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Archive for the ‘Favorite Places’ Category

Happy Valentine’s Day to All

Posted in Favorite Places, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , on February 14, 2012| 12 Comments »

 “The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.” Blaise Pascal

I married twice, but never had a honeymoon. So I took myself to Niagara Falls. What a beautiful sight. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

Seeing as how my choices of men as soul mates were always poor ones, today is not a lovey-dovey sentimental one for me, although I truly rejoice for those who enjoy it as such..

While it wasn’t always so, I am quite happy that my only domestic partner is my canine traveling companion, Maggie. I think the choices I made in my life led me to this point, perhaps because I subconsciously always knew it was the end I truly wanted.

 

My first great-grandchild. He's 2 now and one of the loves of my life. Happy Valentine's Day Junior. -- Photo by Baron Marsh

And just because I don’t have a significant other, doesn’t mean I don’t have love or passion in my life.

My friends (both male and female), children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren provide the love. While I married the wrong man, the union did provide me with five wonderful children. And because of that, I can have no regrets.

Books, writing, nature, birds, travel and a zest for life, meanwhile, provide all the passion my old-broad libido needs these days.

I don’t think I have settled. I think it is truly who I am. I feel like I finally fit in my own skin.

So Happy Valentine’s Day to all those out there who are enjoying it with a person of their choice, and happy hunting to all those still seeking that special someone. Just don’t forget to live your life while you’re looking.

And may the rest of us just enjoy a happy day. And the same tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow …

Bean’s Pat: Horsetail Fire Falls http://photobotos.com/2012/02/13/horsetail-fire-falls A rare photograph captures why this waterfall was so named. Absolutely awesome! But then I’m a nature lover.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Ready

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Travel, Uncategorized, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , , , , , on February 13, 2012| 8 Comments »

 “Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is beauty, admire it. Life is bliss, taste it. Life is a dream, realize it. Life is a challenge, meet it. Life is a duty, complete it. Life is a game, play it. Life is a struggle, accept it. Life is tragedy, confront it. Life is an adventure, dare it. Life is luck, make it. Life is life, fight for it.” – Mother Teresa 

A Canada goose READY for take off at Farragut State Park in Northern Idaho. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 

Bean’s Pat: Martina’s Design Studio: Gone Too Far To Turn Back. http://photosbymartina.wordpress.com/ Words to live by.

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40-Acre Lake and Coots Galore

Posted in Birds, Favorite Hikes, Favorite Places, Nature, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , on February 11, 2012| 7 Comments »

“I never was one for rushing through a country. I like to take my time breathe the air, get the feel of it. I like to smell it, taste it get it located in my brain. The thing to remember when traveling is that the trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast and you miss all you travel for. “ Louis L’Amore

A coot and a turtle inspect each other. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

The mile and a half walk around 40-Acre Lake at Brazos Bend State Park is one of my favorites. While I’ve walked it many times, each time around is different.

Some days the stroll to the observation tower is filled with black-bellied whistling ducks. On other days its egrets and herons that dominate the shallow shore line and swampy wetlands.

Brilliant common yellowthroats like to hide in the reeds, and a northern harrier or two can usually be seen circling in the sky above. One day I had to turn around because the path ahead was lined by huge alligators. I had Maggie that day and I decided I didn’t want her to become just a tasty morsel for those toothy jaws, not to mention that I didn’t want to become dinner either.

Observation tower midway along the hike around 40-Acre Lake. -- Photo by Pat Bean

This past week, it was the coots that dominated the lake. While not the most glamorous of birds, I love watching them. On this day, perhaps because I felt I was one with nature as I had the trail all to myself on this off-season, week-day, the coots let me get close enough to see the glow in their red eyes.

Bean’s Pat: The Fairy Tale Asylum: My Miss Havisham

 http://thefairytaleasylum.wordpress.com/ It’s Margaret Michell’s Scarlet O’Hara for me. I had read the book, “Gone With the Wind.” four times by the time I was 12.

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A Morning Walk Around a Lake With the Vultures

Posted in Birds, Favorite Hikes, Favorite Places, Lakes, Nature, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , on February 7, 2012| 9 Comments »

 “As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.” Stephen Graham, “The Gentle Art of tramping.”

Black vultures claimed the deck that jutted into Creekfield Lake -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

Come. Take a walk with me around Creekfield Lake at Brazos Bend State Park. Bring your binoculars and camera.

It’s a cool, gray morning here at the park, where Maggie and I are spending a couple of days to hike and bird-watch.

The walk begins, continues and ends with cawing crows and dee-dee-deeing chickadees providing background music. Their not unpleasant cacophony is occasionally punctuated by the rat-a-tat-tat of a downy woodpecker.

I was surprised at how close this great blue heron let me get before it flew off. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I was surprised at how close this great blue heron let me get before it flew off. -- Photo by Pat Bean

The robins, titmouses, warblers and mockingbirds also occasionally add a note or two to the melody.

There’s a sign at the beginning of the loop around the lake that says “Don’t feed or molest the alligators.” You can be assured I won’t. I hope someone told the alligators not to molest the hikers. At least Maggie wouldn’t be their dinner. I left her back in the RV after taking her for an earlier morning walk.

Near the swampy, dark-water shore, three white-ibis are feeding. In deeper water, common moorhens are holding a large meeting, their shrill, screeching making it sound as if a dispute is going on.

But by far the most numerous bird I see this day is the black vulture. They have claimed a small island in the lake, many trees, a deck that juts into the water, the top of the park observatory and even the paved trail. They wait until I am almost upon them before they move, then only reluctantly and only to the closest tree, where they sit and watch me pass beneath them.

It’s a bit eerie, but not discomforting. I know they prefer dead things for dinner and I am very much alive.

That the vultures didn’t budge until I was almost upon them didn’t surprise me. The lone great blue heron that let me get closer than normal before flying off did surprise me. They usually fly at the first appearance of a human.

I had the trail to myself, and I was constantly lingering to look about at everything about me, the lingering red leaf, the mushrooms growing on a fallen tree, the feather floating in the water.

A small bench nicely situated beneath a large live-oak tree beckons to me. I sit and soon am being entertained by a small flock of bluebirds that just happen to be passing by. When they move on, I get up to follow. The bluebirds stick together in male and female pairs and I decide they are courting. As I watch a crow flies to a nearby tree with a stick in its beak. I assume it’s for starting a nest.

All too soon, I’ve completed the walk around the lake. What a great morning.

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Favorite Places: Pine Island, Florida

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Travel, Travels With Maggie, Writing, tagged , , , , , on February 6, 2012| 8 Comments »

“All things share the same breath – the beast, the tree, the man … the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.” Chief Seattle

Travels With Maggie

If you want to see wood storks, Pine Island is the place to go. One of these, perhaps the same one, sat in the top of the tree that help shade my RV from the Florida sun. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I spent a month on Pine Island, exploring such nearby places as the west side of the Everglades, Audubon’s Corkscrew Sanctuary and Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge, which were all wonderful places.

But if I wanted to see birds, which of course I always want to do, all I had to do was look out my RV window.

I was especially fond of the word storks that haunted the Dumpster area of the large RV park where I stayed. The also visited me and Maggie at our RV site.

Bean’s Pat: Ruthless Scribblings: 12 (and a half) rules for writing http://tinyurl.com/7bmd3d7 Some good things for writers to remember.

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Favorite Places: Amherstberg Navy Yard, Canada

Posted in Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , on February 4, 2012| 6 Comments »

Colorful river walk at the Amherstberg Navy Yard in Canada, where I spent a delightful afternoon in 2006. I watched the boats go by from the deck of a nearby restaurant where I had lunch. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 Historical marker located in the Amherstberg Navy Yard -- Photo by Pat Bean “Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes – every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man.” – Orison Swett Marden

 

 

  Bean’s Pat: Green River, Utah, Canoe Trip http://tinyurl.com/6royggz  Great photo essay of a section of the Green River that I’ve canoed through three times. Thanks for reviving the memories Jack.

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Remembering the Day I Stopped Trying to Be Perfect

Posted in Favorite Places, Journeys, Travel, tagged , , , , on February 3, 2012| 14 Comments »

“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There’s a crack – a crack – in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen

Travels With Maggie

I don't want to stay forever young, like Peter Pan, who is shown here through Epcot's imaginative gardeners, I just want to live life to its fullest. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I have a purple, business-card sized, magnet placed where I can see it daily. It reads: “Destined to be an old woman with no regrets.”

Some people get it, some people don’t.

I suspect the foggy ones never woke up at 40 to realize the only regrets they had in life were the things they hadn’t done, which is exactly what happened to me.

Perhaps I went a little too far the next few years trying to catch up, but I didn’t do anything to cause me regrets, like hurting someone or stop being a person who truly cares about others, including wild animals. .

I simply stopped being perfect and afraid of living my life instead of the one society said a southern woman should live. After all, I had already done the barefoot and pregnant thing.

A motto to live by. -- Photo by Pat Bean

So what does living with no regrets mean to me?

Mostly it just means being myself and not letting fear of doing something I truly want to do keep me from doing it, regardless of who might disapprove. It means not lying, because lies eat away at one’s soul. It means laughing at myself often. It means loving people even if they don’t love me back.

And it means, to paraphrase a toast my youngest son gave at his sister’s wedding: Living so that when I die, I’ll know the difference.

Bean’s Pat: Fabulous 50s: Five Regrets From the Dying http://tinyurl.com/8xtgjhj Great blog, and the one that got me rethinking the foolishness of living with regrets.

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What’s in a Wrong Name?

Posted in Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on February 2, 2012| 3 Comments »

 “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” – William Shakespeare

Favorite Places: Sardine Canyon, Utah

A sunny fall day in Sardine Canyon. I snapped this photo while up the canyon on an Audubon field trip. -- Photo by Pat Bean

It was January 1971 before this native Texan saw a snow storm, unless you count the piddling snow fall that Dallas gets about once every four years.

My family had just moved to Logan, Utah, where snow stays on the ground sometimes from December to April, which it did this year. I gave up driving because I was a wimp, walking instead the half-dozen blocks to my job at Utah State University.

Then came the night that I got an unexpected call from my brother, who was paying me a surprise visit and wanted me to pick him up at the Salt Lake City airport, 80 miles from Logan – and in a snow storm .

My southern belle hospitality personality clicked into place and I said “Sure!”

The 160-mile round-trip took hours, and I almost ran off the road in Sardine Canyon between Wellsville and Brigham City. I was using the edge of the road as a guide, and suddenly the edge disappeared, eaten by a snow slide that came close to blocking the entire road.

 

One of the many small creeks, fed by snowpack, that flow down from the mountains in Sardine Canyon. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I’ve driven Sardine Canyon many, many times since. And having an inquiring mind, I asked: “How did the canyon get such a fishy name?”

Nobody knew.

The most common guess was that travelers to the valley had sardines for lunch and left the cans along the way as trail markers. Coming in second was the suspicion that it had been named because of the small fish that packed the canyon’s creeks.

And then came the knowledge that the canyon everyone referred to as Sardine was actually Wellsville Canyon – and always had been.

Sardine Canyon, which the settlers actually did use, is located south of Wellsville next to Mount Sterling. Even those who know this, however, continue to call the larger canyon Sardine. Perhaps it’s because, fishy sounding or not, the name still carries more romance in its character than plain old Wellsville.

Whatever name it goes by, this Northern Utah canyon route, also called Highway 89/91 is awesome to drive. If you every get to do so, hopefully it’ll be a sunny day.

Bean’s Pat: frizztext: Aurora Borealis http://tinyurl.com/6uq7hmx I’m a suck for aurora borealis photos. Seeing one in person is high on my To-Do list.

 

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Favorite Places: Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge

Posted in Birds, Books, Favorite Places, Nature, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , , on January 30, 2012| 4 Comments »

 “Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.” – Terry Tempest Williams

Travels With Maggie

Yellow-headed blackbirds are common sights at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. -- Photo by Pat Beans

I first visited the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge east of the Great Salt Lake in Northern Utah in the 1970s. It was lush with vegetation and full of twittering birds.

Then came the early 1980s, when the lake reached a historical high and its briny waters took out roads, causeways and buried the refuge. It killed all the sanctuary’s green-growing plants and took out the visitor center as a warning of Mother Nature’s fickleness. .

It took a long time for the refuge to recharge itself, a period in which Terry Tempest Williams wrote “Refuge,” a book published in 1991 that was written when Williams’ mother was dying. The book weaves the landscape of the refuge and nature into a tangled web with the author’s struggle to come to grips with her own life. A very good read, in case you’re interested.

Another common refuge inhabitant is the snowy egret. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Since both the refuge and I existed at that time in the shadows of the Wasatch Mountains, the refuge drew me to it – often. I enjoyed its quiet sanctuary from the chaotic and stressful world of journalism, and also wrote about the refuge’s recovery for my newspaper readers.

I still vividly remember the first green-growing thing that returned. It was pickleweed, a salt loving plant that would help heal the soil for other plants. Those tiny nubs of green poking up seemed like a miracle.

Today, the refuge,is once again lush and a thriving habitat for birds and other wildlife. It’s there for anyone willing to endure a drive down a 10-mile, bumpy unpaved road from Interstate 15.

Maggie and I’ve driven the slow-going, rough miles several times in Gypsy Lee, who shakes, rattles and rolls over the bumpier spots. She’s used to such detours, however, and so far has not complained.

For those less passionate nature lovers, there is now a new Visitor’s Center just a few hundred yards off the freeway. It was built there instead of on the refuge proper just in case Mother Nature decided to get a wild hair again.

It’s really a nice center, with a created wetlands through which a boardwalk winds to give visitors a chance to see Mother Nature at her best. If you’re ever in Northern Utah, you might like to check it out. Perhaps you’d even like to take the 10-mile bumpy drive.

Bean’s Pat: Travel Photography: Most Unexpected Rainbow http://tinyurl.com/867pogm Have you ever seen a full rainbow? I haven’t. But this photographer did.

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Favorite Places: Wildlife Refuges

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , on January 29, 2012| 6 Comments »

“It is our task in our time and in our generation to hand down undiminished to those who come after us, as was handed down to us by those who went before, the natural wealth and beauty which is ours.” – John F. Kennedy

A Family of Tundra Swans

A family of Tundra Swans at Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Southeast Idaho. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 

Bean’s Pat: Chicks With Ticks: Stream of Consciousness http://tinyurl.com/6rkn8ss All about the chicks and their passion for Mother Nature’s wilder side. .

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