TUMBLEWEES ANIMATED GIF HOW TO
TUMBLEWEES ANIMATED GIF MOVIE
TUMBLEWEES ANIMATED GIF UPDATE
TUMBLEWEES ANIMATED GIF SERIES

TUMBLEWEES ANIMATED GIF SERIES

The series premiered on Rocky Mountain PBS, and you can stream it on Amazon. I turned all that footage I shot from my wagon into the four-part “The Lost Sea Expedition” series. No mules or tumbleweeds were harmed in the making of this series.

TUMBLEWEES ANIMATED GIF HOW TO

How to Watch the “Lost Sea Expedition” The “Lost Sea Expedition” trailer. It contains more photos of my messages in tumbleweeds.

TUMBLEWEES ANIMATED GIF UPDATE

Here’s an update I wrote called “ Waiting for the Tumbleweed Connection“. People still write me to ask if I anyone ever found one of my messages in a tumbleweed. Mule Polly and I have finished our wagon journey.

I even included a stamp.Ĭheers from these Great Plains! Tumbleweed Postscript If you find my note, please write me back. I still feel lonely but a little less so knowing that, somewhere in the night, my message is bouncing across the plains. I wonder where the tumbleweed with my note has gotten to. The wagon is swaying gently back and forth, and I’m all alone. The wind sounds like it’s rubbing its back on my wagon. I have a candle burning in my wagon, and I’m writing in my journal. Mule Polly is staked out, turned tail to my wagon, seeking shelter from the wind. I’m lying in my tiny wagon listening to the prairie wind blow outside. It swished and sounded prickly, and seconds later, it was gone. The tumbleweed landed on the ground, bounced, and the wind whisked it away. This afternoon, I led Polly onto the prairie, tumbleweed in hand, and turned our tumbler free. For good measure, I added a piece of pink marking tape.

TUMBLEWEES ANIMATED GIF MOVIE

Then using gaffer’s tape I use on my movie camera, I tied my message into my tumbleweed. I’m traveling with my mule Polly from Canada to Mexico. Then I wrote a note on one of my business cards. I picked the biggest one, the prize tumbleweed, and gave it an orange belt brighter than a prairie sunrise. After I caught my tumbleweeds, I piled them up in a corral in Keyes, Oklahoma. This is where the fluorescent orange spray paint comes in. They’re just too many of them out here for one with a dirty note tied to it to be noticed. They pile up so high in ranchers’ corrals they have to be shoveled out before stock can be worked They pile up so high in the road ditches they have to be bull-dozed off. They pile up so high on fences they rip the barbed wire off. The stretch of prairie I’m crossing in my wagon right now, the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles, are covered in millions of tumbleweeds that bounce north in mass migrations one day, only to pass me headed south with the next front. Today mule Polly and I chased down a tumbleweed.

I’m giving in to the call of the man alone at sea. Call it loneliness by any name, but that’s what it boils down to. Call it the loneliness brought on by watching the last Sandhills cranes whirling south on those northern busters.

Yep, call it the shorter days of November getting to me. Nope, I’m launching notes tied to something else. No, I’m not stuffing business cards into my empty wine bottles and tossing them into the buffalo grass, hoping some rancher finds them and returns them before his prize Angus bull crushes them underfoot. So, traveling across the Great Plains by mule wagon researching mid-America marine fossils, I’m giving messages another go. I’m still waiting for the first message to be returned by Neptune or someone combing his beaches. I did it because I was curious and lonely. I’d take an empty bottle, scribble a note on a scrap of paper, cram the note in the bottle and toss it into the sea. While sailing alone around the world from 1998 to 2003 on my sailboat “Sea Bird”, I launched dozens of messages in bottles. I’ve even launched some bottles of my own. When I sail, I keep an eye out for bobbing bottles. When I walk on the beach, I look for bottles with corks in them, hoping one of them might contain a note. I have always been charmed by messages in bottles. I thought, “I need to put a message in a tumbleweed and see if I hear back from anyone.” Messages in Bottles Can you send a message in a tumbleweed? How would you do it? I was traveling across America with my mule Polly.

Tumblewees animated gif