The classroom rug was a little crusty, stamped with squared-off primary colors. At its far end, the beautiful Miss Chantry sat cross-legged in white stockings and a plaid wool miniskirt, while the rest of us sat “Indian style” upon the rug before her. From a stack of old favorites, she selected a crisp, clean book […]
Ode to the Great Black Swamp Read More »
Recycling a Well-Tended Garden She side-bends and stoops after decades of puttering limber-up work-in-dirt yoga, knee bends to growing graces. Her garden sprawls on its back, open palms to June sun, humming a hover and rest like the blue darner. Her fingers spread compost, sifting the strumming of vegetable patches into mantras – mantras learned
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The revival of an ancient religion has taken Mongolia by storm. Decades of oppression and religious conversions could not stop Mongolia’s first religion, Shamanism, from surviving. The hundreds of years of Chinese influence over Mongolia before the turn of the 20th century brought in heavy pressure for the region to convert to Buddhism. A majority of
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The yard looks still. Winds riffle green-coin leaves, slim white-preened bark. Sage blooms rust and scratch, each purple nodule at last breaking in breeze to settle in a riverstone crevice. Pale roses wilt. Ridges curl, brown-strafed. Below, roots mottle and twist, an endless lurching and creeping through undersoil. Ants hustle through flagstone fissures, scream a
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The smell of a sun-warmed apricot transports me backwards in time, reliving a day spent picking fruit fresh from the tree with my great-grandmother as she regaled me with stories of living in a sod hut on the Colorado-Kansas border. Orphaned at an early age, she traveled west with her relatives, rode in a covered
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Cheyenne Mountain State Park is a hidden gem nestled quietly in the foothills just south of Colorado Springs. It’s among the more well-known recreational areas near the city. With 22 miles of hiking and biking trails, 61 camping spots, and 52 RV spots, Cheyenne Mountain State Park is the perfect place to get out and enjoy
Cheyenne Mountain State Park: Colorado Springs’ Hidden Gem Read More »