Mouse Haven in Mouse Haven in Winterthe Snow

Mouse Haven in Flint Hills Winter mary todd

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Do Skies Reflect the Ocean?

The Tallgrass Prairie of Kansas was once the bottom of an ocean.

Oh Yes...

A Nice Sky by M.K.Todd

Shall i repeat that?

Hie thee to the Discovery Center in Manhattan, KS to learn more about these wonderful Flint Hills and the Tallgrass Prairie.

A mural in the greeting hall:

 These are the gardens of the Desert, these 

The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,

For which the speech of England has no name- 

The Prairies. I behold them for the first, 

And my heart swells, while the dilated sight 

Takes in the encircling vastness.

Lo! they stretch, 

In airy undulations, far away, 

As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell, 

Stood still, with an his rounded billows fixed, 

And motionless forever.- Motionless?- 

No- they are all unchained again. The clouds 

Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath, 

The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye; 

Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase 

The sunny ridges. Breezes of the South!

...

from

THE PRAIRIES by William Cullen Bryant

the entire poem is a treasure...

...

...The low of herds

Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain

Over the dark-brown furrows. All at once

A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream,

And I am in the wilderness alone.

1832

I only bring it up, 

since our skies here on the Konza Prairie where I live

 are endless, deep, ever-changing, and at times filled with innumerable creatures caught in huge murmurings like a school of Bluejacks...

but--

these creatures cut through the Kansas skies-- thousands, tens of thousands, in perfect peace, honking with delight at the discovery of a lately harvested corn field, the stray kernels like gold nuggets fueling their migration south...

at two minutes through the end a great murmuring takes place...

Some Kansas Skies:

Photographs by Mary Todd

Geese in the Prairie Sky mktodd

Sunflowers as Stormbringer mktodd

Flint Hills Farm mktodd

little house mktodd

Ice Morning mktodd

Konza Skies mktodd

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Here is a tiny snip of a wonderful three-dimensional film experience you can have at the Flint Hills Discovery Center.
The actual movie, a 3-D experience you will want to see again and again, is alone worth the price of admission--although, i recommend joining for a year so you can drop in anytime. I like to pop in and just see the movie, which is shown throughout the day.

the ancient secrets... acting over a very long time... the emotions that come over you... this land was covered by a vast inland sea...

The Flint Hills Discovery Center, click HERE

Providence . Luck . Blessing: Location Location ...

Passing through the Flint Hills of Kansas changes any being...
 the soaking sun,
            the windy rain,
                      the still solitude, the joyful merging
 of a myriad of living things into a buzzing,
 atomic whole--
 .. .. .. .. .. .ah, the Konza Prairie wildly
necklaced about* by the rich Flint Hills is the place for me...

The Flint Hills and the Konza Prairie, as they butt up against the Osage Questas to the east, are truly magnificent in displays of nature's extreme cycles, from a rich, even lush biodiversity to the frosty, transparent aura of the cracked, ancient rock atop the plateaus...

Periodic starkness brings into high relief the vibrating elements of presence, entanglement, and life.

Goose in Flint Hills' Winter by M.K. Todd

* “…a rusting trough ornamented with a necklace of horseflies slung above the last dregs of its stagnant water”

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Bee on Sunflower by M.K.Todd

Beautiful Morning Moon by Matt Flintstone

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