NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/668245
86 NEBRASKAland • MAY 2016 T here's something beautiful to be found all year long in Nebraska, but few months strike the senses as much as this one does. The late Tom Allan, a renowned Omaha World-Herald roving reporter who wrote about our state's small towns in the column Nebraska Byways for decades, once likened the imagery of Nebraska's landscape in May to a boy with a new buzz cut. Regardless of what you consider to be fashionable for hair, you have to respect Allan's sentiment which he expressed after one of his round trips from east to west. Despite an occasional late blast of winter, a journey across Nebraska in May is sure to satisfy one's affinity for eye candy. May is when Nebraska drops its shagginess of winter and puts on a shiny new coat – a coat warm enough on many days that you need not wear one. Vibrant colors progressively pervade the paint-by- number spaces previously filled with dormant browns. Elk and deer carry around a fuzzy set of growing antlers as green grass and a growing number of wildflowers pop up around their feet. May is a time when many things become possible. It's when we anglers are in high gear chasing fish we've dreamed about during winter. It's when morel hunters tromp the woods to bag their quarry and turkey hunters work to trick that gobbler. May compels people to leave their homes and find a park. We photographers are challenged to capture such splendor but enjoy every moment of trying. As the month goes on, it seems each step is more apt to bring something of beauty to the eye. As the school year winds down and children – surely some of them boys with new buzz cuts – wait anxiously for that last bell to ring, we share their excitement. For many, at that point, the classroom moves from a place with four walls to a bog of frogs, and a fishing rod replaces the pencil. The month of May takes over as the teacher. This is a month in which we should all feel like kids again. May we never outgrow the excitement that it brings, nor the desire to be outside to enjoy it. Justin Haag March 25, 2016 Buzzing About May ELK IN VELVET AT GILBERT-BAKER WMA