“Rocky Mountain Glaciers” Photo of the Week #44, selected in March, 2020
I was fortunate to have lived in Centennial State for a few years and was able to see some beautiful and extraordinary scenery, like the glaciers below, sitting high up in the Rocky Mountains. The orange on the cliffs is not rust but lichen, a composite organism that arises from algae. Lichen is long-lived, being considered one of the oldest forms of life on the planet.
Glacial geology can be seen nearly everywhere throughout the many ranges making up the Rocky Mountains. Ice is a powerful sculptor and large masses of moving ice are among its most powerful tools. While the glaciation periods are largely in the past, the Rockies still have several small glaciers.
“The Donut Hole” Photo of the Week #43, selected in March, 2020
Ever since I took this photo in the Colorado Rockies, I’ve referred to it as my “Donut Hole” picture. I guess it reminds me of powdered sugar donut. Sometimes a name just sticks…
This shot was taken from the top of the slopes above Winter Park. We don’t ski but traveled to the top of the Continental Divide via snow plow. If you haven’t experienced winter in Colorado, it should be on your to-do list. The Winter Park resort area, owned by the City of Denver, ranges from 8,700 to 12,060 feet above sea level and is considered sub-alpine country. It is snow-covered for about six months a year.
“Glacial Ice” Photo of the Week #42, selected in February, 2020
There’s no shortage of iconic photo opportunities in Alaska, but I felt fortunate to click this pic for two reasons. First, climate change may do away with these massive Alaskan glaciers someday and there’s no guarantee that this won’t be sooner than later. Second, getting a shot like this with a long telephoto lens can be exceedingly difficult. I was about 200 yards away when I heard the eerie groan from deep within the glacier and was lucky enough to guess correctly as to where the ice would be falling. I can’t wait until we can return to the “Last Frontier.”
This photo was taken from our cruise ship in the Tarr Inlet, part of Glacier Bay, Alaska, while sitting near the Margerie Glacier. This glacier was declared a National Monument in 1925, a National Park and Preserve in 1980, a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve in 1986 and a World Heritage Site in 1992. In case you were wondering, the Margerie Glacier extends upstream for a length of 21 miles, is about 1 mile wide and is approximately 350′ tall at the sheer edge, 100′ of which is under water.
“Snow Moon” Photo of the Week #41, selected in February, 2020
It’s unusual to witness a moon rising from a mountain gap. It happens even less often during winter and snow is covering the mountains, and it’s more uncommon still to see it in daylight without the usual winter cloud cover. I was remarkably fortunate to capture this shot of the moon rising between Mosquito Peak and Mt. Arkansas in the Arapaho National Forest in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains.
This photo was taken just north of Leadville, Colorado, the highest (by elevation) incorporated city in the country (10,152 feet), the gap viewed from SR 91.
“Yellow-Headed Piling Sitter” Photo of the Week #40, selected in February, 2020
In Florida, we camped in Brooksville and decided to take a drive to Cedar Key, a quaint little town on the Gulf coast about 90-minutes northwest of the resort. I have seen many pelicans on the coastline around the country, but this was the first time I had seen the brown pelican in large numbers, easily identified by its bright yellow coiffure. In this pic, the sun was about an hour from setting, backlighting the yellow feathers to a shine.
My fascination with birds led me to look the species up and I found that the oldest known living brown pelican is 43 years old, their wingspan can exceed six feet and that their yellow heads indicate that they are breeding adults. They are found on the Atlantic Coast from New Jersey to the mouth of the Amazon River, and along the Pacific Coast from British Columbia to northern Chile. If you are on either U.S. coast or the Gulf of Mexico, you can watch for them, too!
“Alpine Ice” Photo of the Week #39, selected in February, 2020
On the highest paved road in the United States, ending at the peak of a “fourteener,” Mount Evans, in Central Colorado, winter tends to be long. This photo was taken in June, not January, a few years ago, right after the road was opened for the summer season. This is a shot of Summit Lake, along Mount Evans Scenic Drive, a little more than five miles from the peak.
From outherecolorado.com: This alpine lake sits nestled in a glacier-carved cirque below 14,264-foot Mount Evans and 13,842-foot Mount Spalding. The area, designated in 1965 as Colorado’s first National Natural Landmark, is considered an excellent example of alpine tundra in the United States, with numerous alpine plants growing among the boulders.
If you plan a visit, make sure you are aware of altitude sickness, which can cause headaches, vomiting, tiredness, confusion and dizziness. For some, the conditions can be serious. Here is more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altitude_sickness
“Beach Succulents” Photo of the Week #38, selected in February, 2020
Ever taken a photo that makes you stop and stare at it every time you see it? This is such a photo for me. There’s something about the combination of hues, the flowers and the sharpness of the plants against the blurry beach in the background that always drags me in.
This shot was taken during one of our journeys up the Pacific coast. One resort we stayed in was near Crescent City, California, and this pic is from a sandy rise above the beach and ocean. Crescent City sits about 20 miles south of the Oregon border. It has a very moderate climate and, interestingly, is particularly susceptible to tsunamis, having suffered tsunami conditions 31 times since 1933.
“Little White Steeple” Photo of the Week #37, selected in January, 2020
In our whirlwind tour of Maine a few years ago, we traversed the Penobscot Bay Bridge several times. On one of our jaunts through the area, we observed a quaint town with a unique white steeple in its center, just across the bay. Fortunately, I was able to capture it with my telephoto lens, but my camera did not record its GPS coordinates. There are many small towns around the bay, so I retraced our route that day and can only surmise that this is the town of Castine.
Penobscot Bay is between Muscongus Bay and Blue Hill Bay, just west of Acadia National Park. The drive along the bay is very enjoyable, weather permitting.
Sometimes I think about a problem or situation that doesn’t have an obvious solution. I don’t always keep those ruminations myself, since I often have hope that someone else can come up with funding or a program to help. So, please bear with me.
The situation? Follow my thinking here.
My dad passed away 30 years ago, prior to the digital age, or at least before it developed into what it is now. I remember that he had artistic talent, but his color blindness made painting almost impossible, though I remember he did a watercolor mural of a winter scene that was remarkable (even with green-tinted snow). He started a sci-fi novel once. I’m not sure how far he got with it, but it was about a family on vacation when an atomic war began.
My mother-in-law kept a written journal. She started it in 1953 when she married my father-in-law and kept them up until she passed away in 2010. Along with those journals, we picked up about 20 boxes of photographs from family outings and other events over the decades.
Personally, as a photographer and author, I have created over 50,000 photos, 350 poems, 7 completed novels and 2 partial manuscripts, a movie script, almost 50 published and unpublished articles, a poet’s how-to and two published non-fiction books.
When my wife and I are gone, what will become of all of that data? I know next to nothing about any writing, diaries, art, painting or interests of my past relatives, mostly because computers didn’t exist for most of it. It would be great to be able to read my great-great-grandfather’s short stories or see my aunt’s black-and-white photos, all long gone.
So, my ruminations. There should be an organization that digitizes, for free, a person’s lifetime of work and creativity, for the ages. Yes, you can find birth and employment records on an online genealogy service, but good luck finding someone’s incomplete novel or their collection of pencil drawings. What I envision is a non-profit company, either funded by the government or branches of current technology companies (Facebook, FamilyTree and the like), with an easy to use uploading service. In my mind, the data collected wouldn’t be readily available to the general public until the owner passes away, and would be controlled by that person’s executor or administrator, neither of which would preclude someone uploading theoir own or family member’s content.
Now, remember — I said I hadn’t completely thought it through. Is there a negative of storing personal data? Of course. Maybe someone is found to have been a pedophile or murderer. Should those events be attached? Who gets to make that decision? Should an unpopular or infamous family member get the same consideration as others in the family, and, if so, who will make that happen? Do you really want Jeffery Dahmer’s childhood drawings or Charles Manson’s manifestos available? Perhaps.
I have other reservations as well, but, overall, the thought of all my content that has taken years to create is worth saving for future generations, just like the work of my dad or the daily memories of my mother-in-law.
Someone younger than myself should look into a grant or other funding to start up a digital family legacy program and let us start uploading to it. With drive space so cheap and bandwidth so available, it’s not going to take a billion dollars to set up. I could be wrong about that, I suppose.
“An Audience” Photo of the Week #36, selected in January, 2020
We have had the good fortune of visiting old friends in Wyoming several times when we lived in the Denver area. There in the plains of Southern Wyoming we met a sculptor of metal art pieces, usually playfully utilizing garden tools and tractor parts to create birds and colorful characters. While visiting Dutch the first time we met on his property, this sculpture had interesting company and I snapped the pic. He was gracious enough to let me purchase a couple of his pieces and we displayed them in our front yard before moving into our RV full-time.
Nestled among the Medicine Bow Mountains, the Sierra Madres and the Snowy Range is the Front Range of Southern Wyoming. It is comprised of wide open plains with several flat, dry and brushy areas, most of which is above 7,000 feet. We always enjoyed our visits in the summer and fall, usually seeing an abundance of wildlife.
Trappings of the Years 