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The 3 Most Precious Resources of Life

August 11, 2015 By Robin Strong Elton Leave a Comment

If I were to name the three most precious resources of life,
I should say books, friends, and Nature; and the greatest of these,
at least the most constant and always at hand, is nature.

Nature we have always have with us,
an inexhaustible storehouse of that which moves the heart,
appeals to the mind, and fires the imagination—
health to the body, a stimulus to the intellect, and joy to the soul.

To the scientist Nature is a storehouse of facts, laws, processes;

to the artist she is a storehouse of pictures;

to the poet she is a storehouse of images, fancies,
a source of inspiration;

to the moralist she is a storehouse of precepts and parables;

to all she may be a source of knowledge and joy.

-John Burroughs, The Art of Seeing Things

I’m spending my days mining the storehouse.

It’s funny how no matter how late I stay up here, I’m up with the birds morning. Something about the quality of the new light so close to the horizon demands that you rub the sleep from your eyes to witness it, and I have never, ever walked the beach close to sunrise and not seen something worth witnessing. It’s the ultimate creation of white space in which to highlight and experience wonder.

Only three weeks remain of the kids’ summer vacation; Jake’s last summer as a child and the first beach week in years and years that I wasn’t working while trying not to disappoint my family.

Savoring every moment.

The Song Sings Itself

August 5, 2015 By Robin Strong Elton Leave a Comment

In summer the song
sings itself

-William Carlos Williams

When we first moved here from the city it was late March and we were struck by how quiet it is. Although we do have neighbors, they’re not nearly so close as they are on a city street, and a line of trees on all sides buffer sound.

There’s not a constant stream of traffic, the lyrics from blaring stereos escaping from open windows, the bass turned up so high sometimes that you can sort of feel the car coming long before you see it. There’s no beeping from impatient drivers when the car in front of them doesn’t move quickly enough when the light goes green. No incessant sirens from the firehouse a few blocks down or on their way to the hospital half a mile away. No combatant couple going at it every weekend like clockwork, muttering and yelling until someone gives up and reports a domestic abuse or noise violation so that we can all get some sleep.

Peace. Silence. That’s March.

Summer is a whole different thing. I wake up to the house wrens feeding their babies, a cascade of warbling notes like a bubbling fountain, a chorus of fainter song responding in excitement or hunger. The crows hold a meeting in the trees outside my bedroom window, sometimes hopping down to pace the ground while they state their case. A pileated woodpecker laughs and drums away. Sometimes a squirrel gets all riled up and starts scolding. Morning is my favorite.

Once the sun gets nice and hot though, the birds sensibly settle down for naps and all I hear is insects. Bees and dragonflies drone by. And all day long, all night long, the grasshoppers, crickets, cicadas and katydids are hard at work. It’s constant, unrelenting. In mid-July they haven’t started yet and I’ll wonder where they are; by the first week of August I can’t believe I was looking for it. It’s SO LOUD, crazy making, wave after wave after wave of drawn out clicking and buzzing.

Perspective: I don’t miss the sounds of the city. And I know that pretty soon the robins will be at it and they’re downright annoying to hear all day long. After that, the leaves will turn and fall and the winds and snow will come and I’ll be counting the days until the hot and hazy days of summer return.

So I’ll try to enjoy the sounds of the golden afternoons while I still have them; savor the sunshine warming me all the way through, the delicious respite of a cold sweaty drink or unexpected cool air washing in at night.

It’s hard though. Goddamn those bugs are loud.

Ranger Rick educational nature apps for iPhone and iPad, 99 cents

June 17, 2012 By Robin Strong Elton 2 Comments

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature.
It will never fail you.

-Frank Lloyd Wright

I got Ranger Rick magazine for years and years and years.

I’m going to go ahead and credit it for my ongoing love affair with nature photography, especially frogs (for no real reason I can think of, I just associate frog images with Ranger Rick) and macro.

The National Wildlife Federation now publishes three different magazines for a wider range of kid ages:

Wild Animal Baby for toddlers is board board sized with nice solid pages to hold up to some serious love;
Big Backyard is basically the same as Ranger Rick but with games and vocabulary scaled to the pre-K and kindergarten crowd;
and of course, Ranger Rick itself, for kids ages 7-12.

(Where does a kid turn for his nature photography fix after age 12? National Geographic, I guess.)

If you have a NOOK, you can get e-subscriptions to save paper, but then how do you cut out pages for projects and wall decor? Just seems silly to me.

Anyway, the National Wildlife Federation also has some cute new wildlife apps for kids available for iPhone or iPad, another avenue to get your kids excited about learning about the great outdoors and its inhabitants. Right now they’re just 99 cents!

What Did Snakey Eat?
In this delightfully silly game, preschoolers develop thinking skills by matching  the shape in Snakey’s belly to one of the three suggested objects. Did Snakey swallow an umbrella? A rhinoceros? Or even a school bus? The giggles never stop when preschoolers see the crazy things that Snakey has eaten. Choose the correct object  and Snakey will spit it back out, then swallow something even funnier!

Click the Birdie
Score points, discover cool bird facts, and have tons of fun in Ranger Rick’s adventure-packed app. Use Rick’s special digital camera to photograph some truly awesome birds as you travel to wild places throughout the United States. Visit a Cypress Swamp, an Arizona desert, the Hawaiian Islands, and other fun locales. At each stop, you’ll meet three different birds to photograph. If you frame all three just right, your photos will appear in Ranger Rick’s bird gallery.

But look out! These birdies are quick, and you’ll need fast fingers and sharp eyes to catch them before they fly away. Keep clicking and soon you’ll be a pro at this intriguing game, which also teaches kids about wildlife and fosters a love of nature and exploration.

Raiders of the Lost Aardvark
Join Ranger Rick the raccoon on a wild ride through Africa in this thrilling detective game that tests your sleuthing skills. A rare mummified aardvark has been unearthed in sub-Saharan Africa, rocking the archaeological world. The archaeologist who discovered it, Jack Snare, believes that the aardvark holds the key to unlocking some of the world’s greatest natural mysteries.

Snare takes his aardvark mummy on a global tour of prestigious museums. But en route to the Natural Science Museum in Africa, his precious cargo is stolen! And strangely, after the theft of the aardvark, some of Africa’s rarest and most endangered animals begin to disappear as well.

Is the aardvark cursed? Was it never meant to be found? Is there something sinister behind the disappearances? Put on your detective cap and help Ranger Rick track down the clues to solve this mummy mystery!

Know of any other wildlife & nature apps suitable for kids?