Lin and I are in Germany on our square dance trip, so. . .no post today because we are going to Oktoberfest in Munich. Here’s more information about this amazing event:
Three years ago, Oktoberfest in Munich was one of the highlights of the trip for me. We saw parades with many traditional outfits and wonderful bands. We visited several beer tents and listened to German music. All in all, it was like a state fair on steroids!
Afterwards tomorrow, we are going to a barbecue with one of the square dance clubs in Munich and then dance with them. So it’s going to be a late night.
Be sure to know, I will be sharing lots of pictures and stories about our experience there this year!
Bear experiences on our ranch have been far and few between. My first was with Dad and Mom years ago before cell phones and digital cameras. My second bear experience was last week.
Bear Experience #1
Because of my teaching career, I spent lots of summer time in Colorado on the ranch with Mom and Dad. This had to be in the late 80s and early 90s.
As we were driving down the Scotty trail into our canyon one morning, Dad had just said, “This used to bear country.”
We pulled up beside the well there and checked it as we always did. After crossing the creek bed, we looked up, and there was a brown bear. Speechless, we stopped, grabbed the binoculars and watched this sizable brown bear run off.
“Wow! Dad, a bear, here in the canyon, on our ranch!” I marveled at the site. Mom and I both squeaked now that the bear had run off. This was my first sighting!
We had planned to camp out that evening not too far from the sighting of the bear, so Dad grabbed a gun to have it if the bear bothered us.
What a Joyful Evening We Had!
Mom cooked hamburgers out on an open fire while Dad and I set up our three-man tent. We rolled out our sleeping bags inside—the ten overflowed with sleeping bags! We played Rummy and laughed a lot. Also, we had brought a cassette player and had music blasting. My ten-pound miniature poodle, Windy, ran around, but I had to put him on a chain so he didn’t run off and explore too far away.
When it became time to go to bed, what an exercise that was! To manage the size of the tent, we filed inside in order of who needed to get outside first—that was Dad to pee! Windy bounced around inside enjoying us all being together. After much laughter and shifting in our bed rolls, we finally thought it was time to say good night.
“The gun is in the pickup!” Dad announced, “should I go get it?”
Dad kept saying, “What if the bear gets the gun?” Then we burst out laughing.
After much discussion and deliberation and laughter, we decided we were safe. We had no nighttime visitation of the bear, and we all slept soundly. For years, that was my only bear story!
Bear Experience #2
Last Tuesday, I didn’t go with my brother to the ranch because I wanted to clean out my garage. Because of recovering from the shingles in 2022 and 2023 and the dog attack in 2024, I hadn’t done any work in the garage for three years and it was a mess.
When my brother came in for lunch, he said he only saw turkeys and his buddy. I let that hint slip by and after lunch, he said he saw a bear.
“Where? What color? Oh, my God! I didn’t go and you saw a bear!” I exclaimed, “I am so jealous!” Because we have game cameras set up around the ranch, I have seen a variety of bear colors: brown, black and cinnamon.
“Brown bear,” he replied. So, that energized me for the next day.
So, the next day, I went out to the ranch with my brother, armed with my camera and an extra battery, like I always did. Right outside of Branson, a nice size buck antelope stood close to the road, so I grabbed my camera to take a picture. The battery was dead! No, worry! I had my spare. After putting it into my camera, the red light came on, saying, “Dead battery!
My brother and I looked at each other, and he said, “That means we will see wildlife today.”
I Felt Like an Idiot!
Never have I done that before! In the past, I was hypervigilant on making sure my batteries were charged. I’m going to blame this on the gabapentin I’m still taking for the nerve damage to my foot and leg. We’ve decreased the dosage, but I’m still taking 300 mgs.
As, we drove down the Harper Trail, we worked our way to the Scotty well. We arrived across the creek from the well. I turned and looked at the stock tank and I saw something in the tank.
I exclaimed to my brother, “There’s a bear in the tank.” He grabbed his binoculars and agreed.
So, we sat and watched for 20-30 minutes laughing at his antics. This cinnamon colored bear splashed and moved around. At one point, we feared for the six goldfish my niece put in there a couple years ago because it looked like he was hunting and eating something.
What a joyous time that was to see that bear thoroughly enjoying the wetness of the water that cooled him down and the playfulness of his attitude. After a while, he crawled out of the tank and he roamed around the tank. At one point, he dug up an ant hill close to the tank.
At no time was he aware we were there! Bears’ eyesight isn’t that good—their sense of smell and hearing are. We decided to drive closer and see when he would hear us. When we did cross the creek bed, he ran off.
Over by the stock tank, we investigated his attack on the anthill. He demolished it. Also, we looked in the tank for the fish. With all his movement, he had stirred up the tank so much, we couldn’t find any of the fish. A couple days later, we counted all the six large goldfish and about twelve smaller ones.
A Lesson from My Bear Experience
I always know there’s a lesson in something like this. Sometimes, I need to let go of taking pictures and just be present in the moment—and enjoy that moment for what it is! I will never forget sitting next to my brother and the spirited conversation we had about the amazing sight of a bear “bathing” (really cooling off) in our stock tank.
Finally,
I love the wildlife experiences I’ve had on our ranch, but this week’s bear experience tops the list. Do you have any wildlife experiences, bear experiences? If so, share them!
I received four book award announcements in the last month for my newest book, Time Measured Out!: Navigating Life’s Journey Through Poetry. In the whole year of 2026, I have received six awards for this book this year, and it’s only September!
Here are the four awards I won this last month:
Bronze Award in the Readers’ Choice contest, September 2026
2nd Place Award in the Next Best Reads contest, August 2026
Gold Award in the Global Book Award, August 2026
Honorable Mention Award at BooksShelf.com, August 2026
The other two awards I’ve received this year for this book:
2nd Place Award in the AllAuthor.com nonfiction book cover
3rd Place Winner at BooksShelf.com, April 2026
Why Do I Enter Book Awards Contests?
I was told early on in my writing career—enter book award contests because they elevate your book’s exposure. So I have!
At that point my book, Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better? had won two prestigious awards from the New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards. But my most decorated book was A Time to Grow Up: A Daughter’s Grief Memoir with five awards.
So, my newest book, Time Measured Out! takes the lead with six.
Finally,
The last month has been outrageous for me with all the awards. But it feels so gratifying to have this book recognized.
UPDATE ON MY BOOK I’M WORKING ON: Eyewitness to Healing is to the editor. We have extended the date of my receiving the edited manuscript to the first of October. We had an email exchange this week, and she asked, “do you want to receive it back before you go to Germany?”
I had been pondering that very idea because originally, I was to receive it tomorrow.
“No,” I responded strongly, “because I won’t be able to just let it sit on my computer. I would want to be working on it, and that could ruin my Germany trip.”
I could almost hear her laughing with my response. But the good news, it’s getting closer. Then my work begins again to look at her revisions and hope there aren’t too many of them.
You may wonder why I have a poetry chapbook, Is My Truth Universal?: A Woman’s Poetic Odyssey, free all the time. It’s one of the promotional foundations for an author today—have something free to entice the reader to sample your writing and then buy your books.
Does it work for you?
If poetry isn’t your genre, here is a short story to sample my writing:
Here’s one last look this month at Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better?, my award-winning book. I wrote parts of it as blog posts right here, but I added to it. The format of the book’s chapters enriched it with key parts. I began each of the chapters with a meaningful photo or graphic and quote. Then I ended the chapter with a reflection question(s), wanting the reader to reflect and personalize what she just read. My motto for this book became: Read, reflect and respond!
Key Parts of Each Chapter
One Last Look at the Beginning of Each Chapter
Because I’m a visual learner, I love photos and graphics and used them a lot in this book. So much so, I had to compress the photos before I could publish the e-book. That was quite an experience.
I also know that a lot of readers react and respond to visual stimulus. While I was teaching, I remember watching my students. The majority of them were visual learners, and I have been out of the classroom over fifteen years, but I recall their need for visuals to understand a difficult lesson.
The recent following statistic doesn’t surprise me: “Visual learners – the remaining 65% of the population – need to see what they are learning,. . .”
Then I added a meaningful quote in this book that either summarized the theme of the chapter or reflected its message. Again, I wanted my reader to be able to connect on different levels to my writing.
What Happened in the Middle
I don’t write in one genre only; I see the place for prose. I love writing poetry, so the format of the book has a mixture of each.
Sample the format I Used in the Middle
Here’s the last chapter of the book. It only has prose, no poetry but the topic is as relevant today as it was then. You can see the format though:
Chapter Thirty-One
VACCINATED: SHORT, SWEET, & TO THE POINT
“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one…”
John Lennon
May 16, 2021
Finally, I got vaccinated on Friday morning with my second COVID-19 shot. I received my first one on March 31st. Yes, that’s a long time in-between, but I had conflicts in my schedule. I had no reactions to the first one except for a sore arm.
I got the Moderna, and I’ve heard more people have reactions to it. My husband received the Pfizer vaccine and had no reaction at all. I wasn’t so lucky for the second shot. The rest of the day I felt okay, but my arm hurt where I was vaccinated. Yesterday and today have been a different story. I’ve slept the days away.
Yesterday I had a slight fever, chills, aches like the flu, but nothing too bad. I just slept! Today’s the same. The endless sleeping has been strange—lots of images, not dreams, and noise in my ears! When I wake up, I’m tired and exhausted, ready to go back to bed. My brain feels fuzzy.
For this A-type personality I am, this has been hard on me! I’m usually going ninety miles an hour! I have things to do, people to see, life to live!
My seventeen-year-old cat, Jesse, didn’t like me being inaccessible to him, so he made it upstairs twice yesterday to sleep outside our bedroom door. He doesn’t easily make it upstairs anymore because of his arthritic back legs—you can’t tell me cats don’t love!
This evening has been better—I’m not sound asleep. Today my brain is still fuzzy, and it’s hard to concentrate, but I’ve been able to do this blog, so that’s progress. Hopefully tomorrow will be better! The good news is I’m vaccinated!
What I learned these two strange days from being vaccinated is that you have to listen to your body! I went to bed and slept, and that was probably the best medicine for me.
Chapter 31 Continued
When my two-week waiting period was over, immediately I scheduled a haircut appointment, and Mark trimmed my hair, marveling at how much it had grown. We laughed and caught up on our lives, and he loved my new longer, curly look. It felt so good to be out and not worrying about the coronavirus. Lin and I ate out a couple times, savoring the opportunity to be with others and not fearful. Our state opened up more and provided more opportunities to get out.
Facing the future with the vaccine behind me, normalcy seems a real possibility. I’ve planned a trip to Colorado to see my brother and his children and grandchildren—I expect a bucket load of hugs. I haven’t been there since February because of my cataract surgeries and the restrictions.
The possibility of dancing looms ahead of me—I can’t describe the deep-seated feelings attached with that. Even though I anticipate a hopeful future, I plan to carry with me all that I’ve learned in this intense time apart. I will step towards an unknown future, optimistic because I know I am better, not bitter, for having survived the coronavirus pandemic.
To end each chapter, I challenged the reader to reflect on a probing question I posed. Again, my teacher side showed up. I knew that this book had the possibility of taking the reader to a deeper level if he/she took the time to respond to my question. So in this way, the book became a journal really.
Here’s the questions I used at the end of Chapter 31:
YOUR REFLECTIONS:
Did you get vaccinated? If so, did you have a reaction to the vaccine? If so, what?
Finally,
One last look this month at my book has reminded me of the power of this book. My premise of the subtitle, Bitter or Better, still stands. I had a choice during the pandemic of becoming either bitter or better. I chose better; I hope you did, too!
FREE OFFER: Download a FREE personal journalof Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better?, featuring the photos/graphics and the reflection questions for each chapter. Let me know what you think about it.
