Category Archives: nature

Maui Diary 2 – Freezing at the Rim

Maui, nature, travel

The rim of the now-quiet Haleakala Volcano is at 10,000 ft. elevation, and if you factor in the fierce wind that blows up there, the temperature can easily drop below freezing, especially before sunrise, which is when we felt it.

We had packed our fleece jackets so as to be ready, and I wore gloves, hat, wool scarf. (I know, some of you are thinking, What? In Hawaii?) I instinctively stiffened up to withstand the buffeting, which made it hard to hold the camera or even smile for a picture. I could see with my eyes that the sunrise was lovely, but I couldn’t enjoy it; I just wanted to go somewhere safe and warm.

Eventually we did sit in the car to eat a snack, while I wondered if I would feel old and decrepit like this from now on. We took pictures of the Silversword plant, which grows on Mt. Haleakala and nowhere else in the world.

My blood was moving about as fast as the atoms in the volcanic rock, but Mr. Glad wanted to drive further up the rim for more views. I stayed in the car.

A feeling of well-being did not return for quite some time, and it was flowers and trees that brought full restoration. That story includes lots of photos and requires all of the next installment of this journal, coming soon!

Silversword

Snails and Schist Story

my garden, nature
with arugula flowers

A few years ago Soldier son gave me a lovely piece of schist, a rock slab that he brought from the mountains for me because he knew I would love it. And I did. It isn’t the sort of stone you can use for a path or a table or anything, because it’s too thin, so I leaned it against the fence for decoration.

All the snails in the area thought I had made that arrangement just for their sakes — the perfect snail house. I think I even posted a photo of it here once before. Oh, yes, here it is, last April.

When I was trimming the honeysuckle this week I thought I would check behind my rock for snails, and this time there was a cute little colony of them. I laid the slab down on the ground so that I could take their picture, which you see here.

I went into the house for my camera, snapped the photo, took the camera back, and got on with my pruning job. Crunch. I had stepped right on to the schist and broken it into many pieces, of which I decidedly did not want to take a picture, because it would be too sad.

Rain Songs

family, music, nature, water, , ,

Rain is falling and I’m happy. Recently I refreshed my memory bank of rain songs by means of the recording, “Rainy Day Dances, Rainy Day Songs,” by Patty Zeitlin and Marcia Berman. We used to borrow an LP from the library when the kids were little, and the songs have lodged in my mind forever.

On the recording there was also an instrumental tune, “Over the Waterfall,” played on the hammered dulcimer. I can’t find anything on YouTube by the musicians who gave us this collection that so blessed my children and me, but I did find a similar, simpler rendition.

I loved the silly dancing and singing we did to songs like “I Don’t Care if the Rain Comes Down,” “Windy Day,” and “Why Can’t I Play in the Rain?”

I bought my CD copy of the album from the Bullfrog Ballades site, where you can also hear samples of the songs. Today I’m having a lazy day being thankful that God is watering the earth again, as I let my thoughts slosh about in rainy images like this one of me (on the left) with my sister a long time ago. If you can’t play in the rain, perhaps a puddle will do.