The Nature of Family

For the Love of Family and Being in the Nature

I have for a long time thought it worth while to combine the posts that center more on my personal life, the lives of my family members from different parts of the clans and the elders and ancestors whose histories have come to me in the form of letters, photographs, documents and objects. Here are my great great maternal grandparents, homesteader's on a farm in the territory of North Dakota, my mother's interesting life from the farm to Tibet and back again, the great great (and even greater beyond) paternal grandparents and cousins, and to my father whose own life extended from France to the United States, with trips to Africa.

And then there is me, daughter, wife, mother, and my children and my grandchildren. And my husband whose not inconsiderable clan still remain in our lives. Here is a wide swath of memories, and current events as well. And I have included the role nature has played in all of our lives, from the forests of Wisconsin, with forays to Kilimanjaro, Tuscany, the Quetico National Park and the Boundary Waters, the oceans of Costa Rica and California, and here now, the astonishing Front Range of the Colorado Rockies, just outside my window.

I suspect this will be a long and rambling biography of myself, and the families to which I am connected to and whom I love and cherish.

Waiting For Monsoons

Our family is spilt into different factions, different countries, and often, different continents, which has been more than a little difficult to overcome. We miss our grandchildren and we miss our son and daughter. There are short visits planned for the future, a chance to catch up and eat together -- but even that is bittersweet, as the time together always feel too short. I think (perhaps pray for) in the future, that there maybe a decision from all the factions to gather in a single homeland. But for now, the mister and I have been enjoying Tucson's early early monsoon clouds while our daughter and son enjoys the beautiful skies and gentle rains of Colorado.

These clouds look like exotic mushrooms, but they are filled with moisture and signal the start of seeding the clouds with future rains. As the month progresses, these slender clouds will become huge as moisture and heat cause them to gather and rise into towering thunderheads and then blanket the sky with a gathering of dark, rumbling thunderheads. And we, waiting below in the desert, will once again turn our faces upward to the cool rain on our faces and listen for the crack of lightning. 

Rising Before Dawn to Greet the Harvest Moon

Sometimes I find it so amazing to live here in Boulder, beneath the Flat Irons of the Rocky Mountains. Every morning there is always something extraordinary to see, and to be filled with wonderment. Sometimes it is the elk coming down from the mountains to feed in the green flood plains where we walk, or to hear the early morning frog in the spring singing loudly to each other an invitation of sex. Sometimes the deep indigo blue of the bluebirds or the sun-yellow colors of the Mexican finches as they migrate through the fields of sunflowers and long grass. 

And sometimes, it is this gorgeous pre-dawn sky and the full harvest moon brilliantly white as a cosmic egg, just before its descent behind the mountains. 

Summer is Here With Flowers and Long Hikes.

On a recent hike on the Blue-stem trail -- a fabulous wide stretch of gentle foothills, small streams, and wild flowers and an amazing sky overhead. 

These beautiful milkweed plants on which the migrating monarchs feed exclusively have been opening up their lovely pink flowers all over the mesas. 

And these buttery-yellow cactus hugging the ground. The mesas have such an unusual combination of woodland, marsh-loving, and dry thorny plants all in one place.

Not sure what this is called, though it looks a kind of pea-vetch? It was such a stunning and bright-looking plant.