walking song, the mcgarrigles

Kids need a small dosage of danger. They learn to help each other.

Fireflies, Lake of the Ozarks

Caminante no hay camino, se hace el camino al andar.

[Traveler there is no trail, the trail is made while on the journey.]

Waiting

Left off the highway and down the hill. At the bottom, hang another left. Keep bearing left. The road will make a Y. Left again. There's a creek on the left. Keep going. Just before the road ends, there'll be another road. Take it and no other. Otherwise, your life will be ruined forever. There's a log house with a shake roof, on the left. It's not that house. It's the next house, just over a rise. The house where trees are laden with fruit. Where phlox, forsythia, and marigold grow. It's the house where the woman stands in the doorway wearing the sun in her hair. The one who's been waiting all this time. The woman who loves you. The one who can say, "What's kept you?"

the sweetest gift

One Square Inch

One Square Inch of Silence is the quietest place in the United States. Located in the Hoh Rain Forest at Olympic National Park, it is 3.2 miles from the Visitor’s Center above Mt. Tom Creek Meadows on the Hoh River Trail. Hiking time from the parking lot at the Visitor’s Center to the site is approximately two hours along a gentle path lined by ancient trees and ferns. The exact location is marked by a small red-colored stone placed on top of a moss-covered log at 47° 51.959N, 123° 52.221W, 678 feet above sea level.

Lifelong Friends Build Row of Tiny Houses in the Middle of Nowhere

Happy birthday Langston Hughes!

… and joy, like a pearl, attends all the needs of mankind … of such I dream.

Heirloom. A tablecloth made of seeds gathered around Lawrence Kansas. By Rena Detrixhe

"I am a hunter and gatherer of materials"

"Must-Haves” for the Holiday Season

1. Food 2. Air 3. Water

[From McSweeney's. A list by Aubrey Cloutier. Originally published December 17, 2009]

Farewell to Tarwathie

Lyrics: George Scroggie An old whaling song, written by George Scrogie, a miller at Federate, New Deer (near Aberdeen), in the early 1850s. Tarwathie is a farm in the lap of Mormond Hill, near the village of Strichen, and the song tells the story of a lad who left there to seek his fortune at the whaling. 

  Farewell to Tarwathie, adieu Mormond Hill And the dear land of Crimond, I bid you farewell I'm bound all for Greenland and ready to sail In hopes to find riches in hunting the whale. Adieu to my comrades, for a while we must part And likewise the dear lass who fair won my heart The cold ice of Greenland, my love will not chill And the longer my absence, more loving she'll feel. Our ship is well-rigged and she's ready to sail Our crew, they are anxious to follow the whale Where the icebergs do float and the stormy winds blow Where the land and the ocean are covered with snow. The cold coast of Greenland is barren and bare No seed time nor harvest is ever known there And the birds here sing sweetly on mountain and dale But there isna a birdie to sing to the whale. There is no habitation for a man to live there And the king of that country is the fierce Greenland bear And there'll be no temptation to tarry long there With our ship bumper full we will homeward repair.

Hundreds of year ago, purple martins on the east coast started breeding in gourds hung from trees by Native Americans. Now, they rely entirely on human-built housing, and it’s to late to go back. Natural nesting sites like tree cavities have been taken over by aggressive invaders – European starlings and sparrows. It falls to humans to build the houses that allow purple martins to survive.

Haiku fatigue

A class of schoolchildren was asked to write haikus. One kid wrote this. It's a masterpiece.