Diagonal
May 6, 2018 Leave a comment
Bicycles Need Riders
April 25, 2018 12 Comments
I walked this bridge over the course of several days. This bicycle (one of the thousands for rent in San Diego) did not budge in all of that time.
Glowing
April 15, 2018 3 Comments
Taken in April at sunset over San Diego Bay. We think of sunrise as an awakening, but with the coming of night those things that slept through the day come to life. https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/awakening/
Falling in Love with Mountains, Pebbles, and Waterfalls: Our Relationship with Place
June 23, 2011 18 Comments
Yosemite Valley, Merced River, El Capitan--Yosemite National Park, California. I love Yosemite's meadows as much as I do its mountains and cliffs.
Most of us have memories of falling in love with someone. And I’m not just referring to that first love that often occurs in high school and never goes away. No, I’m talking about finding the first perfect love, or what at the time seemed to be perfect, when we were mature enough and experienced enough to recognize that we had stumbled upon something that would never be repeated and that would be with us forever, even if that intangible “something” must persist only in recollection.
Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California
I hear people reminisce about such relationships all the time. In some cases they’re still with the man or woman who helped create such happy memories. Often, though, there is an underlying tone of longing and regret that accompanies the remembrance of something lost. Such people talk about how idyllic it all was, and how nonetheless there were also moments of pain and sadness that acted as counterbalances to the more euphoric periods. They speak at great length of how they felt, how they behaved, how reality itself was transformed by their contact with this other being. They remember the strangest details, the most irrelevant and trivial facts only because such minutiae coincided with their fleeting encounter with contentment. It may be that one day at lunch a loose strand of hair dangled over their lover’s glacier-blue eyes and somehow made them especially attractive. Or it may be something as silly as the name of the waiter where they had an incredible dinner one night.
Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, California
I have no such memories, at least not in connection with one specific girl. I’ve been in love before, but I’ve never been in what seemed to be a perfect relationship. When people tell me how in love they are and how wonderful everything is as a result, instead of thinking back to a time with someone, I think of my relationship with some place. I think of mountains, snow, sheer cliffs and waterfalls. Images of undulating green meadows and towering sequoias stream through my mind and I am inundated with thoughts of lying alone next to rushing rivers, swinging my legs over bottomless canyons, or sitting in rocking chairs talking to curious strangers and random tourists.
I recall standing for hours in Yosemite Valley peering up at moonlit cliffs to see climbers flash lights on and off all through the night, or standing in the same spot during the day convincing myself that I could actually see these people working their way to the top of their climbing routes. I remember anonymous little pebbles in the river that fascinated me for no reason at all. I think of staring captivated at the glint of the guard rail at Glacier Point, 3,200 ft above Curry Village, riding the shuttle round and round the valley for no reason except that I had nothing better to do, or wading up and down the Merced one day and coming across a middle aged woman with a wide smile doing exactly the same thing.
From the trail to the brink of Yosemite Falls, Yosemite National Park, California. Most of the rest of the photos are from 2000 and were taken with a point and shoot film camera.
These memories are my point of reference when anyone speaks to me of being in love. It’s odd, really, because I went to Yosemite with this naïve, romantic notion that I would find a girl there and we would fall in love. If my boyish fantasy had been realized, I’m sure that instead of always speaking obsessively (and monotonously) about nature, I would spend my time remembering that girl and the relationship she and I had together. I would do so with a smile, and perhaps I would let escape a hint of regret over losing what seemed to be so perfect. I would not forget the cliffs, the waterfalls, and the odd people I came to know, nor would I fail to remember what a wonderful place Yosemite is, but these memories would be dimmed, and they would rest concealed in the shadow of other memories.
But as it happens, I did not fall in love with that girl, though I’m sure I might have had I gone about things differently. So instead of speaking today about how she and I met and how I’ll never forget our time together, I talk yet again of inanimate cliffs and stoic monoliths, as if I had fallen in love with a park and not a person–because that’s just what happened.
From Eagle Peak, about 3,000 ft. above Yosemite Valley.
Half Dome and Tenaya Canyon as seen from Glacier Point.
Vernal Falls, where the Merced River drops over a 317 ft. shelf before calming down and entering Yosemite Valley within about another half mile.
Yosemite Valley as seen from Half Dome, about 5,000 ft. above the valley. There's a much better picture of a similar view in the May or June 2011 issue of National Geographic.
North Dome, during a winter of rock slides and avalanches.
The only picture I have available at the moment of the Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls. See the buses parked along the road for scale.
For more national park photos, see the following recent posts:
Tuesday Photos: Oceans Soothe the Soul; Giant Iguana Attacks Caribbean Bathers
June 21, 2011 19 Comments
As much as the visual aesthetic of the water itself, the sound of breaking waves soothes the soul. The ocean does two things that are paradoxical. Like the grandeur of the mountains, it reminds us of our insignificance. In spite of this depressing truth–or rather, because of it– the ocean in its vastness fills the heart with hope and wonder. I see again and confirm again the existence of eternity and infinity and recall the unlimited possibilities that saturate the universe. Yes, infinity reveals itself in all things, but for my primitive human mind, few natural phenomena convey the infinite like the ocean.
Maybe it’s best that I don’t live near the ocean and can only view it for days at a time when I travel. If I walked along it every day, maybe I would forget to fear it and I would only love it. Then again, maybe the ocean is too immense and too erratic to forget that in the end it thwarts even our best efforts to hold it in our minds, to understand it and to tame it.
On a serious note: Please beware giant man eating iguanas. (Read the previous sentence however you like. 😉 )
Iguana scampering among the Maya ruins of Tulúm, Yucatán, México; also snacking on unsuspecting Caribbean bathers?
Western shore of Cozumel, México.
My favorite stretch of coastline: Big Sur, California.
Pacific City, Oregon Coast (my other favorite stretch of coastline!)
Cannon Beach, Oregon Coast. The beach is so flat that as the tide recedes it leaves a thin film of standing water that turns the beach into a mirror, so that you feel like you're walking on top of another plane of reality that is an inverted version of our own.
Cannon Beach, Oregon, at night. Note he Big Dipper in the sky!
Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica.
The above picture was included in a post I published in April titled, “The Many Worlds Theory of Travel: A Week in Costa Rica”.
Mendocino, California, where I saw my first huge waves (~20 ft.) when I was younger.
Seattle as seen from a ferry docking at Bainbridge Island, across the sound from Seattle.
Arctic Ocean, Barrow, Alaska. Sooner or later I'll write a post about the eccentricities and beauty of Alaska. It still dazzles me that in July of 2006 the ocean near the coast remained frozen.
Atoms of Thought 