Our belief system can limit us, or it can set us free to experience our own limitlessness. OK, stay with me on this, dear reader. You might be like me. Growing up, I believed that tea was something made with hot water and a tea bag. Tea, as defined by Webster, is a drink made by infusing, or soaking, the dried leaves of an Asian plant, Camellia sinensis, in hot water. My mother had a tea revelation at some point in my growing up, and started to introduce many different types of teas into our pantry, some flavored with aromatic spices and herbs. I left for college, accompanied by my love for coffee, while tea was demoted to a weaker...
It’s a late spring day on the prairie. Rain has visited recently after the burn, and prairie bluestem rises from brown clumps on the hillside. It’s warm for this time of the year – more like a summer day, although the plant landscape tells it differently. We walk along a mowed path that circles the perimeter of the prairie, separating it from cultivated farmlandand suburban sprawl. It’s a majestic place for those with the imagination to see it as it might have been. Rolling hills, crossed by a glacial stream, occasional stands of elder with cottonwoods standing taller along the stream. It’s not difficult to imagine what it might have looked like when all of Nebraska was wide and open,...
