Tag Archives: nature

Life is messy

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Reflections on things we cannot control

(Respectively, photos taken in Toronto; Hope, BC; New York City; China Beach, BC; Chilliwack, BC; Volcan Arenal, Costa Rica; and Montezuma, Costa Rica)

Whither Spring in Toronto?

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Previous post was obviously a false alarm…my apologies to all.

After several days of rain, freezing rain and a touch of hail, I thought it would be nice to remind Torontonians and people in a like weather scenario what Spring and Summer look like.

Songs of Washington

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Okay…with this last batch, I promise that I have officially run out of photos of birds (hehehe) from my trip to Washington, DC…but they’re so beautiful.

Spring hits Toronto (maybe?)

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Took a walk earlier today with my camera, trying to shake the creative cobwebs. Got home just as the rains began, and feeling a whole lot better about things.

Gotta let it out

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Do you ever feel like there is an idea inside you just waiting to burst forth? Like you can’t control the energy that is welling up?

It is there, just below the surface, and no matter how much you try to suppress it–it’s not ready; I’ll embarrass myself; what will others think–you really have no choice but to show it to anyone who passes by.

Congratulations, you’re an artist. Welcome to the club. Oh, and you might want to stand back…someone else is ready to explode.

(Photos taken at Geyser, Iceland.)

Waterfalls…but only when pushed

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Considering my fear of heights (I can’t even watch a film of a cliff face), my fascination with waterfalls intrigues me. There is something about the descent of all that water that just amazes me.

Maybe it’s the power. Maybe it’s the freedom. I know there’s a thrill.

The following photos were taken in a variety of locations, including British Columbia, Costa Rica and Las Vegas.

Seascape

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I sit on a rocky promontory,

Gazing over the waters of the sea.

Waves splash below me, sending a spray of water

From a sea, ill-tempered and intemperate.

Somewhere in the distance, a boat has passed

And the waves have reached the shore,

The waters angered by the disturbance.

The water reaches across the rocks

Forming pools in crevices created at an earlier time;

Eroding a little more stone to become

The sand of some far off beach.

In an endless rhythm, the waves strive

For the beach and are mercilessly drawn back.

A twig is caught in the ebb and flow

Never certain when it will get thrown

Too far up the sands or finally drawn

Into deeper waters to voyage somewhere else.

 

Caught in pools, between the larger rocks,

A microcosm has formed of predator and prey,

A world of colour and beauty, life and death.

The flowery anemone, waving in the eddies,

Await their prey with numbing venom.

A small crab picks through the sand,

Scavenging for carrion from other meals past,

Crawling aside to move around a sea star.

Urchins, moving ever so slowly across the rocks,

Their spiny coverings a defence against attack.

Small fish, trapped with the last tide,

Eating plant and animal, their escape

Hours away, at the mercy of the moon.

Vertebrate and invertebrate, together,

Calling this home; for now or forever.

 

The sea is the beginning

And, ultimately, the end.

Great distances

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I sat down recently to come up with some of the great distances in the known universe and think I have discovered the one that trumps them all.

Riding the elevator on Toronto’s CN Tower? Like falling off a log.

Leaping the chasm of the Grand Canyon? Pfft, nothing!

Swimming the Pacific Ocean? Like taking a bath.

Visiting the Oort Cloud at the edge of our solar system? A walk on a foggy day.

No, my friends, none of these is even close to the Greatest Distance in the Universe. That title goes to the space between the nib of a pen and the paper beneath it. I know this, because I have spent hours of my life watching people who cannot traverse this great gap.

The pen sits poised. Ink tantalizingly and agonizingly close to realizing its dream of spreading through the fibres of the paper. You can practically hear the Siren call of the note pad, seducing the ink to come join it in creative matrimony.

And yet, nothing.

The muscles of the hands tighten. The forearm presses harder into the table. The blood accelerates through the capillaries. Neurons in the brain fire in all directions. The spirit wails in unfulfilled lust.

And yet, nothing.

The gap is too large. The rewards uncertain. The risks too high.

Like a supportive father-to-be, I want to scream “Push!” and remind them to breathe.

Like a bicycle-training parent, I just want to nudge their hand to the paper and trail alongside it as it wends its way across the page, releasing just as it seems they have the hang of it.

Like a police psychologist, I just want to talk them down, let them know it will be okay.

But I am powerless in this process. This is something they have to do for themselves, much as I did for myself. When they are ready, they will write.

Until then, as a friend, I will stand with them at the edge of the abyss and imagine what is on the other side, awaiting them.

Any journey is an individual one, no matter how many people come along. (View from Mt. Baker in Washington State)

Any journey is an individual one, no matter how many people come along. (View from Mt. Baker in Washington State)

Spring takes wing – Washington, DC

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So, it seems to be the season of the sparrow this year as they were out in profusion across Washington, DC, although the starlings did their best to make an appearance or two.

The hardest part about getting some of these photos was keeping vacationing children on the Washington Mall from scaring potential subjects away.

Horse Island

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A novel I had started working on a while ago as part of a Humber College workshop on opening pages; i.e., how to attract the eye of acquisition editors.

Really need to get back to this.

Sasha had never had her breasts go numb before.

Sure, she’d lost feeling in her fingers and had suffered frostbitten toes more than once, but this was something else altogether. But then, she’d also never spent six hours prone on a rock in the middle of the North Atlantic.

Sasha had fought off sleep for the last two hours, listening to the rhythm of the waves that charged the beach that sprawled below her. Now that the sun had started to peek above the horizon, she could focus her attention on the dark shapes floating just offshore, knowing that not all of them would be pieces of driftwood slowly making their way from the seaside forests of Newfoundland.

“Get used to this,” she thought to herself. “You’ll probably spend your next four or five Springs this way.”

It was definitely a far cry from the relative civility of her life in Toronto—although maybe sterility was a better way of describing it. The sounds and flavours of the ocean did, however, remind her of the summers she spent with her grandparents at the family home just outside of Halifax.

Funny, she thought, this was the first time she’d thought—allowed herself to think—about her grandparents. All those years spent trying to escape the East Coast and here she was, smack in the middle of it again.

Adjusting her position ever so slightly, Sasha grunted inwardly, trying to remain the silent sentinel while allowing her blood to circulate to her chilled extremities. But even as she settled back in, she knew that something was different. Something had changed in the surf. Some of the driftwood had started to move with purpose, making a beeline for the beach.

It was time to prepare her kit and call the others.

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(Okay, I don’t have any photos of Atlantic Canada, so I’m substituting this one from Tofino.)