Somewhere there ought to be a valid political argument for the value of sharing pretty pictures. If there isn’t, there ought to be. Perhaps as an appreciation of the structural imperative for beauty in any coherent and worthwhile political philosophy.

Emerald Pool Hot Spring, Yellowstone. photo mine

Thank you, Sarah, for a moment of affirmation. I feel better now. Anyone else have something beautiful to share?

I have a folder of photos I’ve taken for future use, and most of them came from there. Some came from the Hubble site. Are there any other places to get beautiful intergalactic tapestries?

We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! Knowing that we’re not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

Instant background, Sarah! Thanks!

And the photo doesn’t even come close to reality. By August, when this was taken, living things in the pools are in full bloom while the surrounding chemicals have largely dried out, making them more intense as well.

Yellowstone is one of those rare places, more magnificent by far than can be anticipated.

I took this last summer when I was down in the area teaching a cheese class. I love this area of the country.

Nice photo, Sima; thanks for sharing. For those who’ve never been on the high plains, the beauty is ethereal and takes a little time to come to appreciate. A person needs to experience a few sunrises and sunsets to be able to see past the emptiness, and more than a little courage to endure.

Some years back a friend of mine sold his business and sunk every penny into his life-long dream, a cattle operation south-east of Baker City right along the Oregon Trail. He put up a new double-wide next to the ramshackle old farmhouse, and friends from all over came out to help him repair fencing and spruce up the barns and the bunkhouse. By the end of that first year he had the whole section and a half fenced and cross-fenced, the watering troughs and windmills running, and 1800 head of pregnant Angus-Charolais cattle out to pasture.

Come spring, what with unexpectedly high feed costs and such, my friend was strapped for cash. I loaded up the car and headed over to help with the calving. By the time I got there he and a couple of hands had moved the cows into one pasture where at least we could keep an eye on them. Calving is a tricky business, out in the field, and requires 24-hour supervision over a week or so. Sometimes the calves get stuck and you have to pull them out or both calf and mother will die. Once the calves are born someone needs to keep the coyotes away at night and the ravens, which will peck out the eyes of newborns, away during daytime. Under the best of circumstances, an exhausting business.

The night the calves started dropping a snowstorm blew in, and by the next day it was a white-out blizzard. With temperatures below freezing you have to dry every newborn by hand or they’ll freeze to the ground. Over three days we birthed a thousand head, damn near froze off everything that stuck out from nose to toes, slept hardly at all and generally had as miserable a time as you can imagine. We lost a few but not many, and with sunshine over the next several days it all seemed like it might have been worthwhile.

Come fall, however, the bottom had fallen out of beef and feed had risen to new heights. My friend sold the whole thing off and, to the great relief of his wife and all his friends, put a checkmark on that dream box and moved back down to California onto two acres with some chickens. Anyone who tries to make a living off livestock has my great admiration and best wishes, but not my envy.

Pendleton, now, that’s a fine little town; been drunk there several times. They have a combination rodeo and pow-wow worth going to, not quite the Stampede but damn good. Real Wild West back in the day, the rip-snortin’ wide-open hell-for-leather kind of place Easterners could only dream of. Late 1800’s Pendleton town proper had a population of only 3,000 but supported 32 saloons and 18 whorehouses. There were only a handful of churches, so life was being lived in its proper proportion.

The whole of downtown was interconnected underground by a web of tunnels, a network that eventually totaled 70 linear miles, all dug by hand using Chinese labor. A respectable gentleman could move from store to bar to rented bed with bedmate and back again while never being seen above ground, handy during spring blizzards. Of course it wasn’t all perfect, a lot of people died young from disease or acute lead poisoning, but still. All this civilization has cost us something in the way of character.

you just have to have two or three large fortunes, to start with.

Cattle are better than cotton, ’cause when the market goes in the tank you can eat the beef, wear the leather, and put up the excess. Clean out the cowpens and spread the results on the garden plot; add a little water and you can grow vegetables, maybe even grain.

Hard to eat soybeans, field-run, or sunflowers; corn can be eaten, but cotton? nope. No way, no how.

but to my admittedly prejudiced eye, east of the Cascades has a roll and swell reminiscent of foothills.

These places are the plains: (Courtesy city of Perryton and others)

downtown melts to the horizon

sunset shows how level the land is

a storm cellar reminds us of nature’s strength

spring blooms south of San Antonio

But I love the Plains and the east of the cascade High Desert/Plains. I say I dunno why because I was born and raised in the California redwood forests and I live in the PacNW rainforest.

If I had my way though, I’d be east of the Cascades somewhere on the Columbia plateau. However, family needs mean I stay where I am, and I do love it here too.

Bringiton I loved your story of helping out on the cattle ranch. It’s such damned hard work, and yet it can be rewarding. Which reminds me, time to go put the baby goats in their shelters for the night. We’ve got an owl that hunts around here, some coyotes, and eagles. It’s best to have the little ones inside for the first week or so. They only weigh about 2 pounds right now.

Here’s some wildflowers I planted over the open ground left after we moved a manure pile…

Bit of a euphemism that. Geologically the land around Pendleton is part of the Columbia Plateau, an eroded lava field, but topologically and meteorologically much of the area is so similar to the High Plains of Montana, Wyoming and Colorado that they got handed the tag without the pedigree – those old Mountain Men were more creative with their naming than they were scientific.

The land is textured, what those who live in the flattest of flatlands might call hills but those of us with actual mountains for comparison barely notice. We’re always skeptical of stories out of Texas, but rumor has it that around Lubbock folks are so hard up for geographic novelty they name the anthills. Couldn’t be true.

Lovely flowers, Sima; amazing what a little organic amendment will accomplish. That cowpoke story was a lot more fun to tell than it was to collect, I’m here to tell you; not something I’d willingly repeat. Spent a lot of summers on dairy farms in Wisconsin so I know all about that kind of work too; not for me. The haying was OK, but milking twice a day, every day, got real old for me real quick. Will confess that fresh milk warm and straight from the teat is a treat that can’t be beat. I’m sure you’d never do that with your wee nannies.

I spent a fair part of today traveling along the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado. Except for the newly-burnt parts, and the parts that burnt last week, much of the country along the eastern edge of the Caprock looks like this right now:

Yes, the Llano Estacado is burning; and so are the breaks of the Caprock, again. It’s March, and it hasn’t rained since Halloween so’s you could notice.

Lubbock’s home to three wineries and we actually have the Yellowhouse Canyon running through town; within an hour of us is a branch of it known as Ransom Canyon, made famous 120 years ago by the Comanchero traders’ occasional “recovery” of stolen Caucasian women or children during trade gatherings there. So … anthills are a bit much, but yeah, we’re partial to the occasional change in the scenery. So much so that some of our residents build astonishing dwellings nearby:

We’re officially part of the High Plains that roll up against the Rockies in New Mexico and Colorado and run off into Canada on the north, beyond Nebraska and both Dakotas; but we’re on the very southern tip of it, with the Ogallala Aquifer for water underneath us.

but out here there are two seasons: dry, and drought.

And there are two things you must remember, if you are to succeed: you have to work harder, and you have to know how to get along with less.