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Posted in Favorite Hikes, Journeys, tagged klutziness on May 13, 2016| 19 Comments »

I’m a Klutz

This was about my 30th time to sit on top of Angels Landing in Zion. I was never injure on the hike, which many people are afraid to take, because I always left my klutziness behind. I now need to learn how to do that on flat ground. -- Photo by Kim Perrin

This was about my 30th time to sit on top of Angels Landing in Zion. I was never injured on the hike, which many people are afraid to take, because I always left my klutziness behind. I now need to learn how to do that on flat ground. — Photo by Kim Perrin

And Age Hasn’t Changed Things

When I was growing up my knees were always skinned, I still have a scar from falling out of a tree, and I chipped a tooth falling on the sidewalk running for the school bus when I was eight. As I got older, I fell over roots while hiking, once slipped and hit my forehead on my desk at work that required 14 stitches, and things got even worse when I began birdwatching because I was always looking up and not down at my feet.

My first reaction on taking a tumble – I’ve pretty much perfected the art of falling without seriously hurting myself – is to look around and see who saw me. I’m always hoping nobody. I only broke my first bone, a tibular, three years ago when I stepped into an unseen hole on a grassy lawn just a week after I moved into my third-floor walk-up apartment here in Tucson.

My daughter worries that I will fall down the stairs. She shouldn’t. I know to be careful on stairs. I always hold on to the railings, always have. It’s the flat ground, except for that one tree, that has always gotten me.

Until recently, I just accepted that being a klutz, which also includes spilling things, bumping into things and knocking things over, is part of who I am. I never truly worried about my klutziness. But the bruised butt and skinned knee I still have from a fall the other day while carrying two packages that obscured my feet, has finally gotten my attention.

This old broad’s body is showing its age. Falls hurt more and the damage doesn’t disappear as quickly. I can’t do everything I used to do with the same kind of impunity as when I was younger. This acceptance comes with a bucket of tears, including a few being shed as I write this. It’s hard to give up the belief that I can do anything and everything, a trait that has helped me survive in a sometimes tough world.

So does anyone know of a class that will teach me not to be a klutz? This 77-year-old broad certainly needs to take if it you do.

Blog pick of the Day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: Big Sky and Big Adventures http://tinyurl.com/zcnphjh The movie review is interesting but the photos that accompany it are the real story.

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How the Magpie came to be my Animal Totem

Posted in Birds, Journeys, tagged animal totems, back to the godddess, Twin Falls Idaho on May 5, 2016| 6 Comments »

“To be a person is to have a story to tell.” —Isak Dinesen

The Snake River Canyon, Idaho. Wikimedia photo

A Story for a Granddaughter

When my children were growing up, I didn’t tell them stories about my childhood because I thought I didn’t have any happy ones, mostly because I thought no one loved me. Once I started looking at things through adult eyes, I realized how wrong I had been. But by then, my children were grown, living in far-away-places, and leading busy lives.

Through this blog, however, my children and grandchildren have learned many things about me they didn’t know, especially when a bit of memoir is thrown into the writing mix. Writing these stories down has also helped me understand myself better. It’s been one of the unexpected benefits of blogging.

So the other day, when I was with my oldest granddaughter, Shanna, and the subject of animal totems came up, I told her how the magpie became my totem. Afterwards, she asked me to write the story down for her. I said I would, and so here it.

My animal totem, the black-billed magpie. — Wikimedia photo

It happened when I was living in Twin Falls, Idaho, and working as regional editor for the Times-News. It was a time in the early 1980s, after my divorce when all my children had left home, and I had moved to this small city where I didn’t know a soul.

I made friends easily, but many of the women I liked best turned out to be New Agers, which is how this non-believing, stick-to-the-facts journalist got invited to attend a “Back to the Goddess” workshop.

The get-together was held beside the Snake River Canyon Gorge, near where Evil Knievel attempted his infamous motorcycle jump. The scenery was fantastic, as were the day’s activities. First, we walked down the canyon, getting rid of all the excess baggage we were carrying in our souls as we descended. On our hike back up the gorge, we picked up all the positive things we wanted in our lives.

I don’t recall what I threw away, or what I picked up, only that the experience was enriching. What I remember vividly, however, is what happened that starry Van Gogh night, as we sat beside the canyon around a campfire.

The workshop leader held a talking stick, and said when it came into our hands, we were to name our animal totem. I had never heard of such a thing, and decided all I could do was say I didn’t have one and pass the stick to the next person.

As the stick came around the circle, the women named many impressive totems: lion, wolf, beaver, elephant, golden eagle among them as I recall. When the stick, which I had planned to pass on, touched my hand, the word magpie came out of my mouth without missing a beat. I then went on to explain why this nuisance bird, a member of the crow family, was my totem.

It’s loud and raucous, like this native Texan. It’s also intelligent and playful, and its white and iridescently black feathers, represent a broad mindset of thinking, all traits that I believe I possess. I was still in a state of shock when I quickly passed the talking stick to the next person.

And that my dear granddaughter is how I got my animal totem, a bird that came into my life 15 years before I became a passionate birdwatcher.

Blog pick of the Day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: Wayward Spirit http://tinyurl.com/zoa23t7 Writing on the Beach. I know how this feels.

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A Chaotic Week Ahead

Posted in Art, Journeys, Writing, tagged plans for the week on May 2, 2016| 19 Comments »

Most recent watercolor and pen painting. — By Pat Bean

“To love doing one thing doesn’t mean one does not love doing other things.” – Pat Bean

And I Have No One to Blame but Myself

The painting before that. I’m guess I’m in a flowery mood.– By Pat Bean

My brain’s on overload after I wrote down all the things I must do or want to do this week, which involves six writing projects (two with upcoming deadlines), a Barry Manilow concert tonight, a play reading Friday night, a bit of painting when I can fit it in, dog walking and sitting (my part-time job), upgrade my computer to Windows 10, a delayed birthday dinner at my daughter’s Thursday, plus reading and cleaning my apartment, etc., etc., etc.

How does a supposedly retired person get herself into so much chaos? Something in me must love chaos. But I’m not going to have time to figure it out this week. I’m going to be too busy.

Blog pick of the day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: Where’s my Backpack http://tinyurl.com/jy4coej Find out how the Devil lost his thumb. Great armchair travel story.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Abstract

Posted in Art, Journeys, Nature, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged nature on April 25, 2016| 5 Comments »

Mother Nature Does it Best

Looking down at a small pond filled with reeds and stuff at Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge. — Photo by Pat Bean

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but Nature’s sources never fail.” — John Muir, Our National Parks

Blog pick of the Day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: The National Parks: America’s Best Idea http://www.pbs.org/ Don’t miss this Ken Burns film that begins tonight on PBS

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Rain, Rain, Rain

Posted in Birds, Journeys, Travel, tagged rainy days, Scissor-tailed Flycatcher on April 19, 2016| 5 Comments »

“The reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day.”― Anne Lamott

This was the rainy day view through the windshield of my car when I left Tucson a week ago. — Photo by Pat Bean

It Falls on All of Us

The above photo was taken through the windshield of my car, at the corner of Swan and Sunrise in Tucson, a week ago. Although the photo doesn’t pick them up, I could faintly see the silhouette of the Catalina Mountains directly ahead through my swishing wiper blades.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t see scissor-tailed flycatchers in the rain — and you don’t want to miss that. — Photo by Pat Bean

It was still raining 450 miles later when I pulled into the Whitten Inn in isolated Van Horn Texas, where I would spend the night before driving another 450 miles to Austin, Texas. This day, the sun came out, and I was even rewarded with a few patches of Texas bluebonnets whose blooming had peaked a couple of weeks ahead of my arrival.

After a marvelous, fantastic, awesome four days in Austin mingling with 100 writing sisters, I left Sunday afternoon to drive to my oldest daughter’s home in Dallas. I didn’t take a picture of my leave taking this time, but the top photo – minus the unseen Catalina Mountains – will work perfectly.

Some days we have rain, and some days we have sun. I don’t know about you, but I try to get on with my life whatever the weather.

Bean Pat: Hasty Words http://tinyurl.com/htdt9za For Real? This blog should give you lots to mull over.

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It’s All About the Writing

Posted in Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged Story Circle Network on April 18, 2016| 26 Comments »

The Wyndham Hotel in Austin kindly turned the men’s room into a women’s room this past weekend when over 100 female writers took over the premises.

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. ~Vita Sackville-West (I know I’ve shared this quote before, but it is my favorite writing quote because it explains why I’m so glad I can call myself writer, a title which took way too many years of writing before I gave myself permission to use it.)

Doing It With Sisters

I’m just hours away from spending four days surrounded by my writing sisters, where we gathered in Austin this past weekend for the Stories from the Heart Contest. It was a fantastic experience, and for way many more reasons than – can I hear a drum roll – that I won the flash fiction prize for my story “The Heart of a Dog.”*

And someone was kind enough to turn the urinals into unique vases.

The reason I’m sharing this with you is because one of the presenters, awesome Debra Winegarten, encouraged us to put ourselves out there to the world without apology, and that was just one of the many pieces of wisdom I came away with.

Now laugh if you will, but the biggest note of things to do that I wrote to myself was to put a note pad by the toilet. Doing just that I realized would better help me to clasp that net over the butterfly of words.

Bean Pat: Live to Write – Write to Live http://tinyurl.com/gpkwxyv This is one of my favorite writing blogs, and today its author, Lisa Jackson, encourages writers to enter contests.

*If you, men included, want to read my 600-word story, “The Heart of a Dog,” send me your email (mine is patbean@msn.com) and I will send you a copy.

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The Joy of a Wondering- Wanderer

Posted in Books, Journeys, road trip, Travel, tagged Sunrise, Texas, Thomas Swick, wanderlust on April 8, 2016| 3 Comments »

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

I don’t drive at night, but I do like to be on the road in time to catch the sunrise. I caught this one on my last road trip to Texas. = Photo by Pat Bean

Upcoming Road Trip

I just started reading A Way to See the World by Thomas Swick, who begins the book by explaining how he became addicted to travel while still a teenager. It’s kind of how I begin my just completed travel book, Travels with Maggie.

Pepper and I didn’t see any rattlesnakes at this rest stop on one of our trips to Texas to see family, but in an unmanicured area just beyond the building, she got into a nest of burrs that took me a good half hour to pick out before we could continue on our way. Photo by Pat Bean

While our stories are quite different, both of us clearly have a gene of wanderlust in our souls that made itself know at a young age. As I’m reading Swick’s book, it gets my mind thinking about my upcoming road trip to Texas for a writer’s conference. It’s a 900-mile adventure over familiar territory, so I know I’m going to have to look at the roadside landscape with fresh eyes.

But then that’s one of the best things about travel, at least for me. I just can’t wait to get on the road again,” as Willie would say.

Or as Robert Louis Stevenson said: “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”

And I’m going to follow the advice of Molsih Eddin Saadi, who believes we should use our eyes when we travel: “A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.”

Blog pick of the Day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: More Travel Quotes: http://tinyurl.com/3p8msma I love them all.

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Daisies and Other Flowers

Posted in Journeys, Nature, tagged butter and eggs, flowers, Jack jump up and kiss me on April 4, 2016| 1 Comment »

Jack jump up and kiss me plant. — Wikimedia photo

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies..” – Nadine Stair

Too Numerous to List

At one time in my life, I decided to keep a list of the wildflowers I came across on my hikes and walks, the same as I keep a list of the birds I see for the very first time. It was a decision that I quickly gave up as a hopeless task, right after I learned that a daisy comes in over 20,000 species and each, most likely, has dozens of common names.

So I just started enjoying the flowers, and identifying them by the name I liked best.

Butter and eggs. — Wikimedia photo

One of my favorites is the one I call butter and eggs, a non-native plant considered a weed that is now common across much of North America. It’s also called toadflax, plus such local colloquial names as brideweed, butter haycocks, bread and butter, bunny haycocks, bunny mouths, calf’s snout, Continental weed, dead men’s bones, devil’s flax, devil’s flower, dragon bushes, eggs and bacon, gallwort, impudent lawyer, Jacob’s ladder, monkey flower, ramsted, rabbit flower and wild tobacco, just to name a few. .

I can’t help but wonder where the “impudent lawyer” moniker came from, just as I wonder about the name given a small purple wildflower that I’ve often come across. Among other names, it’s known as the Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me-flower. It also goes by such names as the Johnny jump up, hearts ease, three faces in a hood, tickle-my-fancy, love-in-idleness and wild pansy.

So now do you understand why I don’t keep a flower list?

Blog pick of the Day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: Mr. Grumpy Gets a Bath http://tinyurl.com/goay5lg For fans of Ogden Nash and birders interested in grackles and coots.

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Texas Bluebonnets

Posted in Journeys, Nature, tagged Texas bluebonnets on March 27, 2016| 4 Comments »

“I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part and discuss it only with consenting adults.” – Molly Ivins

Texas bluebonnets are now in bloom. — Photo by Deborah Bean

And a Thoughtful Daughter

If you’re a Texan, you brag a bit. At least that’s how it is with all the Texans I know, including myself. While it’s not a trait that will gain you friends, we just can’t help ourselves.

So if you’ll forgive me, I’ll just say that when it comes to bluebonnets, Texas outdoes itself. Nowhere else on earth does this Texas native flower grow as well or as abundantly. If you’ve ever seen a meadow full of them, I’m sure you will agree.

Such a sight always makes my heart beat quicken with joy.

The problem for me, however, is that they’re currently in full bloom – and my trip to Texas to attend a writer’s conference isn’t until mid-April.

Because I know Texas’ bluebonnets have a short growing season, I mentioned to my Dallas daughter that I was afraid they would be gone before I got there.

In response she sent me the above photo. I’m twice blessed.

Bean Pat: Trees with stories to tell http://tinyurl.com/jl3ud9e You don’t want to miss this National Geography post. The trees pictured in black and white are magnificent.

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Cooks vs. Chefs

Posted in Food, Journeys, tagged chefs, chicken noodlesoup, chili, cooks, red beans and rice, tamales on March 25, 2016| 6 Comments »

“Too many cooks spoil the broth.” – Unknown, but both my grandmother and mother used to say it when one or the other got in their way in the kitchen. Perhaps that’s why I don’t like other people in my kitchen.

Everything tastes good when you're camping beside the Snake River in Wyoming. --Photo by Kim Perin.

Everything tastes good when you’re camping beside the Snake River in Wyoming. –Photo by Kim Perrin.

Get Out of My Kitchen

Jean, my best friend in Tucson is a chef who worked in Europe when she was young and now teaches high school students to cook. Her food, which I sometimes get to share, both looks and tastes fantastic, especially her beef stew, which is the best I’ve ever tasted in my life.

Or watching wildlife with a good friend in Africa, which Kim and I did in 2007. — Photo by Pat Bean

But Jean, although she’s always giving me a hard time about my kitchen techniques – like the fact that I use my dishwasher to store plastic bags and not for washing dishes — likes my food. That makes me happy because I like nothing better than cooking for people.

I consider myself an inventive cook and rarely make the same dish exactly the same way twice. It usually depends on what’s on hand in the refrigerator and pantry, and what ingredient or leftover I need to use before it goes bad. I rarely throw food out, which is why at least once a week I make soup from odds and ends of veggies, meats and leftovers.

I call it Refrigerator soup. Thankfully I have an instinct about what ingredients will taste good together and it’s only once or twice a year that the mixed results don’t turn out tasty, well at least to me.

I also specialize – back from the days when I worked full-time out of the home and put dinner on the table for seven people every evening at 6 o’clock – in quickie meals*.

Still one of my favorites from those days is to mix Wolf Chili (I prefer no beans) with Hormel Beef Tamales (including the juice) in a casserole dish, throw some cheese on top, and pop it in the oven until it’s hot and bubbly. Sometimes I also throw in onions.

I fixed the dish for Jean once – and she loved it. Now when she gets a craving for it, she asks me to make it again, as she only makes food from scratch. Chefs, you see, don’t open cans. Just us cooks do that.

Bean Pat: The ospreys have returned http://tinyurl.com/jp2pwlh This one’s for bird lovers, or anyone for that matter.

Blog pick of the Day. Check it out.

*Two other tasty, quick meals from cans.

Noodles and Tomatoes: 1 can Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup, 1 can tomatoes with chilies, and a generous splash of sour cream. A great late-night treat.

Red Beans and Rice: Cook three slices of chopped bacon with one small onion, then add two cups cooked rice and one can Ranch Style Beans and red pepper or chili powder to taste.

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