Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
As much as I love hiking, it always makes me smile when returning to the trailhead to see my car peeking at me through the trees. I had just returned from a short hike on the Kestner Homestead Trail in Olympic National Park after driving for hours through an absolute downpour, which my little Subaru handled like a champ before waiting patiently for me to return from my wander in the trees.
In the top picture, rain drops have just started to pelt the side of the old moving van at the Kestner Homestead in Olympic National Park, but years in the rain forest has both figuratively and literally left waves of rust on the decaying truck. But then the rain started coming down in buckets and I retreated to shelter, before coming out for a few more pictures of the now soaked truck before heading back down the trail.
I’ve seen this painting on a door many times but was never sure what it was supposed to represent. Regardless I love photographing the artwork in our neighborhood and finally one day had my camera with me as I walked past, only to discover I was unable to approach the entrance as it was guarded by the most fearsome hound. Only a Jedi could get past to approach the door, I thought to myself, and then I noticed the sign that said ‘Women’. And suddenly I understood, right here in our sleepy little neighborhood is a little enclave of female Jedi, fighting the good fight, while the rest of us go about our lives. Each time they vanquish a foe, another little lightsaber gets painted on the door.
Just so there’s no confusion, now when I walk past I say out loud how much I admire Obi-Wan Kenobi and how that Darth Vader is a real jerk (and upon hearing that the pup even let me move in for a nice close-up of the painting).
There’s more than a little truth to that.
I was eight years old when Star Wars came out. There was my life before Star Wars, and my life after. If there’s been a day since that I haven’t thought about something from that world, there haven’t been many. I don’t recall if I saw it more than once in the theaters, but it didn’t matter, it filled my imagination. All of it. Jedi, the Force, lightsabers, Wookiees, stormtroopers, X-wings, TIE Fighters, the Falcon, the Death Star. Han and Chewie. R2 and C-3PO. Luke and Leia. Obi-Wan and Vader.
Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan changed my life.
As I came of age, I enjoyed a good righteous anger and seeing people get what was coming to them, and wondered why in the gospels we were told to turn the other cheek if the other was struck, why we were to pray for our enemies. About vengeance not being ours to take. I didn’t see that in the national policy of our supposedly Christian country, or in many people I knew. These were central teachings, why were they ignored? What was I missing? And what was their point?
“There are alternatives to fighting.” You mystified me, Obi-Wan. I loved you and needed to understand you.
I was eleven when The Empire Strikes Back came out. Obi-Wan was gone (spoilers!) after sacrificing himself in the first movie, but now I had Yoda. A tiny little kid had a tiny little hero. There’s a scene where Yoda is teaching Luke to become a Jedi and Luke senses his friends are in trouble far away and rushes off to save them, before his training has completed. I had seen enough shows and movies on TV to know how the movie would play out, that Yoda would shake his head at his eager apprentice, with a knowing grin and maybe even a wink to the camera, and then Luke would go and save his friends.
He was the good guy. Right beats might.
Except it didn’t. Yoda was depressed when Luke left. Luke didn’t save his friends, they had to save him. Han got captured anyway.
What? WHAT?
For years Empire made me think about life more than any movie before or since. I knew Obi-Wan and Yoda were fictional characters but I thought often of what they did, and why. About not giving in to anger, even righteous anger that I felt was mine to hold, about how it would harden you. Forgiveness wasn’t just for the benefit of those you forgave, but for yourself. Anger, even righteous anger, maybe especially righteous anger, could destroy you, slowly, without you noticing. Forgive. Seventy times seven. And again.
Stand up for what’s right. Don’t give in to anger. Forgive, forgive, forgive.
I was a quiet kid who kept too much inside, tried too hard to figure things out on my own, and perhaps it’s a little ridiculous that two fictional characters would make it so much easier for me to take messages from the gospels that I loved and apply them in my own life, but so it was.
So it delighted me to no end to see in the new Star Wars movies, The Force Awakens and Rogue One, women and people of color in central roles, unapologetically strong. Representation is important. I love that more people can look up on the screen and see people that look like them, and want to be like them too.
These wood sorrel leaves, wet with rain above a bed of moss, reminded me of butterflies with their wings outspread. I was hiking along the Kestner Homestead Trail in the Quinault Rain Forest after an earlier rain, and when I came back past the rain returned with me, pounding down in buckets. The leaves had folded in, still like butterflies, but the lens I was using wasn’t weather sealed and I hadn’t brought a backup. I was literally in the first few hours of my trip so I decided discretion was the better part of valor and didn’t photograph them with their wings down.
I came across this red rock crab floundering in a tide pool, struggling to emerge from under the rocks and climb onto the beach but the incoming tide washing it back down. Clearly a zombie crab, but still I took pity on it and decided to help it, despite its gaping maw and triangular teeth.
“Need some help there little one?”
“Yes! About time! How long were you going to watch me struggle?”
“Promise you won’t eat my brains?”
“Just help me up!”
“I’m not going to help you if you’re going to eat my brains. And you don’t have to be so, ah, …”
“What? I don’t have to be so what?”
“Nothing.”
“Crabby? Were you going to say crabby?”
“No. Well, maybe. Yes.”
“For millions and millions of years my kind has ruled the border between land and sea, and from that border down to the depths of the deepest oceans. And in our new more fearsome form so too will we now rule the land!”
“Oh no!”
“Now you show me the respect I deserve!”
“No, I meant ‘oh no’ as in ‘oh no, the gulls have spotted you’.”
“What? Quick! Get me out of here! Help! Help!”
“Promise you won’t eat my brains!”
“We do as we must!”
“Well then, it was nice meeting you, but I’m going to keep walking down the beach. Goodbye, and good luck.”
“Help me! Help me! Don’t walk away! Maybe I’ll only nibble!”
If it said anything more I couldn’t hear it above the cries of the gulls as they closed in. If you weren’t eaten by a zombie today, say a little thank you to the gulls, they are our defenders.
I did stop to photograph this dead crab because its scattered parts reminded me of a monster climbing from under the earth, but we’re looking at the back of the crab, not its front. The large hole is where its abdomen would have been, and the teeth are bits of soft flesh left behind by scavengers (they didn’t leave much). While only one leg was still attached with the others discarded nearby, one was close enough, and angled well enough, that it seemed as though it was an extremely long arm emerging from the stones of the beach. The eyes are just a depression on the shell but if I stood at the right angle they looked like eye sockets.
At Latourell Falls in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge, ferns grown not just in the earth but on the columnar basalt near the falls. The ferns must be able to get enough purchase in the cracks of the basalt to not get blown off by the wind, and that wind brings enough water over from the falls (just to the right of this picture) that they can survive. There is lichen growing here too, but not the dramatic yellow lichen that grows further up the cliff face.
I love this place.
Ellie and I came across these washing machines (and other appliances) waiting to be installed outside a new apartment building in our neighborhood. I’m glad to see some (hopefully) more affordable housing going in, I’d hate for our neighborhood to mostly be a bunch of expensive old homes. We’re a part of a historic district, and I share the desire to not see the old homes razed and replaced with massive new ones, but neighborhoods also need to adapt to survive.
I SAID, “ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, BOO!”
I was heading up the loop trail around Latourell Falls when I saw a bench beside the trail and I wondered why it was there, when I looked to the right and all became clear as I saw the waterfall plunging over the basalt cliff. You have a lot of choices when photographing this waterfall, there’s a spot right near the parking lot with a nice distant view of the falls through the forest, you can go right to the base of the falls with a clear (and maybe wet) view of the falls, or you can photograph it here as a view through the woods. I like them all. You can clearly see the yellow lichen that drew me to the falls, although from his high vantage point you can only see a bit of the columnar basalt that also caught my eye.
There are other choices too, such as the classic choice of horizontal or portrait orientation. I like the horizontal picture best for this shot, even though my framing choice leaves out most of the blue wildflowers (delphinium?) blooming below, as I liked the symmetry of the leaves at the top and bottom. With the waterfall I also had to choose a fast shutter speed or a slow shutter speed to either freeze or blur the movement of the water. I prefer some waterfalls one way or the other but I think this one looks good both ways. I prefer the frozen shot as it shows how the shapes the water takes change as it plunges down the long cliff face, and although the picture has more noise due to the much shorter exposure, modern cameras handle this amazingly well (in previous years I would have been more inclined for the slower exposure to minimize color noise).
But it’s the 4K video that really shines. It was hiking in the Columbia River Gorge many years ago that almost convinced me to buy a video camera, solely for the purpose of having long videos of mountain streams that I could play in the background. I’d really like to figure out if there’s an automated program that could find a good place to start and end a track so it would play naturally on an endless loop, as that’s what I’d really like, to be able to just loop the video on the TV and have endless hours of waterfalls as a soothing background.
Our youngest cat Trixie, a tortoiseshell with one white whisker. She had three as a kitten but these days usually just one, although its location may move around as one falls out and another grows.
