2/1/03  I was up and on the road at 5:30am this morning for a day of  trail work over near Mountain Home on the new section of the Ozark Highlands Trail. At mid-morning I stopped to give my bride a call, and she told me the terrible news. No way those guys would have wanted to die any other way. I have always been a space junkie, so took the news especially hard. Today would have been my dad's 90th birthday. He served in the Army Air Corps during World War II, and was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force Reserves when he died 23 years ago. He shared my love of space, and we watched many a lift off together back in the 60's. No doubt he was standing at the pearly gates this morning to welcome our seven wonderful heros home...........

2/2/03 After spending several hours today watching the television coverage of the shuttle disaster, and listening to many folks talk about the failures of the system and the budget cuts and the waste of time, money, and human life, I decided to try to look at the situation from a little different perspective. I put in the DVD of the APOLLO 13 movie. If you have never seen it, I highly recommend it, or the book. It is one of the greatest stories ever told, and certainly one of the greatest achievements that mankind has ever done. In the middle of that ordeal, when things were looking their worst, and the naysayers and doomsday machines were churning out so much negative thoughts at how terrible the failure was about to be, the flight director, Gene Kranz, stood up and reminded everyone that not only was the mission NOT going to fail, but said "Gentlemen, I do believe it will be our FINEST hour." And indeed it was. That's what the manned space program is all about - bringing out the very best that mankind has to offer. For what are we, and how will we ever know what we are made of, if we do not push ourselves to the very limits and see what we are capable of. What we find out is how great mankind really is. It certainly was a tragedy what happened to Columbia yesterday. But it also was, no doubt, another wrung in the ladder that continues to elevate mankind - and the United States of America - up to the highest places where we are supposed to be. We don't all have to be astronauts to push ourselves and see what we are made of. But they are some of the best role models we could ever hope for.

It is just before dark here, and the wind is churning up the wilderness with a great fury. There is smoke and haze in the air. Our outdoor furniture is moving all around the deck, and the wind chimes are going crazy. It was a warm and bright sunny day here today. This wind is coming from the east, I'm hoping it is bringing with it a great storm - we need a foot or two of the wet stuff. The wilderness outside is angry, and parched, and screaming out for RAIN!!! I'm going to head out into the wind and wander around a while and await the nighttime sky, and see if I can find any of the seven new stars that are now watching over us.

2/3/03 My wife goes out and listens to this guy in the morning as she is coming back to the cabin after taking Amber to the bus. He is the weather band man, and he is almost always right about the weather. Well, he is sometimes right about the weather. He was predicting rain and snow for today. From the sound of things last night it could have been the hurricane season - we were POUNDED all night long with heavy, gale force winds, topping out over 50mph. I didn't get any sleep at all. Pam loves the wind, so I think she had a very restful night.

We woke up to dark clouds swirling around and more of the same heavy winds. Pam went out for a hike, but I was deep into a project at the computer and did not go with her - I should have. She came back beaming about how terrific it was out there in the wind and tossing trees, and how it smelled like RAIN! Man, I should have gone with her - I love that stuff. But I was buried in this project - drawing the map for the new section of the OHT to go into the guidebook.

It took me HOURS to finally arrive with a 5"x  8" rough map of the trail and the terrain around it that I could scan into the computer to use as a template to trace all of the important details over. I started out printing a series of full sheets of paper of small sections of the trail (to get all of the detail), then pasted them all together. This first generation map measured about three feet wide and five feet tall. I reduced sections of it, one at a time, then pieced them together to form a smaller map, then I reduced small sections of it, then pasted them together, then did it all over again. The copy machine allows for a 70% reduction, so you can probably imagine how many times it took me to get from a 3 x 5 foot map down to a 5 x 8 inch map that would fit into the scanner. And then by the time I did get it scanned and up on the computer screen you should have seen all of those TINY lines that I had drawn on the original maps, now reduced many, many times and all pushed together. It took me most of the day, but son of a gun I stuck with it and finally emerged triumphant with an actual map of the trail! By then my head was pounding, both from staring into the computer screen all day, and from a terrible sinus condition that I seem to have wound up with.

Outside, the wind continued, and the clouds swirled round and round and back and forth, some dark gray, and some down right BLACK! But try as it might, the sky filled with those ominous clouds never did produce even a single drop of rain, much less any snow. Boy, we really needed it too. Do I sound like a broken record?

2/4/03 Today my goal was to produce the elevation profile to go along the bottom of the map that I drew up yesterday. This one was a lot easier to do, and it only took me several hours at the computer downstairs, the scanner, and at my big screen with the drawing tablet. All of this sounds like an awful lot of fuss for a single map, but I like to get my facts straight, and produce something that is actually usable. If you want to see the map and read all of the text for our new 25 miles of trail, you can go to http://www.hikearkansas.com/sylamoretext.html and see it.

My afternoon was spent making corrections for another map that will go into the reprint of the guidebook - where they have closed down Lake Ft. Smith State Park. I got some advance drawings from the engineers of what the new and expanded lake is going to look like, and it was a breeze to scan that in, then draw the new lake and proposed trails. I still have quite a bit of work to do on the text for the reprint - including cutting the text for the new trail down from ten pages to about one - that is my goal for the week.

Today is was sunny and not all that much wind. The temp remained in the 30's and low 40's. What a change from yesterday, with all of the dark clouds roaming around. At one point yesterday it had gotten so warm that I went around and opened up all of the doors and windows and let the cabin air out.

I have not gotten much chance this week to get out and hike around, and tomorrow I'll be on the road a good part of the day. But one of these days I plan to leave the computers behind and reacquaint myself with the wilderness. Tonight my head is about to split wide open again - from the computer and my sinus problems, but I am headed down to the sauna to breathe in some hot eucalyptus air and sweat a little bit. Things always seem fine when I am outside most of the day, but when I am tethered to the computer or driving around in the city I seem to fall apart. Getting old, me?

One Aspen story that I need to relate to you. Tuesday night is Gilmore Girls night here, and a night when Amber and I spend some time in front of the tube, together. Pam normally gets a quiet hour to herself, but tonight she had to go into town for a PTA meeting. Anyway, right in the middle of our show, we heard a noise from upstairs in the main cabin. Then a large, plastic bowl came bouncing down the steps. Klunk, klunk, klunk, klunk. It was the dog's water bowl, and apparently it had gone dry, and Aspen was trying to tell us to fill it up! Good dog.

2/5/03 For once I believed the weatherman and decided that we had a good chance of snow tonight, so I put off my plans to spend the day in town and instead remained at the cabin all day, and got ready for a winter storm. It was chilly outside, and cloudy, with a bit of wind. I spent all morning glued to the computer, working on the guidebook update. I discovered about 30 pages that needed to be changed just a little bit - that's bad news. Even if I change a single letter on the page, I have to redo the entire page, which cost me about $50. That's not the printing cost, just the charge to make a new negative for that page.

By early afternoon I had had enough of the computer, and busted out of the cabin to spend the rest of the daylight hours outside. Pam had been in town all day with Amber and the dentist and grocery shopping, and was ready to be outside too. We were about out of firewood, so our goal for the day was to cut up, split, haul, and stack enough firewood to last us another couple of weeks.

Man oh man it was GREAT to be working outside! I shed my special  "wood chopping" jacket in just a few minutes as the heat began to build up. I cut up logs into blocks, then hoisted them one at a time onto the splitter - Pam was at the controls. Then we loaded the split wood into the bucket of the tractor and Pam took them down to the cabin and dumped them in the carport for stacking later. While she was off on the tractor I cut up more logs into blocks.

The air heavy with moisture, and at just the right temperature so that I could work hard and not sweat. Funny how just a few days ago it was 70 degrees and I spent time looking for the first signs of the trout lilies that would soon appear. The temp got down into the low 20's this morning, and at 37 had reached its high for the day. Sounds just like winter in the Ozarks!

Aspen had been spending a good bit of time trying to get into this one block of wood that had a hollow middle. He would paw and growl and bark at each end, then dig up the earth underneath the log, then roll it over and start the process all over again. Eventually it was that logs turn to be hoisted up onto the log splitter. Aspen looked a little bit perturbed, but I assured him that there was probably nothing inside the log after all of this time, and if there was, the log was about to be opened up so he could get at whatever it was inside.

Aspen sat by intently as Pam worked the lever and the log split open. There were acorns and a small fuzzy nest inside. The log had been burned out at one time, and the little caves inside were lined with a little bit of black wood. As we all were standing there inspecting the log - now split in half - a little field mouse appeared in one of the little cavities. Aspen got real excited and jumped up on top of the pile of split logs next to the log splitter, then jumped right on top of the log we had just split up. The mouse quickly realized that his home had been destroyed, and jumped out into the air and scampered off as quick as he could. One thing about my dog Aspen that I am both proud of and ashamed of is that while he is indeed of world champion field trial stock, he is also a very good mouser - he immediately flew off of the wood pile and pounced right on top of the mouse, picking it up in his teeth and trotting off into the woods with his prize. Good dog!

Once we finished up the log splitting for the day and loaded up the last batch of logs into the tracker bucket, Pam headed off towards the cabin to dump it. I put away the equipment and began to hike back thought the woods to the cabin. What happened next would be another one of those special Cloudland moments. As I hiked along I could just barely hear the tractor motor further on down the hill. But I could also hear another sound, one that I could not immediately identify. As my pace quickened the tractor noise got louder, and so did the other sound. As Pam and the tractor came into sight I realized what the other sound was - it was Pam, singing at the top of her lungs! I don't know too many people - much less a woman - who enjoys doing manual labor as much as my wife, and hearing her being so comfortable and at ease with her location in life brought a smile to my heart. One of the great things that I worried long and hard about before proposing to this wonderful lady was that I would be taking her away from her city life and friends, and putting her right out in the middle of nowhere, often to fend for herself. She has taken to this place like a duck on a June bug, and seems to enjoy most of her times and life here. Whew!

Later in the evening Amber read a book to me about Sacagawea. It was kind of fun because I told Amber a few facts that were not in the book, and had told her about visiting her gravesite on the Shoshone Indian Reservation in Wyoming - a place we would take Amber soon - and Amber read many new facts to me from the books. While I was not at all interested in history as a child, I am now, and am glad that my child is, as we both can learn at the same time.

2/6/03 When the alarm went off at 5:30am I got up and expected the forest outside to be covered with a blanket of freshly-fallen snow. And it was!!! Yippie, snow! No school today, and snow ice cream for breakfast!

I got up and built a big fire in the fireplace (Pam and Amber had filled the wood box inside the cabin before going to bed last night - good girls!), made some tea, and sat with Amber in front of the fireplace watching the birds play outside. Later, while I was sitting in the hot tub, the snow coming down and hitting me in the face felt like I was getting a facial massage from a sweet angel with slightly chilled fingers - I could just barely feel the snow as it hit my skin, and it melted immediately on contact. By the time I was ready to get out my hair had turned white (YES, I do still have some hair!).

Back in the days of my youth when I had my very first hot tub, it was a standing order that every time it snowed more than an inch there was a "Hot Tub and Buttered Rum Snow Roll" party at my house. I was much younger then, unattached, and able to consume large quantities of buttered rums. Scott, Carolyn, Luke, Jody, Straight John, Liz (and her various roommates), plus other females who shall remain nameless, and The Wildman would all show up, and after a few rounds of Hot Buttered Rums we would be ready for the ritual of rolling in the snow. It is a strange phenomenon that after you spend a little while submersed in 105 degree water and then go out and lay down and roll in the snow that you really don't feel the chill of the snow all that much. And then when you jump back into the hot tub there isn't much sensation at all - at least for a full minute. Then you get a tingle that flows through your entire body. Yep, those days are long gone for me, thank goodness!

Oh yea, it was at one of those hot tub parties where I came up with the name "Wildman" for the Wildman. We had all gone out and rolled in the snow and returned to the tub. Several minutes later we noticed that the future Wildman was not with us. There was an instant of panic that shot through us because this man was pushing 70 years old, and was out there laying in a foot of snow. Just then we all turned and saw him - there he was, burrowed down in the snow, wearing - well, I'll just have to let you imagine what he was or was not wearing - singing some unknown song, and making snow angels with a huge grin on his face! "He's a WILDman!" I exclaimed, and the name has stuck.

Looks like we've received about 3.5 inches of snow so far this morning, and it is still coming down, although it is a very light and fluffy snow. Walking around in it barefoot after I got out of the tub felt like I was walking on one of those space-age memory foam mattresses. The birds outside the window are going nuts - Pam just filled up all of their feeders. They have learned that there is always a good meal at Cloudland. So far there is not enough snow to ski or snowshoe in yet, and we probably won't get enough this time - we need at least 6-7 inches of good snow for that. I plan to have a bowl or two of snow ice cream today, and get hit a few times with snowballs.

Here are a few scenes around the cabin this morning:

But before I had a chance to go out and play, I got to thinking about the 2004 Arkansas Wilderness calendar, and how I probably didn't have any photos that I felt good enough about to put in the calendar for winter shots. The snow that was on the ground today was the best snow we have had this year, I probably should get off of my tush and go out and try to take a few pictures! So within minutes I had gathered up all of my "real" camera gear, stuffed a backpack with film, three pairs of gloves, a snack, water, and an umbrella, and headed out the door with my heavy wooden tripod in hand.

Winter photos always look better when there is water in them, and I knew where some of the best water in the country was - the Buffalo River! So I headed on down the ladder trail, slipping and sliding with each step. Actually once I got down through the bluffline via the old ladder, I veered off of the trail because it was pretty difficult trying to keep my feet under me with all of the snow-covered loose rocks there. Certainly there was no easy way to get down the 700 vertical feet that at times went nearly straight down the hill, but I managed to make my way down the steep benches without falling head over heels. My strategy was to plan a route that would keep me within grasping distance of trees all the way down - that was how I made my way down, by swinging from one tree to the next, my feet sliding along under the snow simply to help keep my balance.

Soon I had landed at the bottom, and was pleasantly surprised to find Whitaker Creek containing ample water. That would be a second goal for the trip - to hike up Whitaker Creek and see what I could find there. But first I had to get some wide-open shots of the Buffalo River, with pools of water, snow-covered boulders everywhere, and snowy trees standing watch.

I found out pretty quickly that the best route up the river was not the best place to look for photos. I needed to simply hike upstream out from the bank a ways, where I could follow the river through the woods with good footing. But when I did that, I could not see and make judgements about the actual scenes along the river. So I had to make my way directly along the river bank, and sometimes out in the river itself, if there were enough rocks to hop on.

I stopped and set up the tripod and shot a few photos at one scene, then moved on and found another shot. Those rocks along the river were rather slippery, and it was an often comical sight as I tried to get into position without plunging into the river. I really wanted to keep my feet dry - which meant that I needed to keep out of water deeper than about three or four inches - I needed to keep the rest of me dry, so I was particularly careful around the deeper pools of water.

Two different views of the same Buffalo River scene

The river was actually flowing pretty well, and making some nice music. There was a lot more water than I had expected, especially being right in the middle of the worst winter drought in many decades. And while I found many great snowy scenes, I never really found "THE" shot that I was looking for.

I worked my way further upstream, at one point leaving the river bank and going out into the woods because the brush and briars were so darn thick. Then I would veer back to the river again when I felt like there might be a good scene that I needed to check out. After looking at each scene, and either taking photos or not, I would tell myself that I would only go on to the next spot, then turn around and head for Whitaker Creek. But each time I returned to the river, there looked to be just one more great spot upstream that I needed to go check out. Needless to say, I hiked on upstream a good long ways, and shot a lot of photos.

More of the Buffalo

One thing that I was surprised to find out today were hundreds (yes, hundreds, really) of witch-hazel bushes in full bloom. They like to crowd around river and stream banks and pop out in the middle of winter to add just a little bit of bright, colorful glory to the monochrome landscape. I guess all of them bloomed last weekend when the temp was up to 70 degrees, and then got caught out in the cold and snow today, still open and beaming at the world. My goodness how incredible the fragrance must have been in this valley last weekend! Their scent is the finest natural one that I know of. Even today, with their blooms mostly buried in snow, that delicate and sweet fragrance that is always so welcome hung in the air, filled my nostrils and made me smile.

Witch-hazel in bloom

Before long it began to snow again - that was both good news and bad news. I really didn't want the snow coming down while I was shooting - the snowflakes are really visible in the photos, but they blur just enough to make the image a little less sharp. The snowfall would be good because the snow that we had this morning was already melting off and into the ground and so I need more snow! When I did stop to take pictures while it was snowing I pulled out my trusty umbrella to shield the camera from the snow - I've gotten many strange looks for packing that little umbrella while heading into the woods to take pictures either on sunny days or in the snow - it always seems to come in handy!

At one point I finally had gone as far as I wanted to go, but I just wanted to look around this one area a little bit, so I put down my camera gear and spent the next 30 minutes exploring,. I didn't find a shot that I had to take, but I did get to enjoy stomping around at the edge of the river and seeing some neat stuff up close. At last I shouldered my pack and headed back downstream.

This time I didn't stick close to the river, but instead hiked out in the woods, where the going was easier and the terrain was different. A lot of folks think that my "job" is nothing but play all the time, but the truth is that up to that point my trip had been nothing BUT work, both physically and mentally - my mind was always working, squinting, searching, trying to find a suitable image, then going through the motions out there in the cold and wet to set up the camera gear and insure a good quality image.

But now on my return hike downstream, I was not looking for photos, nor did I have a particular route in mind - I only wanted to hike in the general direction of downstream until I arrived at Whitaker Creek. And the hiking was easy out there in the open woods - no briars or thick brush to fight, no slippery rocks to scamper across. The next period of time turned into one of the most enjoyable hikes of my entire life!

And I'm not really sure what made it was such a great hike - it was not unlike many hundreds that I have done in the snow before. But it was different, of course it was. The snow was coming down all around me, the footing was great, there were giant trees and moss-covered boulders everywhere. And my mind was free to wander just as much as my body was. And wander I did, both ways. I simply floated wherever I wanted to.  I'm not really sure if it took me 30 minutes to arrive at Whitaker Creek, or an hour, or two hours - time was really unimportant.

Moss meets snow

When I reached the mouth of Whitaker Creek I turned left and headed upstream. I was back at work now, both mentally and physically - I explored every visual option there was as I moved along, and had a tough time moving along because the snow-covered rocks along the stream were very slick. And there were many fallen trees to climb up and over, and steep banks on one side or another to negotiate my way around.

I stopped and shot one scene, but it just wasn't right. The snow was coming down even heavier now, and I was running out of film. And gloves. I had taken three pairs of gloves with me on this trip, and I had already gone through two pairs and was on my third pair. Since I have to carry the heavy tripod in my hands and work the camera controls, I need some protection on my hands, and it has to be thin protection so that I can work those controls. I have always had trouble keeping my hands warm in the winter, no matter if I am cross-country skiing, sledding, taking pictures, or simply throwing snowballs. I simply don't like or can use bulky gloves or mittens, but still need some warmth on my hands. My bride found the solution to most of my problems - tiny kids gloves from Wal Mart, three pair for $2. That's right, most of these days if you see me wearing gloves, they will be Amber's. These little gloves are amazing, and while fit my daughter's tiny hands just fine, also stretch out to fit my hands like, well, like a glove. And they are warm, although not waterproof. That is why I took along three pairs today.

OK, one last stop, and I would need to begin the long and steep climb back up to the cabin. I had drifted away from the creek and was hiking up high to go around an impassible area along the creek, and ended up having to come down a nearly-vertical side of the hill to get back down to the creek. There was one last good scene right there where I crossed the creek. The snow was coming down hard now, but I wanted to get this shot. Out came the umbrella, and within ten minutes I had my shot. IT'S A WRAP!

The last shot of the day - Whitaker Creek

I packed all of my gear safely away and headed out. The going was tough, hand over fist, for the longest time. One thing about doing this sort of thing in the snow is that where you normally can control where you put your foot down to avoid a rock at the wrong angle or a hidden trap under the snow, it is impossible to tell what is under the snow until you actually put your foot down. I tried to always have a hold on - or be within reaching distance of - some sort of hand hold in case my feet went out from under me on the side of the hill. And it was a sapling that saved my can more than once. As I was nearing what seemed like the longest climb of my life (up the FIRST bench), I came up over a ledge and found an oasis - a rock overhang with ample DRY ground and plenty of dry leaves where I could take a break.

I simply hadn't realized how exhausted and chilled I was, but man when I sat down in those leaves and leaned back against the wall it felt like the finest hotel in the world! I was one tired and worn out puppy. My legs and arms ached, and my head was throbbing. I pulled off my wet gloves and dried my hands on a sport towel that I had hidden in the pouch of my pile sweatshirt. I drank a liter of water and munched on a granola bar. Yes indeedy, life was good in my little wilderness oasis. And just a few feet away, the snow was really coming down hard. Had I needed to, I could have easily built a fire and spent the night right there and been as comfortable as a mouse. But I still had a very tall hill to climb, and no telling how much more daylight to do it in. Besides, I had my bride and a roaring fire waiting for me back at the cabin.

Wow, what a difference my rest stop made in my mental and physical strength! The next 20 minutes were tough, but I attacked that hillside with renewed vigor and a smile on my face, and in no time was standing at the base of the tall bluff just below the cabin. I was REALLY glad to see that bluff! I finally dragged my old, weary and throbbing body up onto the front deck of the cabin, all ready for a big hug from the Mrs. and a cup of hot chocolate and a warm dog at my feet (I had left Aspen behind so that he would not mess up the snow in the pictures). Yet when I opened the front door I found Pam and Amber all dressed up and heading right out that very same door - "We're going on a hike - want to come with us?" Oh man, my spirit sank into the floor.

As it turned out I had to go up to the water storage tank on top of the hill and check on our well pump that was not working properly - it actually was pumping TOO MUCH water out of the ground and would not shut off. I needed to see if I could figure out what the problem was. So I waved goodbye to the ladies - who were already disappearing into the woods - and trudged further still up the hill towards the holding tank. When I reached the tank I realized that I could not work the problem with the water level where it was, so I closed it up and hiked on through the woods to join my girls.

I found them in the east meadow, and the three of us spent the next 30 minutes or so hiking on around the mountain. I must say that while I did enjoy the hike and their company immensely, it was obvious that they had a great deal more energy than did I! The entire time we were hiking the snow was coming down in big flakes. Good grief, if that keeps up I'm going to have to hike back down to the river again tomorrow and take more pictures! Although thank goodness I only have one roll of film left - I can shoot perhaps TWO scenes with one roll of film, so the hike would not be as long or tough as the one today.

It will probably be another week before I see the results of my shooting today, but win or loose I was glad to have made the trip. If any of them turn out well you just might see one on next year's calendar! It is getting late now, and there is a bucket of very hot and steaming water out on the back deck that is calling my name. I think I'll go jump in and then call it a day, another terrific winter day in the Ozarks!

2/7/03 At some point during the night someone reached out and pulled the big insulating blanket of snow clouds off of the Ozarks, and the temperature plunged. It was 8 degrees just before dawn. What a change from the past couple of dark, cloudy days, as the sun popped up and rose into clear blue skies. And all of that snow - it was transformed from soft cotton into a hard crust containing a billion shimmering diamonds.

The view out the window looking south this morning

Birds of all sizes, shapes and colors crowded around the feeders this morning, and the two cats huddled at the front door, waiting for Amber to get up and feed them.

My muscles and bones have already recovered from my long trek yesterday, helped out in part I'm sure by a long soak in the steaming bubbles last night. I didn't get too much sleep though, as visions of my out-of-control body tumbling down a mountainside kept passing through my brain. Thinking back, I realized that I never slipped and fell a single time yesterday. The snow was just at the perfect state of composition and temperature to grip onto my boots and hold on tight. We really didn't get any additional snow during the night, so still too little to ski on. We have had more snows this year, but none of them have been very deep. Late winter is often when we will get that really deep stuff, and I will have the skis all waxed up and ready when /if it comes.

It remained bright and sunny all day, and the temp inched up towards the freezing mark, beginning to melt some of the snow.  Amber was out of school again today, so she got to spend much of the day doing chores, cleaning up her room, the cabin, and helping me out with some of my chores. One of those was to go up to the office on the hill and bring back stacks of padded envelopes. Since moving the office down to the cabin last year, I have slowly been moving the supplies needed to process book orders down here two. But I have never had the space for the large padded envelopes that we use to mail out picture books and calendars in. Last week I completed some new storage facilities down in the exercise/outdoor room, which now will double (or triple) as the office storage room.

Amber (loaded with envelopes) and Lucy on the trail back from the office

One of these days, I will have everything organized at Cloudland - in fact I have given myself until the first day of spring 2003 to get that done. It will include building many large shelves up in the tractor shed and more of the same in the warehouse, plus a few more shelves in the workshop area here at the cabin, then actually putting everything in its place - that's a big slice of cake to cut off, but I think I might be able to do it.

2/8/03 Today was a nearly identical copy of yesterday as far as the weather went - only the temp was a little bit warmer and a lot of the snow melted. Normally with a snow like this past one 90% of it would be gone by this second day. But by the time the shadows in the woods grew long and the sun began to drop into the western horizon, there was still a lot of snow on the ground, perhaps still two or three inches. The roads were mostly all clear, but the forests were still blanketed with the white stuff. After stomping around here and there the past couple of days I determined that officially we had about six inches of snow total.

I spent most of my day inside, continuing to work on the update to the OHT guidebook. It is SO NICE to have a second pair of eyes to look over all of it, and not only make corrections, but make suggestions as well. My bride is certainly a great partner for me.

2/9/03 We woke up to a fresh blanket of snow this morning, although it was very fine snow. All of the roads were covered once again, and the later the morning got the larger the snowflakes became. I got an e-mail from Fayetteville saying they had already received 4 inches overnight, but our total was something like one inch, but still building up rapidly as I am writing this. I was supposed to lead a hike around Lake Leatherwood in Eureka Springs this afternoon, then go into town for a meeting and give a program tonight. I don't mind hiking in the snow, but from the looks of things the roads all around Eureka are going to be hazardous, so I will probably have to cancel the hike.

Pam and I had an interesting discussion this morning. We will often plan our perishable foods out here to last until the specific days that we know we will be going into town. The milk ran out this morning. That was just perfect since I was going into town today for the meeting. As we were discussing the pros and cons of cancelling things today and going into town or not, Pam brought up the milk issue. I said heck, we could live without milk for a day, but the real problem was that I was out of FILM!!! My bride found that as humorous as I did.

A few of our breakfast guests

This is one of the really pretty snows, at least as it is coming down - some really large flakes now, and the valley and forest all around us are filled with many thousand streaks of white. If we would get that same four inches or more that others have already received this morning, there would be enough to ski. As luck would have it, I probably will go into town this afternoon one way or another, and I have an early morning meeting in Clarksville tomorrow, so I may not get to do much skiing - the sun is going to be out tomorrow so the melt will begin. No matter - everyone here at the cabin LOVES snow, so bring it on!

I just came in from spending a delightful half hour outside chopping wood. It is so gratifying when you hit the log just right with the axe and it splits apart with a loud crack and wood flies in two directions. I am quite happy that we have a gas-powered log splitter to do the heavy stuff, but I still rather enjoy chopping those logs up into smaller pieces with an axe, standing out in the blowing snow.

2/11/03 Today was a simply wonderful day here in the wilderness. It began early, and is still going on now late at night. Days are meant to be enjoyed for the full hours, and I try my best.

Before I get into today, I want to relate a moment that happened yesterday, while my bride and I were out on an afternoon hike through the melting snow. The sun was out, the sky was blue, and the white stuff underfoot was still several inches deep and very soft to walk through. We were over on the north side of the ridge, making our way along the slope, when something stopped me dead in my tracks. Don't know why, but I came to a halt, and looked down at my feet. There was a small cedar sapling there, perhaps six inches tall, that had been bent over double by the snow, which was quite heavy for the poor little thing. Its head and base were completely buried, with only the arched body and several spindly little branches sticking up out of the snow. The afternoon sun had begun to melt that snow, and just - right when I stopped and looked down at it - the top of the little tree broke free of the snow, and sprung part way back up to life. I felt like I was privy to a rebirth, a bit of life spared, nurtured, released by the sunshine of life. We stood there in awe for several minutes as the little guy gradually straightened itself up. I wondered how it got bent over double in the first place - why hadn't the snow simply piled up all around it and covered it up? Surely there was some event that contributed to its condition, but we would never know, nor did it matter. What did matter was that our little friend would survive to face the snow another day, and I bet he would win, again and again and again!

I replaced Pam as Amber's driver this morning - the little feeder bus did not run today, so I drove Amber down into Boxley Valley. It was 40 degrees when we left the cabin in the darkness, but the temp was a frigid 25 degrees down in Boxley. As I drove back home and climbed up the steep hill out of Boxley the eastern horizon began to glow. The more I drove the brighter and more intense the colors got. Just as I topped out and passed an open field that is home to a heard of dairy goats, the orange ball appeared and quickly climbed into the blue sky. I stopped the truck and grabbed my camera. This herd is guarded by two of the largest dogs you have ever seen  - great Pyrenees - yet they are also the friendliest breed I know. Once the dogs realized that I was there to shoot pictures and not their goats, they relaxed and began to play with each other, rolling in the snow and romping all about. The goats provided the perfect foreground for a sunrise photo.

Later in the morning I FINALLY put the guidebook project that I had been working on to bed (not a new  book, just an update to a current book). I had been working on and tweaking this text and maps for several weeks now, and I was anxious to get the job completed and out the door to the printers before we ran out of books. It really wasn't that big of a deal, but for some reason I felt like a tremendous weight had been lifted from my shoulders once I burned the CD's with the new files and sealed everything up for shipment. YIPPIE!!!

Later in the afternoon I drove back down to Boxley to wait for Amber's bus. I got there a little bit early so that I could get out and soak up some of that wonderful sunshine. While the mighty Buffalo River is singing a lively tune six miles upstream from Boxley here at Cloudland, the river is bone dry where the highway crosses the river, and I mean BONE DRY - not a drop of water in sight. In a normal year, it would be whitewater there, a playground for boaters.

But today there was nothing but a dry riverbed, and I love to hike down a dry riverbed. Just in case I found something interesting, I brought my little digital snapshot camera along. Now you wouldn't think that a dry riverbed would be all that interesting in the middle of winter, but there was no shortage to things to examine and photograph today - sorry for all of the time it took to download the following photos, which I will post at the end of this discussion!

I ambled on downstream for a little while, then made my way back up to where I was parked. Soon the big yellow bus arrived and Amber came running. I fully expected for my hike to be over and for her to be ready to go home, but she couldn't get down to the riverbed fast enough. "Let's go hiking, let's go HIKING!" Needless to say I was more than willing to stick around for awhile.

We walked and talked and hiked and sang and got down on our hands and knees and examined all sorts of things. The patterns of rocks went on forever. And the closer we looked, the more we found to look at. And there is this wonderful bluff that comes right on down to the river, and towers above the country side. It was so odd to see all of this without a single drop of water.

And there was lots of sand in the river bed too, sand that was full of tracks, lots of different critter tracks. We found elk and raccoon tracks for sure, but were really confused by this one "track" that must have been left by someone with a heavy tail - it just made a line in the sand that went on and on for a hundred yards, weaving back and forth between the rocks. There were lots of tracks that went with it, but I'm not convinced that they go together.

It was a beautiful, warm, sunshine day, and soon the delightful fragrance of that best of all wilderness perfumes filled the air - the witch-hazel bushes were out! It didn't take us long to locate the first bush, and then there were dozens of them.

Amber picked up a huge brown leaf and wondered where it had come from. No doubt it was from a sycamore tree, but where? By that time the sun had dropped low and the river bed was in shadow, but the tall sycamores that lined the bank were still lit up, their white trunks shining against that deep blue sky. We calculated how long it would take for the leaf to travel to that location from each and every one of the big trees. She determined that is must have come from the tallest one of them that was standing guard over a bend in the river several hundred feet downstream.

I don't know, it wasn't really all that much of a hike, and it was just along an old dry creekbed, but it will go down as one of my favorite hikes of all time. We don't really need to go to the Grand Canyon or some other great natural wonder in order to see the finest that Momma Nature has to offer - we only have to visit our own back yard, and take the time to slow down and look around us and watch and listen for all there is to see and learn. I hope you enjoy my little photo album of the dry Buffalo today!

The mighty Buffalo River!

Always something to see when you get down low and look around

Rocks, rocks, and more rocks

Witch-hazel in full bloom

Hum, I wonder who this could be?

Rocks of all sizes and shapes mixed in together

Looks like a giant sweet gum ball landed on the moon!

2/14/03 HAPPY RED-HEARTS-AND-KISSES DAY to you!!! This is always a very special day here at Cloudland, as is every day of the year. I am up early and have just seen the girls off to school. It won't be light for another hour. I don't have a lot to report from the past couple of days, but do want to pass on one story that relates to today, although it happened a couple of days ago.

You will come to know in the next few months that my bride has finally begun to pursue her love of drawing in a more formal manner, and has enrolled in a class in Fayetteville. And while it will not exclusively be used for this, I am building her a "drawing room" addition to the cabin (later this spring or early summer) so that she will be able to have a space to call her own. It will also be a sun room, a guitar-playing room, and I suspect we will both be spending a lot of time in there (oops, didn't I just say it was going to be a "room of her own?"). Anyway, she is just beginning this new hobby of hers, and I think she has a good bit of talent in there that will certainly come out (she has not drawn since I posted one of her drawings last year). Her mom has a great deal of artistic flair as well.

One of my favorite artists of all time is from right here in Arkansas - Susan Morrison - and Pam took an instant liking to her work too via her web page (www.SusanMorrison.com). She uses pen and ink and colored pencils to produce some of the most amazing wildlife and wilderness images. The other day I went by Susan's gallery in Eureka Springs, and while I only went in there to buy a single, unframed print for my bride for Valentine's Day, I walked out of there two hours later with FIVE prints, two of them framed (and two prints for Amber). It is easy to spend a lot of time there simply wandering around and looking into the eyes of all the critters on the wall. (Right now there is an ORIGINAL of Susan's on the wall - all of her originals are LIFE SIZE - this one is of two grizzly bears in battle, and stands more than ten feet tall!)

One of the animals that Pam zeroed in on from the web page was this baby bobcat - that was my goal, to bring home that print for my bride for Valentine's Day. Not only is the bobcat itself rather adorable, but I thought it a fitting gift for my budding artist bride who has seen a wild bobcat out here a number of times in the past couple of years. (Pam has seen more bobcats in that time that I have in my entire life!)

OK, so here I am heading home with this beautiful framed bobcat print in my truck - me, not having seen an actual bobcat in many years. Duh, didn't I know that it was inevitable that I would not only see but get a good close-up look at a bobcat on this trip, especially since I did NOT bring my CAMERA with me? And son of a gun, as I got near the cabin, a bobcat bounded right across the road in front of me, then sat down at the base of a hickory tree not 20 feet from the road. I stopped, turned off the engine, GOT OUT OF THE TRUCK, and the bobcat just sat there, totally uninterested in me.

A small fact that I learned while talking with Susan Morrison that day was the fact that bobcats are actually born with long tails, and that the tails do not grow as the cat grows, but rather the cat grows into the tail, so the older/larger the cat, the shorter the tail. Every single bobcat that I have ever seen had a short "bobbed" tail. But today, just an hour after I learned about the long tail, I saw my first bobcat with a LONG tail! I was stunned, not only that the bobcat was sitting right there in front of me, but that I had just learned about the tail thing, and had that gorgeous print in the truck. What a strange coincidence!

Stupid me with no camera - I will never get an opportunity like that again with a wild cat.

Oh yea, about the tail thing. When the cat crossed the road and sat down at the base of the tree, he sat right ON that tail, hiding it from view. I KNEW I had seen that long tail as he was running, but wanted to make double sure I was not just making that up as a result of my visit with Susan. Normally your only view of a bobcat is a fleeting one, and they will never stop right there in front of you, at least for more than a second. After several minutes of looking at each other - and me not being able to see that tail - I finally broke down and did something that my wife told me she had done when this or some other bobcat did almost the exact same thing a few weeks ago (sat there for a good long look) - I called out "kitty, kitty, come here kitty, kitty." I wanted for this cat to get up and move so I could see that tail! What a silly thing to do, call out to a wild animal like that! But it worked - the cat turned and stared right at me - WOW, what a face! - then stood up, and calmly walked right into the thick brush nearby, giving me a perfect view of his tail, which was indeed long!

Well, I guess that was a lot of words just to tell you about my bobcat, but it was a profound moment for me, and I fell so stupid for not bringing my camera with me - OF COURSE, if I HAD the camera with me, I would have NEVER seen that cat!

Oh yea, and my girls loved the prints - they look very good in the cabin. You can see the bobcat print on Susan's web page if you look around a little. Her prints are reasonably priced (although the framing is expensive), and I highly recommend them if you enjoy wildlife art. By the way, at one point I was going to do a book with Susan - her drawings and poems and my photography - but a third party got into the situation and ruined the deal. We may try to do something again in the future. Her work is so incredible.

Pam and I got out of the house just once yesterday - to go plant flower seeds before it rained. I have decided that I want to spread my mom's flowers all over the place. I call them "my mom's" flowers because the main stock of them grows in Mom's meadow where I spread her ashes. Actually many of the seeds for the first batch of flowers came from Pam's mom's flowers in her yard in Missouri. So I guess they are both of my mom's flowers! We carefully picked the dead heads off of hundreds of flowers last fall, and that is what we spread out in the meadows around Cloudland. It was a nice hour or two for us of doing nothing other than wandering around sowing seeds. Each year as more and more of the flowers bloom, and we will continue to spread them around. We put some over in Bob's meadows too - he told us once that he wanted to see his entire meadow filled with them like Mom's meadow is, so we got him started.

Last night we spent a couple of hours at school blowing up and assembling balloons, stuffed animals, and sacks of candy to be delivered to school kids today - 270 of them! I am quite new at this parents thing, but Pam is right in the thick of it, and I tag along when I can. She has done such a great job with the PTA, and while she is just a small part of it, I will say that when she joined last year they had only a dozen members - that number has swelled to 75 this year, thanks in part to Pam's work. More than a dozen members where there last night to help out, including parents and teachers, even the principal of the elementary school. By the time we got finished nearly the entire art room was filled - literally to the ceiling - with balloons.

And for those of you who live in Arkansas, I am only going to say one thing about our governor's insane plan to tear apart the schools of Arkansas (well, perhaps only one paragraph) - he is cracked in the head, and not only has no idea what he is doing, but DOESN'T care what the consequences are, or what the people of Arkansas think. In fact he said publicly over and over again - "I will not listen to what the people think about this issue," and he has told the state legislators to "ignore" what the people of Arkansas think. Huh, don't we elect representatives to be OUR voice? Apparently our governor does not think so. For those of you who are not from around here, I will tell you that our "huckster" governor is pushing to close ALL the schools in our county, and bus them to another county (it will be a statewide busing program, but our county will be hit hard by it - Amber already rides the bus an hour each way, and being forced to another county will make that ride a lot longer, as it will for all the kids in our county, and all over the state - good grief, the increased gas required will be many times more than all of the SUV's in our state consume - WHO is "supporting" terrorism?). My ten-year old daughter has more common sense than this guy does. When she heard about all of this she told me that she wanted to be home schooled if the forced busing law is passed, and then promptly went to school and organized her class to write letters to the governor. Oops, the governor has already said that he does not care what we think, so I guess their letters will be ignored, but it was a great exercise for her and for the class in the way that government in a free society is SUPPOSED to work. I was very proud of my daughter. This is the same governor who said we were "wacko environmentalists" because we wanted to keep our air and water clean - I have heard many of his republican buddies call HIM a wacko over this issue of late, and he fits that description to a tee. The gov said that this issue would be political suicide for many - and it is true that something has to be done with the FUNDING issue of our schools - but I would call it murder rather than suicide, and the governor is the trigger man. I guess the biggest thing that is sticking in my craw about all of this is the fact the he has told everyone that he will not listen to the people of Arkansas, nor is responsible to them. I know that he is a "so-called" preacher, but that does not make him God, which is the role he seems to be playing. At one time I respected this man, but he has lost that, and the respect of thousands of school kids for many generations to come whose lives he is trying to ruin. (This is the same "honest" politician who announced a large tax increase the day AFTER we was re-elected last fall - a smart politician perhaps, but a rotten human being.)

OK, ok, I am off of my soap box now. It is beginning to get light outside my window, and the ghostly silhouettes of trees engulfed in thick fog are appearing. We have had some rain and wind during the night, and are supposed to get a great deal more wet stuff today and tonight. Come on rain, COME ON RAIN! Hiking through thick fog is wonderful, and I think I will go partake a little bit and try to forget about the nut we have running this state.

AND what a delightful hike it was! The temp is pretty warm - upper 40's - and it really wasn't raining, but rather just a heavy mist coming down. The forest was quiet and serene, and each step brought new landscapes into view - the fog remained quite thick.

As I made my around around the far side of the mountain I came to the "avenue of roses" where the lane is lined on both sides with wild rose bushes. There were sparkling drops of water clinging to the branches, and it was neat to stand in front of a single bush and focus on a single branch of drops, then rock side to side and see how the drops changed - every few inches in movement brought entire new lines of drops into brightness, and dropped out others.

I tried to get a good close-up photo of the drops, but every time I found just the composition that I wanted - one with a dark background to help separate the bright drops - I would bump the bush/limb with some part of my body and the drops would fall off. Once when I got way back into a rose bush and found the perfect spot to shoot, I realized as I tried to back out that the bush HAD me - those darn branches covered with stickers were wrapped all around me, and the stickers were dug in and holding on for dear life! I have no idea why this rose bush wanted to keep me - I am the sort that you want to throw back!

Wild rose

One thing about moist days like this - the GREENS really pop out at you! As I came back onto the south side of the hilltop and back into the deep forest (which, by the way, was quite dark in all of that thick fog!), a passed by a number of boulders that were covered with the rich greens of mosses and lichens.

AND, when I got down and took a close look at the ground, I could see little, tiny, itty-bitty green leaves just popping out of the ground - the first signs of SPRING! It won't be long now before a few little wildflowers will be reaching for the sky. Of course, if we get more snow and cold weather that will delay them a few weeks, but I suspect we will spot them in the next 2-3 weeks.

SPEAKING of spring, some of the dogwood trees are already sprouting large buds that look like they might open any day now - surely they will wait for another couple of months, but those buds would be a nice little morsel for a passing deer to munch on.

Dogwood buds

Back to the cabin - home sweet home!

JUST one more post today before I shut down the computer for good. As Pam and I were returning from a road trip tonight well after dark, we began to notice that the rocks and bluffs next to the road on the steep hill coming up out of Boxley Valley were WHITE. I don't mean that the headlights lit them up, I mean that they were actually glowing white. In some spots the white glow extended 30-40 feet up to the top of the bluff, and it lit up with only a small amount of light being near it. We stopped the car and realized it was some sort of white lichens growing on the rock, and while every now and then I will notice something like this, but never anything to this degree. The moisture in the air combined with being do dry for a long period must have activated something in the lichen. I got out and took a few hand-held photos, but could not really do the stuff justice.

White lichen lighting up the sandstone bluffs (this is side-lighting, not direct headlights hitting them)

We arrived back at the cabin to find the place nearly being blown away by heavy and varied winds - it is HOWLING outside, the deck furniture is moving around, and our wooden wind chimes are going nuts. Pam loves the wind, so I guess I will tell her that it is a valentine's day present that I had all arranged with the wind gods. On that note, I am going to go find my bride and wish her well. I hope that you and your special someone are having/had a wonderful day and evening today - I waited many long years for my ship to sail in, and goodness I am SO glad that I found her! Happy heart day to you all...

OH YEA, one last thing - A journal reader friend from Alabama sent me this delightful link tonight - there is a lot of junk out here on the net, but I highly recommend you take a look at this neat little presentation: http://members.accessus.net/~tmcdonld/lighthse/foot134.htm...

2/17/03 If you are reading this that means that I was able to get online to post it, which will be the first time in a long while that I have been able to get online. Our local internet service provider was bought out by some phone company, and ever since the service has been lousy - no, actually much worse than that. The company is called Ritter, although I have no idea who they are, but that name appears on all of our bills. They are the sorriest outfit I have ever dealt with, and unfortunately, we are stuck with them. It has been averaging me about 25 tries to get online, and today I have only been able to get online twice in about 100 tries. I'm not talking about busy signals, but other things that the phone company has screwed up. That really takes a toll on the very limited time that I have each day. So if you don't see an update here for a period of time, or don't get your e-mails answered in a timely manner, one reason might be our new phone company. Sorry, but for now it can't be helped. (After more than four hours and 100 tries, I gave up logging on tonight - this was finally posted at 6:30 the next morning. What a great new phone company we have!)

Speaking of sorry people, I must say that I have been getting a mountain of e-mail from you folks about my little sermon on the governor of Arkansas. My words about him seem rather tame now in comparison to some of your e-mails! I must say that I agree with each and every one of you! Thanks for your comments.

We have had a busy last couple of days at Cloudland. It was in the low 20's yesterday morning when I got up early and headed over to a friend's place on Mt. Sherman. The 22 degree temp and thick fog produced a great deal of hoar frost - the second big batch we have had this year. Sometimes you can go many years without ever seeing any of it. The frost layer was only up on the ridgetops, and above about 1600 feet. As you dropped down into the valleys the trees turned from white to brown in an instant along a very distinct line.

My friend Edd French (real estate guy in Jasper - www.buffaloriverrealestate.com) is building three log cabins over on Mutton Point, and he wanted me to take a look at a potential hiking trail route that he wanted to build from the cabin area down the hillside a ways. No big deal I told him, I'll come out and flag a route and we'll get in there and build it some weekend. One of Edd's cabins is nearly complete, and I must say it is a wonderful little cabin made from cedar logs by Amish craftsman (these two guys helped build our cabin nearly six years ago). The view out the back of the one cabin, and eventually all three, is really nice, looking down and over Camp Orr and the Buffalo River, and all the way downstream to Erbie.

I met Edd and several friends - one, a neighbor, and Don and Millie Nelms from Fayetteville. We all were bundled up. The landscape was quite spectacular - everything above ground was covered with hoar frost ice crystals, and with some fog still hanging around and the temp still at 22 degrees, it appeared that the frost would continue to grow as the morning went along.

We made our way down through a nice bluffline to a waterfall and pool just below one of the cabins. Edd wants to take the trail in behind this waterfall and then along the base of the bluffline - a stunning location for it, but goodness it is going to take a lot of hard work to get a good trail in there.

Then we began a steep descent down a very rocky slope to a small stream below. We spent a good bit of time trying to find a logical route through all of the lichen-and-moss-covered boulders, a path that was not too steep. We will have to cut several switchbacks into the hillside, but I think we found a way down without killing people.

The stream is lovely, pure and simple, and chocked full of boulders of all shapes and sizes. Lots and lots of rocks to route the trail through. We finally made it down into more civil county, but still many rocks. As we went down we got below the frostline but the ground was covered with a fine layer of snow, which it had been doing ever since we left the top. None of us seemed to be too chilled, even going downhill, and we had a wonderful hike. While it is going to take a lot of hard work to get this trail built, it is going to be one sweet little trail for sure. The total length one-way will be less than a mile, but the hike back out will make it seem like a lot more. This trail is specifically for folks who rent one of Edd's cabins (I can already HIGHLY recommend these cabins!), although I bet Edd would let others use the trail - he is a good guy who has been around the area for a long time.

We saw quite a bit of elk sign along the way, including several trees that had been gnawed on at about our shoulder height - not trees that had been scraped or rubbed with elk antlers, but GNAWED on. Very strange. I had heard that whitetail deer sometimes will eat the bark of dogwood trees when they get really hungry, but these weren't all dogwood trees, and it looked like they had been eaten by elk.

After our little flagging trip we all gathered at Edd's house overlooking the Buffalo and had steaming bowls of homemade potato soup and a cold beer. You may not think that folks spending half the day in 22 degree weather would be interested in COLD beer, but I sure was, and it was very good (first beer I have had in a long while).

It was a busy Sunday afternoon back at the cabin, and Pam was playing host to a number of visitors and guests that arrived both announced and unannounced. Soon after I got home Pam's parents from Missouri showed up - with our daughter in tow. Then some new friends and journal readers from Cuba, Missouri stopped by for a visit. While it is true that we can't handle all of the visitors around here that we have had in the past (sometimes 30 or 40 a day!), we absolutely love meeting new folks like Connie and Ed - not only were they delightful people to visit with, but they came bearing GIFTS! Wine, apple butter, homemade fishing lures, a cookbook, AND this goofy hat for Amber. I say goofy but I must tell you that not only did Amber put on the hat and not take it off for a single minute the rest of the day, but she WORE IT TO BED, then got up and WORE IT TO SCHOOL!

Amber with her "hat" from Connie and Ed working at the computer

The temp was a lot warmer this morning - way up to 24 degrees! Soon after daylight we followed Pam's parents over to their property near Jasper and helped them cut down a slew of honey locust trees. Gosh darn I hate those things! No matter how careful you are around them they will reach out and poke and scratch the devil out of you! I must say it was a lot easier handling them today because the branches were covered with ice, so the thorns were not quite so difficult to deal with. Then we hiked on down to a waterfall right at the edge of their property. The waterfalls are not really up and running just yet, but some of them do have a little bit of water running right now, and the Buffalo River at Boxley is flowing again! Now we need some REAL rain - about a foot or two - and then the waterfall season can begin.

I had a very hectic rest of my day trying to get our hiking club's newsletter finished and e-mailed off to our printer's in Fayetteville. It took me a LONG time to actually get onto the internet and get the darn thing sent off, and by the time I was finished I was not a happy camper. Actually I WAS a happy camper - thankful for getting the e-mail to work.

As I was just sitting here writing this I got that feeling that you sometime get when you "feel" someone is watching you. Sure enough I looked over my left shoulder and saw a GIANT orange moon just popping up over the horizon (the actual full moon was yesterday, but this one sure is big, and nearly full, and really ORANGE). I jumped up and grabbed the camera and ran out into the cold night and tried to take a photo it the moon. My poor little digital camera is not very good at that - it takes a really long lens to get a good shot of the moon.

Speaking of pictures, when Pam and I were returning back from locust cutting this morning we drove through a heavy snowstorm up here on Cave Mountain. Actually it was all of the hoar frost ice coming off of the trees. The sky had begun to clear and the sun was warming up the air rapidly. I got out of the truck to take a few snapshots and nearly got covered with the blowing ice! One of our neighbor's fences along the road got "frosted' quite heavily both yesterday morning and this morning.

Speaking of pictures, I am considering investing in a new color printer. They now have one (just this past year) that will produce a very high quality color print with archival paper and inks - the Epson 2200. I have been studying up on it. I normally can't stand inkjet prints, and most of them look like, well, inkjet print, which are on the lower end of the quality scale as far as good photographic prints go. The custom color prints that I sell of my serious work are made with a very expensive process in California - they are quite simply the very best quality prints in the world - they also cost a lot (the cheapest is $250!). Many of you have been asking me about prints from the images here in the journal. Up until now selling them was just not practical. First off, the images on the web page are all very low resolution - which is fine for monitor viewing, but they print out really bad. Also I will often shoot the photos on low resolution to begin with since I don't need anything of good quality. BUT, now that we have this new printer/paper/inks available, I am thinking about getting set up so that I can offer any image that is posted in the journal as an inexpensive print for those of you who want more than what is on your monitor. I'll work on that idea and let you know how it comes out. It would be nice to have a few prints to hang on the wall every now and then.

Well, I am exhausted from no telling what, so I am going to put this journal to bed and TRY to get online to post it - wish me luck! And for those of you who read the OHTA newsletter, if this note has been posted, that means the new newsletter should be too...

2/21/03 We've had some great rains this week, finally! And it is soggy, misty, foggy, and wonderful outside here this morning. The temp is 40 with light rain. The Buffalo River has been up all week, although not really UP. We had a one inch rainfall one night and the river came up, but the next day we had another one inch rainfall and the river remained the same. It has always been clear (well, actually GREEN), and never got muddy - that is a sign that the water hitting the ground is soaking in a little bit instead of all running off at once.

Our internet connection problems persist, but we have been able to get on with a little bit more frequency. We had three nights that we could not get on at all, and for someone like me who is in the middle of doing research on the net and trying to answer my mountain of unanswered e-mails, that is a real pain. But things are getting better - they are about as good as they were a month ago, so we are making progress!

I've had many terrific times this week, but a couple in particular I want to share with you. Yesterday, I was out working in the woods up near the office. It was calm out, and the forest was quiet. All of a sudden I looked up and the forest was alive with color, motion, and noise! A flock of bluebirds had descended on me, or rather were simply passing through. I'm not sure if they noticed me or not, but I tried to keep as still as possible and just watch and listen. What a SPLASH of color they were! That bright blue and orange really stood out against the browns and greys of the winter landscape. I'm not exactly sure what they were up to, but several of them would literally smash into the tree truck when they came in for a landing - their little bodies actually were deformed by the impact. Were these newly-grown birds just getting their landing feet? I figured they did that a long time ago. Perhaps it was some sort of game because they all looked like they were having a great time - is it possible to see a "smile" on a birds face? I think so, and these guys were smiling. I watched them for perhaps ten minutes - or maybe it was only a single minute - or maybe twenty - time really doesn't mean all that much out here sometimes. And then all of a sudden, they were gone, just like that. My show was over.

The other day Amber and I were headed up towards Aspen's meadow. "I'll meet ya up there - I'm going BUSHWHACKING!" she informed me. Hum, I wonder where she got that from? We spent some quiet time just wandering around up there in the meadow, looking for Indian artifacts after a night of hard rain. Amber is getting quite good at spotting the tiny flakes chipped off by a hunter many moons ago. And today - WHAT A FIND! Amber reached down and picked up a black piece of stone, turned it over, and got quite a treat. She had found a small scraping tool, one that was used to scrape off the last little bit of meat from the hide. One side was nearly flat and smooth, but the other side had been worked and shaped into the shaping tool, one end being rounded off with a fine edge. Perhaps it was even used by a little girl just like Amber.

Another "Amber" moment of note this week - and this one made me feel rather old. She has been bringing home an Arkansas History book of late. When I was in school I HATED history (actually, I hated school in general, but history a little more), and often would put my head down during class and pray that the teacher would not call on me. Now I am very much interested in history, especially Arkansas history. I was going through this book with her the other day and happened to look a the photo credits page - my name was in there more than once, and I was rather surprised to find that this text book she had been lugging around all year had one of my photos on the back cover! The book was printed before Amber was born! Small world, and I AM getting older. However, I am really looking forward to becoming an old man, and treasure each new day, month, season, and year that comes along.

The fog is moving in even thicker this morning. I am headed into town with my bride for a half-day of tearing around running errands (we only have 15 stops to make this morning!).

Late night update, the last for the month:

I just spent awhile wandering outside in the dark. Man, it is SO wonderful out there tonight! It is dark - coal black dark - and raining, and pea-soup fog, and the temp is just above freezing, but it was delightful in the forest. Taking that heavy air deep into your lungs feels good.

February has been a great month, with plenty of ups and downs - many more ups than downs (I guess that is great unless you are talking about hills along the trail!). We just heard today that our state legislators were able to get the gov to pull his head out long enough to see reality, and a compromise about the school busing issue has been reached. If the bill passes, small schools like Jasper will not automatically be closed, so we stand a good chance of retaining the terrific educational facility that we have at Jasper. That is very good news, and I commend our legislators who had the courage to stand up to this huckster and be good folks instead of regular politicians.

The robins are out, the bluebirds are flying around, it is RAINING, and I see the very first signs of green poking their heads out from under the thick blanket of brown leaves. It won't be long now! The rivers are up, although not flooding, and the waterfalls ARE running, although not running all that well - we still need a lot more rain to get them looking really good.

A couple of wildlife items of note. Friend Glenn Wheeler called to tell me about the helicopter that we had been seeing flying around in Boxley Valley. The wildlife folks are doing a study to see what is killing off the elk heard, which is in decline (poachers and chicken-guts trucks take a mighty big toll). The helicopter chases an elk herd until they can single out an animal, then drop a net over it. Then some wildlife folks from Wyoming (who are very good at this) jump out of the craft, subdue the elk, then take blood samples and collect other data on the elk, then release the elk and go after another one. I did not get to see this up close, but it sounded really exciting! So if you are in the Buffalo River area soon, you may see something like this going on.

On our way into town this morning, we saw a wild turkey convention - it was just for the gobblers. There must have been 8 or 10 of these beautiful birds out in the middle of an open field strutting around - each one sporting a long beard. Hey guys, the spring turkey season is just around the corner!

Pam and I are taking off tomorrow for a few days of R&R in Colorado, so this will be the last journal post for February. I'm not sure when we will be back, but will not make another post until the March journal - probably the first of March. My brain has been working overtime now for quite a while, and needs a rest. I won't have computer access, but will check phone messages each day. We'll be spending some time in the winter woods on snow shoes and cross-country skis, but mostly we will just be getting away and spending some quiet down time. Pam's parents are here to watch over things, and to keep Amber in line (or will it be the other way around?).

THANKS for all of your e-mails this past month, and for checking in here from time to time. I will leave you with one last photo - that of sunrise yesterday, or was it the day before? Like I said, my brain needs a rest. When we return we will hit the ground running, and will let you know how spring is coming along here in the Ozarks.

Another Cloudland sunrise - makes you want to get up and dance!

March 2003 Journal