Still more pictures coming!
Cumberland Island ~ 3
Tag: seashore
Cumberland Island ~ 2
More wildlife from Cumberland Island National Seashore… I should also mention that we only visited a small portion of the island – perhaps in the future we will allow more time in our plans for further exploration of its charms…
The crab below was on the Atlantic side of the island.
The crabs above were on the Cumberland Sound side of the island.
We weren’t sure if the barnacle-encrusted horseshoe crab (above) was alive until its tail moved. When we took a peek underneath its shell it started moving swiftly away from us.
Methinks the horseshoe crab was relieved when we finally left the scene.
Cumberland Island ~ 1
Between the four of us (Nate, Shea, Tim & me) we took well over a thousand pictures with the new camera over our five-day visit to Georgia. We kept taking turns getting shots and spent several evenings dazzled in front of the TV screen watching the digital slideshow of the day’s pictures. It’s been difficult to choose which ones to share here on the blog!
Starting off here with our day at Cumberland Island National Seashore, a 45-minute ferry ride from St. Marys, Georgia. Nate had the camera for most of this day so the majority of the shots are probably his. It’s hard to remember who had the camera when, but, he most definitely took the one of the tiny lizard puffing out his throat (above) and we are all blown away over how well it came out!
We had hoped to see the wild horses but all we got to see of them was their droppings and hoof-prints. However, the island was teeming with wildlife everywhere we looked, so there wasn’t much room for disappointment.
I will be posting more photos as time allows…
childhood hero
Happy 90th Birthday, Dad!
One of my dad’s earliest and very special memories was of sitting on his father’s shoulders, watching a New York City ticker tape parade in honor of Charles Lindbergh, who had returned from his historic solo transatlantic flight. Dad was five years old that day, June 13, 1927, and he and his father were among the estimated 3 to 4 million people lined up along Fifth Avenue from Battery Park to Central Park. The New York Times wrote “Never was America prouder of a son.” What a thrill it was for a little fellow to catch a glimpse of his hero!
Today Dad turns 90 and I thought I could honor this milestone with some words from the autobiography written by his childhood hero. I gave Dad a copy of The Spirit of St. Louis a few years ago, and I know he read some of it, even while protesting that he disliked reading. He was never much of a reader – he said all the reading he had to do in college turned him off to it. But he loved to discuss the meanings of words and we both enjoyed looking things up in the dictionary and encyclopedia. Now that he is confined to a wheelchair we do find him reading the books we offer to him from time to time.
For unmeasurable periods, I seem divorced from my body, as though I were an awareness spreading out through space, over the earth and into the heavens, unhampered by time or substance, free from the gravitation that binds to heavy human problems of the world. My body requires no attention. It’s not hungry. It’s neither warm or cold. It’s resigned to being left undisturbed. Why have I troubled to bring it here? I might better have left it back at Long Island or St. Louis, while the weightless element that has lived within it flashes through the skies and views the planet. This essential consciousness needs no body for its travels. It needs no plane, no engine, no instruments, only the release from flesh which circumstances I’ve gone through make possible.
Then what am I – the body substance which I can see with my eyes and feel with my hands? Or am I this realization, this greater understanding which dwells within it, yet expands through the universe outside; a part of all existence, powerless but without need for power; immersed in solitude, yet in contact with all creation? There are moments when the two appear inseparable, and others when they could be cut apart by the merest flash of light.
While my hand is on the stick, my feet on the rudder, and my eyes on the compass, this consciousness, like a winged messenger, goes out to visit the waves below, testing the warmth of water, the speed of wind, the thickness of intervening clouds. It goes north to the glacial coasts of Greenland, over the horizon to the edge of dawn, ahead to Ireland, England, and the continent of Europe, away through space to the moon and stars, always returning, unwillingly, to the mortal duty of seeing that the limbs and muscles have attended their routine while it was gone.
~ Charles A. Lindbergh
(The Spirit of St. Louis)
stars above
Surely a man needs a closed place wherein he may strike root and, like the seed, become. But also he needs the great Milky Way above him and the vast sea spaces, though neither stars nor ocean serve his daily needs.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
(The Wisdom of the Sands)
slim yachts of the element
A lifting gale of sea-gulls followed them; slim yachts of the element,
Natural growths of the sky, no wonder
Light wings to leave sea; but those grave weights toil, and are powerful.
~ Robinson Jeffers
(Pelicans)
In this world you’ve a soul for a compass
And a heart for a pair of wings
There’s a star on the far horizon
Rising bright in an azure sky
For the rest of the time that you’re given
Why walk when you can fly?
~ Mary Chapin Carpenter
♫ (Why Walk When You Can Fly) ♫
photos by Tim Rodgers
open pathway
When one soul meets another kindred soul, a great surge of energy rushes through the weaving of the universe as an important connection is made. In the unexplored regions of human consciousness, another light has come on, revealing shared territory. This is the work of dedicated souls on the spiritual path: their individual light illumines the universe for everyone, brings hope, and keeps open the pathway to understanding. This sacred trust is maintained by all who have consecrated their existence to spiritual wisdom; it is a kinship that runs like a golden chain from one age to another. That golden chain comes now into our hands, a sacred trust not only to our ancestors but to our descendants and every inhabitant of the universe. It is our turn to make the next link, trusting that others in turn will complete the circle until the whole cosmos is connected in one bond.
~ Caitlín Matthews
(The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year)
Two years ago on this day, Tim and I drove down to Avery Point to see the beauty of a recent snowfall by the water. I was trying to photograph the lighthouse, framed by a tree’s branches and the blanket of snow. After snapping the shot I looked on the view screen and gasped in surprise! While I had seen orbs in the photos of others before, and was curious about the phenomena, this was the first time orbs had appeared in one of my own photos! And there were so many of them!
As a person who has in the past often gotten myself into trouble by insisting on absolute answers to all questions, this marked one of the first times I was content to accept a gift of mystery and magic from the universe without demanding an explanation, satisfied to embrace not knowing. My intuition has some ideas but I’m not clinging to any particular theory, scientific or mystical.
If you have any orb pictures you’d like to share, please let me know. Perhaps I will post them here on my blog, or link to them on your blog. I have since had a few more pictures with orbs in them, though none as spectacular as this first one!
wreaths by the sea
Yesterday we decided to take advantage of our new membership to visit our local living history museum, Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America & The Sea, to see what Christmas might have been like around here in the 1800s. The museum has a shipyard that is currently restoring the whaleship Charles W. Morgan, other historic ships, a coastal village, a planetarium and indoor exhibit galleries.
(above) Undecorated Christmas tree atop the main mast of the training ship Joseph Conrad, indicating that this vessel will be in port on Christmas.
Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you – smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, “Come and find out.”
~ Joseph Conrad
(Heart of Darkness)
I have to admit at first I was a disappointed, somehow expecting to walk into a twinkling winter wonderland. But later I remembered that they didn’t have electricity back then! Candlelight was an ever-present fire hazard. And it wasn’t until after the mid-1800s that Christmas trees became popular. So Christmas was not such a big thing at that time. In fact, the shopkeeper (below) at Stone’s General Store explained to us that no one expected to receive more than a single homemade gift. And that if we didn’t see what we needed to make our gifts in her store, then she would be pleased to order the items for us.
Even in the homes of the wealthy the holiday decor was simple. I love the winter afternoon sun filtering through the curtains (below) in the Thomas Greenman House parlor.
We stopped by the Mystic Print Shop and, with close supervision, I was allowed to print my own 19th-century Christmas card on an old press. Christmas cards were then the “latest” rage in Victorian fashion.
There were wreaths on every door in the seafaring village and on some of the windows, too. For the present I leave you with pictures of a few of them!
embracing life
One must say Yes to life, and embrace it wherever it is found – and it is found in terrible places… For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
~ James Baldwin
(Fumbling Toward Divinity: The Adoption Scriptures)