Here is my response to her invitation for reader photo submissions that play with abstractions of color.

This was clouds at sunset and their reflection on the rear side windows of my dad's white Ford Edge. I loved how the car absorbed the color of the sky, save for the shadows of the window and door seams, and made the scene look like a wallpapered black and white image. I shall give it an arty title: "Edge of Sunset."

I bet I have some friends out there who would have fun with this assignment.

Go!

Copyright 2012 by Katie Bradshaw

1. You can buy a variety of yummy, locally-produced foods and support small, entrepreneurial businesses that fold their profits back into the community. (Think: cupcakes, interesting varieties of dry beans, honey, eggs that come from happy chickens that you can meet in person if you wish, etc.)

2. While the weather of late has seemed like spring, the windchill Friday into Saturday is predicted to drop as low as minus 5. The farmer’s market will have a chili cooking demonstration starting at 2 p.m. Minus 5 windchill is chili weather. (But don’t let that forecast LOW temp keep you indoors – the high is supposed to be around 40 degrees.) The Superbowl is imminent, and the chili recipes would be useful for those football/commercial-watching parties.

3. You can help support the proposed project to join the North Platte Valley Museum (where I work) with the Farm And Ranch Museum to create a new museum.

Wait. What? Support a museum collaboration by going to the farmers market?

Yes. The organizers and vendors at the Scottsbluff winter farmers market are very community-oriented people. They have agreed to support a different nonprofit organization at each and every winter market by donating space for the nonprofit to display information and by donating goodies for a raffle basket and giving the raffle proceeds to the nonprofit organization. (How cool is that?)

This Saturday, the North Platte Valley Museum and the Farm And Ranch Museum, which are working towards growing together into a bigger and better “new” museum, are the featured nonprofit organization. At the museums’ table, you can buy a history book produced from material from the museums’ archives (proceeds benefit the museums), view a few items from the museums’ collections, talk to people who are involved with planning the NPVM-FARM collaboration project and sign up to become a member. (Just $40 gets you annual memberships at both museums and helps support these community institutions, which receive no public funds for operating expenses beyond a utility credit from the City of Gering.)

AND, for every dollar you donate in support of these museums and their work to preserve the history of this region and tell the story to the nation and the world (and boost tourism in the area and improve our local economy!), you get a raffle ticket for a goodie-packed gift basket that represents the diversity of entrepreneurial spirit in this rural region.

How cool is that?

See you there!

Copyright 2012 by Katie Bradshaw

If this document is is correct, the old picnic area was constructed to the south and east of Mitchell Pass by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, “temporarily closed to the public in late 1939 because of overuse and abuse,” permanently closed “without substantial opposition” in 1940 and “obliterated” in 1941. Judging by the concrete rubble we found out there, the obliteration project was halted just before the “clearing away” phase.

While you can’t drive out there for a picnic anymore, you CAN park at a pull-off on the side of Highway 92 and go for a hike there. Check in first at the Visitors Center, then go west through the pass. You’ll see the chained-off old road just past where the wire guardrails end on the south side of the road.

Bugman and I followed the tire marks left by the Park Ranger patrol vehicle until they ended, wandering off the path from time to time to see what we could see. Here are some of the things we found:

An old boundary sign

A 1935 survey marker. Do you suppose the penalty for removal has gone up since then?

At the based of a slightly burnt pine tree, a pile of mouldering cloth held down by stones that concealed a rotting Copenhagen can and a hole full of sticks and pine cones and perhaps something else that I was too chicken to continue to dig for.

In one of the canyons, a den - three feet in diameter. Wonder what lived there??

Maybe it was the same critter that deposited these hairballs on the trail nearby?

What’s really fascinating to me are the microclimates present on and around the bluff.

In a sheltered area on a south-facing rise, plants were already sending out new buds:

While in shady draws there is still snow clinging around, and I can’t even remember the last time it snowed (apart from Sunday morning, after this hike):

On a larger scale, it’s interesting to compare the relatively treeless east-facing south bluff, which is visible from the Visitors Center:

Photo taken February 2011

with the pine canopy of the west-facing portion of the south bluff that you can see from the old picnic area trail:

Photo taken January 2012

Here’s a photostitched panoramic view from where Bugman and I climbed up towards the face of the bluff:

This is one of the few photos on this blog you can click to enlarge

The lovely scenery and potential diversity of insect habitats at the old picnic area has got Bugman’s curiosity piqued. He wants to go back and explore some more.

I hear there are quite a few rattlers out in the picnic area in warmer weather. All the better reason to go hike there now!

If we go back in the summertime, I may have to invest in some type of snake chaps – maybe SnakeGuardz (linked just for the annoying video and the name spelled with a “z”),  designed for “Hunters, Hikers, Campers, Fishermen, Ranchers, Surveyors, Realtors and Border Patrol.”

Copyright 2012 by Katie Bradshaw

The year-end report also gave me the five most-viewed blog posts in 2011. Only one of them, The new Nebraska license plate, was written in 2011. The report commented that my writing “has staying power” and suggested that I write about those pre-2011 topics again.

Three of the top five posts were written in 2010: Tis the sssssseason, Blankety-blank tumbleweeds and Sugar factory tour. I could definitely see more posts about snakes and tumbleweeds in my future. If I visit the sugar factory again, I’d surely write about that.

But the blog topic rounding out my top five for 2011, which was written in 2009, I HAVE NO INTENTION OF WRITING ABOUT AGAIN!!! It’s the same post that made the top five last year – Gettin’ my Runza on. Ugh!

Now, I have nothing against Runza. It’s the fast-food joint I visit most often, when I eat fast food. I figure I might as well support a uniquely Nebraskan chain restaurant in this world of increasing global conformity and loss of regional identity. The local Runza restaurants have also been rock stars in terms of corporate sponsorship of local fundraising efforts.

But it’s fast food. Fast food never tastes as good as slow food.

This point was driven home to me last winter, when I tasted a homemade cabbage burger for the first time at the Scottsbluff winter farmers market.

In my personal 1-to-10 continuum of cabbage burger tastiness, with 10 being best, a Runza rates about a 2 and a reheated Gering Bakery cabbage burger rates about a 5 compared to the taste of a real homemade cabbage burger – a 9 for the farmers market version I had.

I was SO looking forward to getting a cabbage burger fix when this season’s winter farmers market started up (every other Saturday 1 to 4 p.m. in the greenhouse at Aulick’s TLC). Alas, the health inspector blocked most vendors from selling that particular treat. Something about preparing meat in an unlicensed kitchen. I understand the reasoning, but BOO! What was I to do now?

Learn to make my own cabbage burgers! And blog about it in hopes of knocking my Runza post out of the top 5 in 2012!

I proceeded thusly:

Step 1: Buy a pound of ground beef, a head of cabbage, some whole-wheat flour and some onions from the farmers market.

Step 2: Dissolve 2 tsp. sugar and a packet of dry yeast in 1/4 cup warm water, mix in 3/4 cup cooled scalded milk and 1 Tbs melted butter, then mix and knead in 2 cups of flour (half whole wheat, half white). Let rise 30 min. (Note: this proportion left me with more filling than I could fit into the dough. I probably could have doubled the dough recipe and come out about right.)

Step 3: Brown the ground beef, then stir in about a cup of diced onion, three cups of shredded cabbage and a cup of water and cook uncovered for about 20 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. This step is very close to what my mom calls “schnipfully hamburger” – a term perhaps derived from a German word used in my family generations ago. UPDATE: let the filling cool before making the burgers.

Step 4: Roll out the dough and cut into pieces

Step 5: Add a couple of spoonfuls of filling to a dough square. Last winter, one of my farmers market cabbage burgers was a fusion cabbage burger – it contained jalapeño peppers and was oh-so-tasty. I decided to replicate this with pickled peppers. (Note to self: mince the peppers next time, and use fewer of them.)

Step 6: Pinch opposite corners of the dough together

Step 7: Pinch the seams together, form into a rounded shape and put seam-side-down on a buttered cookie sheet. Top with pepper slice (optional). Let rise 2o min.

Step 8: Bake at 375 for 30 min. Cool on a wire rack.

Step 9: NOMNOMNOM!

As I was working my way thorough the steps, I was thinking to myself, “Gosh, this is a lot of fuss. Why not just slap the filling between a couple of slices of bread?”

I later answered my own question. The aroma and flavor (a 10 on my cabbage burger flavor scale) of the perfectly-crusty bread baked around the meat filling could not be matched by the bread-slice option. Also, it would be a lot messier. The well-made homemade cabbage burger can be easily eaten with one hand. (Aha! Homemade convenience food!)

The size I made those cabbage burgers – starting with dough squares about 6 inches across – was perfect. Each leftover burger just fit into an empty farmers market goat cheese container. (I’ve saved approximately 46 hojillion of those containers to date.)

Here’s hoping my slow-food cabbage burger post beats the page views of that 2009 fast-food post this year!

UPDATE: almost forgot to include a link to the blog at my friend’s dairy, which includes a good explanation of “what’s a krautburger?” (AKA cabbage burger).

Copyright 2012 by Katie Bradshaw

I desperately needed to do some time in the great outdoors.

Bugman and I decided to head over to Cedar Canyon Wildlife Management Area -  a chunk of public land managed by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission that’s part of the Wildcat Hills Wildlands Initiative (which has opened thousands of scenic acres to public access over the past decade or so).

We chose Cedar Canyon because it was close (we only had 2 hours to spend) and because we’d been out there once before with a couple of friends last October, so it was somewhat familiar terrain.

On this hike in October, our friends' dog was sooooo pleased to have found a fresh pile of horse pucky to roll in. Horseback riding is an approved use of the land, as is hunting. We collected and disposed of a few dozen discarded shotgun shells out there that day. Stoopid sloppy shooters.

Back in October, Bugman communed with the meaty lubber grasshoppers that were in abundance near the path we walked.

No grasshoppers in January. No bighorn sheep that we could see, either.

“Bighorn sheep?” you say. “In Nebraska?”

Yes. Bighorn sheep live in Nebraska, but only in the scenic, rocky terrain here out west. They were extirpated from their native range here in pioneer times but have been reintroduced in the Wildcat Hills and Pine Ridge areas.

Here’s a link to a small map of bighorn sheep territory from the NGPC. Here’s a screen capture from a USDA report that shows a more detailed western Nebraska map:

I would like to spot the sheep someday. Methinks I need to bring out a good set of binoculars. If you want to see pictures of Nebraska bighorns, check out the NGPC Facebook page “Panhandle collection” photo albums.

We didn’t see any sheep, but, according to Bugman, I acted like one.

Here’s me, as seen via Bugman’s cell phone camera. (I’m the pale blue dot on the ridge about 1/4 of the way down from the top of the photo.)

Bugman is not too keen on scrambling up steepish slopes, so he found a nice, sunny, grassy spot to relax while I was exploring. (What a great place for a winter picnic!)

The ridges I walked had indeed been trodden by sheep, judging from the piles of scat up there. Here’s a photo-stitched sheep’s-eye view of the landscape:

This is one of the few photos on my blog you can click to enlarge.

Here are some other interesting things I saw up there.

A wind erosion rock sculpture underneath a weathering sandstone ledge

A tiny fossilized bone fragment embedded in the sandstone. (Fossil removal is illegal, FYI.)

If you’d like to check out Cedar Canyon yourself, here are directions:

Head south on Highway 71 from Gering. Turn west on County Road T, just south of Carter Canyon Road (it’s all gravel road from here). Follow the road all until it ends in a T intersection with County Road 17. Turn left/south. A sign says the road is a dead end. You’ll cross a little wood-plank bridge and then take a 90-degree curve. Where the road forks, stay right – this will take you to the parking area.

Enjoy!

Copyright 2012 by Katie Bradshaw

I wanted to photograph it last night and tonight, but didn’t have the opportunity. I did snap a few pics this morning on my way to work as the sun was rising and the moon was setting.

The moon was just bigger than the fishing bobber caught in a tree at Terry's Lake.

Terry's moon. Funny how the apparent size of the moon can change, depending on the photo framing.

Moon over Scotts Bluff

As I was taking the last picture from the curb near Gering High School, I happened to look over and catch another photographer in the act.

As I biked up the street, I saw another person out photographing the moon. I’ve seen an awful lot of moon pix on Facebook posts, too. (My friends are a bunch of lunatics?)

The moon has become a meme.

So I propose this – if you have a wolf moon photo you’d like to share, email it to me at wildebeestly AT gmail dot com, include your name and where/when you took the picture, and I’ll add it to this post.

Copyright 2012 by Katie Bradshaw

UPDATE 1/22/12: my first reader photo submission!

Taken by Maggie Vinson, January 8 or 9, looking back west towards town from outside the North Platte NRD building.

Copyright 2012 by Katie Bradshaw

I’ve gotten used to the parched, dusty, 22-to-33-million-year-old sandstone/siltstone/ash/limestone rock formations of the Wildcat Hills in western Nebraska (prairie rattler habitat), so returning to the moist, green 320-million-year-old sandstone rock formations of the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois (timber rattler habitat) was a bit of a shock.

One one of our first dates in the spring of 1997, Bugman and I went hiking in the oak-hickory forest of the Garden of the Gods Recreation Area, about 60 miles east and south of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, where he was then working on his bachelor’s degree in zoology.

In the summer of 1999, we again hiked Garden of the Gods, this time both of us as SIUC students (I’d started my master’s degree in geography, he was soon to start his master’s in zoology) and not-quite-married-a-year newlyweds.

We did a lot of hiking in the National Natural Landmarks in the Shawnee – at Giant City, Bell Smith Springs, and especially Little Grand Canyon, where Bugman conducted his master’s research on Pseudometapterus umbrosus (which got him published and later cited in a Wikipedia entry). But we didn’t drive out to Garden of the Gods other than the two times mentioned above.

While visiting family for New Year’s Eve, Bugman and I returned to Garden of the Gods for a short, late afternoon hike.

I had forgotten how completely weird the place is, with eroded formations of liesegang bands looming out of the woods.

It was such a different sensory experience to be hiking there. Instead of dust and sage, I smelled mud and oak. Instead of yucca and prickly pear, I saw moss and mushrooms.

But there were still similarities between my southern Illinois hike and my western Nebraska hikes.

For one, Bugman was there, uploading pix on his cell phone.

Cell reception is better on a rock ledge.

For two, Bugman was there, investigating the invertebrates.

Checking out some cold, slow springtails in a puddle.

For three, the rock outcrops provided a great vantage point and canvas for the sunset.

4:41 p.m.

4:45 p.m.

If you find yourself 1,000 miles from Wyobraska, I highly recommend stopping for a hike in the Shawnee National Forest.

Except maybe during mosquito season.

Copyright 2012 by Katie Bradshaw

I wrote that last post while sitting on a sofa about 1,000 miles away from home, where my dad lives in southeastern Illinois.

When I drive out there, I wish I had Wyoming plates on my car, so strangers would give me more credit for the distance I’ve traveled. My dad lives about as close to Kentucky as I do to Wyoming. My sisters in South Carolina are 7 hours closer.

“I’m not from Omaha,” I’d like to say. “See that “21″ on my license number? That’s about as far from Omaha as you can get.” (See here if you don’t know about the Nebraska license plate prefix code.)

Harrisburg, Illinois, is so far away from Scottsbluff, Nebraska, it’s an alien environment. See?

As seen in a Harrisburg florist's window.

Being so far away from family is not nearly as big as deal as it was in immigrant/pioneer days. We have video-enabled cell phones these days, after all.

But when a family member is in fragile health, when you know he would benefit from having you by his side, that cell phone image just makes the distance that much more excruciating.

When people ask me if I like it here, I say, “Yes, but I wish I was closer to family.”

The glorious sunrise on the morning of my return was a bittersweet welcome home.

It was also followed by intensely gusting wind.

Sigh.

I managed to avoid all the intense Wyobraska wind around the first of the year but, I guess I couldn’t escape it for long. “Red sky at morning” and all that.

At least it waited to blow until after I’d arrived at work on my bicycle.

Copyright 2012 by Katie Bradshaw

The Wildcat Hills

The scenery and the hiking opportunities in the Wildcat Hills (which includes Scotts Bluff) have provided me a lot of enjoyment, as well as blog fodder.

Views from a hike

A quick shout-out: while you’re oohing and aahing over the wide-open vistas, don’t forget to thank a rancher. It’s the land’s use as cattle range that has allowed so much of the native landscape to remain, and it’s rancher landowners selling their properties to Platte River Basin Environments, Inc., that has opened up so much new public land in western Nebraska in recent years.

A visit to one of the newer public lands in western Nebraska

The sere, spare landscape

It’s possible to drive for miles on WENE highways and not see another human. The dry, high plains and sparse population develops one’s ability to find beauty in simplicity and desolation.

Snow

The bluffs are beautiful in all weather

“The West”

I still thrill to be living “where the deer and the antelope play.”

A Sunday drive through the Wyoming landscape

Agricultural diversity

I’ve gotten to learn what sugarbeets, wheat, sunflowers, pinto beans and potatoes look like in the field. I feel a bit better educated as food consumer, compared to my previous, urban/corn-and-soybean-landscape-raised self.

Western Nebraska has some amazing artists

What the heck do they do over at PREC, anyway?

Local foods

Speaking of food, I have also appreciated the opportunity to consume fresh, local foods grown, raised and processed by people I have gotten to know on a personal level, or fresh, local foods that we harvested ourselves. A few memorable meals from the year:

Strawberry picking

Vegetable season is in full swing

Goose hunt on the North Platte River

Things to do

Yes, the region is sparsely populated, but there are still plenty of things to do. During some portions of the year, you’d be hard pressed to find the time to attend all the local festivals and special events.

Biking up the bluff during Oregon Trail Days

That’s Spooktacular!

Christmas events, Christmas giving

Shadow portraits and sunsets

The scenery and the quality of the light here on the High Plains makes it awfully fun to take shadow self-portraits.

Seeing Scotts Bluff from a new perspective

Biking up the bluff during Oregon Trail Days

Sunset viewing is made easier by the lack of trees on the High Plains horizon.

Sunsets make me jealous of people who live outside of town

Views from a hike

Five awesome things from this evenings bluff hike

Nope. Still not used to the view

Thanks, Bugman, for landing a job out here and for being so supportive of your bloggy wife.

My husband, the FARM movie star

Copyright 2011 by Katie Bradshaw