High Plains Panhandler

Sleeping on the Bluff

This past weekend Suzanne's girl scout troop had a sleep over at Wildcat Bluff Nature Center. Alex and I tagged along, mainly because they were going to have some tasty roasted marshmallow snacks, and that's pretty hard to resist. (I'm also on the Board of Directors for the Nature Center, so I'll have to write nice things to avoid the wrath of the board, which is usually reserved for me when I show up late for meetings and, in general, slack off on my duties.)

Festivities started at 7:00 Friday night with a rousing game of Territory Management, or, in other words, who gets the best sleeping bag spot. Sleeping arrangements were in the Gilvin Natural Science Center, which has a floor made of snooze-friendly comfort material, known also as concrete. I was apprehensive about sleeping on a slab, but a friend of ours (who is also on the board) let me borrow her inflatable bouncy sleeping rafts, complete with electric-powered air blower. This made for a comfy evening for me and Suzanne, and the girl scouts, when they look back on this night huddled in their sleeping bags, will remember it with the kind of jealousy that only a concrete floor can inspire.

But before all that the director of the Nature Center, Mike Boley, took us on a tour of animals, including a tarantula, a bug called a Vinaigrette or Vignette (something like that - apparently it sprays out a vinegar substance when frightened; I'd look it up on Google, but, alas, I am too lazy for even that simple thing), a hog-nosed snake, and a massive South American (or Central American - I forget) toad that was the size of a hardback novel. After that, a quick potty break, a snack, and then we marched out to the Bluff.

The Bluff sits at the heart of the Nature Center. It's about eight tenths of a mile away on a narrow but well-trodden trail. Mike led the group (behind us was Robin, a new naturalist who is also a student at the university south of Amarillo - her job was to make sure no one dropped off the hiking party), and he chose the Windmill Trail. This trail goes for a bit and curves around, gradually becoming the Bluff Trail, which turns around and ends up back at the main Nature Center building.

The hike out was fun, adventurous, and interesting. Along the way Mike pointed out a variety of things such as tarantula holes and colonies of harvester ants (fun fact: the harvester ant makes up about ninety percent or so of the horned lizarddiet, a.k.a. the horned toad, which is the Texas state lizard and is also a threatened species). Needless to say, we stepped carefully around the ants, not wanting to ruin dinner for any rogue honed toads that might be hanging around.

As we hiked around the windmill and the water hole for the different animals that haunt the 600 acres of the Nature Center, a storm started blowing in. Actually, I should say a storm starting erupting, as spring storms have the tendency to do out here on the Texas High Plains. The light show in the clouds a mile or so away was brilliant and fantastic, and it illuminated the sky with retina-burning flashes of white light. Some of the other girl scouts didn't find it as intriguing because, suddenly, we were on the march back, tromping quickly up the bluff and down to the safety of our buildings.

Along the way poor new naturalist, Robin, got quite an earful from Taylor, the hyperkinetic, hypercaffeinated third-grader whose conversation style zipped along like this:

"andthenmymomandIwatcheddesperatehousewives 'causewelikeitandwatchittogether 'causeshehatesmydad'snewwifeshereallycan'tstandher. I thinkwithmybrainandnotwithmymind, youknow?"

Finally, after the second or third rendition of her life's story, I heard Taylor very calmly say: "I can eat as much fat as I want because I burn it off by walking."

So I turned around and say, "Hey Taylor, take the 'w' off that word and add a 't' and then I think you've got something there."

Taylor: "Huh?"

Robin the Naturalist: "I think that spells 'talking,' Taylor."

Taylor: "Oh, I'mnotthatgoodwithspellingyouknow. OnetimeIwaswatchingthisshow . . ."

By the time we got back to camp, we noticed that the storm wasn't quite going to hit us, so we set up a fire and made S'mores, but I was treated with disdain because I preferred plain roasted marshmallows to the graham cracker sandwiches. Alex preferred getting as much sticky stuff on his face as possible.

Then it was time for bed, and everyone conked out pretty quickly. I had expected some weird pretend snoring (or worse body sounds), but I guess I'll have to wait until Boy Scouts for those. The morning came pretty quickly, and after a dose of cereal and muffins, we headed out to Prairie Dog Town, which was just a little hike down the Bluff path. We learned all sorts of things about prairie dogs: when they move out of their burrows, owls, rabbits, snakes, ferrets, and horned lizards soon move in. A lot of ranchers hate them and blame their burrow holes for breaking horses legs, but Mike told us that there hasn't been one documented case of such a thing happening. All I know is that once a prairie dog saved my life. This is true, and one day, when my knee isn't hurting from jumping rope 59 times quickly in the backyard earlier tonight, I will tell you about it.

That was our adventure. It was a great idea Suzanne had to make an end-of-school trip for the girl scouts, and even though the drive is slightly inconvenient (the Nature Center is on the west edge of the city), I'm glad the entire troop made it. Sometimes it simply takes a little walk in the woods, or in our case the mesquite, to see a little of the wonder around us, a little bit of nature that we forget or ignore, a little taste of cleaner air and longer horizons.

And, if you're lucky, a horned toad or two.

Revenge of the Sith

Saturday I tidied myself up after the Tour for the Cure diabetes bike ride (at one of the rest stops, I pointed out that the PowerAid drinks they were giving the riders were loaded with high fructose corn syrup, hinting that it was kind of strange to be drinking those on a ride to raise money for diabetes research; then I drank three of them and happily rode on my way) and disappeared for a few hours to catch Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith.

I got there, I thought, with plenty of time to spare, but I was wrong. The theater (the movie was showing on four screens) was packed. I found a spare seat toward the upper-right of the room and sat down next to a guy clutching a ratty backpack. A couple of times he’d dip into it and pull out a bottle of orange juice, take a few gulps, shove the bottle back in, and then sit forward in his seat, holding his pack to his stomach as if he were getting into an airplane crash position.

I don’t know if it was this guy or someone else around me, but somebody really was awash in the ashtray stink of cigarettes. It was really pretty awful. Fortunately, to get around the constant barrage of TV commercials we’re now subjected to before a movie starts, I brought a copy of National Geographic, so I rolled it up into a tube, stuffed it under my nose, and held it there throughout the entire movie, breathing through it as if I were snorkeling. The fresh National Geographic magazine smell masked the stale cigarette smell, but I think it made me a little dizzy too.

As for the movie: well . . . it had a lot of effects, a lot of spaceships, a lot of lightsabers, a lot of . . . effects. I mean, if was ok. It was fun. It was worth the price of admission. But holy smokes there were a lot of things that left me stumped, mystified, and grumpy. I think the best part of the entire movie was when the backpack guy next to me fell asleep accompanied by the most Wookie-like snoring I’ve heard. It happened during one of the excruciating wretched love scenes where the audience is supposed to be quiet and meditative, but I couldn’t cooperate because the scene I actually saw went like this:

Padme: Remember when all we had was our love by the lake on Naboo?
Backpack Guy: SNORE! GAAAAACK! KUUUUGN!
Me: (laughs)

I gave the guy a sharp elbow a couple of times, pretending that I was merely shifting in my seat. So he’d wake up, look at the screen for a minute, and then fall right back to sleep, delivering a few more THX-quality snoring sound effects. Toward the end of the movie he finally woke up and starting chanting Qui-Gon, Qui-Gon, Qui-Gon and clapping his hands. Then he fell asleep again. There must have been some heavy duty medication in his backpack.

I didn’t want to write a review of the movie, but here is the main thought I had throughout Revenge of the Sith: in a galaxy far, far away there’s a whole lotta merchandising opportunities, especially for a PG-13 rated movie where more parents than not will take their young kids. A little death, dismemberment, decapitation, burning alive, and child slaughter won’t be too bad for small kids.

After all, it’s just a movie. Right?

A Little Hail

I've got a few stories I have to write since we've had a couple of interesting adventures during the past couple of weeks, but I've been working on another writing project that leaves me both wiped out and in need of medication. So tonight, I'll cheat. We had a quickie hail storm pass through town about an hour ago, and for about twenty minutes it pounded us mercilessly. Afterward, in the sunshiny, cloudless sky the kids ran out to collect bags of hail for long-term storage in the freezer. Here's one that Alex picked up:

Snow in May

Here we are, the second day of May, basking in the lovely glow of five inches of snow in Amarillo, Texas. Pretty freaky.