Today I was reminded of why I seriously considered moving to California after college…
I spent most of the afternoon sitting on the beach watching the waves and birds and even a couple dolphins while waiting for the sun to set behind the Pacific. It was pretty perfect.
Today I hit up the San Diego Zoo.. and although I thought all the animals were beautiful in their own ways, I was most excited about seeing a hawk and a lizard which weren’t actually part of the exhibits (see them below). The plant life there was also pretty unbelievable, including a tree that looked like it had an owl’s face in the bark.
Image above is tonight’s sunset from my hotel room window.. so pretty (I’m on the 31st floor so I have some pretty killer views). I’d love to come back out to this region with my camera and explore nature outside of a controlled environment. I read that San Diego County is the most bio-diverse county in the country. That’s pretty cool.
My day started very early.. facing west at sunrise on my way to a stop-over in Dallas.
It’s been a couple years since I’ve flown, and much longer since I’ve been to California. Being that high up and seeing everything so small kinda shrinks your worries.. We’re tinier than we realize. I guess size and experience is all relative, but its good to gain perspective in that way once in awhile. I was pretty fascinated with the crop patterns while flying over Arizona.. Some of them almost looked symbolic. I especially liked the circular patterns — I saw one where there was a line connecting to it with crosshatches coming off of the line. It looked like some kind of tribal design. The juxtaposition of the natural terrain next to the grid was also really beautiful.
Then I got to the big city. Views from my hotel… I’m finding lots of things that take me straight back to NYC — mostly the diversity and amount of people.. and having to rely on mass transit. I’m enjoying the culture — bought a great small piece of art earlier that feels very regional. Saw some kayakers in the bay and felt a little jealous.
And what do you know.. the first thing I saw from my hotel room window was this restaurant, so I stopped by to snap a pic. You can’t ever get too far away from home..
Ending my day looking out the window northward at the city lights shimmering on the water. It’s nice to be in a new place for a bit.
Dipping my toes in a river in the Rocky Mountains, summer 2012. I’ll be heading out in a few hours for some of the first travel that I’ve done in a few years that has nothing to do with work. And I’ve packed as minimally as I can: few changes of clothes, a book, my computer and cameras. Looking forward to documenting what I see. Updates to come from the west coast. Til then, here’s some reading:
For All by Gary Snyder
Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.
Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.
I pledge allegiance
I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.
“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.”
-Gary Snyder
I had to take a little break earlier and get outside.. Nothing like watching some leaves fall from a tree or squirrel hopping through those leaves to refresh my mind. (I don’t need much to be entertained, to say the least). I read a bit of Gary Snyder this morning and watched some documentary tidbits about him while I was doing some work. Looking forward to exploring his work more in depth.
“But if you do know what is taught by plants and weather, you are in on the gossip and can feel truly at home. The sum of a field’s forces [become] what we call very loosely the ‘spirit of the place.’ To know the spirit of a place is to realize that you are a part of a part and that the whole is made of parts, each of which is a whole. You start with the part you are whole in.” -Gary Snyder
Autumn wildflowers in rural Atchison, KS. 2012.
Under the trees light
has dropped from the top of the sky,
light
like a green
latticework of branches,
shining
on every leaf,
drifting down like clean
white sand.
A cicada sends
its sawing song
high into the empty air.
The world is
a glass overflowing
with water.
Sunlight on frosted grass, turning it into a bed of crystal
Brisk air making every breath heavy
Deer tracks next to my tracks
The rattling of a woodpecker’s beak on cold trees
Frozen limbs and sticks crackling in the breeze
Redbirds and bluebirds and blackbirds and farm cats tracking them
Geese flying in the direction their arrows point
Silly sounds of seagulls hovering above the river
And a stare-down with a fox to make my morning (my month, really) complete.
(I’d been looking for him for a long time.)
I went to the Sea Life Aquarium in Kansas City yesterday and had trouble prying myself away from the jellyfish. So amazing and simple and beautiful (like all of nature — I think it was their luminescence that really pulled me in).
I stayed the night at my brother’s house and found myself awake in the dark hours before dawn (as usual..) flipping through infomercials on tv. I very rarely watch tv and I was reminded why.. so many messages telling me what I need or how I should look or ideas that I should live with… I hit the road shortly after dawn and have been purging my house since. The infomercials had the opposite effect on me, forcing me to think about how much I have that I don’t need. The jellyfish reminded me how important it is to remain simple and transparent. Less really is more.
At a crossroads on a gravel road, Nov. 7 at dusk.
“’One never reaches home,’ she said. ‘But where paths that have an affinity for each other intersect, the whole world looks like home, for a time.’” -Hermann Hesse, Demian
“The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.” -Buddha