California Dreaming

Tags

art, Big Sur, California, Morro Bay Rock, Paintings, photography, scenic views, watercolor

McWay Falls in Julia Pfeiffer Burns Sate Park, Big Sur, California

Two of my paintings are being shown at a local gallery this month. They are part of an exhibition titled “For Love of Central & Coastal California.”

One is a view of iconic Morro Bay Rock as seen from the top of Highway 46, not far from where we live. It is one of my favorite views, especially in the spring with the green hills folding down to the sea. In the actual view from the highway, Morro Rock can barely be seen, even on a clear day. But one of the wonderful things about painting is that you can move things around and make them smaller or larger to fit your vision and what you want to capture.

View of Morro Rock from Highway 46, watercolor by Deborah J. Brakset

This painting was a composite of the following two photographs that I took not long ago. I tried to capture the intense green hills and their shadows from the first photo, and more detail of the ravines that spider up the far hills in the second. I made the hills steeper than they actually are and emphasized the road dipping into the folds.

The second painting on display is a view of a hidden sea cave as seen from Highway 1 near Big Sur.

Sea Cave, Big Sur, from Highway 1 – watercolor by Deborah J. Brasket

It is a composite of the following two photos, the first featuring the yellow wild flowers that grow near the highway overlooking the sea, and the second shows the cave itself in its private cove. You can barely make out the fence and pathway leading down the cliff toward the ocean in the photo.

This last painting is not part of the show but shares the theme. It is a painting of a pathway lined with oaks leading to the river near our home. A “California dreamer” leans against a tree trunk.

“A Splash of Sunlight” watercolor by Deborah J. Brasket

This is the reference photo, sans the mountain and the “dreamer” I added.

I was trying to use the colors and the looser style found in the following painting, one of my favorites by Henri Manguin.

“The Parkway”, 1905, by Henri Manguin

Mine isn’t as successful as I had hoped, but it still captures enough of that “dreamy” feeling of late afternoon, with the sun filtering down through the leaves, to want to keep it.

I hope you enjoyed this brief stroll with me through California’s  sunlit and sea-splashed hills. May you savor the natural beauty that lies in your own backyard, wherever that may be.

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Into the Wild – On Safari in Africa

Tags

Africa, Botswana, Jeff Jones, Namibia, Nature, photography, safari, The Jones Party, wildlife

Water hole, Namibia, Africa – Photo by Jeffrey Jones

My brother and his wife have had a life-long love affair with the wildlife and habitats of southern Africa. So much so that after several trips themselves they began taking small groups on safaris. Here are just a sampling of some of the fantastic photographs he’s taken from various trips. They take us, not to the edge, but to the very heart of the wild.

I hope you will enjoy these stunning images from Namibia and Botswana as much as I have. If you’d like to learn more about his trips and the safaris he arranges, you can visit his website The Jones Party, Adventure Travel.

Water hole, Namibia – photo by Jeffrey Jones

Elephant herd, Namibia

Lion “pride”, Namibia

The stunning red sand dunes of Namibia

Sand sculpture, Namibia

Looks like a scene from Mars, but it’s the windswept hills of Namibia

Even the earliest humans were fascinated by the wildlife of Namibia

Leopard, Namibia

Braying zebra, Namibia

Elephant herd, Botswana

Baby elephant, lost among the legs, Botswana

Stay down, baby!

Sitting and sleeping in the shade of the herd, Botswana

A handsome beast!

Noble profile

A little lion love

More, please!

Water Buffalo, Botswana

Mama and baby, Botswana

Hungry baby

Dining lodge, Botswana

Sleeping lodge, Botswana

Cooling down after a long safari, note elephants in the background

View from the lodge as the sun goes down

The end of another beautiful day in the wild.

[All photographs copyrighted by Jeff Jones]

You might enjoy another post I wrote a few years ago about “Waterholes in the Wild and the Backyard“.

 

Walking in a Green-Winter Wonderland

Tags

California, Central Coast California, green hills, Nature, oak trees, photography, Winter

Here on the central coast of California, we look forward to a green, rather than white, Christmas. While we love our golden hills of summer, we crave green in the winter. During last year’s drought our summer hills turned dun. Even the golden grasses dried up and blew away, and this lasted through winter. But this year our green came early and I’ve been revelling in it.

Here are some recent photos of the green-wonderland behind our home.

My husband and our dog Mitzy.

Amazing oaks!

 

A fallen giant.

 

Shadows and moss.

Sunlight breaking through.

The Three Sisters.

Home again.

My Roman Oaks

Tags

beauty, cycle of life, life, Nature, oak trees, photography, Roman ruins

Recently we had visitors who had just returned from Italy. We talked of how easily you can stumble upon ancient Roman ruins lying beside the road or tumbled along the edge of a parking lot. Paving stones from some ancient road where the legendary 13th Legion once marched; the foundations of a fallen aqueduct; broken urns and shards of pottery. None of it cordoned off to protect. None of it of much value.

It’s a common sight for the native populations, but an unexpected pleasure and exciting discovery for visiting tourists. In some ways these ruins impact us more deeply than the ruins we find with tourist guides or behind museum walls.

As we were talking, I pointed to the “Roman Oaks” in the meadow outside our window.

I’ve come to see these fallen giants, the ruins of ancient oaks that lie scattered in the hills outside our home, with the same sense of tender regard and respect. Once they had been huge and thriving ecosystems, little cities providing shelter and food for a vast variety of creatures large and small. Some dominated the landscape for centuries. Children were born and grew old and died in full view of their robust splendor. The trees that now surround these ruins were tiny saplings or green shoots or still bound within round acorns when these giants spread their roots across the hillsides and threw vast shadows across the land.

I’ve come to love these ruins. There’s beauty in the sleek stripped limbs, sculptured by the wind and rain and passing predators. Beauty in their moss and lichen painted bark. Beauty in the way their sharp ruins rise like flames against the sky. Beauty in their hollowed trunks and upturned roots. I walk among them with their fine mulch crumbled underfoot and feel a sense of timelessness. The past and present tangled together.

I’ve gathered a few photos here to share with you.

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Living Life Through a Lens, What We Gain and Lose

Tags

"step barefoot into reality", Philosophy, photography, story-telling, Wallace Stevens, writing

How much of our lives do we view through a narrow lens, whether through the lens of a camera, our own limited viewpoint, or the stories we tell about ourselves and each other?

When we walk through life with a perpetual camera around our necks, we are tempted to see everything through that narrow focus, framing everything we see–the city streets, the sunsets and landscapes, the people we pass, the objects that come into view. As we frame what we see and take photos, it helps us to notice things we may have overlooked otherwise, and to see these things in a new light. It intensifies our ability to discover the extraordinary in the ordinary, and allows us to capture and preserve those visions.

But it also breaks the whole into parts, raw experience into the photo-worthy and not-so-much.  We experience things not as a participant, but an observer, a spectator or voyeur at worst, a curator of the significant at best.

When we were sailing around the world, I wish I had done more of that capturing and preserving. There were no digital cameras then, and film was expensive and hard to store in a hot, damp climates. So now I have only a handful of photos from hikes through the enchanted valleys of the Marquesas. Three or four of our stay in legendary Bora Bora, a dozen from our three months in Samoa. Now I wish we had dozens more photos of each place to view and remember.

On the other hand, by the time my first grandchild was born we had a digital camera.  Because I saw him so seldom, when I was with him I photographed him almost continuously, following him everywhere and capturing every sweet smile, every cute incident, every new thing he did.

Until I stood back one day and realized that by indulging the urge to “frame” everything for posterity, I was missing out on now, on just being with him–soaking up his presence, our time together–in the moment, raw and unfiltered.

Now though, I do not regret all those photos I took. For I am able to relive those moments with greater clarity and in more detail that I might have been able to do so without them.

It’s all a balancing out, I guess.

As writers we do that too—viewing the world and our experiences through a mental lens, framing things for posterity, seeing images, events, interactions, as fodder for our stories. We couldn’t write without doing that, consciously, or unconsciously.

But we have to know when to see things through the writer’s mind, as observer, spectator, curator, and when to put away that lens and become a participant in the raw experience that evolves around us. To “step barefoot into reality” as the poet Wallace Stevens once evoked.

It’s harder than we might imagine, to put away all the filters through which we experience life, and just “be” it. Life itself. Unfiltered.

LINK TO WALLACE STEVENS POEM WITH COMMENTARY
http://www.thethepoetry.com/2011/03/poem-of-the-week-wallace-stevens/

A Walk to the River

Tags

hiking, Nature, oak trees, outdoors, Photo-essay, photography, river, walking

We walked to the river recently, my husband and I and our little dog Mitsy. A short hike down a canyon a few miles from our home.

I left a crumb-trail of photos, if you’d like to join us.

This is where we started. The river lies below that ridge of mountains you see in the background in the photo above.

The way winds downward and grows narrow.

Among the hollows the oak trees look so dark and wild.

Eventually the canyon opens up into a wide, grassy meadow before descending again to the river.  A place to linger among the oaks.

We find a tree perfect for a child to climb or swing from . . .

. . . and places to picnic in the sun-filtered grass . . .

. . . while we admire the gracefully curving branches of the oaks, some bending so low as to touch the ground.

We watch out for the critters, spotting the tracks of deer and a mountain lion in the mud left-over from a recent rain.

xxx

And strangely enough,  we see the barefoot print of a child, judging from its size.

We cannot imagine what a child this young would be doing out here all alone in the wild. A fairy child, perhaps?  Or one raised by wolves? Or the one that lies down with lions and lambs?

Soon enough we catch glimpses of the river far below the meadow.  Here a ribbon of blue shows beneath a fringe of pine and oak branches.

Another glimpse, framed by falling strands of moss, shows where the river parts, passing in two strands.

Nearer now an old tree stump stands guard.

Closer still the river is almost lost among shadows and leaves.

The final steep trek winding down toward our destination.

Ah, the river, at last.

Looking to the east is a sign warning us to stay away–a military training camp lies beyond this peaceful setting.

Looking westward all is calm and still.

A stand of trees fed by the river rises straight and tall on one side of the shore . . .

. . . watching their white-barked cousins dance on the other side.

Our little dog sniffs among the leaves . . .

. . . and wades among the shallows . . .

. . . and stops to gaze upon the perfectly rounded world reflected in the still water.

Up close the river is just as pretty–a still life of rock and moss . . .

. . . lies beside the rippling water . . .

. . . while green fronds rise from the mud below.

One last drink before we head home.

The walk back is just as lovely as the way down, the path still dappled in sunlight.

I never tire of admiring the oak trees, each so unique and elegant . . .

It’s almost two lovely to leave . . . .

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A Frosty, Sunlit Morning Walk

Tags

backyard, frosty mornings, Nature, oak groves, oak trees, photography, spanish moss

Yesterday when I woke the frost was so heavy on the grassy meadow behind our house it looked like a light pattering of snow had fallen in the night.

By the time I went out the sun had risen beyond the hills and streamed down through the trees.

I’d forgotten gloves and my fingers were freezing but I kept walking, snapping up photographs of things I found and wanted to share, like the frost-laced fronds and mushroom below . . .

Or the old upturned tree stump, lined with moss and dusted in frost . . .

. . . and the mossy tree branches . . .

and lichen-spotted tree limbs.

I loved the light filtering through the trees . . .

. . .  and the Spanish moss dripping from the branches . . .

Mostly I loved how each oak tree is so unique and elegantly shaped.

Finally, on the walk back, I loved seeing my home nestled among the hills and oak groves, and the man I loved waiting for my return.

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• Woodland Fairy Homes, Reflections on Life or…….. (letissierdesigns.com)
• Sunlit Grass (kenben.org)
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A Family of Bloggers Award

Tags

Blog, Blogging, creaitvity, Family bloggers award, photography, writing

I’ve been honored with a nomination for the Family of Bloggers Award, thanks to the lovely Sandy, whose blog Another Lovely Day blesses my email inbox each morning with beautiful photography, inspiring quotations, and posts about the writing life.

This nomination gives me another opportunity to honor other bloggers with a nomination to thank them for being a part of my “family of bloggers” and for blessing cyber-space with their talented creativity, passion and wisdom.

Here are my nominations for this lovely award:

Jacqueline, Bliss in Images  http://blissinimages.wordpress.com

Sumptuous images and stunning writing.  The photos in this post are from Bliss in Images

Cassie, Books and Bowel Movements  http://booksandbowelmovements.com

Book reviews that are poetic and profound.

Seedbud, Leaf and twig 

Poetry and photography entwined—simple and stunning

David, Signals to Attend 

Beautiful meditations on the art of living.

Katherine, The Intrinsic Writer

Savvy tips on writing and the writing life

Matt, Monkey Moon Machine 

Fun and offbeat musings on writing and creativity.

Patrick, Canadian Hiking Photography 

Nature photography worthy of framing, along with tips on how to take them.

Those who wish to accept this award can go HERE for the guidelines, one of which is to create an anagram from the word FAMILY listing the attributes we hope to bring to the blogging family.

Here’s what I hope to contribute:

Fellowship,

Artful living,

Mindful writing,

Inspiration, a

Love of life, and a

Yin-Yang perspective to pull it all together.

PHOTO CREDIT: Many thanks to Jacqueline, Bliss in Images blog, for the use of her photos in this post.

Endless Emerging Forms – Photos of Fog and Mist

Tags

complexity theory, deep ecology, edge of chaos, emergence, Ephemeral, Mist, Nature, photography, Photography. thermodynamics, thermodynamics

I’ve long been drawn to photos of fog and mist.  Part of it is the feel for the ephemeral and mysterious, things half formed, half hidden.  Emerging from a soft nebulous background but not fully formed.

Things caught in a state of transition, in the midst of becoming what is or could be.  Or slowly dissolving back into mere mist or shadow, what was or could have been.

Some of my fascination has to do with the contrast between the softness and starkness of the images, how things are reduced to their elemental forms the way black and white photos will do.

All but the starkest, darkest trunks and branches revealed while the fog swallows the rest.  All that’s left is the essential, the finely sculpted, restrained and elegant.

Bare branches naked and exposed, live wires lifted in soft white hands

I think photos of mist and fog speak to me because they ring true.  They reveal in stark and dreamy notes how ephemeral it all is, this life we live, the forms and forces of nature. All in flux, in constant motion, emerging and dissolving over and over, without end.

The first law of thermodynamics, so they say, states how energy changes from one form to another, but never disappears.

The new fourth law proposed by some scientists is still uncertain, but moving toward the emergent, a law of motion where things are constantly pushed to the edge of chaos and the brink of “perpetual novelty,” an immense field of endless potentiality.

I see that too in these photos.

At noon in full summer, in the bright sunshine, with all our leaves shimmering, richly detailed, brimming lushly, dripping with  color, we hold life firmly in hand, our hearts aching with joy, with the pure bliss of being, and we think we will last forever.

But when the day is in transition, at dawn or dusk, emerging from darkness or drifting toward it, when mist or fog hides all but the faint essential lines of life, we see a starker and at the same time softer reality.  But just as beautiful, and just as enduring.

For what could be more constant and eternal than the fleeting?

Or that which emerges, fragile and half-formed, from the fertile wombs of earth and stars, seas and seeds, dreams and desires and the lusts of ages that brought us all to the brink of being.

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Birthing and Rebirthing

Tags

art, Birth, Childbirth, Evolution, Parent, photography, Tree of Life

My granddaughter was born a few days ago and my heart fell apart.

There’s something so  breathtakingly tender, and heartbreakingly sweet, in the newly born.

We’re astounded again and again by the miracle of life, the birthing of a brand new being, although its occurrence  is older than eons, as common as pollen dust carried on butterfly wings, more numerous than grains of sand washed by countless waves, more prolific than the bursting of billions of stars.

Even so, each tiny finger, each soft sigh, each rose petal ear, seems a miracle that melts us.

How did she, do we, come to be? Is there ever an end to our becoming? Was there a beginning?

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,” writes Wordsworth in “Intimations of Immortality. “Not in utter nakedness, / But trailing clouds of glory do we come / From God, who is our home.”

And this is but an echo of Shakespeare’s thought, in saying that “we are such stuff as dreams are made on: and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

When the morning stars first sang together, did we sing with them, as scripture implies?

Is our “little life” the whole round of creation, beginning with the birth of the cosmos, as so beautifully imagined in the film The Tree of Life?

Do bursting stars and the splitting of a single human egg, each set into motion a whole panorama of evolving life?

All I know is that the whole world was changed with the birth of this child.  A whole new universe of possibilities was opened up.

Her birth forged bonds and relationships that will forever be a part of our becoming.

The birthing of a child is the rebirthing of man as a father, woman as mother, parents as papa and nana. Another child becomes brother or sister, siblings become aunties and uncles.  A whole new set of relationships and shared histories evolves.

No one is quite the same as before.  Nothing will ever be again as it was.  The whole universe is slightly skewed to make room for this one child and infinite number of changing possibilities that occurs with her birth.

They say the stirring of a butterfly wing can set into motion a string of events that lead to the creation of a hurricane of the other side of the planet.  Surely the birth of a child must have an ever more stirring effect on the remaking of the world.

We live in a universe of relationships in which everything is connected to and influenced by its surroundings. We are all tumbling together in the wash of time and space, breaking against and polishing each other.  Shedding what we were in becoming what we will be.

What if all we are is a constantly becoming with no end in sight, with endless sights and sounds and relationships and experiences to sculpt and renew us? Birthing and rebirthing each other, over and over, ad infinitum, en potentia.

It’s not hard to imagine.  After all, I remember not at all my time in my mother’s womb.  Huge potions of my childhood self are largely forgotten, sloughed off as I became something new.  The woman I was as a young lover, a new mother, I am no more.

The strands of my becoming are still unfolding, surprising me day by day, even as this newborn child breaks my heart and takes my breath away.

We hold each other in our gaze and see faraway in each other’s eyes our own evolving selves.

A brand new thing has burst upon the world in the birthing of my granddaughter, and nothing will be the same again.

But I cannot help believe that in some deep and unfathomable way she is not new at all. She has lain in wait in the womb of the universe, tucked away in the folds of time and space with the singing stars, quietly biding her time as the world evolved around her leading to the very moment when she emerged into our midst and recreated us anew, her very presence here a rebirthing of us all.