Month: March 2013
-
Alternate States
I’ve long maintained that I write Twelve Mile Circle primarily for myself although I’m glad other people seem to enjoy coming along for the ride. Case in point, why else would I devote five separate articles to my recent Dust Bowl Experience when I know that 12MC readers prefer geography contests and the like? Nonetheless…
-
Dust Bowl Adventure, Part 5 (Epilogue)
It’s good to be back home. However, I will always cherish my brief journey to the Dust Bowl territory of the lower Great Plains. I enjoyed and appreciated the beauty of the emptiness, the towns appearing fifteen miles distant first noticeable by their distinctive grain elevators, dodging and getting caught in clouds of dust, and…
-
Dust Bowl Adventure, Part 4 (On the Road)
The race series moved on to Colorado next. We’d intended to check into our hotel room in Lamar and sit by the pool, using that as an opportunity for our sole afternoon of rest. The hotel must have been busy the previous evening because our room wouldn’t be available for another three hours. We needed…
-
Dust Bowl Adventure, Part 3 (Geo-Oddities Overflowing)
I completed an epic day of geo-oddity exploration earlier this week during the Dust Bowl trip. An Initial Cluster The first cluster sat near Black Mesa at the far northwestern corner of the Oklahoma panhandle. This small area may be unique in the state from a geographical perspective, with genuine mesas replacing more typical flat…
-
Dust Bowl Adventure, Part 2 (Sea of Grass)
An odd feature of my Dust Bowl trip is that I drive for hours with little or nothing to see beyond the awesome natural beauty of the Great Plains until it’s punctuated by a tightly-bound space overflowing with geographic anomalies and historical sites. One such place is Morton County in the far southwestern corner of…
-
Dust Bowl Adventure, Part 1 (Getting There)
It was a long time coming and I’d talked about it since last autumn. The Dust Bowl trip finally arrived. We flew to Denver, Colorado as our starting point. Certainly there were closer airports, however none of the others had non-stop flights or cheaper fares. I viewed it as an opportunity to capture some previously…
-
Hit the Twit
Twelve Mile Circle now has a Twitter presence. I began a soft launch with 12MC’s Google+ followers two weeks ago so I could work out the details. I’m now able to post a variety of ways including by mobile phone, and I’ve successfully posted a photo from that source as well. I’m ready to take…
-
Three Notches
Marks on trees served as road signs during North America’s colonial times, a period when much of the population was illiterate. Certain patterns of slashes or notches conveyed specific information about the nature of a pike or landmarks a traveler might find farther down down its path. Three notches served as a frequent glyph although…
-
Chicken Scratch
Chicken scratch serves as an informal term for illegible handwriting. It is also a type of chicken feed that’s typically strewn upon the ground. Chickens then scratch around the dirt in pursuit of feed, leaving claw marks behind. I suppose illegible handwriting might be thought to resemble the results of hungry chickens foraging for cracked…
-
Canadian Ethnic Enclave
The intersection of my various hobbies provides a nice tangential benefit for Twelve Mile Circle. It offers a steady stream of curiosities and article ideas. I like to look through census records and use Street View to see if I can spy on the former homes of ancestors and distant relatives. Many of the census…