.

And though she's very graceful

When flying round and round,

How does she get that faceful

Of luggage off the ground?"

    The Beak of the Pelican

   J. Patrick Lewis

 

 

 

"We could go there and live, have a place,
a shoulder of earth, watch days
find their way onward in their serious march
where nothing happens but each one is gone.
Some people build cities and live there;
they hurry and shout. We lie on the earth;
to keep from falling into the stars we reach
as wide as we can and hold onto the grass."

from East of Broken Top

William Stafford

We have been on a short trip to the cabin to build a dog run

so Shaun and Whateley can join us on our next trip. Our 

journey took us thru a short stretch of the Badlands along

the Red Deer River.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badland

The Badlands are a type of dry terrain where softer sedimentary rocks and

 clay-rich soils have been extensively eroded by wind and water. ( from link above )

The Badlands around the Drumheller area are especially well known for the extensive

 fossil beds that have been found there and is home to the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com/

Then we stopped in the HandHills to visit our friends Laraine and Tim.

A visit as always characterized  by great hospitality, beautiful vistas, 

happy white dogs Andi below and Yogi a pair of Akhash-Maremana 
crosses,

and of course Laraine's beautiful horses.

One of my favorite flowers the Prairie Crocus were in evidence.

Here in a bad photo Yogi walks thru a bed of them on top

of a nearby esker.

They had so much snow this winter Tim had to extend

the fences to keep the horses from walking over them on the

drifts.

The snowdrifts also allowed the Snowshoe Hares and the 

Mountain or Nuttall's Cottontails to climb over the fencing

and get at the fruit trees.

Here in a low area Tim indicates the damage 

they were able to do to the poplars, yes the 

snow got very deep.

The White Crowned Sparrows were in evidence 

and the prairie landscape was  stunning. 

 

 

"Now, in the middle of a limpid evening,

The moon speaks clearly to the hill.

The wheatfields make their simple music,

Praise the quiet sky.

And down the road, the way the stars come home,"

 

from Evening

Thomas Merton

 

 

 

"One dark and rainy night at the edge 

of a city on the edge of an ocean, 

a stray cat came walking down 

the beach. 

Across from an old hotel covered 

with vines, the cat stopped. As he 

looked at that place, he got a 

strange warm feeling inside him. I 

think, thought the cat, I am tired of 

being a stray cat."

from Mister Got To Go

Story by Lois Simmie

Illustrations by Cynthia Nugent

And so finally we will end our, in blog post time, fairly long

visit to the Sylvia Hotel which I want to mention is also the

setting for the two wonderful books pictured above.

So a quick look at some of characters and sights

we encountered on the trip.

                                                                                 

"These plants grew abundantly in the wet coastal 

weather and drooped out over the fronts

of the houses. If a person liked the fog and rain, 

he'd like Seaside. It seemed to Jonathan

to be the sort of place where a chap could 

write great poetry while peering down at the 

fog-shrouded streets from a fourth-floor attic study."

               The Elfin Ship

                             James Blaylock

“It doesn't matter what you do...so long as you change

something from the way it was before you touched

it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.”

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

As one gets older the deaths of many of the people

who formed the cultural landscape of your youth 

start to add up. I always watch the clip at the 

Academy Awards show of actors who have 

passed away with some interest and much sadness.

As the death of Ray Bradbury in June of 2012 the

death of the great stop motion animator Ray Harryhausen

today at 92 was a great loss from that landscape. The two men

were lifelong lifelong friends and as with Bradbury's stories

Harryhausen's films were a great joy to me and influenced 

my choice of the books and films I love today.

There are many tributes to Harryhausen on the web today so

I will not repeat the information here. 

Some years ago Ray Harryhausen spent some time at the

Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller Alberta upon learning

that he would be giving a talk and sign films Helen and I 

rented a car and went off to spend a weekend with friends in the

area, one of whom worked at the museum, thanks Tim, Laraine 

and of course Helen. Ray gave a talk, showed his figures of  

sword-fighting skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts 

the chess playing baboon from Sinbad and the Eye of the 

Tiger, and I think the Medusa form Clash of the Titans. He also 

patently signed VHS tapes, okay it was a while ago, the event

poster mine is framed and in the basement, and in my case 

he also signed the dedication page of Bradbury's A Graveyard 

for Lunatics which had a character based on Harryhausen and

was dedicated to, among others Ray Harryhausen.

So I have put together some photos of items fron my collection.

The Cyclops from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and two of

my favorite of Ray's  films.

“I'll make a voice like all of time and all of the fog 

that ever was; I'll make a voice that is like an empty

bed beside you all night long, and like an empty

house when you open the door, and like trees in

autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying

south, crying, and a sound like November wind and

the sea on the hard, cold shore. I'll make a sound that's

so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it

will weep in their souls,

                                                             From the story The Foghorn by Bradbury

                           which became part of Ray’s film

                         The Beast from 20 Thousand Fathoms

Talos from Jason and the Argonauts.
The small figure is the Ymir from 20
Million Miles to Earth.

My signed copy of Graveyard. 

Goodbye Ray you brought myth  and magic
to life and gave pleasure to a lot of people.

"Once upon a time there were two cities within a city.

One was light and one was dark. One moved restlessly

all day while the other never stirred. One was warm

and filled with ever-changing lights. One was cold

and fixed in place by stones. And when the sun went

down each afternoon on Maximus Films, the city of

the living, it began to resemble Green Glades cemetery

just across the way, which was the city of the dead.

As the lights went out and the motions stopped and

the wind that blew around the corners of the studio

buildings cooled, an incredible melancholy seemed

to sweep from the front gate of the living all the way

along through twilight avenues toward that high brick

wall that separated the two cities within a city. And

suddenly the streets were filled with something one

could speak of only as remembrance. For while the

people had gone away, they left behind them

architectures that were haunted by the ghosts of

incredible happenings.

For indeed it was the most outrageous city in the

world, where anything could happen and always did.

Ten thousand deaths had happened here, and when

the deaths were done, the people got up, laughing,

and strolled away. Whole tenement blocks were set

afire and did not burn. Sirens shrieked and police cars

careened around corners, only to have the officers peel

 off their blues, cold-cream their orange pancake makeup,

 and walk home to small bungalow court apartments out

in that great and mostly boring world.

Dinosaurs prowled here, one moment in miniature,

and the next looming fifty feet tall above half-clad

virgins who screamed on key. From here various

Crusades departed to peg their armor and stash their

spears at Western Costume down the road. From here

Henry the Eighth let drop some heads. From here Dracula

wandered as flesh to return as dust. Here also were the

Stations of the Cross and a trail of ever-replenished blood

as screenwriters groaned by to Calvary carrying a

backbreaking load of revisions, pursued by directors

with scourges and film cutters with razor-sharp knives.

It was from these towers that the Muslim faithful were

called to worship each day at sunset as the limousines

whispered out with faceless powers behind each window,

and peasants averted their gaze, fearing to be struck blind."

                              
  from A Graveyard for Lunatics

                                         Ray Bradbury