My World Tuesday Frontier Days

Last Saturday I spent the day at Fort Scott National Historic Site in South East Kansas. The Fort was celebrating "Frontier Days". The Fort has a rich history for the time it served as an outpost on the "Indian frontier", serving as a Calvary Post, Civil War Encampment and the nucleus for a small towns growth.
During the day there were many activities going on as well as folks in period costume "renactors".
Despite the cold temps and grey skies folks seemed to be having a good time.
One of the activities was an black powder lesson, led by the Ranger. I somehow got the feeling the young boy in the red was a ringer.
This young man demonstrated several shots and drilling with the musket, loading and aiming these things while under fire must have taken an great amount of concentration.
A little girl skipped along between buildings.
There was a soap making demonstration right down to the rendering of the lard. I have to admit I stayed here cause the fire was warm.
Inside the mess hall.
A band rehearsed "Buffalo Girls", they were great.
And a Civil War Era Baseball game was "renacted" with the help of two boy scout troops who were camped nearby. The Troop from Kansas donned the Yankee blue and the other from across the nearby border from Missouri wore they Rebel gray. Cheers sounded out "Hurrah for you Jayhawkers". The Border war renewed.
No gloves, slight differences in the rules, grass to run the bases and lots of good fun.

When I left the Jayhawkers were ahead by a few runs.

According to the NPS website "Promises made and broken! A town attacked at dawn! Thousands made homeless by war! Soldiers fighting settlers! Each of these stories is a link in the chain of events that encircled Fort Scott from 1842-73. All of the site's structures, its parade ground, and its tallgrass prairie bear witness to this era when the country was forged from a young republic into a united transcontinental nation."
For more info on Fort Scott National Historic Site visit here:
http://www.nps.gov/fosc/index.htm

For more places from around the world visit here.

Morning Hike.

Bittersweet
Crawford County Kansas

Its been a busy weekend, these photos are from a hike Saturday morning.





"Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature's darlings. 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

Skywatch Friday

Some blues skies that I had to reach back a few weeks to find. We have had rainy cold days this week in SE Kansas.
These images are of a beach my wife and I visit once in a while. The beach is on a beautiful Ozark lake about an hour due east of where we live at a . We slip away there when time allows, its quiet, not many people seem to know its there, as you can see we spent most of the day there.

For more skywatchers visit here.

Saturday Reflections

"Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you." John Muir

"Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today". Mark Twain

Broomweed

Broomweed Guiterrezia dracunculoides
Crawford County Kansas

According to my well worn Owensby Prairie Wildflowers:Kansas; " Broomweed is a bushy-branched erect annual 1-2 ft. tall, glabrous throughout. The alternate sessile leaves are linear and 1/2 - 2 in. long. The heads are numerous and solitary at the ends of slender branches. The ray florets (6 to 10) have yellow liguate petals and the yellow disk florets (10 -20) are borne on a hemispheric involucre. the fruit is an achene with a crownlike pappus."

Reading a field guide sometimes is an amazing experience, these words the authors use roll off the tongue like a poem. Hemispheric, involucre, achene, crown like pappus.
Stand out in a field and read it aloud, I think even Whitman would enjoy it.

Seems like fall is here.

I hiked out the other morning along a favorite trail of mine east of town. Cold enough for a jacket it seems like fall is here.
The sun rose and began to greet the tallest places. The trees swayed slowly in the cool wind out of the north.

It was really very quiet as I walked along the trail.

The sounds of a few birds began to fill the quiet, a group of chickadees searching for breakfast. A group of flickers arguing with a lone red headed woodpecker over a favored spot I think.


The sun rose and warmed the trail. Fall is here. Things are changing quietly like a walk along an early morning trail and if we aren't careful or observant or just too distracted by everyday life we miss its arrival.

Skywatch Friday

A few photos of some incredible sculptures from last weeks Art Fair in Kansas City.
They twirled and danced with the breeze.

For more skywatchers visit here.