Southern escarpment

Animals:
Darkling beetle (Gonopus tibialis)
Sparrows
Cows (in the form of cow pies) (Bos primigenius)
Gnats (Culex pipiens)
Ants (Formicidae)
Deer (Cervidae)
Coyote (scat) (Canis latrans)

In this area we also identified several patterns in the nature around us, including concentric, spiral, parallel, tessellate, and scatter patterns.

At the southern escarpment, it was windy and slightly rainy, which created the sound of rattlesnakes rustling in the grasses. There were some light clouds but mostly dark grey ones covered the sky. A rainbow appeared towards the north midway through the day. There were plentiful gnats and bees at lower elevations and between bluffs, but once we were on top of the bluffs they disappeared. There are signs of trauma in burned wood on the ground.

We have explored this place.  In the morning we set out on a long walk, snaking over bluffs and valleys, allowing our landscapes of thought and place to merge. Passing over, under, and through a barbed wire fence we wander up a grassy ravine toward a cliff. Droplets fall on our dirty heads and birds cry.

We take refuge from the storm under an outcropping, allowing ourselves to fall deeper into the trance. As the space between droplets increases we venture from the cave opening, pulled by the landscape up the cliff, over ridges and along the curving swales and ripples of the land. We come together quietly in an open circle of pebbles, taking our places to listen, beginning to feel our surroundings as we unclench our thinking minds and allow our senses to guide our perceptions.

Everything is round, flowing channels twisting and circulating, expanding and contracting.  It is easy to see the movement of water here. The rock escarpments break in tessellations, spreading and scattering. Sagebrush, grasses, bushes at edges of elevations, reeds and forbs in the potholes.

Everything grows in rings and patches.  We sit in a similar manner and are here.