It started as a plow furrow, seriously.
TODAY’S PHOTO: Providence Canyon in Southern Georgia
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Tag Archives: nature
TODAY’S PHOTO: Roadside Cambodia
This is Cambodia
Traveling cross-country through Cambodia at the end of the wet season, the road seems to be just the Mac-daddy paddy dike, and the rest of the country is a flooded rice paddy. What once was jungle is now solitary trees, often palms, jutting out of a verdant sea. Farmers fish waist deep, casting nets, as emaciated oxen cool their bellies. Everyone lives and dies by water.
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DAILY PHOTO: A Duck at General Coffee State Park
Killer duck jumps out of the water.
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The Sound of One Nub Clapping
Taken at the Red Cross Snake Farm, Bangkok
Once upon a day in February
ruminating about creatures scary
staring at a flaring cobra hood
I thought, maybe this serpent ‘s just misunderstood
I know its bad rap (wrap?) is Biblically-inspired,
but perhaps it’s time that rap be retired
if you stepped on me, I’d bite you too
well, perhaps not bite, but in the harshest tone bid you adieu
The crocodile has a snappy smile
and is always dressed in dapper style
if you evict him from his birthday suit
to suit your needs for some snazzy boots
I think we’ll all understand, if he claims as his your right hand
don’t think it’s some vast assault on man
think of it as a reptilian guru teaching one Zen koan
and, to you, the sound of one hand clapping will be known
hint: it sounds like a bloodcurdling scream
and requires a readied surgical team
Taken at Budapest Zoo
Your bigger tiger can be a grumpy cat
when unwise souls encroach its habitat
just don’t pitch a tent like you own the place
if you value the features on your face
think of yourself as that visiting kin
for whom “just passing through” looks like “moving in”
you don’t feel nice calling Uncle Bob a pest
think how the tiger feels ripping your heart from your chest
Taken at a “bear park” in Veresegyház, Hungary
Grizzly bears’ hairiness inspires scariness
but under that fur is the motive for wariness
it may look like rolly-polly flab
but bears have muscular six-pack abs
you think you’ve got him in your trap
but wonder how your spine just snapped
a minor miscalculation on the tranq front
and your life is liquids through a shunt
can you blame him, the trap ‘s a rusty, toothy maw
that you just caused to kill his paw
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BOOK REVIEW: Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Nature is a harsh teacher. That was the last lesson Chris McCandless ever learned. A recent college graduate, McCandless struck out for the Alaskan wilderness with minimal resources, his body was found by a party of moose-hunters several months after he’d begun his Alaskan adventure.
Into the Wild gives us a well-researched explanation for how McCandless died, but it also tells us a great deal about how he lived– and that story is fascinating in its own right. Many thought McCandless must have been crazy, but refusing to acquiesce to the work-a-day world is often incorrectly diagnosed as insanity.
McCandless had an obsessive desire to find out whether he could make it on his own, not just separate from his parent’s wealth but from all the trappings of modern society. McCandless’s most iconic indicator of insanity-by-way-of-thwarting-convention was when he gave away the entirety of his $25,000 savings account and burnt all the money in his wallet. He wanted to know whether he could survive if he was returned to the state of nature from whence mankind came. Sadly, the answer was no.
It would be easy to dismiss McCandless as a dumb kid who got in over his head. Though he certainly was that. On his deathbed, in a bus carcass in the remote Alaskan wilderness, McCandless likely had a revelation that most teenagers pass into adulthood without ever realizing, that he was mortal.
However, McCandless was more than a kid with an underdeveloped sense of his own mortality. He was a kid with the courage to confront a question that most of us just let nag in the back of our minds. That question being,do we have what it takes to live not as a cog in a machine but as a human in the natural world.
I know many are intrigued by this question in part because there are entire TV channels that are practically devoted to survival shows. Yet most people don’t take it beyond sitting on a couch contemplating whether they could survive. Will thinking man (Homo sapiens) be replaced by doing man (Homo effectus)?
There was a movie based on this book. I didn’t see it, but here is its trailer.
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DAILY PHOTO: Gulf of Finland Inlet
Taken from the Hilton Helsinki Kalastajatorppa
In 2011, we made a mid-summer trip to Helsinki. We stayed at the Hilton Helsinki Kalastajatorppa. It’s located northwest of Helsinki proper up the inlet to the city’s west side (not far from Seurasaari Island.)
This photo was taken at probably 1:30am. Vampires beware: I don’t think it ever got fully dark. There was always light on the horizon. Those little black specks on the water are birds whose circadian rhythms were as confused as was mine.
BTW, that hotel has an awesome breakfast buffet that’s included in the room price. It’ s a little out-of-the-way though.
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DAILY PHOTO: Sacsayhuamán in the Peruvian Andes
This Incan site overlooks Cusco, Peru.
Sacsayhuamán may well be the first Incan site you see, if you fly into Cusco. It sits on a hill overlooking Cusco. If you’re in the mood to stretch your legs and aren’t too queasy from the elevation (Cusco, 11,200ft), it’s not too difficult a walk from the city center. You can use the Cristo Blanco (huge white Jesus), which shares the same hill, as a navigational reference.
The Incans were the master masons. These stone walls were made without mortar. Yes, those irregularly shaped blocks sit perfectly on each other and have for hundreds of years. The one thing that Sacsayhuamán has that other sites don’t is a naturally occurring fun park of slides. One can also traverse a pitch black cave, and get spectacular overview shots of the city.
Naturally occurring slides
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DAILY PHOTO: Reflections in Rangsit, Thailand
Rangsit, Thailand
I thought I’d take a break from posting pictures of either monuments to wealth and power or pristine nature scenes. I took this in Rangsit, Thailand, which is a northern suburb of Bangkok out past the Don Muang Airport. I was there studying at the Muay Thai Institute for one week. (Muay Thai is a martial art and the national sport of Thailand.) If you’re curious about what my experience with that was like, I have posts about it here and here.)
It was fascinating to see what a love/hate relationship water has with these people. It nourishes them. It bathes them. But every once in a while it tries to kill them. A kindly restaurateur showed me pictures of his landlocked restaurant underwater during the floods of 2011. At that time the tree tops you see were probably just jutting out of the water– if they weren’t entirely submerged. (I base this on the height of the elevated express way to the left that I think was at water level, based on pictures I’ve seen.)
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DAILY PHOTO: Isla Contoy, Mexico
“The beach is that way,” says crab to lizard.
Isla Contoy is a bird sanctuary off the northeast corner of the Yucatan peninsula. There are no hotels or permanent residents there, but one can easily make half day trips by boat from either Isla Mujeres or Cancun. The only buildings on the island are a ranger station, an observation tower, a small educational display, and some picnic shelters. Because people don’t live here (besides maybe a few park rangers and scientists) and the number of visitors is limited, the wildlife density (particularly birds, but also lizards, crabs, rays, etc.) is tremendous.
Because they try to limit where people go to avoid interference with the wildlife, a few hours here is sufficient. However, there is a pristine white sand beach that, as I indicated, is visited by rays and fish.
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DAILY PHOTO: Church at Tims Ford, Tennessee
On a cloudy night, this place would be CREEPY!
Have you ever seen an idyllic, pristine setting, and thought, Under different circumstances this would be the perfect location for a horror film?
That was my feeling as I walked out of the woods and saw this solitary, white church and its graveyard on a hill in central nowhere (No offense, Tennessee.) Picture what this place would be like under a low, roiling, gray clouds. It’s spitting cold rain, the graveyard is leaf-strewn. From which grave will a clawing hand protrude? You don’t know. You don’t know.
