Oh dear, Part 2

Halloween here was brilliantly sunny, warm, decidedly un-Halloweeny (isn't the day supposed to be misty and dark, full of shadows and mystery?), so Konza really should have been quite enjoyable. But as I plodded around the second loop, I found myself so disinterested and disengaged that I just sat down, plunk right in the middle of the dry, rocky trail. Perhaps subconsciously it was a sort of show-down with the prairie: "Fine, Konza, if you don't want to show me something new and interesting, I'll just sit here until you do." (Ever-demanding)(And is it a bad sign if I've started calling Konza "you" and speaking to it as if it were a sentient being?)

I was there for probably half an hour, mind empty in a non-meditative way. (Don't even have any "tra la tra la"s or "twee-oo"s to type in here, really nothing, just


.)

I suppose if you sit anywhere long enough, something is bound to happen. It came in the form a grasshopper. Granted, insects had been chirping about all morning, but I didn't really care to notice them until one little green thing leaped right in front of me then just sat there too, balanced on a blade of dry, rustly grass, as if challenging me back.

I could turn this into a much longer story / reflection on perception / amusement / the nature of grasshoppers and people and prairies, but really, to summarize, I ended up spending the rest of the morning crawling around on my hands and knees in an attempt to photograph insects. I can't say that any of the images are spectacular, but it's somehow telling that on a day with such big blue skies, I only used the "macro" setting on my camera.