Articles by Bo Mackison

A Day for Celebration

Red Tulip

Order Tramadol Overnight Red Tulip © 2013 Bo Mackison

go  Celebrate the day, the hour, the minute, the moment.

enter Celebrate the sunshine, the blossom, the greening of the spirit.

follow url Celebrate life and beyond.

source url Thanks to all the women in my life who love, live, and make a difference.

https://hymnsandhome.com/fall/ ————

watch Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.

Nebraska Panhandle and Beyond

May First Snow in Colorado Springs

Buy Hydrocodone Online Overnight May First Snow in Colorado Springs © 2013 Bo Mackison

Order Ambien Online Day Six – Trekking to Nebraska’s Panhandle

https://www.grupoursa.com/prom/ A perfect excuse for a day sabbatical from the car was a freak May 1st storm
that followed me across Colorado and caught up with me in Colorado Springs.
Set with a quiet room, a lap pool, and a breakfast bar,
I planned an all day writing/photography retreat – revival for a weary traveler.

May 2nd and I head northwest, city rolls into country,
cars angled awkwardly in ditches remain from yesterday’s icy sleet.
Yellow road sign: No plowing. 7 pm to 5 am.

Atop Scottsbluff National Monument

Nebraska Panhandle © 2013 Bo Mackison

I delight in beds of deep purple wildflowers on the roadsides.
Sheep, cows, horses share small pastures.
A trickling creek winds around thick-rooted bare branched tree relics.

Snyder, Colorado.
1st Street, 2nd Street, 3rd Street, 4th Street.
Asphalt roads in the villages, county roads are dirt ruts.
Circuitous, the South Platte runs wild with snow melt,
and snow clumps around fence poles, in the tree thickets.

Scottsbluff National Monument

Scotts Bluff National Monument ©2013 Bo Mackison

Clouds are famously scattered, every second grader draws this sky.
Looking for coffee, I pause at the Prairie Cafe in Stoneham.
Abandoned, a sign — “closed, be back soon” — dangles from a cracked window.

I cross into Pawnee National Grassland, though grasses are rare in these parts.
The Grasslands are home to tanks, army helicopters,
I pull over for a camo caravan led by a siren-warning police unit.
Army games and cattle farms dominate my road view of National Grasslands.
With relief I leave Pawnee and cross the Colorado/Nebraska border.

Scotts Bluff National Monument

Path into the Storm © 2013 Bo Mackison

My day’s destination – Scotts Bluff National Monument.
Scotts Bluff, sandstone rising 800 feet above the North Platte,
an eagerly sought landmark by travelers on the Oregon, Mormon and California trails.

And an eagerly sought landmark by this traveler, too.
I walk a rare mixed-grass prairie, listen to a ranger’s  historical stories,
experience her passion for the land and I have time enough to explore.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. A cross-country traveler by day, and an occasional poet. This is a poem in nine parts, because the trip lasts nine days. This is Day Five and Day Six.

Imagination – A Desert Wisdom Card

Imagination - Desert Wisdom Card

Ocotillo Birds ©2013 Bo Mackison

But if we learn to read the signs of life all around us, and if we discover that we are indeed created to be creative, then we can rediscover the power and resourcefulness of imagination — another aspect of soul.
~ Marjory Zoet Bankson

Ocotillo bloom throughout the Sonoran Desert.

They are one of the most reliable flowering plants in the Sonoran Desert, so reliable that migrations of hummingbirds rely on its nectar for sustenance. The bright orange spires pop from the ends of the ocotillo branches in wildly imaginative clusters.

Whenever I see clusters of ocotillo in bloom, my imagination awakens.

I see images of fluttering birds, or celebratory pennants waving twenty feet in the air. When the spent blossoms drift to the ground, I imagine the pavement studded with orange sapphires or paper confetti. What a rich life one has with an imagination unleashed!

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and, therefore, the foundation of all invention and innovation…it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”
~ J.K. Rowling

Imagination not only allows us to expand creative thinking, it also encourages new thoughts, connections, and understanding. It allows us to travel where we have never been, to dream of possibilities, and to identify with strangers as fellow members of humankind.

Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.
~ Gloria Steinem

IMAGINATION offers questions/reflections for journal writing, an art prompt, and a call for action:

  • Imagine the life of an acquaintance or even a stranger. In your imagination, compare and contrast your lives. Reflect on the above quote from J.K. Rowling as she equates the power to imagine with the power to empathize.
  • Spend fifteen minutes (or more) letting your mind wander. Imagine “what if?” Day dream. Doodle or draw while you are noodling with your mind. Yes, doodles can count as journaling, but also include words or phrases, if desired.
  • Art Prompt: Try this activity on a sunny day when you are indoors. Notice the shadows that reflect on the interior walls from the window light. Capture these shapes with a camera or sketch them on paper. Let the wall shadows trigger your imagination. Embellish the shadow photos or drawings using your imagination.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  Bo is creating a deck of Desert Wisdom Cards for exploration and discovery, using photography, with a Sonoran Desert theme – its myths and stories, cultures and heritage, and the desert’s remarkable natural beauty and resources.

Crossing Colorado

Black Canyon National Park

Juniper High Above Black Canyon © 2013 Bo Mackison

The Fourth Day – East Across Colorado

A half-dozen times I’ve circled Black Canyon National Park on vacation maps
and a half-dozen times we lingered too long at Arches or Canyonlands,
and Black Canyon was scratched. Who even knows there is such a place as
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park anyway?

Now you can count me among its visitors, I’ll keep its secret.
Here are steep cliffs, ancient rock, craggy spires,
and walls streaked with dragon outlines, erosion’s art work
on rocky canvas 2000 feet from flowing river to cliff edge.

Black Canyon National Park

Black Canyon National Park © 2013 Bo Mackison

Oh, the quiet places, open spaces, vertical wilderness
shared with soaring hawks and eagles.
Cloud cover kept the canyon in shadow, but the river’s song
sounded on the high mesa and wildflowers bloomed
in the roots of twisted junipers.

Twenty years getting here and I had only half a day
to see what I had missed, a half day to know I’ll return.
When the wind gusts spiked at 50 mph, I knew I’d pushed my luck,
but a tail wind pushed me half-way across Colorado.

Stranded Boat Dock - Curecanti NRA

Stranded Boat Dock © 2013 Bo Mackison

Colorado has fine scenery, but those low gray clouds packed with snowy potential
overwhelmed my yearn to pull over and explore.
Still, there was plenty to see –
the up and down rhythm of mountain, valley, mountain.
Tumbleweeds skirted the highways.

Cimarron, Colorado. Conjurer of Wild West.
Lakes half filled, driftwood sculptures lace the sandy edges.
And colors bleached by winter’s touch take on color — 
greening grasses, tree twigs in muted yellows, pinks, rusty reds,
Weeping willows in yellow-green tangles.
Calves snooze in muddy pastures,
content as their mothers graze nearby.

Dust Storm at Curecanti NRA

Dust Storm at Curecanti © 2013 Bo Mackison

Dust clouds swirl around my car at Curecanti.
I stop at another ranger station,
it’s a slow day for recreation, the staff ply me with coffee, maps,
highlight the safest route through the eastern mountain passes.
Another hawk sweeps past my car, hawks are my companion bird this trip.

San Isabel National Forest.
Steepy Mountain.
And then Monarch Pass. Fitting, Monarch is the pass to bid me farewell
as I cross the Continental Divide and head towards the plains.

Salida and a stop at Sally’s Cafe for coffee.
The road follows the Arkansas River,
running with spring melt, thunder-crashing into protruding red rock.
Fly fishermen queue for prime locations.

In the high desert town of Cañon City
I watch the last hawk of the day —
dancing, sky diving, it welcomes the evening.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. A cross-country traveler by day, and an occasional poet. This is a poem in nine parts, because the trip lasts nine days. This is day four!

Bricks and Passages

Mesa Verde National Park - Visitor Center

Love the Stripes at Mesa Verde Visitor Center © 2013 Bo Mackison

Day Three – A Colorado Day

37˚ at 5:40 am, I unpack the trunk to find my sweatshirts,
truckers start their engines and let them idle over breakfast
the couple in the next room search for their car keys.
Back and forth bickering, truck fumes. I grab my coffee
and a couple of hard-boiled eggs and pull onto the highway as the sun rises.

Mesa Verde National Park is only minutes east, and the new visitor center
receives last-minute grooming for a Memorial Day Grand Opening,
I overlook the bright exhibits on prehistoric dwellings and pottery,
my attention captured by dizzying stripes of light/shadow,
building, bricks, benches, steps.
Each stripe marks my time, passage on a sunlit day.

I follow the self-guided tour of Spruce House,
an Ancestral Pueblo dwelling abandoned in A.D. 1300.
Imagine life on the edge of a rock cliff with toddlers and elders,
and give thanks for the salad and iced tea I order from the Spruce Tree Cafe.

I meander through the gift shop, the museum, explore the ancient diorama,
and leave Mesa Verde — Green Table — hours later than planned.

Colorado Mountains

Spring Melt in Colorado Mountains © 2013 Bo Mackison

Durango is a city I yearn to explore, park my car, walk the streets,
peer in the galleries and visit the breweries, perhaps next year.
Deer and elk crossings, lights flash red and yellow,
I head out-of-town on Colorado 550.
Later I read there are 638 mountains in the Rockies over 13,000 feet.
I won’t claim – neck craned, muscles in spasm – that I saw all those peaks,
but I saw enough for one day.

It is spring thaw, the melt flows over the roads,
waterfalls course along the sheer rock walls, mini avalanches slide across the two-lane road
and snow plows patrol the passes. The scenery is mesmerizing,
I stop at the pullouts constantly as I don’t chance a glance while driving
these no-guard-rail curves and to let my courage catch up to task ahead.

Ribbons of rocky earth alternate with snow pack on the peaks,
stands of fir poke sharp greens into the blue skies,
clouds that peek over the mountain tops are
white as white – glaring white, brilliant white, white of purity.

The high country ponds are frozen and
roads to summer retreats with inviting names are still impassable,
hidden from civilization. Some aspen are greening,
and black tooth-pick lodge pole remnants
stand as reminders of the Missionary Fire of 2002.

Hairpin Curve on Highway 550, Colorado

Hairpin Curve on Highway 550 © 2013 Bo Mackison

A hawk’s shadow crosses the road and glides towards the San Juan Mountains.
Coal Bank Pass 10648 feet.
Hairpin turn at Lime Creek.
Molas Pass 10910 feet.
Sultan Creek.
The Colorado Trail.
Silverton.

Red Mountain Pass 11,108 feet.
Road as slalom, blinking avalanche warning signs,
rock slide mitigation crews clear the road,
we alternate driving the cleared lane which hugs earth, drops into sky.

It is still breathtakingly beautiful.
I practice deep breathing techniques. To calm my racing heart or to increase my oxygen levels?
No matter. I descend into Ouray, and follow the Uncompahgre River,
frothy brown and wild, into the valley.

The next morning, a jovial park ranger and I speak of Colorado 550,
“yeah, highest passes, drop-offs, most difficult maintained road in the state.
Maybe in the country. You drive that, you drive anything.”

Perhaps he was being kind in his attempt to legitimize my feat of courage.
I smiled and nodded. I accepted his announcement as truth.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. A cross-country traveler by day, and an occasional poet. This is a poem in nine parts, because the trip lasts nine days.