Adventure

This is a bridge to somewhere.  

This is a path to adventure, enlightenment, peace, Spirit

This is Self.

This is a trail that will not be denied.

This is hope and opportunity.

We have been given a gift.  A rare, beautiful, timely gift.  The gift of healing ocean breezes, sunshine, the call of gulls, endless horizons and unexplored grasslands and wetlands.  Turtles and pelicans.  Driftwood and seashells.  Peace.  Calm.  Breath of Life.  

Our house has been sold.  Most of our possessions have been given away, donated, pitched.  The good stuff will go in storage.  For 6-9 months we will be overseeing repairs at my stepfather's house on a beach in North Carolina.  Kure Beach.  We plan to return, unless the lure of the ocean won't allow us to.  It depends.  I feel so free.  So untethered.  My GeoGypsy pal Gaelyn has come to mind so much through this process.  She would be the first to say WAY TA GO! 

After this year of trauma, doctors, hospitals, surgeries, doctors, procedures, physical therapy, counseling, exhaustion, fear, anxiety, and driving, driving, driving we are both so excited about leaving this place of pain.  This house is a good house, a comfortable house, but it has some hard memories we choose to release.  The future is approaching way too fast as we age, and it's time to embrace a new place, new adventures, new smells and sights.  Fresh seafood!  New habitats to explore and write about, photograph and blog.  

I will be sharing my adventures on this blog and another one soon to be announced.  Imagine!  Ferries and wetlands!  The wild winds off the ocean!  What will come on shore tomorrow and the next day?  I will get to see sunrises and sunsets again in all their glory!  Pelicans flying by every day!  It's about damn time I get to use exclamation points again.  I've earned the right and I'll use them often and freely and without shame!  

Thank you all for being my blogging friends all these years.  The Giraffe Head Tree remains on her perch overlooking the Tennessee River, but...you know what?  I just realized...she faces East, and that's where I'm going. 

Stay tuned...

Happy Valentine's Day!

 

"Daffodils"

"I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils; 

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretch'd in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth - 1804

Wheeler Wildlife Refuge

Sandhill Cranes at Wheeler Wildlife Refuge, Decatur, Alabama

Carroll and I met in the parking lot of Decatur's Wheeler Wildlife Refuge Headquarters.  We hugged and laughed, excited to see each other after such a long time.  Our mission - to see the sandhill cranes before they fly northward for the summer.  Although it's still February, our weather has been very warm and wet this year which has altered many bird migration patterns.  Two weeks ago I was surrounded by 50 gazillion cedar waxwings.  Normally, they arrive in late March thru April.  But this many?  Now?  It's kinda weird. 

There they go...

These photos were taken in the fields on the drive in toward the headquarters building.  I didn't even get out of my car - just rolled down the window and fired off a few frames.  They didn't like it.  The squirrelly one in the center, above, spooked everyone else and all they flew.  These fields aren't normally this green in February. 

Northern Shovelers circling and eating...

After our hugging dancing jig in the parking we were surprised by the Operation Migration van! So surprised that we didn't even get a photo of it.  We'd heard that 7-9 whooping cranes were at WWR and were hoping to see them.  Clearly, the van's appearance meant they were there, somewhere in the vast acreage along the Tennessee River.  We later discovered that they were still contained in a "safe spot."  These whooping cranes had ample protection provided by law enforcement vehicles, or so we think because we spied 4 officer vehicles nearby. 

American Wigeon

Trudging silently through the pathway toward the observation building, we noted just how quiet it was.  No sandhills flew overhead.  No trumpeting off in the distance.  Nothing but the scritches and scratches of songbirds in the brush, and the quacking of all manner of ducks.  Okay, technically that's not "nothing," but ..... no sandhills. 

WWR Observation Blind - by reservation only

From our perch in the observation building we could see the observation blind across the wetland.  Scads of waterfowl and a few Canada geese.  The northern shovelers were circling and eating something beneath them - the water was very low.  No sandhills.  I've never been there when it was so quiet. 

Take a bow!

As the northern shovelers take a bow we shoulder our cameras and head for the cars.  This quick trip was fabulous in that we got in a nice visit in a beautiful locale.  I traveled a new path on my way home and made a discovery, which will be saved for the next post.  Sorry that I've been MIA.  Simply no adventures to share, but that will be changing....soon!  Stand by...

Winter Wheat

 

2009

Yesterday I received an e-mail from a nice lady who stumbled upon my meager blog.  Googling "Winter Wheat" she'd found The Giraffe Head Tree.

 2009

 She was putting together a program for her church and wanted to use one of the images.  Why, of course, I said. 

2009

Please send me one for my portfolio, I asked, and she thought that funny.  It is funny, really. 

2010

This exchange whetted my appetite for those images again so I looked high and low, finally finding them on my stand-alone hard drive.  Neatly archived away.  Out of sight.  Out of mind.  Until this nice lady's e-mail. 

2010

Why do I do that?  Hide my images away?  Visiting these images brought back some fabulous memories.  More than that I really, really like them.  This is the same wheat field, two years in a row. 

2010

May 2009 I shot them in bright afternoon daylight, a coming storm looming on the horizon.  Bright blue skies being gobbled up by bright white and grey clouds; golden wheat swaying in the wind.  May 2010 I rose before dawn and drove to the field awaiting the sunrise.  A gentle fog and rosy light made these my favorite images of all.  What do you do with your favorite nature images, and what is your preferred method for a portfolio for your work?  I'm really curious as clearly I'm horrid at both.

Photographic Experimentation

I've been playing.

Water, oils, lighting, textures and various lenses.

They're not birds or bugs, sunrises or trees.  

However, they are indeed created from elements from Mother Earth.

The joy of playing was so freeing, happy.