Learning about Australia or "I have questions"

   

First, let me say to all of my friends who are still sleeping, Merry Christmas from Taiwan. Bop almost never blogs, but I find myself in a position of having questions and I need help.

Anybody wanting to gain some understanding of Australia and the incredible people who live there could, like me, begin by reading David Hunt's book, Girt.  I recently was given the book as a greeting gift from my friends Garry and Jill Innes who came to live in our house for Christmas.  I quickly polished it off on our trip to Taiwan.  There is a laugh in almost every paragraph framed around nuggets of historical relevance, I think.  I was never quite sure if the author was just pulling my leg--makes me relate to my grand-girls when they look at me with questioning looks on their faces.  Hunt made me understand how the events leading to the American Revolution correlated to Australia's colonial period and how the English "Bloody Code" led to so many Australians being so "well hung."

His story-like narrative about the explorers and their ships and captains, the Irish and Scot settlers, and what I assume might be Australian patriarchs was humorous, informative, and fun to read.  I was, however, left with some questions to ponder. . .

----Why do they only cut their hair once a year?

---What can be gained by watching wallabies feed?

----Why should kangaroos be tied down?

---How do you keep a cockatoo cool?

----Why do koalas need to be taken back out on the track?

---What's on the mind of a platypus duck?

----Why does Blue play his didgeridoo?

---How come Australians hang the tanned hides of dead people on their shed?

Help me mates!   Bop  

Moons, Meows, and Mortality

What's new on the mountain?
Maples are starting to turn.
The moon emerged from the clouds
just in time for us to watch Sunday's eclipse.
The jeep smells like skunk.
Above us, water was discovered on Mars.
We ran out of ice cream and I lost two pounds.
Chai the cat let a baby mouse escape in the house
and Ivan the cat is missing.

Two years ago

The ladder wouldn't reach Ivan

Luke's cat Ivan
was stuck in an oak beside the outhouse
for almost a week.
He was great at "up"
but not as good at "down."
He was unreachable by ladder
as well as the slightly higher
ladder-in-the-back-of-the-truck.
He was unmoved
by the aroma of canned catfood.
His meows were becoming faint
and the owl was literally calling his name
when we learned
that our neighbor Phil
owned The Biggest Ladder Of Them All.
Salvation.
Ivan loved days outside
and early evenings on Denny's lap
swiveling his plump head in all directions,
kneading,

Ivan, left, wants out

purring,
ecstatic.
The last time I saw Ivan
was one week ago.
He sat, tail twitching,
beside a young hemlock
as a flock of turkeys approached.
One was within pouncing distance
when Ivan reconsidered,
sprayed the area,
and stalked off,
cheeky,
but not foolish.
That evening,
he didn't come for supper.
In the days following
we have walked the woods,
calling,
listening for a faint meow
in case he was treed again.
No Ivan.
Enough time has now passed;
we think he won't return,
that he was consumed by a bobcat,
a coyote,
perhaps a fox.
We are sad.
Luke is somewhat consoled
because,
like the lion Jasmine
in the movie Secondhand Lions,
Ivan died with his boots on.
(Secondhand Lions. Our favorite movie. Watch it.)
Ivan started life
as an indoors-only Texas kitten
named Simba,
which means "lion" in Swahili.
He probably never imagined
the adventurous life of field and forest
and squirrel chasing
and being both predator
and prey.
It will be a while
before we stop listening for him,
and his DNA
may linger in the corners of the house
longer than we would like to admit.

Moon through spotting scope

There were three widows
at our Moon Party on Sunday night:
one whose husband died recently,
two weeks ago,
and two others
whose husbands also died recently,
two years ago.
Death of a loved one is always recent.
I have been told it is like an amputation,
phantom pain,
of feeling the presence of something,
once a vital part of you,
that is gone.
Every time I see Secondhand Lions
I think of how much my dad
would have loved that movie.
It's been twelve years since he died.

In hindsight,
at the Moon Party
I should have explained what happens during an eclipse,
an alignment called syzygy,
but I found myself instead
using the Bunny in the Moon
(much easier for me to see than the Man in the Moon)
to show the Apollo 11 landing site.
If the Sea of Tranquility is the bunny's head,
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on his nose.

The huge crater at the bottom of the moon
is Tycho,
named for Tycho Brahe,
a Danish polymath
who had his nose cut off in a duel
when he was young;
the fight
was over a mathematical equation.
He spent the rest of his life
with a metal nose glued to his face.
Brahe became very rich
and spent some of his money
on a tame elk
who lived in his house
and died after drinking too much beer
and falling down the stairs.
The elk, not Tycho.
Tycho died of a burst bladder
after attending a dinner with the queen.
Protocol stated that,
if she didn't leave the room,
no one else did either.
For years, his cause of death remained unconfirmed.
There was suspicion that he was poisoned by his assistant,
Johannes Kepler
who also has a moon crater named for him,
but Brahe's exhumation in 2010
proved Kepler innocent.
Tycho Brahe was said to have written his own epitaph:
He lived like a sage 
and died like a fool.

I may die like a fool as well.
There have been a few opportunities--
skiing into a waterfall overlook,
climbing onto a snake-infested ledge,
getting lost in the Alaskan forest,
losing control on a cliffside mountain trail.
This week I fell while writing "Moon Party"
in chalk in the middle of the highway.

There are many ways to die.
The trick is to live,
really live,
before you die.
Do what you were created to do
with great enthusiasm
and the occasional yodel,
or, in Ivan's case,
meow.
As they say in Secondhand Lions...

Farewell Ivan

"He really lived."

The Cowboy Mystery Tour- Vacation 2015

 

Why "The Cowboy Mystery Tour"?
Mystery because
usually we leave for truck-camper travels in June,
our destination and route decided,
applicable books read,
notes taken,
music chosen.
This year
we left as soon as Paul's family moved to Taiwan,
the last week of July,
with absolutely no idea of destinations
except that we would end up
at Uncle Jack's kitchen table
to drink coffee
and talk.
The routes there and back again were a mystery.

Uncle Jack is my dad's oldest brother,
a Korean War veteran
who fell in love with my Aunt Shirley
and his job with Utah's Department of Fish and Game.
Now retired,
he helps run the Ogden Nature Center,
drinks coffee,
goes birding,
and cruises Costco.
He is one of our favorite people
and regular phone conversations were not enough.
Seeing Jack and Shirley was a priority.

Our first stop,
the Altoona AAA office for maps and tour books,
aimed us south,
so we continued to West Virginia,
the Blackwater Falls environs,
places about as far from civilization as you can be
and still be east of the Mississippi River.
That night when I looked at the map
I decided I wanted to see Arkansas's Crater of Diamonds State Park
as every year I tell my first graders
that you can hunt for real diamonds there
and keep whatever you find.
Our journey to Arkansas went through Kentucky,
a place of caves and cookies,
Lincoln's boyhood
and Ale-8
and the George S. Patton Museum in Fort Knox.
(Note: You cannot visit the Patton Museum
if you have a gun in your vehicle.
Ironic.)
Tennessee was front row seats at the Opry,
the Gibson Guitar factory,
Martin Luther King
and Beale Street
and Memphis barbecue.
We crossed the Mississippi River
and entered Arkansas,
and after a tour of Hot Springs,
rib-and-fry at McClanes
(Oh! McClanes!)
and a stop at the hardware for a bucket and trowel,
we pulled in to Crater of Diamonds.
It was 97 degrees and mostly sunny.
The truck's dash said it felt like 106.
Den opted for a nap in the shade
with the cat
(Did I mention we are traveling with a Siamese?)
while I went diamond-hunting.
Crater of Diamonds is an actual volcanic crater,
plowed to expose new rocks.
The introductory movie I watched
said that most diamonds are smaller than matchheads
and that they shine in the sunlight after a rain.
Just weeks before,
a Colorado woman had found an 8.52 carat diamond,
slightly smaller than an inch-long pencil
which is huge for a diamond.
I joined about eighty people sparcely scattered in the 38 acre field
and soon realized that it hadn't rained for weeks,
that trash shines even when it hasn't rained,
that the dirt was in hard clumps,
and that matchhead-sized objects are beyond my focus.
I quickly broke my trowel blade off by smacking it on the dirt clumps--
three dollar trowels are apparently not meant for smacking--
and decided to walk the perimeter of the field
smacking clumps with the trowel handle instead.
If I'm going to find a diamond,
it's going to be a big one!
At the far edge of the crater
I asked a middle-aged man
if he wanted to jump up and down
and yell "Wow!" with me
to see if we could get anybody to run over.
He declined.
I ended up at the shady sluice trough with the park ranger
and a Serious Diamond Hunter.
The Serious Diamond Hunter had a screen
and was sluicing
and swirling
and using a scalpel to examine his bits of gravel.
They looked with amusement at the colorful fist-sized rocks in my bucket
and told me they were mostly jasper.
After a geology lesson
and a history lesson
and a trade with the Serious Diamond Hunter--
his old working trowel for my broken new trowel blade--
and a discussion about how armadillos are startled
and kill themselves
by jumping up when a car passes over them,
I left the crater with a new reason for the chicken to cross the road:
to show the armadillo it could be done.
A girl sat at the counter with her tweezers and eyepiece;
I dumped my bucket of fist-sized mostly-jasper in front of her.
"I don't think I have any diamonds here," I said.
"Ummmm, no," she replied
and gave me a strange look.

A bucket of jasper

An hour later it rained.









We then re-aimed for Utah,
choosing the roads not taken before:
The Oklahoma panhandle.
A south-to-north trip through Colorado.
Enroute we sang "This Land is Your Land" at Woody Guthrie's birthplace,
hiked Capulin Volcano's rim in New Mexico,
went to a square dance,
had breakfast with Den's cousin,
and started to notice a pattern
that we then focused on:
cowboy stuff.

Oklahoma City Cowboy Museum

Oklahoma City's Cowboy Museum started it,
with original Remington and Russell art
and Tom Selleck's gun
and Hoot Gibson's chaps.
We then had a Colorado adventure to the end of a road
where we met four dogs
and three cowboys
who invited us to sit on their porch
and listen to stories of
Great-granddad's acquaintance with Butch Cassidy
and how Butch shot up the saloon in Baggs,
then covered each hole with a gold piece.
We visited cowboy museums in Craig, Colorado
and Baggs, Cody, and Sheridan, Wyoming.
We went to a rodeo,
ate a cowboy dinner,
went to a cowboy concert,
bought cowboy books
and cowboy boots
($5 at Sheridan's Salvation Army Store)
and bandanas
and a picture of Lonesome Dove's Gus McCrae,
went to a saddlery
and a rope maker,
and visited locations where Teddy Roosevelt,
the Cowboy President,
had been.

Five dollar thrift boots

Dogs, cowboys, and stories

We did get to Uncle Jack's.
We spent hours each morning
at his kitchen table
eating Fortified Oatmeal
and drinking coffee
and watching black-chinned hummingbirds visit his feeder.
Jack showed us the arrowheads he had serendipitously found
and the trees he had transplanted
to make urban Ogden
an oasis of quiet.
Aunt Shirley prepared seafood linguine
and served it on Grandma Maud's dining table.
As I ate,
I slid my toes up the curves of the table legs
and felt like I was twelve again.
Artistic cousin Jill joined us twice a day
and brought her three affectionate Yorkies
who served as both pets and dustmops.

Morning coffee and talk

Utah Rensels-Jack, Shirley, Jill

Ogden oasis

Penny, arrowhead

We are a bit compulsive on trips.
Journaling is essential
and various items are tallied.
Here is The Cowboy Mystery Tour by the numbers:
5,927 miles travelled
$1,059 for gas
80 pounds of interesting rocks
71 pronghorns on the southern loop
        between Creston Junction and Wallcot, WY 
65 miles of Absolutely Straight Highway west of Guymon, OK
47/50 state license plates spotted (missing VT, ND, and HI)
36 hikers in Waterfall Canyon
26 beds stacked in a German bus
19 roadkilled rabbits
18 cords on the $2 Thai parachute at the Presbyterian rummage sale
17 states travelled
15 miles per gallon
10 point mule deer
9 bridges to the end of the road
7 KOAs
5 satellites and
4 shooting stars in the Medicine Bow National Forest
3 wild horses on a hilltop
2 women visited Den while Sue showered    "Cats are a chick magnet."
1 overpriced trick rope
(cue music)...and a buzzard in a dead tree.

What did we learn on The Cowboy Mystery Tour?
1. Planning can be overrated.
2. The West is more than topography.
     It's sun and shade and wind and rocks and far-off rain
     ...and an occasional historic saloon.
3.  Don't even try to count giant windmills. Or cows.
4.  If everything else is equal, travel the highest passes.
5.  Look for local cars at restaurants.
     Ask the waiter what most people order, then order that.
6.  Use a GPS as back-up, not your primary source of information.
     Our Garmin, "Carmen,"
     (as in Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?)
     gave good advice in Nashville
     but was not appreciated in Vail
     or Cody, where we followed her crackpot advice through six tunnels.
     Like a cat always on the wrong side of the door,
     Carmen was often discontent.
     If we were on a four-lane, she wanted us on the parallel side road.
     If we wanted to travel the byways, she insisted on interstates.
7.  McDonalds has free, easy internet.
8.  You can lead a cat to water, but you can't make him drink--
     and the leading is more like dragging.
9.  South Bend seems to be an iffy place to sleep.
10. Abe Lincoln's mother's last words were "Be kind to one another."

Oh, and one more thing.
Write your memories down so you don't forget them.
Done.
More pictures below....

Morning coffee in Kentucky

Chai the Cat, chick magnet

Grand Old Opry, Nashville

Den started a Gibson sales pitch

Donkey democrats in Arkansas-- Bill and Hillary?

The longest straight road in the USA is west of Guymon, OK. Sixty-five miles. The perfect perspective drawing

Ten point mule deer in Colorado

At the rim of Capulin Volcano

Collecting some of the eighty pounds of rocks

Light and shadow in Flaming Gorge

Halfway up Waterfall Canyon, Salt Lake in the background

Destination reached! Shoes off, water and snacks consumed, short nap to follow

The waterfall of Waterfall Canyon fame

Butch Cassidy danced in this Baggs, Wyoming room. So did Sue.

This ain't Butch

A mountain, a fire, clear skies, two hours to meteors

Rodeo!

German bus with front seating, twenty-six bunks, kitchen and picnic table storage beneath

Cows. Fortunately, Sue speaks Cow. It's always good to have a second language.

Big Horn Canyon, Montana-Wyoming border

We predict Big Horn Canyon to be the next place the Californians discover.

Can you spot three wild mustangs on the hilltop?

Some rocks are too big to haul home

Den talks rope...

...and admires the variety.

The back room at King Saddlery, Sheridan

Saddle workmanship

Apparently the Japanese need reminded as well

The Occidental Saloon, Buffalo, Wyoming

(cue music)...and a buzzard in a dead tree. Without the buzzard.

You're Welcome, Sweetie Pie!

 I had three goals for this summer.
1. Learn to ride a motorcycle.
I burned my leg 
and broke Den's brake handle 
on my first lesson.
2. Get my Movement Learning website working.
Sadly, 
when I had knowledgeable people here, 
the internet was down 
and/or the website wouldn't let me on. 
3. Be flexible.
This is the only goal that has been mostly successful.
Flexibility was especially important
as we wanted to be available
for whatever our son Paul
and his wife Kate
and the grandgirls,
Anna and Lucy,
needed to facilitate this summer's move to Taiwan.

Flexibility allowed us to make more memories with the grandgirls:
Drip sandcastles at Parker Dam.
Baby swallows named Wendy, John, Michael, and Peter...

Wendy, John, Michael, and Peter

guess who's into Peter Pan?
Bike shows with no training wheels
and scooters
and spinning tricycles.
(Advice:
Any time a used Razor bike product is for sale,
buy it.)
Woods walks that allow us to find puffballs
and blueberries
and round leaves
and sticks that look like the letter F.
On walks,
the grandgirls liked to pretend
that they were the girls in The Boxcar Children books.
I was always the little brother Benny.
Benny lisps
and they found that hilarious
even when the lisp sounded like Lucy.
Treks to the swimming hole
to float the current
and make mermaid pools
and rock stacks.
Daily trips to the raspberries,
abundant this year.
Lucy liked to be in charge of the bucket
and then put the berries in ziplock bags,
squish them up,
and take them to the freezer...
Anna liked to eat them.
Mountain backroad jeep rides
that allowed girls to have their heads above the windshield
with a kite flying behind.

Lucy and the jeep

On one jeep ride
a red fox,
Lucy's favorite animal,
crossed in front of us
and then stood in the woods,
peering out.
That night
as I prayed with her,
"Thank you, God,
for letting Lucy see a real fox,"
she piped up
"Thank you, God,
for letting me see a real fox!"
and then immediately became the voice of God:
"WELL, YOU'RE WELCOME, SWEETIE PIE!"

This morning at 12:30 AM
we left for the Pittsburgh Airport
to begin what Den called
The Big Jump.
Waiting at baggage check-in,
Anna and I put googly eye stickers on their luggage.
(Full disclosure:
I barely resisted putting them on airport signs.)
Goodbye hugs occurred at 4:00
with big-and-little tears
from six Shaffners
and Shelby-the-amazing-driver/friend.
For the many people
who have prayed for our adjustment
to our family's Great Adventure,
thank you.
Thank you.
THANK you.
Bless you.
We are at peace.
We confidently hand them off to their Asian family,
to grandparents Victor and Joy,
and to the hand of God.

Last night,
Paul and Kate decided to let the girls stay up
so they would sleep more on the plane.
Ten o'clock found us in the garage
painting our pinkie nails
to remind us of each other.

Polished pinkies except for Foxy

Anna soon disappeared
into the house
to resume
her new-found friendship
with Calvin and Hobbes,
but Lucy hopped on the Razor trike
and spun around the driveway
in the dark,
admiring the stars.
I began to sing
the simple children's song
"God made the stars..."
when she took over
and bellowed
"Thank you God
for the stars
and the MOOOON
and Grammy
and BO-O-OP..."
I raised my hands
to the One who made the moon
and joined her in thankfulness
imagining God's response:
"Well, you're welcome,
Sweetie Pie!"

When someone else is driving
and you have no control,
be thankful for the company.
Throw your hands in the air
and enjoy the ride.
There is joy in the journey.

Paul, Kate, Anna, and Lucy  now live in Kaohsiung, Taiwan

May you find joy in your journey.

Denny and Sue

Mange and Primroses

Most evenings
as dusk approaches
we look to see if the evening primrose flowers have started to open
and we look north, east, south, and west
for bears.

Uncle Jack taught us about evening primroses.
New flowers open each evening,
quickly.
The buds split and fold back
and four papery yellow petals unfurl,
exposing stamens
and the cross-shaped stigma;
a closer look reveals strings of pollen
strung across the flower like webs.
The whole process takes about a minute and a half.
Calming.
Fascinating.

We sometimes miss the bears
as they aren't on as predictable a schedule
as the primroses.
Bears may come in the mornings
or afternoons
or during the night
and all we see are their tracks
or broken branches on the Juneberries
or the birdfeeder on the ground.
The cracked corn
that Den scatters on the driveway for the doves
sometimes disappears overnight,
licked clean.
This week, though,
we have spotted a yearling cub
visiting at dusk.
One evening Den found him in the garage
next to the spilled sunflower seed container
and named him Little Bear
like the bear in the Minarik/Sendak children's books.
The next night I saw him
as he moseyed from the driveway
to the back woods
where I had thrown old eggs
and some ham fat.
The cub was not easily frightened
but stood up,
curious.
He reminded me of the pictures from my youth
of starving Biafran children
with sad smiles
and skinny limbs
and distended bellies.
His limbs and belly
were almost hairless,
his ears white
with mange.
Den wanted to fatten him up;
I wanted to stroke him,
to teach him to come when I call
like a pet cat--
not that our cats come when we call--
but instead we called the game warden.


Officer Stewart and his deputy came yesterday morning
with a large metal tube on a trailer,
a humane trap.
It was baited with dogfood
and fat
and beaver lure
and tasty sunflower seeds.
In the late afternoon,
Den added a opened can of tuna
but no bear came at dusk.
I settled for the primrose show.


This morning at 7:15
while lying in bed
we heard a clunk.
"Got him!" 
We dashed outside in the rain,
peered through the holes
and saw his white ear tips.
"It's Little Bear," Den said.
"Let him alone. He's scared."
But I couldn't.
I peeked in one hole,
then another,
talked to him,
told him I was sorry he was so sick.
His nose appeared,
curious.
and I blew on it.
He made some noises.

Den couldn't let him alone, either.
He thought that Little Bear's mom
may have been the mountain's mangy bear
that circled but wouldn't enter last year's trap,
that she hadn't survived hibernation,
and that the cub had been on his own for months.
"Poor Little Bear.
He must be hungry."
Den dropped half a pound of good bacon into one of the holes.

Officer Stewart came this afternoon
and took him away.
He will determine
whether Little Bear is a candidate for rehabilitation--
medicinal treatment--
or not.

Not long ago
I made my evening trip to the windows
and looked north, east, south, and west,
but saw no bears.
I said a prayer for Little Bear
and looked at the primroses.
They stood tall in the raspberry patch,
shedding raindrops
like tears.

---------------------------------------------

Follow-up to this story, two days later:

When we called to report another bear,
Middle Bear,
about 250 pounds
with slight mange
and tags in both ears,
Officer Stewart told us that Little Bear
had received two mange treatments
and was released in the gamelands.
When he was given a dead beaver,
instead of eating it,
he snuggled down with it.

We now have another cub in the trap
instead of the Middle Bear
we have Tiny Bear.
He, too, is mangy
and loves bacon.

Hopefully,
by the end of the summer,
we will have caught and treated them all.