Take a Photo Holiday

Take time to smell the roses ... er, the yellow wildflowers?

 

Take pictures as if you were taking a holiday in your own life.

That was one of the photo prompts from the book, "One Photo a Day Keeps the Doctor Away" by Joost Joosen, which Brent and Susan gave me for Christmas last year. On the same page was this Alexandra Horowitz quote:

Together we became investigators of the everyday. ... In this way, the familiar becomes unfamiliar and the old becomes new. We do have the ability to pay attention. We just forget how to use it. 

We're all quick to share the moments from the highlight reel of our lives. Maybe it's the visit from our grandchildren. The beauty of a National Park is sure to generate dozens - if not hundreds - of photos. But there is no shortage of beauty hiding in plain sight along our normal routes.

Several times, I drove past those yellow "flowers" at the corner where I make the turn onto the Zenith Road. But on a day when the clouds were like a 3D painting on a bright blue canvas, I made the time to stop.

The same clouds and sky provided a counterpoint to the green alfalfa field and hay bales.

They also gave me a different backdrop for my sunrise tree ... even though it was the middle of the day and not sunrise.

When I took my "photo holiday," we were coming back home from a Labor Day trip to the Stafford golf course. 

I spent a lot of the time reading my book. But I also took a few photos with my favorite model, framed with some natural "decor."

It's not often that it's wet enough in August to find mushrooms on the golf course!

All the rain this summer has offered other unusual August photos. Last week, we had a total of 3 inches of rain, and Peace Creek was uncharacteristically flowing.

This was the scene at our new bridge - which is done, by the way! 

On the Zenith Road looking east

I always like looking at Peace Creek from a view on the Zenith Road, too. 

On the Zenith Road looking west

 It's certainly prettier with water than without!

August 10, 2022 - from the Zenith Road

To prove that point, here's a photo from August 2022. (For the record, the water is back down this week.)

Last sunset of August 2025

 Sunsets are always an opportunity to take a holiday in my everyday life. 

First sunset of September 2025

Storms that went north and east of us provided the drama in the sky last evening.

We only see what we look at. 

To look is an act of choice.

--John Berger 

 

 

 

***

I love the nature all around me. But the "highlight reels" of life can be fun, too. K-State football games have been part of my life since I was a little girl. 

The drone show following the home opener win was certainly worth commemorating with photos.

It may have been man (or woman) made, but the formations were certainly worthy of a "photo holiday." 
 

 

Prairie Sunset Finale: Symphony of the Flint Hills

There couldn't have been a more fitting theme for the 20th and final rendition of the Symphony in the Flint Hills. The concert - Prairie Sunset - was Saturday, June 14, at the Evans Family Ranch in Chase County, Kansas. The wildflower-dotted rolling hills and overcast sky provided the dramatic backdrop for this grand finale concert of the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra set in the Flint Hills. 

 

It began in 2006 with the mission to heighten appreciate and knowledge of the Flint Hills tallgrass prairie. 

Rooted in these hills, like the enduring bluestem itself, Symphony in the Flint Hills, Inc., works to build awareness for the last stand of tallgrass prairie. ... The landscape's stone, soil, flora, fauna and skies above pull on our souls and care for us, and we are called to care for this place in return. ... We envision a future where our efforts encourage people to strengthen the Kansas prairie by sustaining the region's unique culture and landscape.

From the Mission Statement - Symphony of the Flint Hills 

This was not downtown Kansas City - by any stretch of the imagination. While city drivers sometimes have to dodge potholes after a brutal winter, they don't come across too many signs like this:

 

There was only one way in and out of the concert venue, set in the pasture in rural Strong City. It created a different kind of traffic jam as vehicles made their way north of U.S. 50 and down roads white with the dust of the area's limestone. (It took us 2 hours to travel the seven or so miles from the highway to the pasture.)

As we placed our water jug and program between our lawn chairs, we saw evidence that this was a working pasture and felt right at home. (For the uninitiated, those are a couple of dried cow patties.)

 

After 20 years, the concert volunteers had the logistics down to a science. Once we arrived, we quickly parked and caught a ride on a pickup-pulled wagon to the tents set up in the pasture. 

Unfortunately, because of traffic, we didn't arrive in time for any of the afternoon seminars. 

 

They delayed the concert start for 30 minutes, hoping to get more of the concert goers to the venue in time to hear the opening strains of the Celebration Overture by Peter Boyle. That same piece had opened the 2016 version of the Symphony of the Flint Hills - the only other time I'd attended, that time with Brent. This was Randy's first time, since he had been baling in 2016 and couldn't make the trip with me. When he saw it was the final opportunity, he got tickets to celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary. 

 

It was the perfect gift and well worth the wait.  

While making our way from the highway to the concert site, we'd seen lots of wildflowers lining the ditches in a rainbow of colors. I did think about jumping out of the car to take photos, but didn't. I didn't find as many in the pasture itself, though I did take photos of a few. 

 

This was right by our seats. It was still standing at the end of the night, surviving all the visitors.

During intermission, I wandered over to an electric fence for some photos of the prairie beyond.

 The purple lupine was a favorite wildflower.

The Flint Hills are part of the tallgrass prairie. In Kansas, they stretch from Marshall County in the north down through Riley, Geary, Pottawatomie, Wabaunsee, Morris, Lyon, Chase, Greenwood, Butler, Elk, Cowley and Chautauqua Counties and then into Oklahoma, where they are called the Osage Hills. These 5 million acres comprise the largest expanse of tallgrass prairie in the world.

The Flint Hills began as a vast inland sea 270 million years ago, which left scattered limestone and shallow soil behind. With the rocks less than a foot down, this part of the prairie was spared the plow and left in native grass. It’s the prairie mosaic that author William Least Heat-Moon called “360 degrees of sky.”

While it certainly isn't the mountains of Colorado, it's also very different from the stereotypical flat lands of Kansas. 

I'm a fan of clouds during sunset because they provide such a vivid painting as the light seeps through them. It was a constantly evolving scene as the light of day began to fade into a mild Kansas evening. 

 

The light and shadows played hide-and-seek in the gentle nooks and crannies of the rolling Plains covered in lush grass after plentiful spring rains. 

 

Kansas City Symphony Conductor Daniel Wiley directed a program that also included John Henry and Saturday Night Waltz by Aaron Copland, as well as George Gershwin's Summertime and Dvorak's finale from The New World Symphony. As the orchestra's notes rose and fell, it certainly seemed like the perfect celebration of music and nature's beauty. 

I am used to seeing cattle in pastures, but watching the cowboys drive the cattle across the landscape while an orchestra played was a little different from our 4-wheeler round-ups. (My photos aren't great of the cattle drive and cowboys.)

As the concert came to an end, the 8,000 or so spectators, donors and volunteers stood and sang "Home on the Range," a tradition of Symphony in the Flint Hills.

I thought about the words to a less-familiar verse of Kansas' state song, "Home on the Range," words that we'd just sung in unison:

How often at night when the heavens are bright

With the light from the glittering stars

Have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed

If their glory exceeds that of ours.

Yes ... indeed.

We didn't think there was any need to hurry away from the concert site. We decided we'd much rather take in the after-concert activities than sit in the car in stop-and-go traffic. 

 Lots of us watched the powwow dancers. The area now known as the Flint Hills was once the ancestral homelands of the Kansa (Kaw) and Osage Nations and the traditional hunting grounds of Siouan, Wichita and Pawnee people who relied on the great herds of bison once so abundant there. 

Country singer and Kansas native Logan Mize had sung his song, “Welcome to Prairieville,.”with the symphony. After leading the audience-participation rendition of Home on the Range,  he moved to the beverage tent to entertain into the evening. 

 We didn't get home until after 1:30 AM, but it was worth the late night (early morning). 

The Flint Hills don't take your breath away. 

They give you a chance to catch your breath.

Jim Hoy - Cowboy and historian - 1939-2025 

 

What a wonderful grand finale! Thank you to all the volunteers who made it possible.  

As directed, I didn't record any of the concert. But with no wind, the sound was spectacular. I found this short clip online - just in case you're interested. (CLICK HERE.)

I Know A Green Cathedral

I still know the first few phrases of the first vocal solo I ever sang for a music festival. It was "The Green Cathedral." It was my 7th grade year at Skyline Schools, and I remember standing by the piano in the music room with Mr. Bob White, practicing over and over again, trying to perfect the performance before the music festival.

These days, I sometimes can't remember why I walked from one room to the other without retracing my steps and trying again. But the words to that long-ago solo were among the first I remembered as Randy and I stepped into the light and shadows of an abandoned farmstead.

"I know a green cathedral, 

a shadowed forest shrine.

Where leaves in love join hands above 

and arch your prayer and mine."

It might not be a forest in the middle of the Kansas plains. But the Dame's rocket flowers were a siren call stretching far into the shelterbelt and dotting the blanket of green underfoot and overhead with a splash of lavender.

That day, we had been driving by at 55 MPH on our way back home. But the splash of purple at the side of the road had me asking Randy to turn around.

We've been to this spot on other springtime afternoons. But never do I remember the flowers being so prolific and magical.

True confessions: I didn't remember all the words to the song without Googling them. (And, by the way, isn't that reference tool a major upgrade from the old card catalog? After all, it was probably 50 years ago or so.)

So, "The Green Cathedral" has joined the never-ending sound track of my mind.

"Memories, light the corner of my mind. Misty, water-colored memories
Of the way we were."

Oops ... wrong song.

"The Green Cathedral" 

Verse by Gordon Johnstone

 

I know a green cathedral, a shadowed forest shrine,

 Where leaves in love join hands above

 and arch your prayer and mine;

Within its cool depths sacred, the priestly cedar sighs,

 And the fir and pine lift arms divine unto the pure blue skies

In my dear green cathedral there is a flowered seat,

Birdhouse at Sterling golf course, photo taken the same day.

 And choir loft in branched croft, 

 where songs of bird hymns sweet;

 

 And I like to dream at evening, 

when the stars its arches light,

That my Lord and God treads its hallowed sod, 

In the cool calm peace of night.