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Story Series Story Series
- From: allenhenriquez
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Description:
Wild Horses Live
Part 3
It can not be said that Blake Cory Greystock changed the course of his life because he failed to deal with Carter Russell properly. Carter had been on a high speed downward path from the moment his mother, Chloe Wintertree Russell, died of a drug overdose when he was sixteen. If you encountered him in route and you didn't get clear fast enough he would do what he could to drag you along. However Blake didn't know how bent on destruction Carter was and if at some point he realized it, it was too late now to get up, and around him.
* * *
On this Friday in July the temperatures stirred the kettle that was a hot and humid day, and served it slowly, with meticulous care, and equal distribution. Down near the river it was as hot as the open fields, hills, and roadways, with a variety of vegetation alert and at attention as were: birds, beaver, caterpillars, ants, worms, and weasels. A two legged mobile type, Carter Russell, was, and is, up at dawn with a heighten focus and determination.
Carter Russell had gone down to the river and set some bear traps around a staged campsite, created with used cans, food, and sugary treats, to lure the bears into the traps. Carter presently was in his gray pick up moving just off of a wooded area on a dirt road, and in thought. His truck climbed up an inclined pathway not far from where his father, Leland Russell, had gone fishing for the last time some years back. Leland Russell worked at the lumber mill, his work ethic was good, he was a very good employee, but on his time off he was a hard drinking, angry man. He beat Carter and his mother, but as Carter got older he fought back, as did his mom. On one occasion Leland hit Chloe in the mouth with blood flowing, after which he stumbled away through the kitchen to pick up his bottle and head into the backyard. But on the back porch Chloe cracked him over the head with a bat, knocking him to the ground unconscious. Later a neighbor inquired about the sprawled out Leland, while Chloe was picking tomatoes, at which point she advised, "Drinks too much for his own good." But when Leland hit his head on a stone shoreline having passed out drunk while fishing, and died; his mother now free from his abuse killed herself. The why of this torments Carter on this day, and every day.
* * *
Blake was in the process of selling off his livestock to neighbors. He'd already sold his horses, cow, and bull, and was carrying cages filled with chickens and a rooster to a customer, in his blue pick up, when he passed Carter just off his property line with his back to the road, urinating; with a cigarette in his mouth. The message and intent were obvious.
* * *
To be continued. . .
- Blog post
- 5 months ago
- Views: 92
- Not yet rated
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Shaded Gqrden Gone Wild Shaded Gqrden Gone Wild
- From: edngu
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Description:
- 7 months ago
- Views: 196
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Little Corner Of Paradise Little Corner Of Paradise
- From: edngu
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Description:
- 7 months ago
- Views: 234
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Vegetation Invasion Vegetation Invasion
- From: Toe_Knee
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Description:
I've been photographing this piano from approximately the same spot for almost a year now documenting it's demise. The vegation is starting to close in around it. Two mulberry trees have come up this year so it'll be interesting to see how that changes the light, the composition, and the piano itself. Took this shot about 9:30 this morning.
- 11 months ago
- Views: 493
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I liked what i saw I liked what i saw
- From: DAMP
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Description:
This is actually a reflection in a creek. I turned it around as i liked that there seemed to nothing behind the trees, they stand alone. But if you saw the shoreline, there is actually a lot of trees and vegetation behind these trees.
- 2 years ago
- Views: 409
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Broad Side Broad Side
- From: MarkSeanOrr
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Description:Broad side of a local barn covered by fall foilage.
- 2 years ago
- Views: 442
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Vegetation, and Reflected Sky Vegetation, and Reflected Sky
- From: ent49
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Description:
Stony Brook Wildlife Refuge
Norfolk, MA
- 2 years ago
- Views: 148
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Wednesday Story Series Wednesday Story Series
- From: allenhenriquez
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Description:
The Soiled Fabric of Out Twisted Spirits by Allen Henriquez
In tomorrow’s darkness
I took off my mask
feeling the mask underneath
As the spitting black of night
burned down into my soul
The moist ground from yesterday’s rain evaporated with heartfelt enthusiasm, anxious to return to the sky from whence it came. The face of a large and bright sun sat on top of, and breathed down with exuberance on the town of Millstown, Florida. The sky behind it tried with little success, to cool this ball of fire in its blanket of blue. From the continual balance of sun and rain came vegetation and crops of sturdy and abundant constitution. Thick tobacco, corn, peas, rice, oranges and potatoes, even the weeds, were fat and filled with power and determination. The consumption of Millstown’s crops naturally produced an offspring of hard and robust animals and men. Mules, men, and horses, strong as bulls, cows with rich, sweet milk, and women with bright, unflinching eyes.
Such was the state of the environment in this town, in the year 1915, sturdy and full of promise. But the war was here. It was a vicious confrontation of humanity, so mechanized, angry and vast that it was to be a world war. Years would pass before, and not until the second Great War did we call it World War I.
Gilbert Stallman, a white businessman of wealth, lived in Millstown. He being the owner and investment banker for “Stillman’s International Bank.” Stillman was a tall and erect type with a large head and thick handlebar mustache. His ruddy face and deep blue eyes were always with intensity, even when he laughed. Stillman’s wife, Geneva, a bright and beautiful woman bore him a son and daughter, ages five and three. They were a family who lived in the south end of town in a large and white, three-story, wood framed house.
Geneva ruled the house and would not hesitate to slap the arrogance from Gilbert’s face if he came home having overindulged in drink. And Gilbert would two to three times a year meet with his business associates and wash down his political chatter with good whiskey and strong opinion.
After one such drunken night, however, Gilbert came in receiving a quick and concise tongue lashing, followed by a series of thick handed smacks across his cheeks. Geneva’s discipline on this particular July night had an undesired affect on him. Gilbert still in his business suit found a bottle of brandy to his liking in the study and poured a large portion of it down his throat. The quiet precision of his act did not betray him, for while Geneva slept he drank.
The overnight, sleep-in maid was interrupted from her slumber by a request for a late night brew of coffee. The request was followed by a voluminous spray of vomit from Gilbert’s overloaded insides. The vomit ungraciously found reason to connect with Carol Beth’s face, nightclothes, bed, floor, and some personal items on the night table.
To be continued…
- Blog post
- 2 years ago
- Views: 111
- Not yet rated
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Sun Bathing Sun Bathing
- From: Sharon76
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Description:
She was soaking up the sun...
Sun Bathing by Sharon Taylor ©
- 2 years ago
- Views: 88
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Sharon76
- Artist
- Points:41550
- Views: 3169
- Since: 2 years ago
- Not yet rated
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The Pest House-Knightstown Ind The Pest House-Knightstown Indiana
- From: MarkSeanOrr
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Description:
In 1902 the Pest House served as the place of quaranteen for an epidemic of smallpox. By mid-July the Knightstown toll had shot to 81 cases. During the epidemic Knightstown
was like a city of the dead. All business in Knightstown was paralyzed, weeds, corn and other vegetation grew up all over town, hitching racks in the town square were overgrown
with weeds as tall as six feet. Hardly any business was transacted for nearly two and one-half months.This is how the house looks today in 2010. Knightstown in Henry County was the setting for the fictional town of Beardstown in the epic novel "Raintree County" by Ross Lockridge Jr.
Mark Orr
Nikon D40X
HDR - 3 years ago
- Views: 2408
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Festive Winter Poppies Festive Winter Poppies
- From: LadyArtist
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Description:
Acrylic on a gallery wrapped canvas, painted all sides. I created all the vegetation with a knife and the background was done with a brush as was the vase. This has a semi-abstract feeling to it, and is more modern. The orange and magenta really work well together with that touch of black in the background. The vase has a touch of metallic gold in the design. Size: 24 x 18 inches. Price: $1,650.00
- 3 years ago
- Views: 83
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Eye Popping Color Eye Popping Color
- From: Charley
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Description:
I really like how the green vegetation frames this bloom.
- 3 years ago
- Views: 139
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Show Off Show Off
- From: Charley
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Description:
As I toured the butterfly habitat at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattenooga, I found it very difficult to concentrate on only one creature from the hundreds visible. There were also many people there, further complicating the process of finding, focusing, framing, and photographing these lovely creatures. A closer look at the vegetation afforded the opportunity to stake out an acceptable spot, and patience yielded some memorable images.
- 3 years ago
- Views: 172
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THE SEAL - part two THE SEAL - part two
- From: Eye_In_Focus
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Description:
** PART TWO **
Chilicoot brought grace to the Shaman's ceremony, begging forgiveness from the spirits for stepping into Shaman Isilaak's mukluks. With strong, wide sweeps of his arms and rhythmic archings of his back and neck, he tilted his head skyward while keeping his eyes downcast to show respect. Low and strong, he sang the chant beseeching the animal spirits for help. His hollow rattles echoed over the ice. Fully feathered fans made from the snowy ptarmigan brought a wind the villagers had not felt since summer's end as his hands twisted and flicked. From a small skin pouch, Chilicoot pinched pungent herbs that he cast onto the smoking fire, calling forth in a strident voice the sacred names of the animals.
Ugarook was not sure, but he thought he saw the wispy spirit of a seal, dark-eyed and sad. "I am the last" the seal seemed to say before dissipating into twisted strands of driftwood smoke.
Did that mean there would be one? Even one gave hope. One until another was found. One until the effects of the grey death lifted just a little to allow life to push forth. One to allow the village to remain alive.
'Please, let there be one,' Ugarook pleaded within his heart. Quietly his rough voice joined Chilicoot's in a singsong cadence, thanking the spirits for considering their pleas. His fingers gripped his spear tightly. When their voices had trailed to air, Chilicoot smudged the tip of Ugarook's spear with sacred ashes, muttering incantations Ugarook thought only Isilaak had known. As if reading Ugarook's thoughts, Chilicoot smiled, the skin around his wise eyes crinkling.
The villagers pressed against Ugarook at the ceremony's end, clutching his parka with cold fingers, uttering words of luck and blessing. Talhgit forced a small packet into his hand. "This will help you to be strong, to save us all with your harvest," she whispered. He shook his head, denying her gift, knowing it must be fish, but she forced his fingers over it with surprising strength then rushed away. He stared at the packet carefully tied with gut string. It was true, he knew. Without vitality, he would be limited in the distance he could cover.
She had looked ahead, he realized, known what would happen, saved from her portions in anticipation. Feed the hunter, feed the village. Sharing is living. A small smile briefly crossed his face. He looked up, caught the sight of her retreating back. As if feeling his gaze, she turned, a woman in her prime only months ago but now withered from hardship, raised her hand in farewell and dived into the darkness of her igloo's entryway.
* * *
Even through the slits in the bone Ugarook had strapped over his eyes, the reflected sun stabbed at his eyes. Already the day and a half of walking had drained him. He remembered when he could walk for a week without feeling a sensation of thinness in his limbs. Those times were times of food, he acknowledged. Well fed before going, he had also had dried food to sustain him during his trek-as well as fresh killings from which he could eat along the way. This time he had left physically depleted with only Tahlgit's meager savings of fish and a few stone hard berries from last year.
He sucked on ice, pretending it was soup rich with caribou and seaweed. It distracted his mind from the way his stomach seemed to suck at his spine. Hunger was an insistent master. He used its needling to hone his perception to a fine antennae that gauged the land around him.
With acute attention to detail he sought imprints, indentations, melted concaves, broken ice crust, any slightest movement, a piece of vegetation out of place, projections of ice that might hide or shelter an animal. He used his sense of sound and smell. He tasted the air for faint hints of animal. At times he crouched and felt the ice-covered earth, trying to sense vibration caused by movement. When fatigued to needing rest, he would huddle like a seal on the ice, hoping to attract the attention of a polar bear. Only through pure intention could he hope to win in a fight with a polar bear, so weak was he, but intention he had. He was the village's best hope. He could not fail them!
Eventually he walked without stopping, afraid that stopping meant freezing. Tired, hungry, it would be easy to drift into a sleep state, to never wake. He would not bring home a seal by sleeping. Thus relentlessly he placed one foot deliberately forward, drawing toward the west where he knew he would eventually find a break in the ice.
'Seals have to breath. They will find the open water. Ugarook will find the seal. The seal will feed the villagers. Sharing is living.' It was a mantra Ugarook repeated to the rhythm of his footsteps. It drove him forward. It fed his intent to succeed. It encouraged him that the seal spirit had appeared. Surely their pleas had been heard and would be answered. Without food ... the village would die.
'Seals have to breath. They will find the open water. Ugarook will find the seal. The seal will feed the villagers. Sharing is living.' Ugarook strode forward, bent as if fighting the wind, but no wind pulled at the fur bordering the hood of his parka.
It was at the end of the second day that Ugarook smelled the open sea. There was no open sea near, however, that the smell should be so strong. Ugarook knew that smell meant seal. Elated, he stopped, straining to pinpoint its location. So far from the break in the ice which now appeared like faint twin lines wiggling alongside the horizon, Ugarook felt the seal had come to feed his village. This did not mean the kill would be easy. The spirits demanded respect. Only after a proper hunt would the animal spirits relinquish their bodies to nourish those that sought their sacrifice.
* * *
please continue to part three
- Blog post
- 3 years ago
- Views: 197
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THE SEAL - part one THE SEAL - part one
- From: Eye_In_Focus
-
Description:
THE SEAL
It was six months into the coldest winter Ugarook had ever seen. He stood outside his house of ice, his dark eyes slits in the flat planes of his face. He faced the horizon that stretched like a black line separating the glistening blue-white snow from the dark, unbroken sky. The sky had not changed in those six months. An odd thing for the sky to not change, thought Ugarook, shrugging his shoulders within his spotted seal fur parka to create warmth. He pulled the thick rabbit's fur ringing the parka's hood closer to his face. Have our spirit guides forgotten us? Are the spirits of the earth and sky and sea occupied elsewhere? Fighting an evil we do not know? An evil so great as to be causing this?
Even before the hardships of winter had descended upon them, the Grey Death had struck down many in the village. The Shaman Isilaak had spoken of a great disaster, a result of spirits fighting. The earth had broken open and spewed eye-torturing spirals of flame skyward. The breath of the spirits had solidified into a grey dust that coated the landscape, seared their lungs, shriveled the twisted shrubs on the tundra, and brought the migrating caribou to their knees. Later, hunters, traveling to learn of the extent of the spirits' wrath, had discovered that the migrating herds had been caught in the molten rock that swept downward from the gash in the earth. There had been survivors, yes, but those caribou soon sickened from breathing the dust.
The Shaman said this dust was evil, that it came from the intent to hurt that the spirits had thrown at each other. "See the lands," he had said, sweeping his gnarled hands outward. The villagers had followed his gesture with their gaze. All was grey. Little stirred. Only the grey dust that fell still could be seen to move. "Go into your homes," he had cautioned. "Stay until the grey dust stops. It brings death!"
Indeed, it had. Many had died, breathing the grey dust that seemed to creep into every crack and cover every object. Others had huddled beneath skins, clutching their children's faces close to their chests. These had survived. 'But survived to what?' Ugarook wondered, staring at the unchanging landscape.
The dust had poisoned everything. There was no water, no plant not affected. The villagers had carefully dug into the ice to capture clear pieces to melt for water. Salvaging the vegetation, however, had been impossible. There were no berries, no herbs to harvest and store for winter. The meat that would have been added to a summer's harvest of fish did not exist. They had entered into winter short on food. Twenty-three villagers had entered into winter. They had known then, those that had stood facing each other, facing the Shaman who prayed for the goodwill of the spirits, that at winter's end, it was possible only a handful would stand together to thank the spirits for whatever blessings had come their way. All prayed that a handful would indeed survive til spring.
Ugarook thought of those who lived still: Tahlgit, whose expressionless face hid a sense of humor she used well to lighten harsh realities; his own wife, Egalat, with the sweet smile she had endowed to their surviving daughter, Willow Bud. His face clouded with pain, remembering the two sons who had died within the first month as they had sought to find game to feed the village. Always think of others, he had told them. And they had, giving their lives in the hope of giving life to the village. They died bravely and well, he reminded himself, squaring his shoulders. Choosing life is not always the best choice.
There were others, huddling together within the village, asking the spirits for help. Among them a family of four had clung to life: man, wife, two young sons,perhaps hunters of the future. Two female children of one family had been taken in by others for their parents and siblings had perished. An old woman, Selavik, known for her beadwork and her young son, who would be forced into manhood through need. Chilicoot, an elder of the tribe, had somehow succeeded in walking through the grey death from where he had been foraging. Ugarook, as one of the most experienced hunters, had insisted Chilicoot come live with them. Better to cluster together, thought Ugarook, so we can see who needs help. Perhaps we can banish death from our doors by staying together, staying strong. A desolate wind whistled through Ugarook's mind. No breath of air moved across the snow-covered plain before him, its harsh crystals throwing blinding rays of reflected sun.
Two weeks ago Nagatok and Chilgaat, young, single men with some skill as hunters, had left the village to seek game. Guided by Ugarook's knowledge, they hoped to find the ice's edge to hunt seal, to return successful so the village might be nourished and continue its fight to survive til the sun would shine again in spring and rains would heal the earth.
There had been no seal brought to the village to cross their lips with trails of welcomed fat. Nagatok and Chilgaat had not returned.
The last of the summer's fish had been portioned to each remaining villager four days earlier. Boiled in ice water, they had made it stretch. Soup so thin it only faintly smelled of salmon, it had sustained them. Barely.
As a hunter, Ugarook knew all the life patterns of every animal that flew, walked, or swam within their territory. All had been disrupted by the spirits' fight. Many had died, buried within the liquid stone that later hardened or brought down by the dust, the meat too tainted to eat. It had become rare to see an animal of any size. When the large animals had disappeared, he and the few other hunters had sought smaller game: hares, weasels, foxes, moving down to rodents of any sort as desperation emerged within their hearts and their bellies.
Now ... there was nothing left. So it seemed. No animal had moved within a two days' hunt of their village for over six full moon cycles. If the Shaman were still alive, Ugarook would ask him to perform a hunting ceremony to draw in the animals. The Shaman had had the power to beseech the spirits of the animals to sacrifice their bodies that the villagers might live. Those spirits that had nurtured the village so many times in the past would have responded again. Through a twist of fate, Ugarook had become the Shaman, an Elder, and the only hunter of experience left in the village. He was no Shaman, no matter what village tradition stated. But a hunter ... 'yes,' thought Ugarook, 'I am a hunter.'
He had a knack for knowing where the game would be and an eye for unerring accuracy. He had speared his first seal at seven with his grandfather. He had always provided for those in the village who could not hunt for themselves. Being so able, he had had plenty to share. Sharing was living. Sharing kept those alive who added much to the village but were unable to bring meat to their own smoke pits. Like Chilicoot, who knew more of the herbs than anyone besides the Shaman. Or Selavik, her greatly admired beadwork adorned the garments of the Shaman and the hunters with magical symbols that kept them safe and brought them luck. Neither Chilicoot nor Selavik could bring meat to their fires, but they brought much to the village. Yes, sharing was living.
'I will ask Chilicoot to perform a hunting ceremony,' thought Ugarook. 'He will know better than I how to ask the animal spirits to come to our aid. He will know the right words, the right gestures and perhaps ... perhaps he will yet have some bit of the right herb with which to draw the spirits to us.' Although Ugarook could see in his mind's eye the movements of the Shaman from ceremonies past, he had no confidence to perform such a ceremony. It was his hunting in which he had confidence.
'I will draw upon this confidence to bring life back to the village,' Ugarook thought fiercely. Without thinking, he shook a fist toward the earth as if to imprint his will upon it. With the dark line of the horizon burning within his mind, he turned toward the opening of his ice house and entered.
* * *
please continue to part two....
- Blog post
- 3 years ago
- Views: 244