Prairie Days and Prairie Nights

March 17, 2017


Once again, I have allowed too much time to slip by without posting. Greg's Dad peacefully passed away at 96 years of age on February 13^th. We spent a weekend in Naples with Greg's siblings remembering their Dad and planning a service to commemorate his life.

Back on the prairie we have fallen into the easy rhythm of the days here. It allows for healing and contemplation, but it is also easy to become lazy, and fall into a daily and weekly routine. Very much like life in a stationary home. In some ways that has been a blessing. We can observe the changing prairie. The last of the oak leaves are falling off the trees in the days of continuous strong winds, and the new green leaves are bursting forth rapidly in this warm climate.

Our campsite at the end of the road and the rainbow!

We have the daily animal visitors that pass through our campsite at the end of the road. Early morning and again at dusk the turkeys move through en masse, looking like small dinosaurs. The lone male has been appearing with them recently. The ladies ignore him as he tries to impress them with his marvelous tail feathers. The crows and squirrels line up at the “Crow Bar”to drink from the dripping hose sprayer. One day we found a raccoon partaking. Calls from red-shouldered hawks, warblers, and other native birds resound through the hammock, as the tree-covered areas of the prairie are called. A deer or two wanders along the edges of our hammock. Any snakes or alligators nearby stay well hidden.

Barred Owl guarding the wild, heirloom oranges

Female turkey in a hurry!

Crested Caracara gatekeeper at the park entrance

The Crow Bar is open!

Gopher Tortoise about 18 inches long

When the weather is this dry, everyone needs a drink!

Box turtle leaping off the road.

5-Lined Skink

Can you find the very large spider?

The weather blows in and out across the prairie vista. The clouds scuttle by like a fast motion film. Last year was an El Nino year. Every part of the park was flooded. This year we are having drought and above average temperatures. The gators and wading birds are concentrated in the few remaining wet areas. The easiest for our visitors to see has a concentration of almost two dozen gators resting on the edges of Seven Mile Slough. The herons, ibises, and wood storks stalk the remaining fish and try to avoid becoming some gator's dinner!

The hot, dry, windy weather is ideal for prescribed burns and the fire crews have been able to systematically burn areas that have never been burned in the 20 years of the park's existence. Ordinarily, sections are burned every two years to maintain the health of the ecosystems. The current conditions are ideal for the hot, fast moving fires that burn the grasses and low palmettos without burning long over areas of oak trees and palms. They can be controlled by the wind direction and the prepared plowed up firebreaks. We are getting an education in prescribed burning, as well as spectacular smoke plumes and two fires that glowed while burning into the night.

Over 100 miles of firebreaks divide the burn zones

This area hasn't been burned yet. Lush stand of palmettos. Storm rolling in!

A new burn being started

Big burn 2 miles north of camp. Watched it burn all night.

The day after a big burn. Right side of road burned. Left side not burned.

Recently burned palmettos and Sabal palms.

Huge old  Live Oak scarred by many fires and storms.

Greg has lead a few swamp buggy tours, but had more canceled due to a flat tire and mechanical problems. He has a few more coming up before we leave in two weeks. The last two weekends we were treated to the use of the ATV Kabotas and the two of us spent long days exploring the 54,000 acre preserve. We haven't covered the whole park. The rest will have to wait until next winter. I also got to accompany Greg in a park pickup to do weed and underbrush cleanup around a hiker bridge. The three trips were amazing! We saw lots of different ecosystems, wildlife, birds, flowers, and butterflies. After a long search we found a hammock with heirloom “wild” oranges that we brought back with us. The second Kabota ride we got drenched in blowing rain. The Kabota has a small roof to block the sun, but no windshield or sides. We were drenched! But, since the temps were fine we enjoyed the adventure.

The tour buggy

The Kubotas are great for exploring

Greg's demonstration of where not to drive. Stuck in mud!

Kathleen does NOT get stuck!

The trail was obliterated by wild hog rooting!

A photogenic gopher tortoise

Checking one of the hiker bridges in the rain!

Gathering oranges from an old cowboy camp

Greg spent lots of time searching for the orange trees!

Pink tropical lichen

Lots of Spanish Moss on the big old Live Oak branches

We found grass filled trails that rarely get ridden upon.

7-Mile Slough is still too deep to cross here

Checking the primitive campsites

Clearing the little hiker bridge

Here are lots and lots of photos! Hope you enjoy them. Unfortunately, the majority of the photos I took with my new phone were lost when we transferred them to the laptop. A few had been posted on Facebook, but the rest are gone. Trying to figure out how to make lemonade... I'll post again after we leave. We'll be heading back to Maryland for ten days, and then will make a bee line for the Southwest US and hope to wander for 5-6 weeks. Late May we'll be back in Maryland and then up to New Hampshire to Geneva Point Center for our summer workcamping. I'm ready to move on!

The mighty Kissimmee River

 

Blue Flag Iris

A wet area full of the next flower.

A road less traveled

We found lots of animal tracks at this water hole!

Little RV House on the Florida Dry Prairie

February 9, 2017



I hope that my writing drought is over. The last several months have found me unable to sit down and share in written words about our adventures, as they have not been the kind of adventures that easily lend themselves to enthusiastic narration. Lots of loss and death amidst the normal progression of life has left me sapped, but I feel a turning in my spirit after some time sitting in the Florida Dry Prairie. Nature and silence, as well as the ever awe inspiring night sky is restorative. I am following this post with one I wrote on January 20^th when I felt stirred to share, but haven't published it until now. Since then we have busied ourselves with our volunteer positions at Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park, north of Lake Okeechobee in south central Florida. It has been warmer and drier than last winter. A great respite after the unseasonably cold weather we endured while finishing up our stint at Amazon in Kentucky, and Maryland for the holidays.

My spirit was healed by a hectic week with our almost two year old granddaughter who visited at the end of January. Introducing her to this amazing environment made us feel that we had a hand to lend in the unfolding of her consciousness of the natural world. She saw alligators, snakes, turkeys, deer, vultures, crows, cara-caras, wading birds, butterflies, lightening bugs, horses, dogs, and met the amazing staff and volunteers that give their care to the 54,000-acre preserve we are living on. She was awestruck even at her young age by the night sky and the “twinkle, twinkle little stars” arching over our campsite every night.

Let's go for a ride!

This lock won't keep a 2-year-old in.

We are beginning to formulate our plans for the time after our departure from here at the end of March. After a quick visit back to Maryland to visit family and take care of business, we hope to quickly head to the Southwest and have two months to wander to favorite places and new ones. Then we will return East for some summer workcamping. I am looking forward to returning to the nomadic lifestyle for a short time. Our lifestyle has been far too planned out and not spontaneous enough over the last two years! Enjoy some photos of our time here and if you feel inclined to, please read the introspective post that follows. Thanks everyone for your patience with my hiatus from the blog.

The road into camp

Our campsite

Our daily visitors

Prescribed burning to rejuvenate the prairie

Some of the few winter wildflowers

Mama with 8 babies

The dry prairie still has some very wet depression marshes.

Golden Orb Weaver - Florida's largest spider. Lying in wait for an inattentive bicyclist.

Repairing a hiker/ATV bridge

Good friends in the volunteer community

Heirloom orange from a pre-WWII cowboy camp.

We meet snakes on the road almost daily - Eastern Corn Snake 

Very grumpy Water Moccasin

Blue Striped Garter Snake

Red Shouldered Hawk trying to make dinner of a Striped Crayfish Snake

Florida Diamondback Rattlesnake, not happy to see our car.

Warm sun on a cool afternoon

Crested Caracara

January 20, 2017



Living in the Moment - The Beginning and the End of Life, and the Unfolding In-Between



We sat quietly at lunch in my father-in-law's assisted living dining room, and tried to give him the open spaces in the conversation in order for him to share what popped into his mind. At 96 years-old with congestive heart failure and short term memory issues, he is winding down a life filled with a passion for business and for his family. Greg and I had been filling the time with tales of our nomadic lifestyle when we paused, while Dad looked at the single rose on the dining room table. He commented that roses were so amazing because they start out so tightly wound up, but push from the inside of the rose to unfurl into a fully blooming rose. I was a bit surprised to hear such a thought from him. My mother-in-law had always been the one more attuned to the details of nature. Greg and I commented about the beauty of the pink rose on the table, paused, and then resumed our stories.



Ten minutes later Dad again jumped into a conversational pause and commented again on the awesomeness of the unfurling rose. He had already forgotten his earlier comments. His mind easily reaches back to commanding a troop carrier in World War II, but the current moments slip away too quickly. The longer his life stretches, the more he is living in the moment, and then the next, and then the next.



Our little grand-daughter does the same. At not quite two years old, everything is new. Living in the moment is natural, organic to her developing mind and spirit. She is just starting to understand the progression of the days, but too young to understand how long a week is, or when she can anticipate seeing Pah-pooh and Gramma again. She will come to visit us soon, and we are looking forward to the refreshing that a young life bring to our spirits after the past year with its ups and downs coordinating life on the road with the needs of our families.



Writing for the blog slipped into the back seat during the past year. Those of you who have followed us know that my first two years of blogging I wrote frequently and excitedly about our adventures roaming North America. We covered a lot of ground and it was fun to share our discoveries. At the end of our two year “sabbatical” we realized that we were hooked on our nomadic lifestyle. To continue we needed to find a way to stretch our monetary resources and be available to family in the East which included three elderly parents and a soon-to-be grandbaby.



The last two years have yielded fewer posts as we adjusted to workcamping. My creative spirit has not always adjusted well to our new work lives, but that is a topic for another blogpost! Throughout our changes I have struggled with the notion of living in the moment. I have always been future oriented, planning, dreaming, envisioning, looking around the next turn in the road. But, living in the moment allows me to accept life's changes as they come, and the space for peace to flow in. The last few months with deaths and changes and more death to come, have felt heavy and cumbersome. Living in the moment has been difficult.



I was reminded of the need for conscious, momentary living in order to allow the unfurling of our day to day purpose during the middle parts of our lives, by the momentary living of those at the beginning and the end of their lives. Both times are so elemental, basic. They are times for the first lessons and the last lessons, and they cannot fully reveal themselves to us unless we live in the moment. For a toddler it is normal, and perhaps it is as well as an oldster, if we allow it for ourselves as we near the end. But, how do we allow those lessons to unfurl in the time in-between?



Sitting at the dinette in the RV, in the quiet of the Prairie Preserve I am struck by the randomness of my day. I started out with the idea of a disciplined day to write. I knew that on Inauguration Day I would want to take a news fast. I would live in the moment, recording my thoughts, writing on the blog, working on my book. Instead, I fell down the rabbit hole that is Facebook, and the political news postings began to come in. One upsetting post after another. Living in the moment wasn't working so well!



I share all this in order to get to where I am today. We started our almost three months volunteering at Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park in Florida on January 7^th. Before arriving here we finished out our time at Amazon in Kentucky. It was a slog until the end. I wanted to be gone in order to begin grieving my Dad and evaluating the future. We went back to Maryland and had a lovely, but hectic time with extended family during the holidays. I needed to spend a lot of time with my 88-year-old mother trying to improve her living situation. We babysat and hugged our amazing grand-daughter, had some doctor's appointments, resupplied the rig, and took off down Interstate 95, that dreary, crowded southern route accompanied by the rest of the January snowbirds bound for Florida.



We both breathed deeply as we drove onto the 54,000 acre preserve. Greg said it was good to be home. He jumped quickly into repair jobs around the park. I began my two days a week working in the ranger office. We are back in last year's campsite, the one at the very end of the road with only trees and prairie on three sides of us. It was hard to sleep at first. It is so quiet at night. We have been watching the deer, turkeys, ravens and raccoon parade through our site. The sun filters through the live oak trees and the breeze comes and goes. The moon and stars work to try to outshine each other at night. But, I am restless, and now that I am in a place that it is conducive to living in the moment, I struggle. Without the perspective of the beginning and the ending of life, how do we unfurl and appreciate the unfolding in the middle? Can a true nomad be still long enough to live in the moment and not yearn for new vistas and fresh experiences?