30k - Just a Number, Words and Wonder

Fall morning showdown between bucks at the Newt Spring.
The wonder of it all.

In a few days, the Dipper Ranch blog will reach 30,000 hits since May 2009 (2.5 years).  I actually started blogging in October 2008 but I think I didn't rig up the simple version of Google Analytics until later.  I am not sure how significant 30k hits is.  I know that at least one blog I follow probably gets that many hits in a day, and many things on the internet are popular but not so useful.  I guess I could look into it, but I would rather spend the time researching cool season grasses.

Anyway, I am taking it as a message that I should keep writing and sharing.  I have noticed my writing and powers of observation have improved in the last 3 years.  Certainly due to the daily practice of writing, researching and editing, but also because the writing process itself reveals links and patterns I might not otherwise have considered. Great comments from readers give me new sources and insights, and I'm starting to develop a network of other bloggers who enrich my natural history knowledge.

I've noticed that over the last year or so, I've started to allow more of my personal thoughts to creep into my writing such as finding comfort from a kingsnake after a tragic death and reflecting on historical approaches to managing land.  To me, it feels authentic and harmonic to write this way, but I am not sure how well it works for readers.  A few people have told me offline what they think and I have used their advice to balance my writing.

I would appreciate hearing specific advice from you readers about what you like and what I should change about this blog.   Is the format of the site easy to read?  Can you find stuff?  Are there some topics that are more interesting than others?  Frequency and length of posts?  What about the quantity and quality of photos?  Do you like the small stories in the sidebar or are they distracting?  Is the tone comfortable?  What are blogs you recommend I check for style and techniques?  Are you frustrated that I haven't developed the Links page much?  Are there networks you recommend I join (currently, I only belong to the Nature Blog Network)?

I feel brazen in asking you this after you have spent your precious time reading my overly long posts, but if you consider this a joint journey, let me know what you think. And thanks!

Right now I am editing a post with photos of the lunar eclipse and a short story about autumn wildlife which I wrote for my niece's birthday.

Here's something a friend shared that captures my feelings of wonder at this moment:

There is nothing I can give you which you have not got; but there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No Heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it to-day. Take Heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace!  The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see; and to see, we have only to look. Contessina I beseech you to look.  Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendour, woven of love, by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the Angel’s hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty: believe me, that angel’s hand is there; the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing Presence. Our joys, too: be not content with them as joys, they too conceal diviner gifts.  Life is so full of meaning and of purpose, so full of beauty—beneath its covering—that you will find that earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage, then to claim it: that is all! But courage you have; and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home.  And so, at this Christmas time, I greet you; not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem, and with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.


~ attributed to and translated from Giovanni Giocondo, A Letter to the Most Illustrious the Contessina Allagia degli Aldobrandeschi, Written Christmas Eve Anno Domini 1513.