Tuesday, May 4, 2010 - Beymer Park, Lakin KS
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Fish Ponds, Beymer Park, Lakin KS, May 3, 2010
Catfish dinner
The caretaker saw me out with my camera this morning. He had a couple pictures to show me and a story to go with them. It seems there are a couple of wily old catfish in the next pond over. Were in there when he took on the job 15 years ago. They are still there. About 5 feet long now. Wily as ever. Not tempted by anything those guys in hats throw at them.
I was honored to see them this afternoon, drifting around. Of course I didn't have my camera along. Wily old buggers.
Night camp
Site 7 - Beymer Water Recreation Park, Lakin KS
- Beymer Water Recreation Park is an older County park about 4 miles south of Lakin KS offering a few sites with electric and water. It's quiet and clean with several stocked fish ponds enjoyed by the local residents, hatted and feathered.
- Verizon cell phone and Broadband service are available here with a strong signal.
- Locate Beymer Water Recreation Park on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
Writing From the Inside Out
A young writer, if he is unknown, can be at a party and watch what everyone is doing. If he has a marveluos ear for dialog, he can wake up the next morning and remember all that was said and how it was said. He is a bird on a branch. Sees like a bird and writes books that are extraordinarily well observed. But once he is successful, especially if that happens quickly, it's as if the bird were now an emu. It cannot fly. It grows haunches and foreshoulders and a mane: lo and behold, it is a lion. And everyone is looking at the lion, including the birds. But it is a lion with the heart of a bird and the mind of a bird. So there is a terrible period when the transmogrified emu is trying to live like a lion and has little talent for it. Then the beast begins to experiment. When it runs, it now sees other animals scamper. It takes a while - often years - for the writer to get to appreaciate his effect on others, and even longer to begin to understand human beings again. In the old days, he could write about friends, enemies, and strangers by intuition, by induction; now he puts it together by deduction. Of course, he does have more material on which to work his deductions.