I joke about being a little obnoxiously talkative sometimes, not quite knowing how to stop talking when I need to sort of thing. It's not really always true. I like to just wander around sometimes and think...all alone, with no one to tell me, "Mandi, let's go! I'm bored!" Most of the time, I love to wander outside. I love feeling the breeze (or in today's case, the howling wind) on my face, listen to the trees & grass respond to the wind, and feel the earth under my feet (most of the time I prefer bare foot walking, but unfortunately it's still too cold for that!) I would have loved to squish mud under my bare feet today, but I had to settle for my sister's pink rainboots.
I'm fascinated by trees. For some reason, I admire their intricacy and beauty. Even when everything is still dead and brown waiting desperately for spring like the rest of us, I find it breathtaking. The designs that the branches of the trees make against the cold, cloud-filled April sky make me dizzy if I stare for too long. I went searching for grapevine branches today on my parent's farm. We have acres and acres of land behind the house that my brother and sister-in-law live in, and the woods is one of the most beautiful, silent, and peaceful places I've ever visited. The woods are so thick with trees as a result of little to no human undertaking to thin out the vegetation and brush. This and its position on a high, glacial formation hill make it a fortress from the whipping, howling, icy wind--even when the trees are bare. Oh, and in case you haven't guessed, my interior decorations are aimed at bringing the outside into the inside. Home decor is often comprised of sticks, twigs, pinecones, and occasionally...rocks. Interspersed with some artificial flowers, leaves, and ribbon or burlap, makes it look just perfect. This is sort of a contradiction for me. My decor of choice is always natural and neutral, calm and earthy, but when it comes to dressing/decorating myself? None of that! My closet displays clothes from one end of the color spectrum to another, with very little black, brown, or gray.
I found my sticks....my decorations. However, I also found myself "lost in the woods" for over an hour. I saw sticks missing bark from where animals had gnawed it for food in the long winter. I saw tiny sprouts of vegetation poking through the fallen leaves, just waiting for the warmer spring days to arrive. I found more colors than just brown. Even though the woods looked somewhat like a war-zone with the fallen, uprooted, rotting, and dying trees, I found it beautiful. I walked in one side of the woods, and out the other. As I returned on the muddy, cold, wet path I scanned the field and found beautiful rocks that had showed me of billions of years of sedimentation and glacial movement. The wind blasted cold air onto my face causing tears to form as a result of its force and coldness. The tears ran down my cheeks without even being noticed, because when I got into the house, my sister said, "Mandi, were you crying? You have mascara all the way down your cheeks!" Oops, I guess I didn't even realize that the wind had made my eyes water! I'll show you a few of the pictures I played with.
Who would have thought to find such bright red?
This was the "war zone"
It looked so fuzzy; I almost wanted to touch it--but I left it
See what I mean? the lines? the designs?
More color contrast. The bark on that fallen tree is completely stripped. The tree in the crux of the fallen one has grown up always being held by that fallen tree. If left like that, it will continue to grow and either bend outward away from the log, or it will grow around the log and envelop it. Only time will tell.
Animals are getting hungry for real food...not just bark off of saplings. The only eat the bark off of living trees...they won't touch the dead ones. They're smart, they know where the nutrition is...and it's not in dead food. We could probably take some lessons from the rabbits...eat your food fresh. 
Messing around with the focus and coloring on the photo. Yes, even dead trees fascinate me.
It looks like an oozing sandwich. But the lighter parts are actually granite that has been squished in-between the limestone.
Same tree, just the actual non-edited photo. Overlooking our barren fields. In a month or so, my dad and brother will be frantically planting corn and soybeans...and my sister and I will be scrambling to "rock pick" all of these fields. (driving a tractor with a wagon, up and down the lengths of the fields, picking up any rocks bigger than our fists so that they don't wreck the machinery in the fall when the crops are harvested---we hate rock picking. Thanks to the glacial formations in our area, there are fascinating different kinds of rocks, but always LOTS of them...and every year when the snow melts and the the frost heaves the ground upward, more rocks appear.)
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