My online journal where I share my interests in photography, nature, journaling, fountain pens, bicycling, coffee life, spirituality and the mystery of it all.
I’m making a road trip to Denver this morning with a couple of friends for a meeting. We are coming back early afternoon then I’m meeting up with a friend late afternoon. So it will be a social day which always seem to drain me. Pretty sure I will want to be out in nature after today for some quiet time. Hope everyone has a great weekend!
I have always carried stress in my shoulders. It’s there now. There is a feeling of restlessness. I find my mind wandering to unknown places in the universe. Feel I’m not listening to the inner voice within me but the chatter of my ego and the noise of the world around me. Maybe if I share myself more on this blog, hear what you have experienced, take more action, the stress will lessen.
Now in my retirement there is a life to live full of excitement and adventures, images to receive, words to write in my journals, blog posts to write, places to visit, people to meet and a chance to discover more creativity within me. I find this exciting. However, this requires me to take action and not just dream of them. In the past I have only dreamed. There are no excuses. As I’ve heard, “Dreams without action are only fantasy.” I hope and pray I live the rest of my life with excitement, without fear of failure or success, looking for awe and wonder all around me.
I needed more time away from the bustle of the city so drove out to the Cathy Fromme Prairie Area for a walk. This short grass prairie was established because of the large prairie dog community and the support it provided for coyotes, raptors and rattlesnakes. This area has never seen a plow so it remains in a pre-settlement state. They built a nice covered observatory allowing visitors to see hawks and eagles. The birds are amazing with my favorite being the Western Meadowlark and its song. A sad part was the city deciding to poison off the prairie dog community due to disease. Never the less its always a place to find a connection to the natural world for me.
Loss is a part of life. We experience loss through declining health, jobs, marriages, and children who move off to school. There is a sadness within as I look at this image taken back in June of 2006. I made visits to this older barn and it’s open view of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. It is is gone now and a large executive housing complex is going up. 🙁
I watched these clouds forming for several miles as I drove along Indian Route 13 on the Navajo Nation Reservation. I’m not sure the exact place I stopped but it just got the best of me. I had to stop. Couldn’t help myself. What beauty we are given in nature!
As the storm clouds were building up in the northeast yesterday afternoon, I grabbed the camera and tripod and headed that way. This storm had some strength as the tail winds were quite powerful making it difficult to steady the camera. There were lightening strikes in the mists of the clouds which gave me an idea on capturing them. I decided to make an experiment with my camera using the interval timer. I closed my aperture down to f22 and set my ISO to 200 to get as long an exposure as I could for each shot. I then was set up my camera to shoot an image every 5 seconds for as many images as I wanted. No such luck but I think it will work and I’ll try it again some time. Has anyone ever done this before? I did enjoy my time away from the city noise and watching nature show off.
Next week I will be house sitting for a couple of friends in their straw bale house and 40 acres of prairie. Just me and the chickens for a week at The Prairie House.
What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it; boldness has genius, power and magic in it. – Goethe
“It isn’t what a picture is of, it is what it is about.”
John Szarkowski
And that involves the photographer and the viewer.
The other morning a few clouds were snuggled among the mountain in the west while the pale blue sky to the east had nary a cloud. The wind was causing a bad hair day for even those without hair. As is customary along the Front Range, by mid-afternoon larger clouds were developing from those few clouds. As these clouds moved eastward they showed their power with thunder, lightening and rain. So, in the next morning I rose early in hopes of seeing a colorful sunrise. But nature gave me more cloudy skies, unusually cool temperatures and, of course, the wind.
Since I’m new to this area just east of Denver, everything is unexplored. After driving 20 miles east the pavement ends and the bumpy dirt road reminds me of the few rattles in my old car. The beauty offered by the Colorado prairie are large fields of green wheat extending into the distant flat horizons. Every so often we can find small clusters of trees following along river bottoms that offer protection and habitat for deer, raptures, coyotes and other wildlife. But, along with finding these gifts in nature we also find mans electric power transmission lines, a farm house with a barking dog claiming ownership to his homestead, an old barn (maybe no longer used), an isolated oil pumpjack, and, sadly, the proverbial real estate sign. I had another good morning but without the photograph of a colorful sunrise, only a a photograph of an unused and solitary barn on the horizon.