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Rainbows Lightning Sunset

 

direct youtube link

 

Intense storm front came through this evening. Temperature dropped 25 degrees in just a few minutes. Ten miles west of here, the same storm dropped hail the size of half dollars.

It passed quickly. Behind it the clouds broke up just as the sun was going down. For a while there was a double rainbow, lightning, and a sunset all in the same sky. Lightning actually shooting through the rainbow. Amazing.

Didn’t have my camera with me, jut grabbed a little with the phone. I really should just keep a good camera with me all the time.

 

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East River ~ Mathews, Virginia

 

direct youtube link

 

Beautiful early spring day, in beautiful country, with beautiful boats.

Video from the weekend in Mobjack, Virginia. A mix of drone footage, shots ashore, and on board a handmade rowboat and a William Garden Eel.

A couple of Coquinas, a Marsh Cat, a Melonseed, and a flock of Caledonia Yawls. Perfect boats for these shallow waters.

 

 

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New York in 1911

Some extraordinarily well-preserved film footage shot of New York city in 1911.

 

 

The most striking thing is that the broad avenues and boulevards are filled with pedestrians. This is not one of those rare festival days when they shut down the streets for people to use – this is normal, every day. The streets were made for walking. Horse carts, cars, and trolleys all share the road. All move at a walking pace, which is why it works.

Also, the windows of the skyscrapers are open. There is no air conditioning in 1911. People live in apartments on the upper floors, with the windows thrown open to the breeze and the sky.

But umbrellas have not changed in over 100 years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Migration Patterns ~ Robins Return to Holly Road

The end of every January, flocks of robins stop at this holly tree on their way back north. They start at the top and work their way down, eating every berry until the tree is bare. Then they move on.

 

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Brush Creek Yachts ~ Concentric Circles and Paradoxes

Doug, his son Ben, and Marvin Spencer, with the new Marsh Cat “Magpie”

 

(This is a post started last August; am just getting back to it.)

It will take nearly four hours of driving to get there, to get where the boat is, a boat built by hand in the loft of an old barn. We head out at sunrise while there’s still dew on the grass.

We don’t go east toward the coast, though, where most boats and builders of them live. Instead, we turn and go the other direction – to the southwest into the mountains. Instead of the land of crabs and oysters and skipjacks, we’re going deep into coal and bluegrass and moonshine country.

After 200 miles of driving we’ll still be in Virginia, though just barely. From south of Fries it’s just 10 miles as the crow flies to the Carolina line, and 20 to Mount Rogers, the highest peak in Virginia. This is where Marvin Spencer, proprietor and master craftsman of Brush Creek Yachts, lives and builds boats.

 

Buffalo Mountain

 

 

Continue reading “Brush Creek Yachts ~ Concentric Circles and Paradoxes”

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Logging as an Art Form

Came across this video a few days before Christmas. Just found it again.

Cutting timber on steep mountainsides in Switzerland. So steep that no conventional equipment can be used. It’s all done by hand, with chain saws and hand jacks.

The trees have to be partially felled, carefully shaped, prepped and aligned, so when finally broken loose with the jack they shoot straight down the mountainside to the water below.

Once there, the logs are caught and corralled, then chained together in a big boat-shaped raft and towed down the lake.

 

INS HOLZ (IN THE WOODS) from mythenfilm on Vimeo.