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Deer Moss

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.

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Schooner Gallery

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:

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Rowing by Moonlight

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.

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A Year of Days, the Sky

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.

 

 

Youtube                                                       Vimeo

 

 

 

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Cape May Morning ~ Video Postcard

Youtube Link

 

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.

 

 

 

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Returning ~ Danger on the Delaware

Towed through Cape May Canal 

 

The Chesapeake is known the world over as a popular sailing ground. The Naval Academy is in Annapolis with it’s top notch sailing program, and there are scores of sailing schools scattered all up and down the Bay. Marinas in every cove and creek are full of pleasure boats. As time approached for this trip, I began to wonder why I had heard so little of the great sailing to be had on Delaware Bay. It’s right next door, only 14 miles away – the same 14 miles the C&D Canal spans to connect them. They’re like sisters holding hands.

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Returning ~ The C&D Canal

Motoring into the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal

 

One of the easiest ways to spot the handiwork of man, especially engineers, is to to look for straight lines. Humans love straight lines. Nature, not so much. We think in a linear fashion, prefer to travel that way, even measure time along a single line either forward or back. Simple geometry imparts order and efficiency to our world in a manner we admire with almost spiritual piety: the shortest distance between two points, walk the straight and narrow path, etc.. To the ancient greeks, geometry was indeed an expression of the divine. We don’t even build things out of trees until we’ve sawed them into straight boards. Continue reading “Returning ~ The C&D Canal”