I love concept gifts.  They are the best.  For Christmas this year, my sister, Shaunna, gave me an invitation to 24 adventures yet to be determined and a kit which included a corvid mascot (black crow in this case), a roll of 24 postcard stamps and a small black journal.  A couple of days ago, I received my first postcard invitation to adventure.

Invitation to Adventure

I filled out the cleverly designed reversible postcard she made for this very purpose and sent it back to her.  The next day a card arrived with instructions and a provisions list.

RSVP to Adventure

She arrived with the mysterious announcement that only 6 women in the world have successfully done what we would attempt today.  There was a small tableaux of K2 related objects:  Pakistani scarf, Cliff Bars and books on the mountain, K2.  She handed me a Lincoln Telephone book and directed me to find K2.  (There is a city map in the middle of the book.)  She said she hadn’t peeked ahead of time.

K2 Tableaux

We discovered that K2 is located in the extreme north and east part of Lincoln with most of it outside city limits.  The interior of K2 is not really transected by roads so we mostly flirted with the perimeter roads of Arbor road on the south, 40th St. for the West, Bluff Road on the north and Highway 77 for the eastern wall of our rectangle.  (I 80 does cut through the extreme southern end.)

Discovering K2

We set out on our constructed adventure with a stop at Schlotzky’s Deli to take along for a lunch inside K2.  It is a small area and we circumnavigated the whole thing before finding our picnic spot behind a gas station, pointed towards a little boggy area with cat tails and willows.

Boggy cat tail area behind gas station.

Though warm for January (44 degrees), the wind made the sunny day quite brisk.  We explored some round bales and the serpentine willows that arch over the muskrat lodges.  The pond was frozen with dry cat tales blowing in the wind.

Willows over bog

Willows over bog

Round bales silliness

Round bales silliness

Our next stop was at a small creek that runs under 40th street to see what we could see.  I first saw a deer frozen in a death rictus.  Then another and another.  We counted six dead white tail deer including does and fawns that appear to have been dumped here without having been butchered, though coyotes clearly visit this place at lonelier times of day.  It felt a little dreadful.

Grisly find

The next bridge on Bluff Road also had a strange find involving deer.  It appears that someone threw a large cooler full of skinned deer flanks onto the frozen creek.  Contents shattered many directions upon impact.  This all felt in contrast to the beautiful sunny day around us.

Bridge on Bluff road

Our final stop was at a farm house that had a chicken coop with a repeating crescent motif.  I obtained permission to photograph and felt nostalgic listening to roosters posturing for top cock of the walk.

Crescent Chicken Coop

It was time to return home and though we barely left city limits, it felt like we had a full adventure.  Thank you Shaunna!

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