Here be dragons
Posted: June 30, 2012 Filed under: 365 Yoga Challenge, Air, Critters, Earth, Fire, home, nature, Photography, pond, Spirit, Summer, Walking, water, weather | Tags: dragonfly, flowers, nature, Ohio, Outdoors, Photography, pond, Summer, water, weather 31 Comments
The hot, sunny weather has the dragonflies and damselflies dancing, skimming, hovering, and winging their way around the pond. I went out on Wednesday afternoon to see what I could capture. Dragonflies (and damselflies) are cold blooded creatures and as a result, they seek the sunny, warm spots. A hot, sunny day is guaranteed to bring me a decent shot or two of the dragonflies.
Morningtide
Posted: June 29, 2012 Filed under: 365 Yoga Challenge, Air, Digital Art, Earth, Fire, home, nature, Photography, pond, Quotes, Spirit, Summer, Walking, wandering, water, weather | Tags: Henry David Thoreau, Mary Oliver, meadows, nature, Outdoors, Photography, pond, reflections, sunrise, trees, water, weather, wildflowers 24 Comments
Early morning by the pond
What is there beyond knowing that keeps
calling to me? I can’t
turn in any direction
but it’s there. I don’t mean
the leaves’ grip and shine or even the thrush’s
silk song, but the far-off
fires, for example,
of the stars, heaven’s slowly turning
theater of light or the wind
playful with its breath;
or time that’s always rushing forward,
or standing still
in the same – what shall I say –
moment.
What I know
I could put into a pack
as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it
on one shoulder,
important and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained
and unexplainable. How wonderful it is
to follow a thought quietly
to its logical end.
I have done this a few times.
But mostly I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing
in and out. Life so far doesn’t have any other name
but breath and light, wind and rain.
If there’s a temple, I haven’t found it yet.
I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass
and the weeds.~ Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems Volume Two
Faces in Nature
Posted: June 28, 2012 Filed under: 365 Yoga Challenge, hiking, nature, Photography, Spirit, Spring, Summer, travel, Vacation, water | Tags: Bay of Fundy, Canada, garden, Hiking, Hopewell Rocks, nature, New Brunswick, Outdoors, photo challenge, Photography, spring, water, woods 22 Comments
Can you see the faces in the rocks?
Have you found a face in nature for Bearyweather’s Find a Face in Nature challenge yet? I keep finding faces in the images of the rocks from Hopewell Rocks in New Brunswick. Since Bearyweather didn’t specify it had to be a human face, I decided to use this image for the challenge.
What do you see? (I’ll let you know what I see after the break.)
Karma’s June Photo Hunt
Posted: June 27, 2012 Filed under: 365 Yoga Challenge, Adventures in Life, Earth, friends, home, Karma's Photo Hunt, nature, Photography, Spirit, Spring, Summer, travel, Vacation, Walking, wandering, water, weather | Tags: Hiking, nature, Outdoors, Photography, spring, Summer, travel, water 44 Comments
Peace ☮
Karma’s June Photo Hunt is pretty interesting. To me it expresses feelings more than person, place, or thing (although certainly person, place, or thing could represent or be the recipient of those feelings). I wasn’t sure what I’d be able to do with some of the words. To be honest, even as I sit down to put together this post I’m still not sure. I guess we will all have to wait and see where it goes as I scan through the photos I’ve taken this month. Since I spent more than half of June traveling, I suspect most (if not all) of the photos will come from my adventures in Canada and Maine.
The first word on the list —Peace— was easy. I always feel a great sense of peace at sunrise. More so than at sunset. There is something about the silence of the early morning, before the world wakes up, that automatically instills a profound sense of inner peace. On Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, this sense of inner peace was somehow, incredibly and surprisingly, intensified. The water in the harbor was still, everyday life was remote (almost as if it didn’t exist at all!), and the colors were the hues of dreams. Sunrises are awakenings for me, a connection to Peace, Love, and the Great Whatever.
Let’s call that one Peace 2. ☮ I’ll bring you Peace 3, 4, and 5 another time. We should move on to the next word so this post doesn’t become too cumbersome. (I sense cumbersome is approaching whether I like it or not. It’s that kind of post, the one that wants to write itself, using Karma’s list as a catalyst to fire up some words and images.)
A walk around the meadows
Posted: June 26, 2012 Filed under: 365 Yoga Challenge, Adventures in Life, Air, Critters, Digital Art, Earth, Fire, garden, home, nature, Photography, pond, Spirit, Summer, Walking, wandering, water, weather | Tags: bee, Black-Eyed Susans, butterfly, clouds, Flower, garden, Meadow, nature, Outdoors, Photography, pond, Summer, water, weather, wildflowers 24 Comments
Wisteria vine in the old doorway
I thought I’d give us all a break from how I spent my vacation, and post a few shots from home. The weather has been so beautiful here the past couple of days. Summer is going full force in terms of the flowers blooming. It’s almost as if someone hit the fast-forward button. Plants that normally bloom in July and August are blooming now, at the end of June.
On the beach and through the forest
Posted: June 25, 2012 Filed under: 365 Yoga Challenge, Adventures in Life, Earth, Fire, hiking, nature, Photography, Spirit, Spring, Summer, travel, Vacation, Walking, wandering, water, weather | Tags: Bay of Fundy, beach, Canada, Canadian Maritimes, flowers, Hiking, Hopewell Rocks, nature, New Brunswick, Outdoors, Photography, spring, travel, water, weather, wildflowers, woods 29 Comments
Demoiselle Beach
I mentioned in my Hopewell Rocks post that M and I explored the area while we were waiting for low tide. Behind the Hopewell Rocks Interpretive Centre is a trail that leads to Demoiselle Beach. It’s a lovely, sandy, and very quiet area (at least while we there — the family you see in the above photo left shortly after we arrived, the children having obviously enjoyed the mud). The beach is framed by rock formations on one end and a salt marsh on the other.
Sunday signage
Posted: June 24, 2012 Filed under: 365 Yoga Challenge, Adventures in Life, Digital Art, Earth, endings, goals, nature, Photography, Spirit, Spring, Summer, travel, Vacation, Walking, wandering, weather | Tags: Acadians, Bay of Fundy, Canada, Canadian Maritimes, cemetery, graveyard, nature, New Brunswick, New France, Outdoors, Photography, spring, travel 44 Comments
Cemetery in New Horton, New Brunswick, somewhere between Cape Enrage and Alma.
After driving by this cemetery the day before on our way to Cape Enrage, I had to stop when we saw it again (coincidentally on our way to Cape Enrage again). Who names a cemetery the “Ha Ha Cemetery?” And what do they mean by that? Are they laughing at death? Was there something funny about the way the people in the cemetery died? If you Google the Ha Ha Cemetery, you’ll find that many people before me have stopped to take photos and contemplate the meaning of Ha Ha.
Life in the Bogs 