A First Last

We trekked to the Great Plains Nature Center today for our (last?) nature walk. We took no books, no paper, no pencils... just our weary selves. We watched clouds, watched grasshoppers, sat on our favorite benches, and ate Larabars. (Yes, Larabars are a BreadwithHoney-approved snack food!) I refused to be sad.

We talked about what nature walks will be like in the Rocky Mountains. I remind myself that it's a bit silly to cry over big bluestem prairie grass and Kansas sunsets- which are amazing, by the way- when we will soom be trekking mountain trails instead of paved prairie walks. Really, Maureen, cry us a river, right?

Well, I've lived and loved in Kansas long enough to appreciate the beauty and subtleties of the landscape, the openness of the space, the air, the sky. I mean, anyone can take great pictures from the top of a mountain, but it takes artistry to compose pictures on the dry summer prairie.

Or so I tell myself....

Anyway, without further ado about nothing- here is our little ode to the beauty of a dry, Kansas, summer afternoon.

"To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few."
-Emily Dickinson, Poems

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed."
-Albert Einstein

To think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted. ~George Kneller

It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block. ~Paul Gauguin

"Having spent the better part of my life trying either to relive the past or experience the future before it arrives, I have come to believe that in between these two extremes is peace."
-Author Unknown

"Forever is composed of nows."
-Emily Dickinson

"Let the credit card companies market as they will, the only thing that's priceless is Now."
-Caleb Baylor Hive, 2005

"They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom."
-Confucius

"Continuity gives us roots; change gives us branches, letting us stretch and grow and reach new heights."
-Pauline R. Kezer