Traveling the Badlands and Beyond

May 16, 2013 by 6 Comments
Badlands National Park

Entering the Badlands © 2013 Bo Mackison

Rapid City. 6:27 am. Sunny and 37˚F.
Filling the car’s gas tank is morning’s first priority – $2.94 a gallon,
cheapest gas on my travels. I buy sunglasses as I pay for my gas.
Standard equipment in Arizona, I’ve three lost pairs in the car,
and I’m driving due east into sunrise.
Streaks of angry orange flames decorate the cheapest pair that fit.
No matter, I buy them, in a hurry to find the back road to the Badlands.

I am the sole traveler on Highway 44 for miles, the country’s rough, desolate, beautiful.
The Badlands rise from prairie, stark layers of sediment,
rock ribbons in tan, gray, yellow, black.
Grasslands and badlands – a contrasting combination
of pale green growth and rock erosion. Soul soothing.

Badlands National Park

Badlands National Park © 2013 Bo Mackison

My hike is brief – an hour in, an hour out – I make the time.
Hiking in rocky wilderness is good for what ails me.
I celebrate with lunch, Indian Tacos at the Cedar Pass Cafe,
visit the Badlands National Park’s Visitor Center.
Roam through the twenty site campground – more family trips
come to mind. I am grateful I’ve held tight to these decades-old memories.

I’ve avoided the mindless Interstate roads for 2100 miles, but no longer,
Back roads that head east are no longer an option.
Roads in South Dakota head to outlying ranches or farms, or towns 50 miles to the south.
I pull on I-90 East, set the cruise control, and become traffic.
Destination: Sioux Falls, a decent dinner, a quiet hotel room.

On my last night on the road, I wade through puddles in the cold rain,
enter the nearest restaurant,
and order a steak. It comes with a first class salad bar –
bowls mounded with fresh veggies along a twenty-foot table.

Contentment eases into my being.
Tomorrow I will be in Wisconsin,
but for now, a walk in the rain soaks me in Midwestern welcome.

—————

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

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Arizona Dust Storm

April 9, 2013 by 4 Comments
Dust Storm

Dust Storm, Hidden Mountains © 2013 Bo Mackison

 

Such fierce desert winds.
Dust devils spinning.

The mountains, peaks ten thousand feet
above the desert floor,
vanish in the dusty clouds.

Yellow ochre granules, desert spit
in frenetic dance, rise like mini-tornadoes,
slam into Santa Rita’s rocky face.

Desert powder settles on
the bristling Ponderosa pines.

Broad billed hummingbirds, in defense,
fluff to twice their size
and burrow their faces in their feathers.

Prickly pears cast faint shadows in the arroyo
through cloud filtered sunlight.
And pollen drops, like yellow rain.

—————-

Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She explores the desert with her camera, and occasionally is inspired to add poetry.

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Exploring — My Lawn as a Metaphor

September 28, 2012 by 6 Comments
Fully Floral

Fully Floral in Black and White © 2012 Bo Mackison

“Think of your free time, and how you spend it. Are you fighting your inner geography and planting a lawn? Are you going with the ambient climate and keeping it simple? Do you want to do work that is intense and may not fit the popular climate, or do you want to go with the flow and keep your work suited to an easy schedule? Or, do you want to create an environment that’s exotic for you or do you want to explore your nature as it is?” – Quinn McDonald

There are just so many options for spending my free time, and I always pack more ideas into my brain than one woman could do in a lifetime.

But that doesn’t stop me from adding to the list constantly. When I factor in my penchant for change, I need to consider several options for my front lawn if it is to be a metaphor for my free time.

At first thought, I liked the idea of a tall sunflower field.

I would be surrounded by eight foot high plants, all topped with giant yellow sunflower heads. Hidden in the glory of all those waving flowers, spending my free time wandering without being seen. But when I thought about the upkeep and the crispy brown remains of sunflower stalks once autumn’s frost paid a visit, those glorious sunflowers lost their appeal. Maybe I would get tired of being surrounded by a jungle of bright yellow flower heads the size of dinner plates. Too much intense color, over a long period of time, it might be too bright. Or too lonely, hidden away in the flowers.

What about a mass of low growing, take-care-of-themselves-flowers?

And while I’m imagining what I’d really like my free time to look like, in lawn form, I’d like a black and white flower yard where I can change its colors on my whim – like the original movie version of The Wizard of Oz which begins in black and white, and then magically transforms into resplendent  color. That would satisfy my preference for quick change – white to match a pristine day, red for a passionate mood, multicolored when I’m feeling  festive.

Of course, I’d need a magic wand to keep the flowers in tip-top shape, growing lush while remaining an easily tended ground cover.

And the magic wand would come in handy when it was time for a color change, too. My flower lawn requires a bit of magic – is that because I don’t want to do all of the work that fun sometimes requires (such as the wild rush that comes before and after a planned vacation.)

Perhaps I’d like a magic wand because I’m not the quick change artist I wish I could be in real life.

One day I yearn to be a landscape photographer tramping through the wilds of red rock country or the Southwest desert; another day I’m the artist curating her photographs for a museum or gallery show.

One day I am a photographer who is demonstrating the simple workings of a pinhole camera to a group of excited children; another day I’m an urban photographer documenting form and shape in the architectural details of abandoned buildings.

Maybe I’d even be in the mood for some meticulous, creative work. I spend much of my free time doing just that when I am in front of the magical computer screen processing my photographs.

What a changeable yard…um, photographer…

 

 

 

Filed Under: Art of Healing, Photography, Writing Practices Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Traveling East, A Spring Greening

May 1, 2012 by 12 Comments

The greening of the trees in spring rain,
see-through trees like a lacy negligee, the nesting bird
watches from the half-leafed trees.

Traveling in the Rain

Rain Travel © 2012 Bo Mackison

Calves balancing on gentle hills rub their noses in the wet grasses.
One stands wobbly, leans against its mother.
Others watch their mothers watching them, nibble a bit, suckle,
wander about the remains of last fall’s tattered harvest.

Darkest brown, Iowa’s earth, earth that dips
and dances. We’ve driven past the Kansas grasslands,
and not yet reached the prairie flat of Illinois.

See the family plot tucked tightly between
the edge of the woods and the tilled field;
Splintered posts and strands of wire mark its boundary.
Roughly hewed stones, two rows of three, the mossy inscriptions illegible.
Though one, a mother’s marker, is split in half – part upright,
part broken off and tipped into the rain-soaked grass.
The roughened quarry block, now a rest stop for crows,
splats of white the only sign of life.

Clouds hang gray, so low I yearn to stand
and push them high into the skies, high enough to punch an opening into the dim blueness
that is Midwestern sky, give sunlight to the earth.
Yet fog lingers, sky primed in deep grays.

We pass a highway sign, What Cheer, population 142. Twenty miles south.
I wish to see a town worthy of this name, but we’re on the fourth morning of steady travel.
There is no will to detour.
Tonight we sleep in the familiar ridges and valleys of our familiar bed.

First I will say hello to the house I left a hundred days ago,
walk through the rooms I know by memory, peer out the back window at the apple tree.
I’m told no blossoms remain.

Oklahoma, Gray Skies, and a White Truck

White Truck © 2012 Bo Mackison

I bought a primitive statue of a woman last summer from a stone sculptor the next booth over.
She toppled in a winter storm. My husband mentions this
as he pulls into the Save-n-Go in Dubuque for gas and coffee.

Tomorrow morning I’ll push her upright so we can watch the garden together.
We will meet, eye to eye, and reflect on the greenness of Midwest spring.

———————-

Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. After four days of cross-country travel, Bo is back home in the Midwest.

Filed Under: Photography, Travel, Writing Practices Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

From My Desert Journal

January 25, 2012 by 5 Comments
Sonoran Desert

Sonoran Desert © 2012 Bo Mackison

West, beyond the terraced land of copper mines the earth coughs up mesquite and creosote,
layered gravels holding tight the bushes’ roots, thorn scrub this land is called,
or desert scrub, a swaying land, dizzying,
blinding to my eyes unaccustomed to the torrential whites
of desert light, swaying, undulating, until the scrub becomes desert, the cacti appear.

Look and see the mountains rising from sea-level-deserts to miles-high-tundra, scan the landscape, the topography,
fifty miles in the distance there are observatories on Kitt Peak.
I see white domes.

Pale earth, palest of terra cotta, red ocher,
burnt sienna, burnt umber – a Renaissance painter’s palette,
the minerals – Sonoran desert colors.

Sky paint? The sky’s sapphire blue,
not mineral but precious gem, deepest hue of blue,
no smudges on the blue bowl. Pure blue, it carries my eye into infinity.

Distant Mountain

Distant Mountain © 2012 Bo Mackison

Distant mountains watch from their blue-grayed peaks,
peaks moored by centuries-old anchors, desert sands,
lands rolling ridge over ridge, cracked by water-carved-arroyos.
There is beauty in such surroundings.

Mountains interrupt the repetitions of waves,
a woven landscape of constancy,
the earth remains the same until close inspection uncovers an unsuspected diversity.
My mouth drops open, my eyes widen, my senses awaken.

Rough edges burnished with desert varnish,
polished in black patina, countless layers of microscopic colonies,
millenial crusts cover mountain faces.

Ever present guardians play their roles, here
in the desert – silent cacti, arid plants,
grasses growing amidst the sounds – calls, yips, whistles,
whispers, and yearnings carried upon the winds.

Standing in my circle of silence, the desert quiets.
I hear nothing, feel nothing except the sun and my own breathing.
I breathe — slow inhales, slow exhales — I breathe for the desert earth.

————————–

Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is exploring the Sonoran Desert.

Filed Under: Nature Explorations, Photography, Writing Practices Tagged With: , ,
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