Rock or Sand?

Posted on October 23, 2017 by Donna Coulson

The foolish man built his house upon the sand.  The wise man built his house upon the rock.  The Coulsons bought a house that is perched on a man-made flat spot half way up a hill.  Hmmm.  Sand or rock?  Not sure now and we are having our doubts.

Clean up on St Croix since Hurricane Maria is actually really pretty exciting.  Last week it was nearly impossible to drive around on this end of our island.  Every main street and many side streets were (and now others are!)  blocked by men with huge trucks, front end loaders and saws cutting back broken trees and snapped off electrical poles and removing debris from the sides of roads.  Then, nearly the minute that part of the project is finished, the dump trucks and loaders are replaced by beefy bucket trucks and crews of hard-hatted men (the ones on Queen Mary Highway were from New York but there are close to 500 linemen from the mainland here on island from all kinds of places), and all of a sudden there are brand new power poles with brand new electrical lines on them lining the roads, inching their way across the island!  People are working seven days a week.  The territory’s goal is to have 90% of the homes territory wide to be enjoying electricity by Christmas.   Beside linemen from around America, there are teams of FEMA reps here.  Their trucks are parked around the island so that they are easily accessible.  There are also lots of military – National Guardsmen (and women!) here protecting assets and lending a hand.  Our local park and playground in Frederiksted was a total mess.  I noticed it as I drove by on Friday – tree limbs and ripped roofing littering the park, the fence annihilated by blowing debris.  Across the street is the beach.  Wait, that’s where the sea is, but the sand has been missing since Maria – instead of a gorgeous beach, there are just rocks.  All the sand is across the road and drifted against the park fence.  Or I should say was.  Yesterday on the way to church we saw an army of people in fatigues working there.  An hour later we came back by and stopped.  The park is usable again – debris is picked up and the fence was being repaired.  A crew was beginning to work on the bathroom building.  And.  Front end loaders, a skid steer, and a dozer were returning the sand to its proper place!  We stopped and talked with and thanked several of the guys working.  They are volunteers from the Alaska National Guard.  Yay!  Heroes!

We’ve been so encouraged by the progress we can see, but there’s still so very much to be done.  Everyone is doing their best and there are so many true heroes here – local and visiting.  But. There are no phone land lines so getting ahold of businesses is impossible.  You just go to the site and hope they are open (or wait until they are in the parking lot waiting to get your propane tank refilled…). If you don’t know exactly who you need to contact, you are really in a maze.  For example…

Remember our house upon the undetermined underpinning?  Well, here’s the deal.  Our house, happily called Pirate’s Perch because it rests on a man-made flat spot, has always been surrounded by a nice yard on all four sides.  The sea side next to the house had about a 10-15 foot wide yard, then dropped down a pretty substantial grade filled with trees and green.  When we got back here two weeks ago, a large portion of that yard had disappeared.  The huge mahogany tree and all other plant life were in a mangled heap 83 feet down, leaving a precipice just three feet from the back of the house.  It’s clear that the soil got so full of water that as soon as the banshee winds of the storm hit, they took the trees and a lot of the hill with it. It’s also clear that what is there isn’t stable.  Scary.  Sleepless for the first night.  God’s heard a lot from me lately.  Clearly we need to build a retaining wall (the size of one in China!).  We need equipment and expertise and advice.  For two weeks I have been talking with FEMA people, calling public works, having no luck at all.  Now please do NOT hear that as a criticism of FEMA or anyone else.  The FEMA people we have met are all here to focus on roofs and structures, they are not engineers and soil experts.  They have taken our name and number and have been trying to help.  With a load as overwhelming as this, every issue is an emergency and there are only so many hours in the day.  So.  Yesterday we stopped to thank the crews at the beach and park, and noticed that a soil and roads truck from Public Works was parked next to the dozer moving sand.  We talked to the guys working, explained our need, and asked them who to talk to.  They gave us info on how to find the right person at Public Works, but then smiled.  The advice one man shared then was precious.  Talk to this man, he told us, he knows how to help.  He gave us the man’s name and directions to his house.

Summoning up our chutzpah, we drove directly to the man’s house, into his yard and asked to see him. (Not really something we’d normally do, but…).  His grown son reported that the man wasn’t home, but kindly took our names and number and promised to have him call us.  Which he did!  Less than two hours later both the man and his son were at our house, talking about retaining walls and remedies to keep our house from falling down.  Yay!  He left us with the promise that he was going to look into some ideas and get back to us with some recommendations.  Yay!

Sometimes God speaks to me by calming me inside.  This has happened a lot in the last two weeks.  After that first sleepless night worrying the house was going to fall in at any minute, I have been really quite calm.  Confident that God can and will provide for us in any eventuality, electricity or no, house on a rock, house on sand at the bottom of the hill. It’s all good, because God is all good.  Now, He has brought into our lives a local man, willing even on Sunday to come and share his knowledge to help a neighbor.  We are blessed by God’s hand in every situation whether it is hard or easy. Right now He is easy to see here on St. Croix.  He’s in the new leaves on trees that had been made bare, He is in the hands of hundreds of willing people who are here to help, He is in smiles and tears and joy and fear and frustration.  My prayer for you this week is that you are aware of God’s care and love for you wherever you are.  😊

Categories: Living on St Croix | 5 Comments

Back home again!

Posted on October 17, 2017 by Donna Coulson

This has been a difficult week. When the wheels of our plane touched the ground on St. Croix last Monday, the passengers broke into applause. It was a plane load full of people just like us. People who love and live on the island, but who had been away for the hurricanes. The lady in the seat beside me showed me pictures she’d been sent showing the half of her house that had been destroyed – she was going home to put the pieces back together. Our neighbor, William, picked us up from an airport without all of its roof. Since it was mid-afternoon, we took the long way home and we saw for the first time the evidence of the power of a cat five hurricane.

Though I have owned a home on this island for six years, there were several times on our drive home that I couldn’t recognize where we were. It looks that different, a barren war zone. Driving is a challenge – you have to keep an eye out above you for low branches and power lines, beside you for branches and trees sticking out in the way and side of roads that are undercut by water and dangerous to drive on, as well as for traffic.

I am thankful to say that our house itself is actually fine. (We do have some other damage, and I’ll blog about that another day… THAT story is still unfolding and needs prayer…) The damage the house sustained is easily and quite economically fixable – one small roof section that was over the patio missing, a little water on the ceiling of our bedroom, the eight foot sliding glass doors that stood behind the hurricane shutters pushed in a bit. There are lots of broken limbs and trees down outside we’ve had to deal with. But. We’ve just begun meeting friends and hearing reports of roofs and walls gone, of water damage. Worse are the stories of hunkering down for the twelve hours of the storm, listening to the house groan and give with the terrible wind and pressures outside.  As we’ve found our way to the store and the post office this week, we see cars driving on the roads with no windshields, or any glass at all. Karl’s pickup has a broken rearview mirror. Maria ripped off his front license plate, but I found it in the yard among some debris. My Jeep had water in the back, but it’s a Jeep, it didn’t mind. We were so lucky.

Everyone is shell shocked. Maybe the worse damage is in the hearts and minds of the people here. People are trying to smile and be patient, though it’s clear that just accomplishing that isn’t easy. Communications are virtually non-existent. My phone works for voice and text most of the time, but there’s no internet even on my phone. ( I am writng this with the intent to drive about three miles to a place reported to have an active WiFi hotspot so I can post it, we’ll see how that works!) I think there might be a radio station working, but since we are on the west end of the island behind a hill, we can’t tune it in. No one knows even essential info. I went to the post office at 9:15 thinking it would be open when curfew lifted at 9. Not so, it didn’t open until 11. I stood in line with strangers with haggard faces , listening to stories and watching them try to be patient.

 

The rumble of generators has replaced all other sound, and the low growl of the combined force creates a low grade of anxiety in the pit of my stomach. Many don’t have generators, and they are cooking outside even though it has been raining off and on every day still. They are living by candle light. We, like many, have a small generator that doesn’t power the whole house, just the essentials and not 24/7. We run it for three hours in the morning to keep the frig cold and run the water pump. We turn it back on for maybe three to four hours in the late afternoon and evening to renew the frig, take showers (by flashlight! really!) and have some semblance of normality, even while I have to take a flashlight to the bathroom with me.

Yesterday was Sunday. There were only a few people at church since getting around its still so hard. Hearing from our friends about missing roofs, collapsed walls, no water to drink but plenty of water damage made me feel thankful and guilty. We sang acapella praises to God, through tears and smiles. The sermon was a short one – since there are no lights and no AC and people just can’t handle more – and it was about God’s comfort. Right now my head knows that God is the God of all Comfort, but my heart is bruised and hurting for myself, and my friends and our island home and I’m not sure where to find Him.

Even though I feel overwhelmed, through it all, I know that God is good all the time. Evidence of that is as plentiful as the destruction. It is amazing how quickly the leaves are sprouting out on barren tree branches. We can’t help but be encouraged by the groups of strong and positive people f who’ve come far away to replace light poles and cut up and cart off the millions of tons of debris. Armstrong’s Ice Cream – the very best ice cream on the planet – reopened on Wednesday and we had ice cream yesterday. We go outside at night and revel in the stars that we can see since there’s so little light pollution. Life here is good… even though it is hard right now.

Categories: Living on St Croix | 4 Comments

…and our vacation from retirement ends for this year!

Posted on October 8, 2017 by Donna Coulson

We are going home on Monday!  The St. Croix airport opened on Thursday, and we have reservations for Monday, so God willing, we will be home by late afternoon.  Yay!  Since our flight to Miami leaves at 6 am and we’ll be traveling all day, I’m posting my blog today.

We’ve spent four months and twelve days on the mainland – (on vacation from retirement as Karl puts it) living most of the time in our fifth wheel, camping and traveling and enjoying.  My blogs since the first of June have documented some of the highlights. For many, many years, Karl and I have kept a journal of our trips and adventures in our campers, and this summer was no exception.  So not only do I have my blogs, we have a journal with lots of memories and places to hold our memories. As this trip was so long, we decided a fitting end to our journal for this year would be a set of lists to recap the summer.  I decided it would be fun to share some of those with you:

Top four tourist sites we visited:

Monticello (Virginia)

Niagara Falls (New York)

Buffalo Bill Canyon and dam (Wyoming)

Seneca Caverns (West Virginia)

 

Top three meals:

Jen Leman’s chicken in foil while we were camping together

Karl’s chicken Frangelico that he made at Liz and Greg Luce’s house

BJ Nation’s Walleye fish fry

 

Worst night:

The night we had a mouse in the camper

 

Best night:

Camping near Douglas, laying on the picnic table watching the stars

 

Top three musical experiences:

Sawyer Brown, Bellamy Brothers and Joe Diffie at Frontier Days

Michael Martin Murphy at Frontier Days

The Cowboy Gathering in Encampment

 

Top four whole days:

Experiencing the Eclipse in totality

Sharing the celebration of Amanda and Jarrett’s wedding day

Discovering a gorgeous waterfall in the Sierras

Spending time near Haggarty Creek

 

Hands down funniest moment:

Playing Uno with Branda and Dave Steege while camping together.   Dave was sitting across from me so I couldn’t drop a ‘draw four’ on him, but he kept changing the color to something I didn’t have.  I merely said, “Dave for every time you change the color, I will visit my wrath on Branda (who was sitting next to me) threefold.”  We didn’t play again for close to 20 minutes while Dave laughed uncontrollably.  Priceless!

It doesn’t take much thought to add item after item of great moments, beautiful vistas, spending time with precious people, and being blessed.  Now we are off on a new adventure – living on our beautiful island and doing what we can to come alongside our friends and neighbors to rebuild what the winds of Maria swept away.

 

 

Categories: Gypsy life, Living on St Croix | 1 Comment

My new novel is now available!

Posted on October 1, 2017 by Donna Coulson

I preempt this week’s blog for an important announcement:

 

Just in time to combat the chill in the air and the coming cooler weather, here’s your chance to curl up on the couch with a terrific new novel, hot off the presses!

The Archer’s Perspective

by award winning author donna coulson

 

One Action

Three Reactions

A beautiful fall day in Wyoming’s Sierra Madre Mountains turns tragic and life changing with the twang of a bowstring.  Three people are involved that day and their responses to the challenges that follow reveal not only who they are down deep, but how they see God.

 

The Archer’s Perspective is available in softcover or as an e-book at Amazon.com (just search the Archer’s Perspective or donna coulson!)

I’m inviting you to be among the first to read this contemporary Christian novel and then write a review!

 

 

Categories: The Archer's Perspective | 4 Comments

Holding on

Posted on September 25, 2017 by Donna Coulson

There is so much to be thankful for.  Life every day is a gift.  The fact that our friends and neighbors and our house on St Croix are fine, though battered and bruised, is a blessing beyond belief.  The fact that we just lived a wonderful four months of travel and friends and family and beauty has been great beyond words.  So.  Why am anxious?  Why am I having trouble sleeping?  Because I am sinful.  Because part of my sin is being a control freak who hates waiting while hurricanes and closed airports and no electricity possibly for months are things that I want control of but do not have.  This is a concept that I’m struggling to grasp. I should say continuing to struggle to grasp.  So.  What to do?  Remind myself every single moment that God is good all the time.  Hold on to the fact that His Grace provides an eternity of blessings.

Clearly I can not get the airport open (I can’t even get a call through to St. Croix to ask the question!) But I can accomplish something.  I can enjoy today.  I can (and am!) thankful for the extra time we have here in Virginia with our son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter.  I can reject the pain in the pit of my stomach that is my worry and I can enjoy the last of the Fall’s fireflies, the warm days and starry nights and the acorns thumping to the ground.

I can hold on to the wonder of our recent gypsy summer and hold on to scripture. So.  With joy and in peace I am sharing some pictures that I took this summer along with some wisdom …

 

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  He makes me lie down in green pastures…

 

He leads me beside still waters…

 

He restores my soul.  (Psalms 23)

 

Ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.” (Job 12:7-10)

 


“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands… Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” (Psalm 19:1-4)

“You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55:12)

 

“Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)

 

“Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights above. Praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his heavenly hosts. Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars. Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created. He set them in place for ever and ever; he gave a decree that will never pass away.” (Psalm 148:1-6)

Categories: Gypsy life, Living on St Croix | 3 Comments

Update…blessings galore!

Posted on September 17, 2017 by Donna Coulson

I totally forgot to blog last week! Since I have a signal, I’m going to blog a day early this week!  Yikes! Let me quickly catch you up… we left south eastern Wyoming and traversed the state on our way to Cody for the Wyoming State Historical Society awards luncheon.  On our way, we got a ‘hot tip’ from my friend Judy and spent one night outside of Lander, Wyoming at a place called Sinks Canyon State Park.  The next day we drove to Cody – to stay at Buffalo Bill State Park.  We had a great time being tourists in Cody and the area, very much enjoyed the awards luncheon, then got up on Sunday and pointed ourselves toward the east.  Sunday we made great time and made it to Ocana, South Dakota, on the Missouri River.  Monday was a marathon.  We drove for about 15 hours…wait! I drove for 75 miles, Karl drove all the rest, and we ended up at a Walmart in Michigan City, Indiana.  I know that sounds pretty lame, but actually, staying in Walmart parking lots is a pretty good gig when you are traveling.

Tuesday, we got up and drove about 3 hours to Albion, Michigan and spent a couple of really precious hours with our oldest grandson, Kody, who is a sophomore there.  He’s terrific, and we got a tour of campus and a nice lunch before he had to go to class.  We left Albion and drove a couple of hours to Dundee, Michigan and the beautiful home of our daughter Amy and son-in-law Bret.  Their home always seems like a refuge – it is calm and peaceful and beautiful.  We timed it just right so that we got to see Kyle, our 13-year-old grandson, play his first football game of the season.

We left Michigan on our way to the Adirondacks to spend a couple of days with neighbors of ours, John and Bonnie.  They live just down the hill from us in St. Croix, and spend their summers in a wonderful house (they call it a camp) by Lake Kayuga, New York.  We got an added bonus and surprise when another couple, Linda  and Henry, our very first friends when we moved to St. Croix, came to join the party. Yesterday we took a boat ride on the lake, enjoyed a great day together, and ended it with a huge bonfire.  Wow!

Now, we will get ready and drive to our son’s house in Virginia and prepare to fly home to St. Croix next week.  We hope… there’s another hurricane heading towards our island – Maria, and this time she’s aiming straight at St. Croix. On top of that there’s ANOTHER storm building to the east that could also turn into a hurricane and come our way.

We’re praying for the people on St. Croix who, after 16 days still have not got their electricity back on from Irma (which means no water, no lights…) who are now facing another onslaught.  We are praying for the people of St. John and St. Thomas who are living in tents and under tarps because their houses are unlivable who are now facing another storm. There’s a saying I’ve read that says sometimes God chooses not to calm the storm, but instead holds and calms His children instead.  We’ve had an amazing summer, and I cherish the friends and family we’ve seen and the absolute beauty we’ve been gifted with.  I am, right this minute, sitting under a canopy of hemlock and balsam trees in a thick forest in upstate New York, surrounded by friends and standing beside the man who is the love of my life on this world.  I am blessed beyond measure.  I am one of the disciples standing in the boat during the storm.  I’m watching my Saviour walk on the water toward me, reminding me that His power is greater than any other, hurricanes included.  Peace to you, and to me!

Categories: Living on St Croix, Random thoughts on being me | Leave a comment

Hope and Trust

Posted on September 5, 2017 by Donna Coulson

This morning we packed up all our camping gear and ‘broke camp’ up in the mountains for the last time this summer.  I feel a little sad, we’ve had such fun exploring the nooks and crannys in the Sierra Madres. I will admit, I’m a bit tired of being dirty and dusty from riding, and I am looking forward to being where I have a phone and internet signal all the time, but still, I will miss the splendor and peace and awe-factor that living in the mountains I love so much have provided in the last three months.  I’m ready to move on and work our way across the US back to Virginia where we will leave our rig and fly home to St. Croix.  I pray that we get to come back next year and explore more.

One thing that has impressed me this summer – thanks to the eclipse and the stars, deer, elk, moose and foxes, watching a tornado scoop down and then back up, and a number of incredible sunsets – is the power of nature, and the God who set it in motion.  I love the power of nature. Yet.  It scares me as well.    I love God’s love for me as well. Yet.  That scares me, too.  I don’t always understand His love.  I don’t always understand the ways he answers prayer.

I’m certain that lots and lots of people who love the Lord were crying out to Him to stop the rain from falling in Houston.  But it continued to rain.  Now there’s Hurricane Irma bearing down on St. Croix.  It is  supposed to hit this afternoon, at our house while we are thousands of miles away.  I’ve been assured by neighbors and friends that our house is buttoned up tight and I know that we left it pretty much ready for a hurricane.  I know that the house and all that is in it is ‘just stuff’.  I also know that I’ve been praying for that house and that stuff, and for all our friends and all those who we don’t even know on our island and on the other islands in Irma’s path.  I know that God is near.  I trust God.  But.  I’ll spend today, as we drive up to northern Wyoming, praying.  Praying for safety for St. Croix.  Praying for the storm to calm or go north where it will not do harm.  I will also be praying for peace inside me, and for the trust I so dearly want to hold on to.  God is powerful enough to create a world full of wonders, and He’s loving enough to make choices for us that will grow us and bring us closer to Him, even if we don’t understand the methods.

 

 

Categories: Gypsy life | 1 Comment

Happy Birthday, Karl!

Posted on August 28, 2017 by Donna Coulson

Thursday is my husband’s birthday.  I haven’t bought him a present.  It’s not that I haven’t thought of it, but we’ve been in the mountains, away from shopping, and honestly, we’ve come to the point in our lives where we don’t actually need or want a whole lot and what we do need or want, we buy it.  Hmmm.  I could order him a movie from Amazon or drive somewhere and buy something, but I think instead I’ll make him a cake here in the camper and find ways this week to let him know how much I cherish him.

There’s a lot to cherish.  When Karl and I got married, he didn’t just get a wife, he acquired a ready-made family.  It took a while for all of us to gel into a unit, but Karl didn’t give up. He taught my children (who became our children!) how to have fun and live full out.  We used to have momentous waterfights (I remember once when the kids had control of the hose in the front yard, leaving Karl with just a water pistol. He ran to the back yard, brought the back yard hose THROUGH THE HOUSE AND OUT THE FRONT DOOR, and evened up the odds), he gave them permission to not like lima beans (and then taught Sam how to line them up on his plate and flick them at me…lima beans came off the menu at that point!), he modeled honesty and hard work and picking yourself up after trouble with the intent of continuing on.  He cheered for them while sitting in the bleachers, yelled at them when they were wrong (and probably sometimes when they weren’t, but hey…).  He taught them to build and fix and make things, and how to be a decent human beings.

I’m the more educated of the two of us.  We’d been married a couple of years when I finished my Master’s Degree.  For a while, I thought I was the smarter of we two.   It was, perhaps, an easy mistake to make at that point.  Karl ran heavy equipment when we got married, driving huge scrapers and motor graders and dozers and backhoes to do dirt work for large projects (like dams and pipelines, or the foundation of a sports facility at the university). He was definitely a workin’ guy, doing what he was told and doing it the best he possibly could. I learned how wrong I was about feeling intellectually superior through a long and winding road.  He went to school to learn electronics.  He was so good at the school, that when he graduated, one of the instructors arranged for Karl to teach the class himself for several weeks so that the teacher could take a vacation.  Over the years since then he has, as our son Sam describes it, “Reinvented himself” several times.  He taught himself how to be the owner and CEO of two companies, and retired last year by selling a business he took from near bankruptcy to respected and highly profitable. I can’t even begin to think through problems and solutions like Karl can. I know a lot about literature and teaching kids, he knows so much about so much more.

Karl is the strongest man I have ever met.  No, he can’t bench press half a ton, but he has faced and overcome so many obstacles with his health that if I were to list them, you’d wonder why and how he is still alive and moving. From breaking his neck to tick fever to passing a gall stone while driving across the Golden Gate Bridge (Now, that is a story all by itself!!), to knee surgery, to the arthritis in his hands that makes them ache every day,  Karl has faced lots of issues with such stoicism and humor. Others might just succumb to the pain or give up or become angry or whiny.  Not Karl.  He ran a backhoe while wearing a halo brace and slid into second base two seeks after knee surgery.  Instead, Karl keeps moving and doing with a sense of humor and determination that makes me a better and stronger person just because I am beside him.

It has been my great privilege in the 34 years I’ve been married to him and the 47 years I’ve known him to watch how he has grown and how he walks in his faith in God.  He’s gone from a young man whose temper often ruled him to a quiet and God-assured man.  And he is quiet.  He won’t often pray aloud, he doesn’t speak up in groups (about his faith or anything else), but he never hesitates to show God’s love and kindness whenever he can.  I’ve watched him turn around on the highway and drive back so that he can lend a hand to someone marooned on the side of the road. Once he bought two tires for a complete stranger so that she could continue her journey.  He is generous and quick to give, and he uses his talents and his tools to speak of God’s love a grace to others.

There’s so much to cherish about Karl.  I am so thankful to be his wife, his partner, his friend.  I’m so thankful for the things he has taught me, the ways he has enriched my life.  I thank God every day for him.  Happy birthday, Love.

 

Categories: Gypsy life, Random thoughts on being me | 5 Comments

A sermon in the eclipse

Posted on August 23, 2017 by Donna Coulson

Like millions of others, this week I watched a full eclipse of the sun.  At mid-day.  I’ll admit to feeling anxious this morning.  We teased that it seems like such a normal day, maybe the scientists were pulling off a monumental prank and nothing would happen.  Then, through the cool glasses I got for free at the bank, I saw the first little chip come off the edge of the sun, and we became serious astronomers.  It surprised me that the temperature dropped. Wait – it’s daytime! Other images that stay with me: the profound quiet – until near totality when the crickets began their night song, the bright and sparkly star we spotted overhead, the shadows and odd colored light as the sun was slowly being obscured.  Then – oh my gosh, it isn’t really explainable – the moment that we could take off our cool glasses from the bank and stare at the sun – just a black circle with a silver halo of light around it.  I wanted to just stare at it, but there was so much else to see… the 360 degree sunset on the horizon, the star overhead. I studied around me and then stared back at the sun, pulling my hoodie up tighter in the cold. I’m an intelligent woman, and I fully understood the phenomenon I was experiencing.  I knew in my head that the sun would return.  But.  There was this tiny part of me that was just a little frightened.

Then, just when the daytime was the blackest, the chilly air and my cold hands teaching me experientially how important the sun’s light is to our little planet… hope dawned.  A light – pure and perfect – shot out from behind the blackness, and all at once we were back in the light. Miraculous?  Yes, I think so.  The Bible tells us that nature itself teaches us about God.  Jesus told the Pharisees who demanded he quiet his disciples that “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” So on Monday, I think it was the sun and the moon crying out showing us the face of God, His power and glory.  This lesson is all we need to know.  The workings of the universe, created with a delicate and exacting hand, are completely out of our own hands.  Many things can obscure the important elements of our lives.  As soon as we are out of His light we are cold and in darkness.  But without our help or anything we do,  hope – in the form of the pure and perfect light of the world – returns our hope and brings us Light.  Man, that’s some sermon!

 

PS.  I used one of the pairs of glasses I got at the bank to fashion a lens for my camera.  My shots aren’t at all professional, but I think some of them turned out quite well!

 

Here’s one from the beginning of the eclipse:

 

And  one from after the totality:

Categories: Gypsy life | 2 Comments

Elk and Moose and Deer, Oh My!

Posted on August 16, 2017 by Donna Coulson

In previous posts I’ve written about deer and antelope, so it isn’t a surprise to anyone that I admire them.  In fact, I’ve realized this summer that one of the things I love most about camping is those moments when I encounter wildlife. We’ve just come down out of the Sierra Madre Mountains after a little over a week of camping.  It was beautiful.  And Cold. (The leaves are starting to turn up there, and the nights are in the low 40’s!) We had a beautiful spot to camp, and except for a somewhat close camper with a set of yappy dogs, it was a peaceful time.

Now back to talking about wildlife… I have come to realize I have a hierarchy of importance when it comes to seeing big game.  At the bottom of the list are antelope.  They are everywhere – in town, near town and dotting the rolling prairie – and something about them makes them look a little dumpy and not so intelligent.  I enjoy seeing them, but it’s such a natural occurrence I don’t get very excited.

Deer come next.  Nearly every time I see a deer I think, “What a nice gift.”  Deer are also quite prevalent and are in town (especially in Encampment and Medicine Bow!), on the plains, and in the mountains. They seem like kind souls somehow, and I love to watch them bounce over fences.  They often stand still for portraits, though this week we saw a HUGE buck with a massive set of antlers, and I just stared and enjoyed, no time for the camera. Here’s one of four bucks who hang out on the outskirts of Encampment, and who walked through the yard when we were enjoying a fish fry with friends:

 

On the hierarchy next are elk.  Elk are much more shy and hide themselves away from people.  We’ve only seen a few elk this summer – and I’ve had no opportunities for pictures, either.  Elk leave me smiling and feeling blessed.  They are so regal and commanding looking.

Even more special are moose. Moose are much more rare where we go camping, and so getting a glimpse of one is definitely special.  This week we saw three.  Now moose are aggressive and mean.  I’m actually pretty scared of them because I know they will charge.  I spotted a small bull while we were driving on the highway up in the Sierras.  We stopped, and because he was down in a little valley next to the road and there was a guard rail between us, we pulled over, grabbed the camera and walked back to get a good look.

 

After I snapped a couple of shots, we spotted a cow moose with a ‘small’ baby coming out of the trees.  Mama didn’t like us, we could tell that from how she locked eyes on us and put her ears up.  Guard rail or no, we retreated. After we were safe in the truck, Karl turned around so that we could drive by again.  It was at this point that they decided to cross the road.  You can picture me now, heart pounding, and smiling ear to ear as I snap pictures.

Mama was the first to cross the road, her legs so long that she just stepped over the guardrail like it wasn’t there.

Next came the bull and baby.  (I’m told by a friend who knows way more than I about wildlife that from the size of his antlers he’d guess this little bull is about two years old.)  The bull crossed the guardrail easily enough and disappeared into the trees.  The baby was afraid of the barrier.  He stayed in the road for a little longer, not wanting to cross it.  Eventually, he did and the threesome sauntered off into the trees.

I think I was warm for the next few hours, basking in the afterglow of such a terrific encounter.  What a beautiful gift from the Creator of this world!

Topping out my hierarchy of amazing creatures in the Wyoming forests are mountain lions.  There’s the pinnacle for me.  Haven’t ever seen one, though I know they are around and I heard one scream once when I was quite young. Maybe someday. In the meantime, I’ll be thankful for the splendor we have given.

 

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