Fallingwater, Mill Run, PA

I’ve always enjoyed looking at and drawing buildings, and designing Lego and Lincoln Log houses. I was also lucky enough to take an interior design class in High School.  The options for electives were awesome at Hibbing High School back in the 1970’s.  During this class, we took a walking tour of the neighborhoods around the high school and identified the multitude of beautiful architecture styles in Hibbing.  From that class, I took a love of thinking about the people those buildings housed. Today, the people of the world and their structures often catch my attention.  I like taking pictures of barns, houses, and even quirky looking businesses and signs.  I love seeing how fence lines and gardens accentuate the structures.  I think about the lifestyles of the people who live and work in these buildings.

Growing up as Joy Wright, and the daughter of an expert carpenter, Ed, I loved the idea that dad might have been related to Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous architect, as both are from Wisconsin.  It became a dream of mine to visit the ultimate mid-century modern house called Fallingwater. This house, once the Kaufmann Residence, is a house designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935 in rural southwestern Pennsylvania.

Fallingwater was built on top of a series of cascading waterfalls on Bear Run in the Allegheny Mountains. A beautiful choice stylistically, but the location led to a series of architectural challenges and some extensive mold problems. The fact that the location on the bank of the river was not large enough to support the foundation of a typical Wright house is what prompted the cantilevered design. The original owners used it as a weekend home until 1963, when it was donated to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, and it’s been open to the public as a museum since 1964.

Our visit was planned a few days in advance as you can’t get same day tickets. Kathy bought ours online.  We stayed at one of the many beautiful Pennsylvania state parks, Ohiopyle. This is a great place for hiking and biking.  Kathy learned the ride down was much easier than back up the hills in the area.

The little town of Ohiopyle had great ice cream parlors and hosts several places for tourist collectibles.  We enjoyed the bridge above the river and watching children and dogs playing in the cool water below.

On our tour day, a light rain threatened a perfect day for a hike in the PA thick.  Luckily, we got enough sunshine to get some nice photos and enjoy the beauty of the site the house is built on.  The tour starts at the visitor’s center and you walk through the wood alongside the creek which widens into a stream that a bridge crosses above and beside the lower levels of the home.  Seeing is believing how glorious this location truly is.

The house feels lived in and is filled with the nuances of day to day life.  Even the son’s library is intact and gives you a good idea about him as a person. He grew up to be an architect himself.  You aren’t allowed to photograph inside the house but you can walk the grounds and take as long as you want on the grounds after your tour inside. Most people are interested in these views anyway.

I just wanted to pack my bags and move in.

Minnesota: Land of 10,000 Lakes

Besides Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge, we enjoyed the wonders of Minnesota during the summer of 2015. 

 From purple mountains majesty, aka taconite tailings, to the Bellamy award winning high school Joy attended,  

Enjoying the largest great lake, Superior and the largest weasel, 

 Eating the best potica from Sunrise bakery and bowling on historical lanes,

 We watched birds gather like family, 

And gathered family members together,  

 Visited old friends and made new ones,  

All this was just part of exploring Minnesota’s past and present.

  

Tamarrac National Wildlife Refuge

  We arrived during a rain storm. Seems like arrival days and departure days often have inconvenient weather.   Of the two level gravel spots, we set up in the larger as we were the first volunteers to arrive for the season.  We had laundry, of course, so we checked out the bunkhouse and where the interns live met two females.  One worked with the fire crew and Emily who we would working with and for in visitor services.  

Eventually we met their male housemates as well.  This was a fun group with which to enjoy evenings.  The bunkhouse was small compared to Bosque Del Apache NWR but we could use the laundry and kitchen facilities when we wanted. Most importantly it has a crawl space for tornadoes just in case the spring or early summer sprung one.   

The refuge, 43,000 acres of diverse habitat in the midst of  three geologic zones that meet here. The rivers flow into the Red River basin or north and east toward the headwaters of Mississippi River basin.  The refuge hosts over twenty named lakes and Eastern deciduous hardwoods, Northern coniferous forests and Western tall grass prairies. Wildlife and plant life are abundant:  birds galore, deer, bear, wolves, beaver, groundhogs, skunk, mink, muskrat, wild rice, iris, berries, lilies, cattail,and of course it's name sake.

Tamarack

Oh tree that's deceives

Your branches like family seem alive and complete

Come fall you wither and from gold you rain, reign, rein down

So that in winter you look gone while all the other pines live on

Evergreen you are not 

your needles are leaves soft and tender

Clusters that bend and stand up in the winds of spring
your paired cones dipped in honey glisten in the sun

Our duties at this refuge seemed easy and sometimes we tried to make them more challenging by volunteering for extra things.  Kathy and I worked I the visitor center together. We set up the bird feeders, cleaned the museum, checked the restrooms, operated the video and manned the gift store. We loved watching the birds and other wildlife that came to the feeders or we watched while helping maintain the refuge.  Joy also gave refuge tours.  Here's a group near an Indian battle site.  The visitors often we either locals who stopped in once or twice a season or had never been.  Both types we're excited to see how much the refuge had to offer and how, in collaboration with the Friends Group were building an educational annex.  We would be lucky enough to see it open after its completion. 

On other days, Kathy mowed and I clean outhouses and stocked brochures around the refuge.  We enjoyed keeping the refuge tidy as people would toss trash from their cars on the roads.  Once we found a truck full of household trash laying beside the road.  The law enforcement officer went through it and found a bill with an address and the trash hound was prosecuted for dumping on federal land.  Mostly though just thoughtless people dropping things out car windows.  I hate litter bugs.  

Tamarac is a beautiful place! Great hiking trails with windflowers and wetland creatures galore.  They allow berry picking, mushroom foraging, fishing and some hunting.  Kathy and I especially enjoyed the annual loon counts.  We reported on two lakes.  We got buzzed by and eagle as we floated in a canoe around one lake. It was an awesome day.  Kathy even got to see the northern lights.  I had pointed out faint ones while in Alaska but these were glorious.  Dancing green and pink fire in the sky was worth the fight with the mosquitoes.  Oh yes, northern MN has lot of them in the summer with all those lakes around us.

Tamarac

Green mornings of dew dressed dandelions 

Blue skies warm the day

Fiery fox passes in her same old curious way

Woodchuck pups digging painted turtle nests

thirteen striped ground squirrels giving chase

Friends sharing tales and tators at a picnic table

Watching Netflix and Northern Lights just for fun

Thunder rolled and the AC went out

But we felt family warm and friendly

Familiar like the Tamarac brass

Oh, did I forget, the Tamarac brass was the most glorious sound of the trumpeter swans. We first met these beautiful graceful creatures in Alaska but here we truly learned to love their beauty and their brass.  We took a bicycle ride one afternoon to the lake behind our RV site.  We came upon fifty or so swans sunning themselves on the shore and singing happily away somewhat like geese with more bass.  Their rich sounds rang through the breeze blown grasses into our happy song of the Tamarac brass.  

Besides all the wonderful animals it is still about the people.  Janice, the volunteer coordinator is soft spoken and well prepared for anything.  When the bear broke into the bird food shed it was just another day.  She helped organize large groups of elementary school child in sunshine and rain and they all left having a great time and evidence of learning not only to Janice and the other volunteers but our friend Pat who we volunteered in Alaska had written curriculum for them to use.  It was fun helping guide students through activities another volunteer had created. The couple here were our counterparts Ken and his wife stayed through until the fall.  

Along with the local volunteers, Emily the intern played a large part in the success of the educational programs.  She became our friend not only because of our working relationship but she lived in the bunkhouse previously mentioned.  Another friend we found at Tamarac is Will.  He interned with the fire crew and we keep up with him on Facebook after all the time we spent together evenings at the bunkhouse watching groundhogs and thunderstorms.

This beautiful refuge allowed Joy to be back in Minnesota.  We visited Joy's college and high school friends Rita, Barb, Sheila, Erna, and Monty as well as her family. It gave us time to introduce Minnesota's real beauty to Kathy.   We would definitely volunteer here again.