Category Archives: mountains

Nov22

‘Zarks Cuisine and Dazzling Lights

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‘Zarks Cuisine and Dazzling Lights

Winter came upon us early. We were hoping to put this colder weather off until closer to Christmas, but the Midwest has its own mind. For the past 4 or 5 autumn seasons, Dean and I manage to get away for a long weekend in the Ozark Mountains, about a 4 or 5-hour drive for us. Some months ago I planned a long weekend trip to attend a writer’ workshop in the Ozarks at one of my favorite places The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow. Dean used his last vacation days of the year to join me as a chauffeur, but also as a fellow partaker of the slower-paced Ozarks countryside and local cuisine. The writer’s workshop was thought-provoking learning more about using ekphrasis and hearing the shared words of other writers.

The children’s & cookbook author Crescent Dragonwagon calls the local food, “‘zark cuisine” and made it famous at her Dairy Hollow House back in the 1980’s and 90’s. From this establishment came The Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow, and that unique culinary suite I wrote from one week the summer of 2021. The foods come to the forefront of our long weekend in Eureka Springs, Arkansas and Branson, Missouri. This year we met up with my sister and her partner, Sandy at the Local Flavor Cafe in Eureka Springs for delicious dinner entrees. I found a great deal for sleeping accommodations at the Bridgeford B & B situated close to downtown on Spring Street. Breakfast fare and fellowship with other guests and the hostess was delightful on that first snowy morning. For lunch Dean partook of a veggie hash bowl and I had a slice of spinach-mushroom-sausage quiche at Mud Street Cafe before heading to our beloved Branson for a 2-night stay at a snuggled lakeside resort. A quaint eatery run by a husband-and-wife team downtown Branson served us delicious Thai-style plates at a decent price. A ‘Zark-style breakfast at Clockers Cafe is served all day and we are game for anytime.

Local shoppes, Silver Maple and Crescent Moon Beads are our stops in downtown Eureka Springs. I found a string of beautiful beads to make my first eyeglasses lanyard. I need those reading glasses more often with increased age, reading, and writing. Our Branson entertainment was the Market Days craft show during the afternoon with booths of crafts, fancy cowgirl garments, jewelry, jackets, and boots. Two gorgeous Christmas light displays dazzled us, one for each evening while in Branson. The Big Cedar Lodge is fabulously displayed with holiday cheer! We come back to our suite with a small pizza from a local pizzeria and watch a 2-hour Opry special. Of all people the Opry is honoring Johnny Morris, founder and owner of 50-year-old Bass Pro, Big Cedar Lodge, and multiple other outdoor business adventures as well as a successful philanthropist and nature conservationist. How appropriate for our Ozark weekend! Finished the weekend with another antique shop for holiday gifts on the way home.

Sep22

Autumn’s Here and Aspens Here We Come!

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Autumn’s Here and Aspens Here We Come!

Here in my neck of the woods autumn arrived overnight when a cold front blew in rain and cooler temperatures. By the books the summer ends today and the meteorologists are saying officially the autumn equinox takes place this evening. But my senses tell me it is already here! All just in time for a road trip to Colorado to see groves of glowing aspen, rigid mountains, and brief visits with friends and family along the way and back. Packed long and short-sleeve shirts, shorts, leggings, jeans, jackets, socks and my boots. I brought my sandals as well as a winter coat just in case. Ready for it all!

Preparations have been made all week. Bills paid ahead, ordered the mail to be held until we get back, arrangements made for my brother & sister-in-law to look after our cottage and yard, ate leftovers and emptied the frig. All were a reminder that vacation is finally here. Dean and I put off a week-long vacation this summer to experience this autumn get-away. Our last long road trips this year were to St. Augustine in February for a sunny vacation, and Gulfport, Mississippi in March to make arrangements for my younger brother’s remains after his sudden death. But these next 9 days away we will travel to the countryside and be with the “Talking Tree, a place where spirit and nature can be”. 

Come with me to the Talking Tree
a place where spirit and nature can be.
Where science of the forest couples
with ancient traditions of the land.
Where indigenous people learn to live
with trees mindfully hand in hand.

Listen to branches rustling hymns
through silent sounds in their limbs.
Mighty Maples murmur in the breeze
sweet tales of syrup drawn to please.

Trees converse, they do care
sending forest messages everywhere.
Through the air and underground
signals pulse from floor to crown.

Quaking Aspen is known for being
the earth's most massive living thing
these trees united by one root system
the world's largest superorganism.

Trees often act for collective good
doing exactly what they should.
Sometimes they will reset their mast
until the attacking danger's passed.

Internal rhythms set their pace
slower than the human race.
Tree's daily burden that they bare
is they process the world's air.

Did trees learn survival plans proven
in the 360 million years pre-human?
What do 7 billion humans foresee
as the fate for earth's 3 trillion trees?

Fallen trees again live too
vessels that life flows through.
Their wood relives deeply in
buildings, books even violins.

So stand with me in equanimity
and listen for lyrics patiently.
Wait to hear beneath this tree
poised to the sound of "poetree".

by Greg Gaul
Jan22

Dormancy

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No winter-like simulation now, it is the real deal.  The winter weather seems to be sticking around for more than a few days.  Icy, sleety, and snowy last week, and again this week dipping into the teens overnight and staying below or close to freezing during the day.  Due to budget constraints our winter vacation week was decidedly best to stay in our home state of Missouri this year.  No expensive sandy beaches to sunbathe on.  Making the most of our budget and what our state has to offer during this winter season, Dean and I chose to visit our state’s Ozark Mountains.  Most of our vacation budget is for a lovely lodge in the woods, the journey there only a 5-hour drive from home.  Home-cooked meals prepared in a well-stocked kitchenette, and an occasional meal out satisfy us both.  Every night a vignette of soft lights dot the mountain sides from the valley we are nestled in.

Dean and I venture out on half-day trips for a couple of days, visiting small towns and cousins.  We went target shooting at an outdoor range one afternoon.  We meander into northern Arkansas part of the week.  Naked hardwood trees, pines, and cedars clothe the mountains along with icicled cliffs and crags much like glittered ornaments.  Flowing valley streams, swooping birds of prey, and cattle feeding in the fields are the only movement around.  Dormancy is what we experience, and what we need. Oxford’s online dictionary defines dormancy … “the state in which a plant is alive but not actively growing” and with this sentence example “dormancy allows woody plants to survive these unfavorable conditions”.  

The quiet, unassuming beauty of the woods in dormancy stills my busy body, mind, and soul.  Very present moment several times each day, a retreat without structure.  Just being, breathing in and out, and audibly awake.  It is not necessary to block out the static and noise of my job, the house, and almost no obligations as I am far enough away from these occupations.  Words come in and out on occasion, Dean and I relating this quiet vacation week to our retirement years.  Some words make a page in my journal, and others are just thoughts in dormancy for a later writing in favorable conditions and more life lived.

This year I am ending the summer season of my wellness career.  The autumn season of my career follows, short and sweet like Missouri’s autumns with the winter season close behind.  The dormant season always emerges into a glorious spring song.  A book of collected letters, Letters To A Young Poet, poet Rainer Maria Rilke urges the young budding poet, Franz Xavier Kappus to look inward and know what motivates his own writing.  Rilke encourages the development of a rich inner life which is the process of creative art. “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet.  In today’s words, live today, be present moment.  Some answers come eventually.

 

Jun8

Two Peas In A Pod

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I chose to live this life alone over 12 years ago.  “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life,” one of the proverbs tell us.  My heart was sick for too many years with an unhappy relationship.  I only imagined what a happy marriage would be like.  A come-true dream is a tree of life for me today.  Eight years ago this July, Dean and I met on a semi-blind date arranged by his brother and sister-in-law.  This tall, dark handsome man captured my eyes.  But unlike the other bucks in the herd, Dean captured my heart.  So happy I pursued this relationship. With our family backgrounds and life experiences, Dean and I came together like two peas in a pod, and we still are.  Our pod is shared with our huge family almost every evening and every weekend. “If you want to go fast, go alone.  If you want to go far, go together” is how an African proverb is told.

Dean and I needed to become just “two peas in a pod” again for a few days.  We stole away to the Great Smokies, doing the Air B & B thing.  Mountains, pines, music, and the visual and culinary arts we surrounded ourselves with.  Despite the hot days while on a mountain culture retreat away from our Missouri life,  I picked two big plastic bags full of leaf lettuce and a heaping bowl full of arugula and chives from my gardens this week.  And those delectable garden peas!  I love the pods picked fresh, and peas plucked out one at a time right into my open mouth like a baby bird awaiting mother robin’s wiggly worm catch after a rainy morn.  The bountiful earth is feeding me (and my family and friends) goodness this spring.  The longer and hotter days tell me the summer equinox is soon.  Purple lobelia, wandering jew, and red geraniums are filling my moss baskets and terra-cotta pots.   I thank God for watching over my beloved gardens while pursuing what captured my heart 8 years ago!

 

 

Feb9

A Seed

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“What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky?” author David Whyte writes.  So much hope from a seed.  And the size of the seed does not matter according to Jesus’ parable. “The simple truth is that if you had a mere kernel of faith, a poppy seed, say, you would tell this mountain, ‘move!’ and it would move. There is nothing you wouldn’t be able to tackle.” (The Message Bible).

Just how complex God has made each of us, “fearfully and wonderfully made”. Holy words to behold …  From seed to a tree … providing beauty to delight in, cooling shade to the weary, whispered wisdom from the leaves in the breeze, wood for a warm fire, roots as a foundation, fruit for the hungry, and sweet sap for those special moments.   Is not that a mother to her child?  A grandchild to a grandparent?  A man to his kin?

 

From seed to a tree, we each grow to be.  Taking care of self and our brother. Each can learn from the other. Growing branches at different directions, new skies to explore, yet rooted in the love of family and friends. Faith in self and who our God is, our Perfect Father.

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Aug14

The Best Weapon

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Simplicity.  “In a world of complexity, the best weapon is simplicity,” Price Pritchett is quoted.  The simplicity of a garden is one place I find peace in this troubled world. I am an artistic gardener, rather than a scientific one. I love creating an ambiance with green life. The fragrances of fresh herbs after a soaking rain or while harvesting feed my culinary imagination for Dean and I’s next meal, cucumber salad with snippets of cilantro to cool the heat of the summer day. The beauty of August’s blooms set in a simple vase uplifts the day no matter the bad news.  “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow,” Audrey Hepburn once said.  It takes faith. “Faith isn’t the ability to believe long and far into the misty future.  It’s simply taking God at His Word and taking the next step,”  artist Joni Eareckson Tada tells us. So I  take one step at a time, one seed at a time.  “Faith as a mustard seed can move mountains” as the Bible encourages us.  I believe one simple step of love leads to another and then another.  Those mountains of hatred will move.  Make one simple step towards peace this very evening.

 

Jul28

Summer Connects

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In a world with ever changing values and technology, some things remain the same. Kinship, old mountain towns, and summer lakes. Most of the time you can depend on all three.  Family is family. Most of us are connected if not by blood, in some other fashion to each other no more than 3 times removed. We connected to Joe, owner of this small town bar & grill and a new eatery called the Galloping Goose Cafe while in Rico, Colorado.  He is a visionary for this town.  Not sure if I could go back 4 decades, but the brief week we had in the old mountain town cabin took Dean and I to the simplicity of our childhood years.  And we loved it.  In search for WiFi a couple of times to get connected to our urban civilization to post photos and reserve a hotel room for our travels back home, other than that we lived without any electronics and screens.  Dean and I resorted to reading, writing, napping, cooking, bird watching, photography, and walks.  We return to our full-time employment with government entities that overwhelm with procedures, projects, policies, and politics.  Cannot escape it in the evening with the political conventions being aired. So here is to wonderful July 2016 memories with family in the old mountain town and near the summer lake.  I will keep reading, writing, … making more memories and connections.

Jul11

Contrasts

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A week in the mountains away from suburban life, work day conflicts, time constraints, and society’s woes … God’s creation … His canvas …

colorful vignettes, the snow-capped peaks and vi-rid valleys, mountain streams, deep-rooted trees, fresh air, hummingbird shrills, delicate flowers abloom, the silvery paper coins of the aspen groves fluttering, and the simplicity of just being can settle anyone’s mind, heart , and soul.  What a difference a week can make.

Why are we as a people so fired up?  In fight mode, defensive?  Pause a moment. Take a deep breathe or two. Quiet the soul.  Chill, or sip some chamomile tea if you cannot get away to that quiet place on your own.  Think, but not too hard.  Meditate on goodness.  Selah from the heart.  Thank God.  Love unceasingly.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails…”  1 Corinthians 13:4 -8 (NIV).