Beautiful *green* thread. Ah, now there's a thought....Max makes it so that we can chose a colour for our thread, depending on mood, chakras, subject, etc.!Haha!!

Jen...we watched an incredibly good special on Mt. St. helen's last week, I think on the History Channel or maybe TLC. We were here, in casper, then. I remember the wholetown, this far away! was covered with ash broought on the winds...I couldn't drive home from work wihtout washing all the windows off. My doctor told me to stay inside to keep from breahting it in.

The sky was hungover in a sickly grayish-white pall and stayed that way for days, leaving a gritty and small idea of what it must've been like much closer to the eruption. we were all amzed at the reach of the Mother that day.

This is my favourite time on the prairie. I can imagine it is the highlands of Scotland and feel so at home...everywhere are little tiny wild phlox and other flowers, hunkered down low for protection from the wind, while the silvery-blue sagebrush stands up tall, yet twisted, with scars of antelope browsing and literal brow-beating by the wind.

I was amazed at the contrasts in greens from here to New England and back. There the greens were lighter and brighter...we were sure that what someone had told us was a blue spruce couldn't possibly be...it just was the wrong colour. Then someone told us it had to do with the acid rain. Don't know if that is true or not, but I had missed the greens of the West and was joyous when I came back here and saw the dark, opaque greens of Casper Mtn's spruce and pine, with a tiny bit of bright thrown in by the quaking aspen.

I love spring. Too soon, it will be over, the wind will be blowing dust everywhere, the blood of the prairie, its soil. It will be almost 90 degrees in the shade and all of the greens will be tarnished with the pancake powder of akali dust, like an old diva of the theatre readying herself for a fading swan song in the autumn.

kat