Synopsis of our trip at midpoint: I attended the Urban Forestry Council meeting in Madison on the 11th , did my “lobbying” with Senator Jauch and Representative Sherman re the DNR’s tree grants and the Forest Service stimulus grants, and we then drove to Weatherford, Texas via I35. We had good driving weather all the way, saw lots of hawks and geese and were more than happy to see son Dutch, daughter-in-law Leslie, little granddaughter Allison and Leslie’s parents. The drive south was more-or less a drive into spring, with flowering trees, shrubs and early bulbs and perennials appearing by Oklahoma City(redbud, pears, wild plum, forsythia, cherries), where we spent some time at the Cowboy National Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Museum, a great art museum with major Western artists, classical (Bierstadt, Catlin, etc.) and modern represented and lots of Indian art, and major outdoor Western bronzes by Remington, my favorite being "Comin' Through the Rye". This is a museum not to be missed if near Oklahoma (along with the Gilcrease Museum of Western Art in Tulsa). Northern Texas has received a lot of rain but the wildflowers still were not really blooming except for a very few bluebonnets and some yellow coreopsis and poppies. Everything we did in Weatherford was centered around dogs and horses, family, and music (our son’s profession; google Definitely Maybe to see some of what he is up to). Joan and I spent several days in the Hill Country bumming around ranch country but it was very dry and still early and there were no wildflowers at all.
On the 21st we left our Texas family and started the two day drive to Denver to visit daughter Eva and grandchildren Nickolas and Katie (son-in-law Doug is working out of town). Recession has fortunately not affected any of our families as yet, and by appearances has not greatly affected Texas or Denver. Texas has a strong, and it seems virtually independent economy, being a pro-business and low tax state, with plenty of its own energy sources. Denver is booming, as it has been for some years.
The Texas pan handle is highly agricultural, with cattle ranches, cotton, wheat, pecans, and peaches. Texas in general also has plenty of producing oil wells, ethanol production, and we saw massive new wind farms. Colorado coal is transported in mile-long trains to power plants, and the only energy sources we didn’t see were nuclear plants and solar panel farms, although we certainly weren’t everywhere. We drove throuugh the northeast corner of New Mexico enroute to I25, particularly appealing country with broad vistas of distant mountains, and extinct volcanoes everywhere. Here we saw large herds of pronghorn antellope, several with fifty or more to a herd.
America, it appears to me, has diverse and plentiful energy resources, if we choose to use them and let free markets develop them as economic conditions dictate. Our energy “crisis” reminds me of the story my mother used to tell about near starvation on a central Wisconsin sand farm a century ago; the crops and gardens were shriveled by drought, and the family went to bed hungry and the kids were dressed in flower sacks, but every night the prairie chickens went into the barn to glean seeds and to roost, and as she said, “we could have eaten wild chicken every day if we had only had the good sense to close the barn door at night.” We would have plenty of affordable energy, and clean too, in our country if we only had the common sense to close the barn door on what we already have.
We are enjoying family and good weather in Denver and will look forward to the trip home along the Platte to view the sand hill cranes. Of course I always leave my mark by pruning trees and shrubs, etc. wherever we visit family (keeps me out of trouble as well). I read that the Ice Road is closed, hopefully without the iconic advent of a pickup truck going through the ice.
In some places the robin is a harbinger of spring
In others it is when the bears wake up
In Bayfield it is when some guy
Goes through the Ice Road in his pickup.
Please pardon my doggerel; I couldn't help it, the Devil made me do it.
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