Happy Sunday!

My little electric scooter and I took our longest trip to date yesterday…from the house to the Kennebunk Plains, about 13 miles round-trip. That is the absolute limits of its range, at least up and down hill and carrying my considerable weight. I got back under power, but I was down to about 8 mph at the end. 🙂

I wanted to try for the Plains in part to test the limits of the scooter, but, of course, in part to see what was happening on the Plains. I have written about the Plains before, but essentially they are sand plains, kept open as kind of tall grass prairie, well out of place in forested Southern Maine, by a combination of natural wildfire (now managed) and soil conditions, and home to several endangered species. Grasshopper Sparrow, Clay-collared Sparrow, and Upland Sandpiper all reach range limits on the Plains, but it was first protected, by the Nature Conservancy, because of the presence of the Northern Blackracer snake and Northern Blazing Star wildflower. Management and ownership of most of the property has now been turned over to the State of Maine, and lumped together into a larger conservation area that embraces almost all of the habitat.

The area where Route 99 crosses is known locally as the Blueberry Plains, and it is still about the only place in Southern Maine where you can fill a bucket with wild low-bush blueberries. Picking is allowed during the month of August, but I saw a few people (who apparently believe that the law does not apply to them) picking yesterday. These early berries are supposed to be for the wildlife. Of course maybe these folks just did not read the numerous signs to that effect.

The Northern Blazing Star was just coming into bloom yesterday, but I could see that the show should be spectacular in another week or two. Lots of plants, tall and well grown, covered in buds about to open. The one in the image is only about half open, but already it had attracted a Northern Broken-dash Skipper, who was extracting nectar…sipping nectar…from down deep in the flower.

The other thing I was looking for, of course, was dragonflies. There were a few, but they were flying high yesterday and not perching. I did hike down to the pond on the backside of the Plains along Cold Brook, where I found a female Common Whitetail (a first for me, and pictured here) and a newly emerged Widow Skimmer, along with a few Ebony Jewelwings haunting the stream where it leaves the pond.

The most common Odo at the Plains yesterday was some kind of female (I think) damselfly of the Bluet variety. The female bluets are mostly all similar enough so it is not safe to make an id without a specimen in hand, and way more knowledge than I have.

And we will return to the Blazing Star for the final image. This one with one of the smallest metallic bees (or hover fly maybe) that I have ever seen.

I will, of course, be going back to the Plains some Saturday or Sunday afternoon soon, to catch more of the Blazing Star show, and maybe find a few perched Meadowhawks. 🙂 but for now, the Sunday Thought:

My tag line on Google+ is “kind of walking the line where technology and spirituality meet”. By that I mean that I am pretty much a geek when it comes to technology. I like camera tech, computer tech, tablet tech, phone tech, and even electric scooter tech. I want stuff that works…and it has to work because, maybe beyond geekdom, I actually do use the tech. I take pictures and video, I record sounds, I write words…I process the same on the computer…I show it off on my tablet…I tell people about it on computer, tablet and phone. And I get to the places, these days, at least locally, on my electric scooter. So I am geek who actually uses the tech for what it was made to do.

But way beyond that, nothing I do is complete until it is shared. Yes I show my stuff to friends and family, but I also blog (here and elsewhere), I twitter, I Facebook, I Google+. To me the miracle of modern technology is how easy it makes it to both create and share content…to catch your bit of the world and life, make a bit of meaning out of it, and broadcast it to a, relatively speaking, wide audience. Almost 27,000 people have me in circles on Google+. That is a small number compared to the super-stars of the internet, but it is a huge number compared to the number of people I could have touched even 10 years ago (without being noticeably rich, famous, or powerful).

And that is where the spirituality comes in. It is, I am certain, a spiritual act to catch your bit of the world and life, and to make a bit of meaning out of it. It is, I am certain, a spiritual act to share whatever meaning we make. And, for me, the more I share, the more certain I become that there is only one Spirit that gives meaning to all of us, and that my only value in life or in the world, comes from touching that Spirit, and sharing that Spirit. Personally, my experience has lead me to identify that Spirit with what most of us call God, and specifically with the God of love who we know, who we can come to know, in Jesus Christ. That is my experience, and, for me, it gives a whole new layer of meaning to what I make of the world and life.

So I take a moment, each Sunday, as I continue my walk along the line where technology and spirituality meet, to celebrate the Spirit that moves us all…with digital images and word-processed words…on a computer, through the internet, and out to you…so you can experience a bit of the meaning I made of a Northern Broken-dash Skipper sipping nectar from a Northern Blazing Star on the Kennebunk Plains. 🙂