Aspen Grove above Austin, Nevada. Toiyabe Mountains, August, 2024.
It’s starting to cool off here. Not quite cool enough to hike in the sun at midday, but the night temps are dipping below freezing, and the afternoons are peaking in the 80s, so by the time we go for our regular early evening walk, conditions are comfortable. Also, the trails have been improved substantially this summer, giving us access to some of the prettiest high-country groves, such as the one above.
Midsummer photo of the grove in the top photo from a distance.
The Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest is located throughout the entire state of Nevada and a small portion of eastern California. You can find out more about it here: https://travelnevada.com.
A pinecone in the sun (taken during yesterday’s walk).
The view from our driveway in Austin in the fall.
View approaching Reese River Valley and then Austin from the west on Highway 50,
“The Loneliest Road in America.”
As you can see, the mountains are gorgeous in the winter
(even seen through our slightly dirty windshield).
Our driveway in the winter. We can’t get up into the groves during the winter, as we don’t have a snowmobile, but the hiking around town still presents us with beautiful views.
I love the changing seasons. Nature inspires me to write, to listen, to photograph . . .
August in Austin, Nevada… Waiting on Queries, Minding the Library, and Marveling at Nature.
Much of the country (and the entire Northern Hemisphere) is hot. It’s August, a time we refer to as “the dog days of summer.” -Days so hot that even the friskiest of canines refuse to venture out in the blazing sun, barely raising themselves for any reason. A slamming screen door, tri-tips on the grill, Junior home from summer camp . . . all excruciatingly exciting otherwise, barely elicit a thump of the tail during the grip of a heat wave.
We miss you, Atticus!
Dog Days have always been about dogs, right?
I guess not! I was surprised when I looked up the origin of the phrase. According to Dictionary.com, “The dog days, in the most technical sense, refer to the one- to two-month interval in which a particularly bright star rises and sets with the sun, shining during the daylight hours and staying hidden at night. This star is known by three names: Sirius, the Dog Star, and Alpha Canis Majoris. Apart from being the most prominent star in the constellation Canis Major (Latin for “Greater Dog”), this heavenly body is responsible for the origin of the expression dog days, a phrase that has endured through millennia.”
Dog Star or not, August is hot. We head higher up in the hills to cool off. I wrap ice cubes up in my scarf and wrap it around my neck. We play with the hose…
When I’m in the library, I keep the air conditioner set at 65 beautiful bone-chilling degrees Fahrenheit. I check my email compulsively, waiting on agent query replies for my manuscript, and one in particular. I had a fantastic literary agent contact me and request a full reading of said manuscript back at the end of June. I am so honored she asked! In the meantime, I’m getting more reading done (loved I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger), and have had some great getaway weekends. Soon I will be back in Lake Arrowhead for a few days. So much to be grateful for!
And then there are the cats. Somehow, perhaps because we no longer have a dog, all manner of cats, along with their little kittens, and a small number of mule deer, have made our yard, our driveway, and our carport, if not their full time home, at least part of their daily rounds. A few of the kittens now come in through the cat door to look around the house, lounge on the sofa, or eat out of the resident cats’ (Jack, London, and Annabelle Lee) bowls. The mule deer, thankfully, cannot fit through the kitty door, but they do come into the carport at times, which unnerves the visiting cats, their kittens, and our own cats. We even had a near catastrophe last week when a deer wandered in, not noticing Mr. P was in there– and then spooked when he saw him and bolted, running over poor London, our sweet gray long-haired cat. London took a solid hit and was knocked senseless for a time. It was horrifying! Thankfully, he suffered no permanent damage and was back to himself the next day.
London
Two of the four baby kittens who showed up early in the summer got sick. Mom eventually left them with us, and we’ve done our best to nurse them back to health. Happily, they are doing much better, but of course, now we are thoroughly hooked.
Gremlin, the tiniest and most ill of the babies, now thankfully, on the mend.
These past couple of weeks have been busier than usual. Our newly reopened library began the summer reading program, folks are out and about enjoying warm summer temperatures, and summer celebrations are underway.
Library Days…
Austin Library at The Gridley Store
We are enjoying settling in to our beautiful “new” facility in the wonderful historic Gridley Store. This building has an important place in Austin, Nevada history, and the Civil War, as the original owner of the store, Reuel Colt Gridley (1829-1870), “repeatedly auctioned a plain sack of flour and raised over US $250,000 for the United States Sanitary Commission which provided aid to wounded American Civil War Soldiers… Mark Twain told this story in his 1872 book, Roughing It.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuel_Colt_Gridley
This is a new beginning for residents and visitors alike! Thank you, Lander County!
Lake Tahoe Days…
After the library opening, Mr. P and I took off for a couple of idyllic nights in Lake Tahoe, about a 3 1/2 hour drive west. We danced (Kat and Arizona Jones were fantastic!), ate, walked, and relaxed all around the lake, which is both in Nevada and in California in the majestic Sierras.
Gridley Days…
The following week brought us to Austin’s annual Gridley Days celebration, which included a parade, picnic, fireworks, live music, and a rodeo. It’s Sunday afternoon now, and folks are resting after church, or packing to go home, or maybe planning one more ride out on the trails to Big Creek before saying goodbye to a great Nevada weekend.
Wishing you all long and happy summer days and nights, where ever you may be. Life is a beautiful gift! With Love and Gratitude, Lori
Hello readers and writers! It’s a bright and shiny day here in Austin, Nevada. We’re experiencing our first really warm days and our summer activities have begun. I’m told that two high school seniors graduated yesterday in our tiny school district in a lovely ceremony with all the pomp and circumstance of a much larger school. Congratulations to them and their families! In addition, our new library opens to the public Tuesday, and our summer friends are arriving—they of the full-time RV life—bringing their fresh faces and musical entertainment to our quiet town.
How are you? Is the season bringing you joy? What are you up to in your community and life? What changes does the summer season bring?
I opened the main page on my WordPress blog today and noticed I’d written 99 blogs so far. The number 99 is so close to 100 that I felt it best to get down to it and send out another. I don’t post regularly, so 100 posts isn’t really too impressive considering I started this blog in 2013. I spend much more time working on my manuscript and querying prospective agents than I spend blogging.
Still, it almost always feels good to write a blog post (once I’ve committed to sitting down and I’m at least a few paragraphs in-not so much at the beginning when I’m staring at the blank page, obviously) – it’s a way to reach out to family, and friends, old and new, and also is a sort of diary where I can record images and thoughts on times and places—and of course, there’s the curative element of a diary or journaling.
Recent and current books I’ve been reading: A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles; The Night Tiger, Yangsze Choo; A World of Curiosities, Louise Penny; and Hang the Moon, Jeanette Walls. They are all wonderful!
A lovely book, and a fun journal I bought in January while traveling.
I was excited to learn that A Gentleman in Moscow has been adapted to the screen in a series (thank you, Denice from Washington who stopped into the library last week!), so I will watch that as soon as I finish the novel.
The Night Tiger is enthralling- we’re listening to it when we travel to the grocery store (112 miles away), and any other time we’re in the car for more than 10 minutes (which is anytime we leave town since we are so remote…). Here’s an example of the wonderful writing just from memory. Choo describes a doctor’s writing as “a conga line of ants.” Brilliant!
As for Louise Penny… she got me with the first Chief Inspector Armand Gamache mystery years ago, and I am never disappointed as the series progresses. Wonderful characters, heart, and settings.
Books! Wonderful books!
I am a big fan of Jeanette Walls and have read and reread The Glass Castle several times. Hang the Moon is another big thumbs up!
Meanwhile, the crickets are back. Just last week I was remarking that there weren’t any in our yard this year and maybe the gigantic hordes that usually march through town would miss us this year. Uh, no. I’m sure that no matter where you live you have some kind of unusual local wildlife… There are other parts of this state, for example, that experience large migrations of tarantulas, and I know the cicadas are a huge presence in other parts of the country. I’ve heard that Miller moths are everywhere in parts of Nebraska… It’s all a bit eek, but I always think of the line from one of the Jurassic Park films, “Life finds a way.”
I am one of trillions… I just want to travel south (I don’t know why!), but your house in the way! Please move your house!
This, too, shall pass!
Have a wonderful weekend and please do check in and share what’s going on in your little corner of the world!
Austin is currently crawling with crickets. And they are not named Jiminy. They don’t quite have Jiminy’s charm, his staunch set of personal ethics, nor his spiffy wardrobe. Also, thank goodness, so far none of them have stood on top of my shoulder or given me a good lecture. No, these crickets are definitely not Disney material.
Jiminy Cricket created by Ward Kimball. Photograph from Walt Disney’s Pinocchio (1940)
The crickets I speak of swarm the West in various regions all the way from the Rocky Mountains to the High Sierras. They are called Mormon Crickets, though obviously, they are not Mormon. Just to be contrary, these little imposters aren’t even crickets! They are actually shield-backed katydids. And they aren’t little either…sometimes they’re 3 inches long.
I’m not purposely making this confusing. Really!
The story of their naming goes something like this: Way back when, swarms of these critters were eating crops planted by early Mormon settlers in what is now named Utah. It was a tragedy. What would the settlers eat when winter set in? Then, suddenly, like a miracle, a flock of seagulls descended from above. It must have been a very large flock, because the seagulls ate all the insects, thereby saving the crops.
Intermountain Forest Service, USDA Region 4 Photography / copied from goodfreephotos.com
Yay, seagulls!
Mormon crickets travel in large groups, marching along relentlessly, eating everything in their path (including their fallen comrades; this is why I question their ethics). When they cross a busy highway and get run over, their fellow insects stop to eat them. And then they get run over…
In some places the roads become dangerously slick… I know. Ugh. A local man, now retired from the road department, told me yesterday that some years ago his crew had to use a snowplow to clear away the detritus and then many, many gallons of detergent to wash Main Street.
This is our second summer here in Austin, and my husband and I are trying to take the current invasion in stride, but I admit it’s a bit of a challenge what with our yard and the outside walls of our house being covered in an ever-moving mass of large insects. Still, I can not blame the Mormon Crickets for being Mormon Crickets. Their life is no trip to Disneyland.
During moments of quiet contemplation, I fondly remember the seagulls of Kenosha gathered on the shores of Lake Michigan. Always so many. So lovely on the sand, on the waves, and in flight.
And like Elizabeth Warren, I persist.
Photograph: Kenosha, Lake Michigan, and Seagulls by Lori Pohlman
Welcome to a space for all moms. This is a platform where I write my experiences as a mom in her primes—sharing real-life stories, lessons learned, and the ups and downs of motherhood. My goal is to inspire, support, and connect with fellow moms who are also embracing the journey of raising a family while growing as women.
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