Detours

Sometimes, diverting ourselves for a few minutes or a few hours helps. Follow these detours to see where they lead you.

We'll add more content as we find it. If you'd like to submit photos, art, creative writing or videos that you created, we'd love to include your work! Please contact us at MoodfuelCO@gmail.com.

In swirling purple, blue, gray, white and orange, an anvil-shaped thundercloud hovers above Colorado Springs. Purple and gold lightning is visible on the left, in the center and up in the cloud on the right as rain comes down toward the bottom left corner. A few pine trees are visible at the bottom as are the lights of the city. — Have you ever watched a lightning storm in awe? Join the crowd. Oddly, details about how lightning is produced remains a topic of research. Scientists do know that updrafts prompt ice crystals to collide with larger, softer ice balls, causing the smaller crystals to become positively charged. After enough charge is developed, a rapid electrical discharge occurs as lightning. Lightning usually takes a jagged course, rapidly heating a thin column of air to the temperature of about 3 times the surface of the Sun! The resulting shock wave starts supersonically and decays into the loud sound we know as thunder. Lightning bolts are common in clouds during rainstorms, and on average 44 lightning bolts occur on the Earth every second. For this compiled image from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day, affectionately known by fans as APOD, 60 images were stacked to capture the flow of lightning-producing storm clouds over Colorado Springs. (Image: Joe Randall)

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A hearty thank you to Joseph Herscher of Joseph's Machines for allowing us to use his marvelous "Pizza Maker" video here, ad-free! Check out his other hilarious contraptions on his YouTube channel.

Photo of an Asian woman smiling widely & digging into a piece of cake with white icing & a strawberry. The poem is here: https://poets.org/poem/colorado-oregon-upon — A poem by Joshua Beckman used with permission from the American Academy of Poets

In North America, millions of monarchs complete the longest migration of any insect species. After wintering in Mexico they fly north, breeding along the way. Their offspring reach southern Canada where they begin the long return trip back to Mexico at summer’s end. In tribute to the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), amazing sand artist, Charlene Lanzel, created "Monarch Butterfly Metamorphosis." Original soundscape by Charlene Lanzel & Barrett Cobb (flute & vocals)

From Jonathan "Jono" Hey who explains the world through his wonderful Sketchplanations and allowed us to use this one here: "Being clear is not only helpful, it's actually being kind. Being unclear about expectations, fuzzy on what you really need or skirting around an issue...sets people up to fail and creates problems. If you don't give clear feedback, then you're holding a person back from improving. I learned this from Brené Brown in Dare to Lead. She said she heard it in a 12-step meeting."

A poem by Ariana Brown used with permission from the American Academy of Poets

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If you know the artist who created this video, please email us at MoodfuelCO@gmail.com so we can add an attribution.

4 bison stand near each other in tall grass looking toward the camera. The sky is white & a distant mountain is visible — Bison at Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge in Colorado. Photo by Jim Carr, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

For Girls Who Run Through Storms Like Buffalos, Knowing It's the Quickest Way Through

By Tanya Winder

We were never ones to avoid pain
even if we found him in another person.

And when we do (find him again)—
let him have not been born in the rain

and grown up to become a storm.
His kisses lightning that scorches the earth.

As young girls, our grandmothers warned us
When there is lightning, cover all the mirrors.

But, one night thunder snapped;
its rumble shattering the vanity.

We’ve chased cloudbursts ever since.
Committed ourselves to flood and flight.

For girls like us who pray to the Sky Beings—
Protect us whenever we go
where we were never meant to be.
Put tobacco down
for the ones

with Creator-shaped holes in our hearts.
We spend lifetimes trying to fill,

to feel. What is the medicine for this?

Our mothers tell us (as they taught)
Send them love. Send them love. Send [say it] love—

So, praise our fathers who left in the night,
mapping us into unlovable.

They made us tough as nails. Now we know
how to hold ourselves together.

Praise the ones who listened
when girls like us asked them to leave.

Praise the lovers who never returned.
You helped us no longer be afraid of ghosts.

For girls like us,
the wound never fully heals.

The gentle rhythm of its pulse, a reminder to
praise our mothers for teaching us words are seeds.

We plant, bloom ourselves anew.
Praise the lightning. Praise the storms

we run through
because girls like us know—

this is where
our medicine comes from.

Tanaya Winder isn author, singer & speaker who is Southern Ute, Pyramid Lake Paiute & S=Duckwater Shoshone Nations