Spring 2023 has sprung!

What a busy spring!  Here (in southern Arkansas) in early May it is as warm in the late spring as it is on a hot summer day for northern Wisconsin, but earlier in the spring we tend to be cool and rainy, and this year has been no exception.  The image above is of Stephen and I on an adventure we took to southwestern Arkansas to look for some old cinnabar mines (more on those shortly).  You can tell by the fog in this image that our day was rather damp but not chilly...

Kenny joined me (while on his spring break the first week of March) on a second adventure to look for these cinnabar mines--the picture below is of the canoe trip he and I made--in much better weather--to some islands in a reservoir to find some of these mines:

Cinnabar is an ore of the liquid metal mercury, and some deposits of this ore can be found in parts of southwestern Arkansas.  In the 1930s and 1940s, attempts were made to commercially mine this ore to produce mercury, which had considerable value at that time.  The image below is of Kenny standing next to one of these old mine shafts, now filled with water:

I also took advantage of an opportunity this past March to join in on a tour of Native American mounds in Mississippi not far from our home in Monticello.  The picture below shows the tour group we were with--the green hill in the background with the trees is the mound, which is surrounded by plowed fields:

This area of west-central Mississippi also touts itself as the birthplace and childhood home of Jim Henson, one of the creators of the Muppets...and we stopped at a small local museum in his honor on our mounds tour:

I also took Stephen and two of his buddies, Eli and Zeke, to see the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra play the soundtrack for the movie "Jurassic Park" while the movie played above the stage.  Before we went to the theater, I took the boys out to sushi for dinner:

Over spring break in March, I also joined in on a brief excavation at Historic Washington State Park in southwestern Arkansas.  We have joined digs here in years past, and this also proved to be an interesting effort.  In the picture below, Arkansas Archeological Survey station archeologists Andrew Beaupre (orange hat) and Carl Drexler (grey hat) talked to some visitors about our excavations:

There was much enthusiasm for our dig...except for a few gophers, who objected to our digging up their homes, as you can see by the piles of dirt they pushed into my test unit:

Historic Washington State Park has long been one of our favorite places to dig because the very sandy soils are easy to screen and there are always lots of historical artifacts to find:

I couldn't dig as long as I wanted to because I had to travel to eastern Texas for a professional forestry research meeting...but a conference I always enjoy, and one we had a great field tour of some pine forest management:

Hope and I also made a trip in early April to see a talk given at Poverty Point State Park (an Indian mound site in northeastern Louisiana).  Below, Hope is working on the "junior ranger" badge:

Of course, April was also Easter, and with Easter comes coloring of eggs:

Also in early April a pottery expert, Betty Gaedtke of the Quapaw Nation, came to UAM to discuss some of the Native American pottery she makes and that the university recently acquired some of her works for display.  Below, she is describing some of the tools used to make these ceramics (by hand, of course):

I did a lot of business-related travel in April, including a trip to the Arkansas Historical Association's annual conference at DeGray Lake State Park.  I would take walks around the state park early in the morning before the conference and took some nice pictures of the natural environment, including the sunrise photograph below:

An old logging railroad once ran through the park (which wasn't a park in the early 20th century when the lands were logged), and you can see this elevated railbed in places in the park--now overgrown with pines nearly a century old:

The lakeshore walks also showed me many good examples of how tough trees can below--the one pictured below with some of its roots exposed is still very much alive, even after the lake has washed away the topsoil next to it:

There are also some neat rock formations in the soft sedimentary rocks along the shore, including these harder, rounder, iron-heavy "concretions" eroding out of the softer sandstone:

We also attend the wedding of a couple of our fellow parishioners at St. Marks--below, Hope and Beth await the newlyweds at their reception:

I also just returned from a visit with my parents in northern Wisconsin during the first week of May.  Mom and dad drove down to the Central Wisconsin Airport to pick me up one evening:

As you can see from the picture below, northern Wisconsin is still very much in the early part of spring this year, with almost no leaves out and piles of snow remaining in places:

And, of course, part way through my visit, just as the snow really started to disappear and some first leaves started to appear...it snow on them again, with the 3-4 inches of new snow adding to their new annual record for snowfall:

Fortunately, even this fresh snow did not last long, and it didn't get in the way of mom and I going out to do some antiquing (no, we didn't buy the elk head mount!):

By the time I had to leave to return to Arkansas--I met Kenny in Rhinelander as he returned from finishing his third year at Michigan Tech, and we drove back to Monticello--the weather warmed enough to melt all the new snow and leave the woods still feeling like spring:

The picture above are some of the pines on our land near Rhinelander, and one of my many great joys to see on our visits to the Northwoods!