Great Blue Heron
/I sat down on a bench to watch. The heron moved its neck slightly then turned toward me as if acknowledging my presence - a silent communication that seemed to say ‘be still.’
Frontier Texas! is a combination rest stop and museum - just off Interstate 20 in Abilene. The building is patterned after a frontier fort complete with a parade ground with adobe structure with overhands to provide shade. There are picnic tables in that shade! The buffalo silhouettes on tall poles turn in the wind; the flag flutters.
Inside the sculpture of Longhorns driven through water at the entrance was the first indication that this was more that we had anticipated: two theaters - one in-the-round - and holographic speakers talking about their lives with lots of more traditional museum displays in-between. The multiple perspectives this museum offers into the frontier history of Texas are more diverse than in older museums; they include:
- The Indian with family dead or scattered,
- The woman that survived capture by Indians and admitting in her later years that if she had known what it would be like she would not have to Texas,
- The former slave turned teamster,
- The bar tender than had been a lawman, and
- The cowboy.
The slaughter of the buffalo is emphasized with a large display and a pile of skulls with a red light shining down on them. The last stage of the museum is the theater in the round. The seats are sections of tree trunks so it is easy to turn all around to see the various parts of the unfolding stories: a stampede….and Indian raid.
Frontier Texas! offers a view of the time that attempts to be realistic rather than romanticized. Well done!
The high point of the visit for me was watching a Great Blue Heron stationed on a platform in one of the ponds. I’ll do a later post with more of my pictures. My sister insisted initially that the bird was a statue and it did stay very still for a long period of time - until it moved into this hyper-alert stance.
We were the only visitors to the garden on the day we were there. This jewel is not well-advertised. We probably would not have seen the snake on the pavers of the formal garden area had there been more people around. We simply walked way around him - letting him soak in the warmth of the June day.
I always enjoy water lilies but the added bonus I observed in this garden was a dragonfly laying her eggs in the pool.
I’ve included a slide show with the best of my other pictures. The model trains were a very pleasant surprise. They are depicting trains that were common to this part of Texas….and the use of natural materials to build the trestles and scenery around them was enchanting.
Clark Gardens is a place I’ll want to visit again.
The landscape in Texas is quite varied. Let’s see what we can tell from looking at this image of the area in the western part of the state.
At first glance - it is flat. Are there some low hills in the distance or is it a trick of the moisture in the air? The billowing cloud and the darker haze underneath gives the promise of rain ahead. Will it reach the ground?
The plants near the highway are predominately straw-colored rather than green. Further from the road, there appear to be green clumps of scrubby vegetation. Once disturbed, the soil does not support the vegetation that it did before.
Perhaps the area along the road is just the most recently disturbed (from the building of the road) and the area further away was disturbed early by grazing cattle. The original vegetation may be long gone.
Is the straw colored vegetation an invasive plant? Does it burn more easily than the more varied vegetation further from the road?
On the positive side - this is landscape of a wide open space. It is impossible to feel claustrophobic when the horizon is so far away!
Renovations to Dallas’ Love Field are still a work-in-progress but the traffic flow getting in and out of the airport is already improved from last December. When I arrived (and departed a week later) in June - I also noticed the artwork.
There is a large mural decorating the area near the security checkpoint.
And there is a “cloud” in the high ceiling of the central portion of the terminal - with birds and airplanes and balloons and butterflies…all kinds of things that fly - within its swirl.
There is a small gallery that displays copies of the airport art. When I went in to take a look, I found out most of it was installed in April.
All this celebration of the ‘new’ was before I headed down to the gate for my flight - in an area of the terminal that had not been renovated yet. I look forward to seeing the progress next time I travel to Dallas.
Back in August 2012, I posted about finding something to celebrate each day. It’s an easy thing for me to do and the habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. This month has been full of ‘little celebrations’ so I have one for each day up to today rather than the usual 10 for the month!
My road trip a few weeks ago took me from Dallas TX to Tucson AZ. The route went through Dallas - Fort Worth - Weatherford - Abilene - Midland - Pecos - El Paso - Las Cruces - Tucson…and back. On the way out we made a side trips into Abilene for the Frontier Texas exhibit and from Las Cruces to White Sands National Monument. On the way back we stopped at Clark Gardens near Weatherford. I have some future posts about those places. This post is about the scenes from the road.
It turns out that the pictures from Tucson back were the better ones - so the slide show below starts in Tucson and includes the scenes from the road in the three states. All three states have increased decoration of bridge abutments and overpasses along their interstates in recent years. They emphasize architecture, natural features and colors of the area. I captured some of the more unusual ones. El Paso seemed to have the most extensive and the most elaborate - in muted colors that seemed to fit the environment of El Paso.
The clouds were also noticeable. Their thickness built up in the afternoon of our first day of driving from Tucson. We had quite a rainstorm about an hour past El Paso. At first we thought we might be able to drive from underneath the big cloud…but it was as speedy as we were. The speed limit in that stretch is 80 mph but we slowed down in the deluge.
All three states have rest stops…many of them quite scenic. And they had picnic tables with shade - and situated to catch the breeze; we enjoyed picnic lunches even in the June heat. The welcome centers are even more elaborate. I took a picture of the sign and the doors of the one in New Mexico. The Texas rest stops included mosaics on the walls….and photogenic insects because they are so ‘open.’ As we got closer to Dallas we managed to take the route through Weatherford rather than return to the highway after our stop at Clark Gardens - so I got a picture of the center of town while we were stopped at a light. From there it was Fort Worth and Dallas traffic…not photogenic. We were all glad to get out of the car and stretch!
The fronds of ferns emerge rolled up - in a tight spiral that unfurls to turn into the greenry that always seems so luxuriant on the forest floor. I saw fiddleheads in biology textbook pictures long before I saw them growing. They were on the list of plant forms to look for along with horsetails and Indian pipes; none of them were easy-to-find in the part of Texas where I grew up because of the dryness and the city landscape. I found horsetails in Oklahoma and the other two in close succession when we moved to Virginia in the early 80s. The fiddleheads have become a continuing favorite for me over the years.
The shape is appealing. Spirals are like infinity into the past or into the future. The translation of that shape into violins and other stringed instruments is a reminder of the continuing importance of plant designs into our own creations; the pleasure in that shape must be deeply etched into the human psyche.
The tight components of the frond as they unwind have a gracefulness about them too. The compactness of the fiddlehead next to the mature frond is extreme. Mother nature is full of design tutorials that are effective and beautiful. Let’s hope that human engineers can approach their challenges with the same finesse.
The slide show below is a collection of fiddleheads from conservatories (Brookside Gardens most frequently) and our local woods.
I photographed the mosaics near my gate in Terminal D of the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. It was a last interlude after being in the Dallas area for a month…finally on my way home to Maryland.
I had seen some of the medallions before. The one I saw first several years ago is still my favorite: Cypress Trees by Arthello Beck. The slideshow below shows different parts of it.
I didn’t walk the whole terminal but there were other mosaic medallions nearby.
A bird
Concentric circles
Golden shapes and geometrics
There were a few other people that paused to look at the mosaics. They too made the circuit around each one to take in the images created from the small pieces of color. Most people hurried along their way - focused on their destination rather than the art under their feet.
Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from 2023:
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
Powered by Squarespace.