Perseverance Furthers

I woke in the middle of the night and two words floated mysteriously into my head: perseverance furthers.
What the heck does that mean? It's 2:00 am, and I am trying to remember where I know these words, when it hits me, it's from the I Ching. The I Ching? How long has it been since I counted out yarrow sticks to divine meaning from the moment? More than thirty-five years. Yet here I was lying in bed, contemplating two words straight out of those sweet, new-age hippie days on the 14-acre farm in West Linn, Oregon circa 1974, and now stirred the night with their mystical divinations.
Perseverance furthers.

So, in the morning I googled "I Ching" and found this from the very first hexagram:

The creative works sublime success,
Furthering through perseverance.

It actually doesn't matter that this really means nothing to me. I am more struck by the remembering of the words than considering the absurd poetry of hexagrams divined by yarrow sticks or coin tosses.
What I know is that I have been trying to photograph trees that are lit like fire by the setting sun.

I had Roger show me how to use the digital camera with manual settings to open the aperture more and close the shutter more quickly. I needed light and speed to capture these wildly lit moments.

Light doesn't always materialize in exactly the place it is expected. The trees stay green at the end of the day, their needles dark and calm, where two days before they had been utterly transformed. The rains come too, folding sunset into its endless gray. The sunset orange glow rays move on, especially now that the sun is diving south as quickly as it can to reach solstice at its celestially appointed hour.
But I did persevere and found the lingering light in some trees across the road. I've read that this affect is called alpenglow, the low angle of the sun and maybe a bit of high altitude. I don't know. I am just awestruck by the fire of it and am glad to see it burn like blazing embers in the trees.

I Keep Trying Without Much Luck

The previous post's photos simply don't capture the crazy thing that happens around here at the end of the day's light. Some trees simply catch on fire with the last of the sun's rays. But what's weird is that not all of them do; trees right next to each other look completely different in the waning light. This tree all lit up is NOT deciduous. That's a fir tree in the setting sun. How is that possible? Have you ever seen it before? I haven't. (Definitely embiggen the pic.)

Wordless Wednesday: Forest Light

Driving As Fast As We Can

I had a funny conversation while Skyping with my twin brother the other morning. Well, it was funny to me, but that's because I have a terribly morbid sense of humor. You don't know that about me but it's true. My brother is a sweetheart of a man. He is a social worker who serves the schizophrenic and bipolar community in the county just south of where he lives. He commutes 80 miles daily (that's round trip), and is very conscious of his mileage and his carbon footprint. Well over a year ago, he decided to not drive over 60 mph, which is slow for California drivers on almost any highway, but that was his commitment. Until the other day, when it occurred to him that the earth is a complete mess, and is really not going to recover while we humans are still on it. So rather than driving slowly to impede the slow destruction, he's decided to drive as fast as he can to assist in the demise. He told me, "I'm driving 75 mph now." We laughed about it until tears rolled down our cheeks. I told him I wanted a bumper sticker that says:

We roared.

Except some part of us was solemnly serious. We grew up in a household without formal religion, so we always placed our faith in our fellow humans, in community and in government. But we see that even a faith in things that can be seen and known can be as absurd as any other. We had a dark awakening, a bleak epiphany accompanied by a bit of hysteria. Perhaps there is a certain relief in not believing anymore that we can effect a change, work to make things better. That head-banging gets old pretty fast, well I mean after 40 years of it, you finally do have to see what's in front of you. A handful of earth-firsters and recyclers are not going to save the world. For the most part, it's already over. Is that an awful thing to say or think out loud? It won't be a dramatic 2012 scenario, but the slow agony of little losses that will eventually amount to the loss of everything. Do you see that too? Or is there some shining hope on your horizon that actually makes sense? We see there is hardly the will in our government to end wars; provide a basic human right to health care; or even to have a serious conversation about global climate change (Oh Copenhagen, you can drop dead). We're a mess on every measurable scale. It is completely acceptable to privatize profit and socialize loss; to protect the mighty while they stand on the backs of the weak and fallen. Our fellow citizens exalt inanity; foster the apotheosis of insipid politicians; and stare blankly at television screens while eating foods that will never in a million years actually nourish them (but have a shelf-life lasting that long). It's a mighty bleak landscape, one that requires maximum speed for traversing.

So, how could we not laugh? We laughed. I mean really laughed. Like there's no tomorrow.

Wordless Friday: Alert and Asleep

Perseverance.

For The Thousandth Time...

You'd think with something as momentous as the one thousandth post, we'd have something lined up to dazzle you. Hah! Slackers like us? You must know us better than that by now. Although it's certainly not for lack of trying that a dazzling post didn't materialize here. Not even looking back at our humble beginning and our forays into politics or our first encounters with:bald eagles in Port Townsend;

or the neighborhood bobcat;or this luscious tidal estuary; or amazing sunrises;or sunsets that set the sky ablaze;

could spark something to set this post on fire.

Suffice to say, we have seen things that confirmed our wildest dreams, and

our deepest fears.

We've tossed our lives so high in the air, we have yet to securely touch down. Who knew that our private lives would intersect with a global economic crisis that would have a direct impact on the very thing we need to settle down? Not us. Still we keep looking around with our aging eyes and challenged spirits, seeking out the things that invoke awe and inspiration.
Luckily, there's always something. Like this young orphaned doe that comes to our yard to sniff out the apples (that we furtively put out for her) and nibble away at them. She reminds us that the instinct for survival is intrinsic to life from the beginning.

Roger sez:

our one thousandth post, a kilo-gram if you will. a time to look back over the past year's posts and consider blogging. we humans do like numbers with zeroes. how fun it is to look back at our life through the lens of blogger. yes, my own contributions have dribbled off to almost nonexistent, and i was not prolific in the best of times. without a blog though i would probably have written zilch.

while i do enjoy looking back, i realize that what i value most about blogging is the people we have met online, and in a few cases, in person. such a wide range of opinions, ages, interests, and locations. i've gotten an at-least-college-intro-class level education in botany, marine science, medicine, evolution, politics of all sorts, and economics. i know quite a bit about many places i will never visit. all of this reading the posts of interesting and vital people speaking for the most part in conversational language.

So, will there be a second thousand? It may take us ten years instead of this speed-by five, but hey, who's counting when it's been so much fun? Hah!

We Saw A Bear, But Here's A Squirrel

Squirrels are just easier to photograph, and the bear was running so fast, I wasn't even sure it was a bear until my brain registered BEAR! We really did see bear on Tuesday (my very first one!), while we were hiking the Banner Cascade ditch trail. It came bounding down off the hillside, splashed into the irrigation ditch, crossed the trail about 25 yards in front of us and then thrashed down the very steep ravine on the other side.

When we see a squirrel, our brains don't shout SQUIRREL, but when we see a BEAR, the shout is unmistakable.

Photo is of a Western Gray Squirrel. We have a very rambunctious family living in our yard. They are really cute rodents, and incredibly industrious.