A Year in Photographs

JANUARY brought an opportunity to share the winter beauty of Yosemite Valley with my whole family...

FEBRUARY provided moments to appreciate the coziness of a warm house on a cold day...

MARCH saw some much needed rain and a profusion of flowers...

APRIL was full of visits with family and friends in both Yosemite and Indiana...

MAY allowed time to reflect on the past and ponder my path into the future...

JUNE foreshadowed the forest fires and home repair projects that would persist throughout our summer and fall...

JULY offered an escape from the intense California heat to the cool shores of Lake Superior and a chance to hang out with my sister and nephew in Minnesota...

AUGUST afforded us a break from home renovating to explore the Monterey coast and Sierra Nevada high country...

SEPTEMBER was full of fun times with good friends in the Tetons and Oakland...

OCTOBER was a challenging time of transition and loss for loved ones back home in Indiana...

NOVEMBER made me grateful for unexpected moments of beauty and relaxing family vacations...

And DECEMBER has been filled with winter wonders...

Happy holidays to all and best wishes for the coming new year!

Sunrise Over Sanibel Island

I opened my eyes in the dark bedroom and noticed a trace of morning light reflecting off the walls. Quietly I slipped downstairs to the living room where out the window I saw dark grey cirrus clouds streaked across the eastern sky, their undersides tinted a deep raspberry pink. I ran back upstairs to throw on a sweater and grab my camera, and then headed out the back door and down to the boardwalk with high hopes for a colorful sunrise.

A fresh green scent mixed with the salty air as I walked along the trail through the dimly lit stands of sea grape and oat grass toward the ocean. Osprey in flight called to each other from the tops of the tall pines. I stepped beyond the shrubs and onto the soft, silvery sand. The tide was low, exposing a vast expanse of beach fringed along the shoreline with shallow pools of water. A glowing band of coral light across the eastern horizon cast a subtle glow all around.

Waves crested lazily onto the beach and spilled into the shallow pools, creating small ripples that traveled across the water. The rebounding ripples interfered with oncoming waves, exchanging energy with each other and filling the surface with a geometric dance of infinite troughs and crests. Out beyond the pools, sea-going birds alternately plummeted toward the ocean and soared across the sky while fishing for their breakfast.

All at once, the coral pink color of morning began to seep from the horizon onto the clouds above, except for where a distant thunderhead cast two conspicuous streaks of gray shadow. A spectacle of iridescent light began to fill the sky as the long rays of morning sun stretched across the Earth's curved surface.

With the increasing amount of daylight, I began to notice ripples of sand at the bottom of the pools which mimicked the movement of the water that formed them. Some of the sand ripples broke the water's surface creating linear chains of tiny islands floating in a sea of pink and blue. These ripples looked very much like those preserved and hardened in the sandstones I collected as a geology student in college. Layer upon layer of wavering sediments deposited over hundreds of millions of years under the same sun and perhaps on a morning just as beautiful as this.

Further up the beach I saw a banded sea star on thousands of tiny, undulating legs slowly making its way toward the water, its appendages leaving long furrows in the wet sand. A small crowd gathered around to watch the progress, until a knowledgeable man stepped in to say that the star would die if it remained on land too long. He gathered up the creature into his hands, its arms threading through his fingers and trailing down the sides of his palms, and gently carried it to the rippling shallows as the sun peeked over the horizon.

Everything Changes

“When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid."
-- Pema Chödrön

You've probably heard the saying "the only constant is change", but how many of us let that truth really sink in? So much of the fear, anger and pain manifested in this world comes from not fully accepting this reality. I'm not saying that it's an easy thing to do, or that people who don't accept it are wrong or bad. But as with any fundamental truth of human existence, when we argue with it we will lose - every time. How frequently and for how long are the only variables.

I'm beginning to think that acceptance is the key. Not to happiness exactly, nor to never feeling fear, anger or pain again. It's the key that opens the door to whatever comes next. When I accept my reality for what it is without all the blame and judgement (aimed at others, at God, but also especially at myself) I gain the ability to see more clearly the path that is in front of me. We cannot navigate freely into the future by constantly looking through the lens of the past. What has happened cannot be undone and what is to come is wholly unknown, and therefore directly influenced by each choice we make from this moment to the next and beyond.

"The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” 

-- Howard Zinn

Change, acceptance, choices - three forces that will dance in lockstep with each of us throughout our entire life. This concept can seem overwhelming at times, even daunting. Especially when the change is particularly jarring and choices appear to be undesirable or nonexistent. This again is where acceptance comes in. I've had to get over the idea of equating acceptance with liking or condoning the situation. I used to think that if I didn't resist that which offended me, I would just give up or give in. But what I missed in all of this was that by resisting, my perception of the whole situation was blurred and so any solutions or alternatives I might try to apply were incomplete. In order to accept my present circumstances, I've had to cultivate a lot compassion and patience, particularly for myself. I am, as they say, my own harshest critic.

With patience, compassion and an absence of judgement, the world is a much kinder place than I once perceived it to be. I realize that I may not get to where I thought I was going, but everything changes and when I accept that fact, I see choices open up to me that I did not notice before. When I begin to feel fear and apprehension, I will meet those thoughts with compassion and wait patiently for them to dissolve. Slowly, slowly, I am returning to myself and I find that by doing that, I am better able to embrace the gifts I have been given and then share them with the world.

"Dissolution is needed for new growth to happen. One cycle cannot exist without the other."

-- Eckhart Tolle

One September Day

Autumn arrived on the afternoon breeze.

I heard it approach as it threaded
Through the tops of the dusky gray pines
Lacing between their densely needled boughs
With the lilting ebb and flow of a hushed roar.

It softly touched my cheek before slipping
Down the length of my bare arms
Taking with it any trace of accumulated heat and dust
As a coolness spread across my skin.

The scent of the sea was carried in its gusts which swept
From the coast and across a wide valley to these hills
Conjuring memories of damp salt tinged days
Along the cloudy shores of Monterey.

I watched it glide through the weary oaks who sighed
As they released their pale summer scorched leaves
Lofting them into the reinvigorated air
To celebrate the moment the world changed.

Life in Bloom

August is a brittle, dusty month in the California foothills. All the wildflowers have long since gone to seed and the once lush green stands of grass now glow with golden yellow light, their stems rustling in the hot afternoon breeze. During the monsoon season when thick, billowy cumulonimbus clouds pile high on the mountain tops, only a few storms will stray down to lower elevations. More often than not, they bring with them wind and lightning, but precious little rain. Even the native trees and shrubs take on an ashen pallor, stalling their growth to divert all their efforts into simply surviving.

Earlier in the summer, a multitude of long thin leaves sprouted in patches along the lower parking area in our yard. I was charmed by the presence of such vibrant life bursting out from the layers of last year’s sharp, crisp oak leaves. As the weeks passed, the leaves turned leathery and yellow, eventually curling into wisps of plant fiber. I lamented the fact that the plants never had a chance to bloom, but was not willing to haul buckets of water down the driveway multiple times a week.

Imagine my surprise when almost a month later, out of the arid August ground began to emerge fleshy slender stalks topped by thick pink buds. It turns out the Belladonna amaryllis, a native of South Africa, requires a period of dry dormancy between leaf growth and flower production. Within days the pale green tips peeled open and clusters of trumpeting flowers erupted forth, wafting their sweet scent around the barren yard. They stood tall and proud, defying logic and daring me to utter one more complaint about the heat or the lack of moisture at this time of year.

And so recently I’ve remained silent, as well as a little more observant. I notice that the nights are cooler and the morning sunlight comes a bit later. I remember that there is a season to everything and the trick to living is not fighting against, but adapting to these changing rhythms. With patience and resilience, one never knows what miracles might emerge.

Precious Stones

I take slow, deliberate steps along the shore of Lake Superior with my head cast down, gaze sweeping methodically across the ground. Thousands of small pebbles are scattered in tiers on the sand, some glistening at the edge of the ebbing waves, others pushed further up the beach by past storms. They create a colorful earth toned mosaic punctuated by bright flecks of mustard, terracotta and slate blue.

My eye is most easily drawn to the layered nuggets of maroon and gray, which glow like hot embers in the shallow water. These rocks known as banded iron formations were created in the region two billion years ago when oxygen first became abundant in the atmosphere. This element combined with dissolved iron in the oceans to form iron oxides. The oxygen was produced by photosynthesizing algae, thus preserving the first breath of plant life in stone and laying the future economic foundation of this entire region.

I spy an oval shaped slip of white rock scored with telltale tubular striations contrasting against the grainy brown sand. It is a piece of fossilized coral from the ancient shallow sea that covered this land 400 million years ago. I imagine a watery world blanketed with coral reefs. Sea lilies sway in the current as the perfectly spiraled shell of an ammonite jets by, squid-like tentacles streaming in its wake. Trilobites scuttle across the sea floor over and around clusters of brachiopod shells. A seagull’s call brings me back to the terrestrial present, but thoughts of geologic time and transformation continue to swirl in my mind.

I am determined to collect a rainbow of rocks. Oranges and blues are mostly igneous rhyolite and basalt deposits from a 1,200 mile long rift through the heart of North America that opened up one billion years ago. It extended from modern day Ontario down to Kansas and branched over into Michigan. A large basin formed at the junction of the northern and eastern arms of the rift, which was ultimately filled with water by retreating glaciers to form Lake Superior just 10,000 years ago. I add them to the metamorphic green epidote and yellow chert already in my pocket.

Red, brown, purple and white sandstones represent deposits from ancient rivers and streams that flowed off the volcanic mountain ranges in the region 500 million years ago. The brown sandstone was particularly prized by architects in the late 1800’s as a building material, referred to as Lake Superior Brownstone, and was used to construct many stoic buildings and residences in the towns that ring the lake. These sandstone formations were also carved and smoothed by wind and waves to form the Apostle Islands.

The individual colors of rock all blend to steely gray as twilight approaches. I sit on the beach listening to the hush of the waves lapping onto shore, holding the accumulation of two billion years in the palm of my hand. Sunset casts its glow as the lights of Washburn begin to twinkle in the distance. I dig my toes down into a confetti of geologic time to feel the lingering warmth of the radiant summer sun still in its grains.

History and Memory at the Santa Barbara Mission

The city of Santa Barbara is stunningly situated along a crescent shaped bay that slopes gently from the shoreline up into the Santa Ynez mountains. The seemingly infinite ocean view is tempered by the sight of the Channel Islands rising out of a haze of distant saltwater spray. A tapestry of whitewashed stucco and terracotta clay tile blankets the rolling green hills, in deference to the Spanish colonials who settled here in the late 1700's. My parents had come from the cold and snowy Midwest to visit Southern California, and sun drenched Santa Barbara seemed like the perfect place for a day trip. We decided to visit the Mission to gain a better understanding of the complex history of this area, which was shaped by successive waves of Native, Spanish, Mexican and American influence.

Spanish missionaries were likely amazed by the similarities in geography and climate to their native homeland when they first arrived in California. The architectural style and agricultural crops that had evolved over centuries in Spain were easily grafted onto the California coastal landscape. Even today, a visit to the Mission feels like an instantaneous trip to another place and time. The four of us stepped across the foyer threshold into their Mediterranean world and quietly ambled down the long shady walkway skirting a courtyard garden filled with citrus, palm trees and herbs. An alter of offertory candles flickered warmly in the dim light of an adjoining portico. We admired the craftsmanship evident in the surrounding decorative iron and wood work, and marveled at the ornately painted interior of the church sanctuary. A high arched door led out into the cemetery, where sunlight cast a network of shadows onto the lawn as it passed through the outstretched branches of a gnarled fig tree. I glanced back at the moss covered exterior of the shaded church walls and saw above the doorway a faded arc of skulls and crossbones embossed in the stones.

Across the lawn, the long cool stone walls of the mausoleum interior were lined by polished marble plaques etched with names and titles of important clergy members and prominent citizens who contributed to the success of the mission settlement. I continued strolling the grounds reading the Spanish surnames carved into the tombstones and sarcophagi, each one blending together with the next to form a manifest of faith and devotion. I thought of all the generations of families who have taken comfort from visiting their loved ones in this place and was unsettled by the growing awareness that I was a complete stranger surrounded by two hundred years and many lifetimes worth of memories and experiences that were wholly unknown to me.  

And then I saw it. A bronze plaque on the wall in a distant corner of the yard, different from all the rest with its industrial appearance and modern font. I walked over to read what it said and felt my breath catch in my throat.

I knew this story like it was my own. A young woman was accidentally separated from her people during the chaotic evacuation of their island home far off the coast of California. She lived alone on the island for almost two decades learning how to hunt and fish, and to protect herself from predators. A fictional account of her life was published in 1960 by Scott O'Dell, entitled Island of the Blue Dolphins. From the few shreds of her known history, he wove a story that swept me up in the tragedy and beauty of her solitary existence. She was the idol of my childhood, this strong, resourceful woman who developed the skills to survive in such an unforgiving environment and made peace again and again with her circumstances. Through her experiences I learned that each living creature has to find a way to meet its needs and that every day requires making choices to maintain the delicate balance between connection and conflict. The story ended with her standing at the bow of the ship that would carry her from her island home to the settlement of Santa Barbara.

I had always wondered what it must have been like for her to enter into that entirely new world. The myriad of feelings that were evoked at the sight of strange animals, the taste of new foods, the smiles and laughter of other people around her after so many years of solitude. But also the sadness of learning that none of her tribe had survived to share in her joy, most having died of infectious diseases after being brought to the mainland (I later learned that she succumbed to a similar fate only seven weeks after being rescued). I now marveled at the impact her story must have had upon the people of Santa Barbara, given that they placed this plaque near her humble grave site 75 years later.

We are each the sole owners of our personal memories and experiences, but the resulting stories ultimately belong to the listeners. And in that way her story became ours. Millions of people have taken from the telling what they find most meaningful and have carried that forward with them throughout their lives. And so in some way perhaps we are all essentially writing the same story, one that speaks of a desire to survive and connect through the choices we make over a lifetime.

But, there are also times when I feel that I'm not the writer, but actually the one being written, for I could not have imagined that twenty five years later I would stumble upon this final chapter of her life. The small white marble tombstone was planted firmly in the soil with a fringe of geranium leaves hovering above it. I walked over to it and bowed my head and in that moment became one of the thousands of other souls who have found comfort in this place. I was no longer a stranger. I gave silent thanks for all the ways her life had touched mine and then walked back across the lawn to rejoin my family.