It was ideal apple-eating weather; the whitest sunlight descended from the purest sky, and an easterly wind rustled, without ripping loose, the last of the leaves on the Chinese elms. Autumns reward western Kansas for the evils that the remaining seasons impose: winter’s rough Colorado winds and hip-high, sheep-slaughtering snows; the slushes and the strange land fogs of spring; and summer, when even crows seek the puny shade, and the tawny infinitude of wheatstalks bristle, blaze.
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, p. 10
Tag: American West
I didn’t realize bighorn sheep were quite so … big
I mean, look at that thing! It’s almost the size of a cow.
Usually, you see pictures of them poised on a rocky outcrop, looking all delicate.
Megalithic Ruins in Montana
Deep in Montana’s remote wilderness lies the Sage Wall, a stunning megalithic structure composed of massive granite blocks intricately stacked in a straight line extending 275 feet (84 meters). Reaching up to 25 feet (8 meters) high, with some blocks weighing 91 tons, it is believed that the wall continues an additional 15 feet underground. This unique formation appears to have precise, interlocking stones resembling ancient masonry found worldwide.
Despite its remarkable features, the Sage Wall remained hidden for centuries, covered by dense foliage on private land owned by Christopher Borton and Linda Welsh. Its discovery occurred when the landowners cleared their heavily forested property, revealing the wall and sparking scientific interest.
These paragraphs are taken from the article linked below:
It turns out that I have been sitting practically on the doorstep of a potential bucket list item!
If I had money and could travel, my destinations would be all the remarkable archeological sites in the world, particularly the ones that seem to partake of what appears to have been a worldwide megalithic culture. As I have pointed out before on this very blog, new examples of these are discovered almost yearly. Anyway, this site in Montana is one that I could actually be in a position to check out.
There are other sites in Montana that some believe are intentionally erected dolmens, and others believe are natural rock formations. Sage Wall, if it really is as it appears in the picture above, looks suspiciously manmade and highly similar to sites such as Sacsayhuaman in Peru. However, I realize that anyone who takes it as a given that there was never an ancient megalithic culture in North America will argue that Sage Wall is just a natural formation, and that rock does sometimes tend to fracture this way, as demonstrated by formations like Sage Wall.
The best way to deal with this is to see it in person.
Here’s how you do that:
The Predawn Walk to the Chicken Coop Painting II
Here it is with its predecessor:
Wooly Mullein at Lava Hot Springs
A few hours’ drive from my house, in the mountains of southern Idaho, we have a hot springs attraction. The pools are tucked into a niche between the town on one side and the highway on the other.
The photograph above was taken from the east end of the little canyon. Behind me, as I took this photograph, was something called “The Grotto.” It consists of paths and small garden areas winding along the lava-rock hillside. The rocks are basalt, but covered with mineral deposits from the days when the springs gushed out over here.
My husband and I went to the town of Lava, which is very touristy and has a lot of old-timey, cowboy-themed restos and hotels, back in September. I had never walked in The Grotto before. (Usually, I’m just either going in the hot springs or not going in the hot springs.)
But on this particular September, The Grotto was simply alive with the most Wooly Mullein I had ever seen in one place! Wooly Mullein are those plants you see with broad, pale-green, pillowy-looking basal leaves and (in some cases, not all) a tall spike of a flower.
I blogged about these plants a few years ago, when I had photographed one growing in a farmer’s field near my house. According to Central Rocky Mountain Wildflowers, “They are biennial plants, growing the first year as a round cluster of large radiating basal leaves covered with thick, woolly hair. The second year, they rapidly grow a 1 – 6′ tall stalk, crowded with yellow flowers in a spike arrangement. Then, with all its energy expended, the plant dies.” (p. 157)
“This introduced weed colonizes disturbed places from the valleys and plains to montane forests.” (ibid) Look at how many of them there are! They must love the dry climate.
But Wooly Mullein is not just a weed. “Dioscorides, the Greek physician to the Roman armies in the first century, used mullein to treat coughs, scorpion stings, eye problems, tonsillitis, and toothache. Today, herbalists value it as a medicinal herb for asthma, bronchitis, coughs, throat inflammation, earache, and various other respiratory complaints.” (ibid) My copy of Prepper’s Natural Medicine confirms this.
Hence, Lava is really the place to come if you’re ill in apocalypse situation! The Shoshoni Indians would bathe in and drink the hot-spring water to cure illnesses, plus there is all this mullein here. Still, it might be better to plan ahead.
I walked down this path and sat on a bench set into the rock wall. Lo and behold, up in a niche was Spiderman watching over me! Lava truly does have everything you might need!
Grasses by the Canal
This is, obviously, a picture left over from my Summer 2024 period.
It’s not for sale, unfortunately. I already know who I’m going to give it to.
Video: Chickens taking dust baths in the elm leaves
Smart girls, they figured out that right beside the quonset hut there is a good place for a dust bath.
Paintings of the Drive Home
I’m continuing with the “quantity over quality” approach. This is partly inspired by an artist whose work I found on Pinterest, often with the tag “a sunset a day.” He does lovely impressionistic cloud paintings. However, I think he may be putting more time into them than I am.
What I do is, notice the sky around 3 or 4 p.m. when I’m driving myself and my offspring home from school across the windswept Idaho plains, take a mental picture, and do my best to reproduce that mental picture over the next few days.
Both of these are 8×10.
The one on the top is cornfields; the one on the bottom features fields that have been harvested, then harrowed, then planted with something green again before the winter.
Another 8×10: Big Southern Butte in a dirty sky.
Life in America: Unrhymed Sketches
I love the little houses:
trailer,
double-wide,
double-long,
saltbox,
shotgun shack,
ranch,
unconverted farmhouse.
Dogs that come out and terrify you
from behind a far too flimsy fence.
***
Castor oil, ginger,
apple cider vinegar,
put half an onion on a sill and see how it behaves.
Honey’s good for cough and cold,
pine-needle for the hard-core.
Lots of garlic helps to chase the stomach bugs away.
Epsom salts and menthol rub,
basil, thyme, and black cohosh.
Herbs that our great-grandmothers
used to keep in stash.
Tinctures, teas, and poultices,
but we don’t say Hail Marys ’cause
we’re Protestants.
***
At first, it will seem intrusive.
If outdoors, you’ll want to stop what you are doing and watch it glide by,
noting its three or four engines,
its well-executed graffiti,
its rhythmic clicks.
If indoors, you’ll want to stop speaking
when you feel its rumble.
But after a while, it will become part of the necessary sounds of life:
water running, the heat kicking on, children singing, your own breathing,
and the train.
This process will take less time than you expect.
In weeks, not months,
you will feel uneasy if it does not come on time:
your motherland’s lullabye
rocking you through your days.
Out of Babel Books 