Tag Archives: travel

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Off-Season

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One of the advantages of being self-employed is that you can take advantage of the freedom of your schedule and do things when you feel like it.   Steve and I like to travel in the spring and fall when places are less crowded.  Consequently, we got the opportunity to be the ONLY visitors at a National Park one day.  It was Lassen Volcanic National Park in northern California, and it was April.  Here is what the walk up to the Visitor’s Center looked like:

off season 3We hadn’t really come equipped to hike in so much snow, so we settled for watching the video describing the volcanic terrain from inside the cozy Visitor’s Center.  One park ranger is all we saw there that day.  (I should note that this was in 2011, before the severe droughts of more recent years.)

Here’s a local off-season shot:

off season  Milwaukee on the first warm day in March.

I hesitate to label anything off-season, though.  All seasons of the year are open for exploration.  Nature is doing its thing whether crowds show up or not, and I love to see natural areas at any time and at different times.  It’s always beautiful, always worth it.  Here is my final shot of Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas in October: 

off season 2

Off-Season

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Photography 101: Swarm

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I witnessed a perfect example of this theme last month.  The sight of this swarm was so moving that it brought tears to my eyes.  I did not bring my camera to record the event because it was prohibited.  We were invited to watch the emergence of 300,000 bats at dusk from Carlsbad Caverns and instructed to sit in absolute silence and be still.  We did not want our presence at the door of their habitat to be disturbing to their natural activity.  To disrupt their nightly venture to find water and forage for insects would be disastrous to their livelihood.  There were school groups in attendance, and the children were remarkably respectful.  The park ranger began the program by taking some questions and giving some information about the bats.  He was, in effect, stalling for time.  When the bats began to emerge in a climbing spiral behind him, he left.  All were silent.  The rubbery slap and flap of wings became audible and the bats poured like pepper into the evening sky.  Lines of dots headed for the horizon in waves, like bait balls in the ocean, like starlings over the fields, like natural creatures who live and move and have their being in great numbers, synchronous and individual at once.  They came from deep within a cavern so huge it had taken me an hour to descend to its first level on foot.  They rose in an unbroken ribbon for 45 minutes.  Steve & I were the last to leave the arena.  It was like tearing ourselves away from a cathedral after a sacred service.  I am glad that I don’t have this image in my camera, only in my gut.  Here is a shot of the arena before the sun set:

swarm siteI do not have any photos of what Dave Foreman calls “Man Swarm”.  I shun crowds when possible.  I do live with inanimate objects in number — namely books and CDs. 

Visually, I think the most effective compositions of swarms of things are the ones that are aligned with the vanishing point.  In other words, as James Taylor sings, “Line ‘Em Up” like Nixon’s staff when he left office, like wedding couples under Sun Myung Moon.  It gives the feeling of infinite expansion and maximizes the impact of sheer numbers. 

And now that I’ve figured this out, I’ll try to keep it in mind the next time I find myself pointing my camera at a swarm. 

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Photography 101: Mystery

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I can think of no better icon of mystery than the sky.  The heavens in “Big Sky Country”, the American West, give plenty of fodder for pondering mysteries of all magnitudes, from “Do you think it’s going to rain?” to “Are there other life forms on those twinkly planets?”  I wish that I had the proper equipment to photograph the night sky in New Mexico.  The number of stars visible to the naked eye is astounding.  We had a new moon night with a view of the Milky Way that was indeed mystical.  It put my own life into a different perspective.  Here’s a gallery of some mysterious skies:

Bandelier band of light
Rainbows when there is no rain
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Photography 101: The Natural World

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I don’t believe there are any straight lines in the natural world.  All is “wiggly” (as Alan Watts would say), and we’re told that the Universe is funnel-shaped, a huge graceful curve.  I figure that pine needles are almost straight, but even they exhibit a gentle arc.  Nature is the ultimate Art, in my estimation.  Shape, texture, line, composition, color…every artistic facet writ large on the world around us.  How do I pick one photograph?  Or even a few?  This is the challenge for me.  I have a whole gallery of Wisconsin outdoor shots on one of my pages up there.  Feel free to browse that.  Meanwhile, I’ll put up a few new ones, taken outside of Wisconsin.

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Photography 101: Landmark

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Rarely do I have an unobstructed view of a landmark.  Typically, those are BIG things, and there’s something in front of them.  Well, if that’s the way it is, then I guess that’s my point of view. 

It kind of makes you think about focal points and how you see the world.  Steve is always saying that he’s ‘holistic’.  He likes to see how the whole picture connects.  I usually try to organize the world in a more linear fashion by taking out the thread that I’m interested in and laying it out flat for observation.  Compartmentalizing, he calls it.  So after I’ve drawn out various parts and examined them, he squishes them together again.  We’ve gotten over fighting about this; now it’s an exercise that edifies both of us. 

Take it apart; put it together.  Try to see the world from someone else’s point of view.  Yeah, that’s a good practice.

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Photography 101: Solitude

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One of the wilderness character traits is Solitude, a dwindling natural resource.  Where do you go to realize your solitude, to find humility, to gain perspective?  Where do you find reminders that we do not dominate the planet?

solitude(And thanks for the tip on the Rule of Thirds…I’d heard it mentioned, but not explained.)

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The Other Side of Bliss

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This morning, I posted a Photography 101 assignment on Bliss.  (You can scroll down to see that or click on the link to the right under Recent Posts.)  I “bliss out” when I am with people I love who love me.  I am a Lover by temperament.  I get all relaxed and happy and dreamy when my love tank is full.  It feels very nice, and I tend to fall asleep.  This is bliss. 

The other side of this, the fierce energy of love, is not far away, however.  I CARE about my loved ones.  I CARE about the environment.  I have a lot of beautiful landscape photos on this blog.  Those would depict the bliss I feel about loving the Earth.  But it’s not a sleepy bliss.  My relationship with Earth is not in the blissful, dreamy lover stage.  The Earth is in distress, and I am in distress with it.  The election results this week are chilling to me.  I got this letter from the Natural Resources Defense Council yesterday:

“Prepare yourself. Yesterday’s election results will put the Senate under new management, and its incoming leader — Senator Mitch McConnell — has made no secret of his pro-polluter, anti-environmental agenda.

Simply put, come January, both houses of Congress will be run by a faction of climate deniers and friends of the Koch Brothers. A list of the attacks they have threatened to unleash is as long as it is alarming —

They want to force approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline … cripple the President’s bold plan to crack down on the power plant pollution that is driving climate chaos … open the Arctic Refuge to oil drilling … launch a full-blown attack on the Endangered Species Act … restrict the government’s ability to protect our drinking water from fracking … slash budgets that promote clean energy … and strip the EPA of its authority to block the disastrous Pebble Mine.

… GOP leaders are making a huge mistake — a potentially fatal mistake — if they think this election has given them a mandate to deepen our addiction to fossil fuels and shred our environmental laws.

Poll after poll shows overwhelming support for strong environmental protection. An ABC/Washington Post survey has reported that 70 percent of Americans view climate change as a serious problem and want the government to tackle it.

House and Senate leaders ignore these facts at their peril. …But, historically, there seems to be something about the headiness of victory that makes the fossil fuel lobby overreach and try to ram radical policies down the throats of the American people.

We’ve seen this movie before. In 1994, Newt Gingrich swept to power in the House, brandishing a “Contract with America” that never mentioned the word “environment.” But once installed, the new majority claimed a mandate for undoing 25 years of environmental protections.

NRDC and our allies fought back hard by mobilizing an enraged public; more than one million Americans wrote or phoned Congress in protest. In the end, the House leadership gambled everything — their budget, their power, their agenda — on an extremist assault on nature. They lost, and found out the hard way that protecting the environment is a bedrock American value.

We must do no less this time.

NRDC will bring everything to bear — the grassroots power of 1.4 million Members and online activists like you, the advocacy clout of our legal and scientific teams and the unmatched effectiveness of our rapid response operation — to stave off Mitch McConnell’s Big Polluter Agenda.

But playing defense is not enough. If we are to avoid the most catastrophic outcomes of an overheating planet, we’ve got to prevail on the Obama Administration to reject the Keystone pipeline, deliver on the toughest possible power plant rules and move America beyond all fossil fuels as rapidly as possible.

That is our planet’s last best hope for a sustainable future — and we are not going to let Congress stand in the way.”

I want to use the anger energy that is in my fierce love for this beautiful world to make a difference in the policies and mindsets that determine action.  I vote, I blog, I talk to people I know.  I want to raise awareness, to educate if I can.  Why are we harming the ones we love?  It is madness.  The opposite of bliss. 

Sign along Hwy 137 in New Mexico; near Guadalupe National Park and Lincoln National Forest...and oil wells.

Sign along Hwy 137 in New Mexico; near Guadalupe National Park and Lincoln National Forest…and oil wells. “Generally, any gas- processing facility where hydrogen sulfide is present at concentrations of 100 ppm or more must take reasonable measures to forewarn and safeguard people that have occasion to be on or near the area. Wells drilled where there is substantial probability of people encountering hydrogen sulfide gas in concentrations of 500 ppm or more must have warning “poison gas” signs.”

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Photography 101: Water

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Water in the desert.  It’s a huge factor, and not in the way you’d think.  Water shaped the desert landscape, even though you might think there’s none there.  The canyons and caverns of the American West were formed by water.  I heard a very enthusiastic Death Valley National Park ranger named Jay Snow expound on this amazing fact.  He was right.  Death Valley is all about water.  So is the Grand Canyon and Carlsbad Caverns and all those other iconic desert places.  Many of them were once part of a vast inland sea, believe it or not.  Water is ancient and powerful and wild.  When we’re not tampering with it, that is.  (and that’s a huge topic for another post on my ‘In Wilderness…’ page)

Upper Falls at Bandelier

Upper Falls at Bandelier

Carlsbad Caverns ceiling

Carlsbad Caverns ceiling

 

 

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Photography 101: Street

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street

Highway 4 near Jemez Springs, New Mexico

The Photo 101 prompt says, “try to capture an establishing shot: a wide-angle photo that sets up a scene. It might mean moving back some steps, or finding higher ground (like climbing stairs) to fit all of your scene in one shot.”  Here’s the ‘higher ground’ I used to get this shot:

scilla in NM

photo by Steve

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Wilderness and the Myth of Nothing

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“There’s nothing out there!  It’s a barren landscape.  Why would you want to go there?  Why should we preserve that useless place?” 

Nothing out there, eh?  Well, if that’s Nothing, it’s pretty spectacular.  It’s vast, for one thing.  Stretching in all directions, as far as the eye can see and further.  And it’s limited, encased in a single droplet from a juniper berry, sweet and pungent in my mouth, yet powerful enough to stimulate a rush from my salivary glands and wet my parched throat.  You could live on Nothing.  Many have, and left their artwork in symbols on the rocks.  Yes, they had time for Art in ‘subsistence living’.  Do you have time for Art in your life?  It is barren of some things.  There are no strip malls.  There are no straight lines.  There is a meandering curve of vegetation down there.  It’s a lot more narrow than it used to be.  The air is warming.  The climate is changing.  Fecundity is fighting the curse that foists barrenness upon it. The energy of life will not give up easily.  And that’s why I want to go there.  To learn.  We must preserve it in order to let it teach us.  We are ignorant.  We ignore the wilderness and call it Nothing.  There is a story there.  A Myth.  One day we may get wise. 

the myth of nothing

The Ojito wilderness

© 2014, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved