There’s a place nearby where the Rockfish River winds through a ripple of hills. The hills are small, just a faint echo of the mountain ridge to the west. The river is, too; never more than a stream really. In most places you can wade across without getting your knees wet. A good sized tree falling over will span the banks. But It cut itself a narrow cliff-lined canyon through these hills. The steep stone walls, old and grey, seal it off from the outside world. Indirect light filters in softly most of the day through a clerestory of trees along the rim.
Albemarle County, Virginia ~ October 28, 2009
More accurately, Deer Lichen. A northern variety grows on the tundra, called Reindeer or Caribou Moss. Things with antlers like to eat it. It’s rich in carbs – more than potatoes – but too tough and acidic for humans to eat directly. When the Inuit killed a caribou they could eat the partially digested contents of the stomach, which was mostly moss and lichen, and this was the only vegetable in the Inuit diet. In Scandinavian countries they make a distilled spirit with it called Akavit. The Gaelic term for the same elixir became whisky.
Spirit of Independence at Thomas Point Lighthouse
Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race
Got the whole gallery of images from the Schooner Race uploaded – all 394 of them. You can find it here:
Moonrise on Totier Creek Reservoir
Every autumn, for the last few years, I’ve posted photos of the fall foliage here for friends and family who don’t get any. Did something a little different this time.
A couple of weeks ago, I took a row in the small local reservoir in the late afternoon, going from the dam all the way back up the creek that feeds it. The low sun set the trees on fire. These boats draw less than three inches, and it was a wonder to glide over water so shallow, well back into areas I had never been before.
This is a very cool project recently completed by Ken Murphy called A History of the Sky. It’s a video mosaic of the sky over San Francisco Bay – a year of days captured and synchronized to play simultaneously.
Created in conjunction with the Exploratorium Museum and a Kickstarter project, he plans to install it in various configurations of monitors and projectors.
Another example of Art made of Time.
Nice morning after the tow into Cape May Harbor the night before. Nice antidote to all that excitement.
Coffee in a paper cup. Time to kill.
For some reason, cameras make everyone at Utsch’s very nervous. Three times different people stood in front of my lens and demanded to know what I was doing. The last time it was the owner. When I explained, he laughed and gave me a hug.
Never got far from the marina. All this is from there.