The Flickr Musings Image Generatr

The first roads across Arkansas were routes followed by Native Americans. (Image courtesy Gerald Klingaman.)

Of the 13 detachments of Cherokee forced from their homelands in the southeastern states to travel the Trail of Tears, the Benge Detachment was the only group to travel overland through the Arkansas Ozarks. This signpost is at the Trail of Tears Memorial in Fayetteville. (Image courtesy Gerald Klingaman.)

This section of the old Southwest Trail between the Randolph County community of Supply, Arkansas, and the Current River is called Pittman Road today but in 1838 was the trail followed by the Benge Detachment on the Trail of Tears. (Image courtesy Gerald Klingaman.)

Reelfoot Lake, on the Kentucky-Tennessee border and not far from the Mississippi River, formed when the New Madrid earthquake of 1811-12, changed the landform of the region. (Image courtesy Gerald Klingaman.)

Texas longhorn cattle are a bit more common today as the American diet swings back to leaner, grass-fed beef. The animals on the left with impressive horns are cows while the bull on the right, as is typical for the breed, has shorter horns. (Image courtesy Gerald Klingaman.)

I’m still wondering if it means anything. On another note, her sister, Solaris, has new buds. The other blooms did what blooms do, wither and fall away.

Also taken before I accidentally damaged a bloom. 😞

I see three more buds cropping up.

I'm wondering if this flower blooming also means something.

By now, she has 5 blooms. I wonder if this means anything.

The bloom hasn't opened up, yet, but it will soon. I'm still musing.

The October 15 U.S. Drought Monitoring map shows the southern Ozarks to be in extreme drought conditions with no relief expected through the rest of the month. (Image courtesy U.S. Drought Monitor.)

There are now four blooms.

Thinking about it still, I wonder if the number of blooms is a sign as well, considering what I know about "Polaris".

At a highway intersection in roughly the middle of nowhere, I took the chance to pull over and climb a nearby hill to capture a view of the surrounding landscape. Mindful of rattlesnakes, I kept my eyes to the ground and my footsteps loud as I scrambled up. Any snakes present were wise enough to avoid getting stumbled upon, but near my stopping point I encountered the remains of some animal who no longer had that option. A season or so gone, I'd guess, given the lack of fur or other remains, but the skeleton was still partially articulated; I'm not enough of an organismal biologist (nor a rancher) to know to what manner of mammal it once belonged. Whatever the luckless beast may have been, dying on some unnamed hillside, it did not go without a trace - its memory lives on, recorded in silver and passed through the aether to the regard of countless creatures as alien to it as it now is to us. But in the end we are close cousins of this creature, and we too will be skeletons on some hill or in some valley when our time comes. To contemplate its image is to contemplate the universal kinship of mortality, which unites us all, with or without our consent.

Shot with a Voigtländer Perkeo II
80mm f/3.5 Color-Skopar lens
Kentmere Pan 100 film
Shot at EI 100
Developed in Rodinal (1:50, 9:02 min, agitated each minute at 79.25F)
Scanned on a Coolscan 9000

Or, simply, "Solitude"

There's an alternate title or two but I think I'll stay mum on that.

I don't know what she's thinking about, though she looks contemplative.

Washington State apple growers are moving towards planting high-density orchards to increase yields and automate production as much as possible. (Image courtesy Gerald Klingaman.)

Ball Horticulture is one of the top providers of seed and cuttings for the greenhouse industry. They have a stunning display garden in suburban Chicago showcasing their offerings. (Image courtesy Gerald Klingaman.)

In downtown Chicago is the sumptuous Lurie Garden that shows how native plants can be used to create a natural looking prairie that is better than it would ever be in nature. (Image courtesy Gerald Klingaman.)

in the heart of munich's old town, a moment is cloaked in rain and reflections. a young woman stands, a solitary silhouette under an umbrella, the night air carrying the whisper of her thoughts with the smoke that drifts away. she's a portrait of the city's nocturnal poetry, each drop of rain an echo of stories untold. the restaurant's lights spill out onto the wet cobblestones, framing her in a hushed glow, a quiet interlude in the evening's rhythm.