Some photos I like

The last photo of Barry and me, 2008, taken for my poetry book, Now Might as Well be Then, published in 2009

Winter at my house a few years ago. 

Winter in my woods

Brasstown Bald, highest peak in Georgia with dusting of snow.
Photo taken from my deck.

We walked this long road up to Connemara, home of poet Carl Sandburg, a few years ago. We spent the day there. I toured the home and learned much about this fascinating man. His wife raised champion goats. 

I am sick with a cold and not up to writing a post today. So I decided to post some photos I like.

Sailboat on the bay in Nova Scotia. I liked the cleanliness and fresh air. I could live there except I don't want to be so far from my family.

Bison graze at Yellowstone in 2003. This trip motivated me to write a number of poems. I will always remember the wildlife and the wonders of Yellowstone Park. I hope we will always have our national parks and national monuments.

Scene from Yellowstone’s Valiant Wild

By Glenda Council Beall

A young male strode down the mountainside,

crossed the road, strutted into shallow waters

of the Gallatin river. He stalked the old bull elk

grazing alone on the other side.

The herd master ignored the gauntlet for a while,

then quick like a rattler striking, charged from the bank. 

The clash of antlers cracked like breaking pines

in an ice storm, rolling sound upstream and down.

On land once more, the battle halted

while both tried to maneuver bony-branched horns

between the lodge pole pines. A minute’s rest--

then back into the current.

Strong hind quarters, taunt neck muscles, bunched

like iron cables, pushed, retreated, up and down

the icy stream. The match wore on for more

than twenty minutes.

Heads low, antlers commingled like old bones

collected in a basket, until the young stud forced

his aging foe beneath the water’s surface, held him there.

The veteran of a life of valiant clashes at last broke free.

He crashed and splashed downstream, the loser,

bleating like a lamb who's lost his mother.

Posing for cameras on the roadside,

the victor, centered in the roaring river,

raised his head and shook his massive rack.

He bugled his triumphant call to his new harem

Oh, Canada, I could make you my home

Hi to my Canadian Friends,

I heard tonight that Halifax, Nova Scotia is the first place to make a law against fragrances worn in public places. Wow! How nice it must be to live in a city that cares so much about people. How great it must be to attend concerts, plays, and church and not have your throat close up.

No one has the right to invade the space of other people with fragrances that are toxic, just as they don't have the right to blow smoke in the face of others.

I loved my day in Halifax last September. The clean air away from the terribly smelly ship - it was one of the few places I was able to visit before the chemical smells on the cruise ship made me so ill I had to stay in bed or try to make it outside to a place where no one was smoking, where I could actually breathe.

I also learned that Halifax has the largest environmental illness hospital.

Evidently, Canadians have great concern for clean air and limiting exposure to toxic chemicals.

I just wish it was not so far from NC. I'd drive up and spend my summer there. I can't fly. Toxic air in planes is awful for me and thirty million other people who have to deal with MCS.

In the past when I imagined myself in a place where I am happy and feel good, I sat myself down in the Canadian Rockies. What a glorious place. Now that I've been to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, I want to think of myself settled on the porch of a little house on the water watching sail boats or sitting high above Fundy Bay.

I feel the breeze and clean ocean air, the unfettered view over water that changes color as often as the velvet mountains here in the Appalachians.