It’s difficult not to be upset, angry, and despairing about what’s happening in the world now. Taking time out when the news or personal concerns are too disturbing is essential. I’m sure you have ways to calm down or let off steam when you need to. This post is offered as another way to pause from the too-muchness of the world. Just a series of photographs to enjoy. Simple.
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These photographs were made in 2025 and 2026, on the hills and beaches of Fidalgo Island, where I live. The first photo is from last September. It was a morning when the fog held on for hours, chilling the air and veiling the landscape. On an outcrop to my left, Pacific Madrones reached for the sun. Long, uprooted stalks of Bull kelp floated freely on the water’s surface, their work done for the season. Next year fresh stalks, technically called stipes, will rise from their holdfasts on the rocky bottom and quickly grow tall enough for their wavy, ribbon-like blades to photosynthesize near the water’s surface. Diving birds, fish, seals, crabs and other creatures will hide and forage in the forest of kelp that grows here, as long as the water remains cool and clean.
The second photo is a closeup of a Pacific Madrone tree that survived a fire.
The third photo shows some broken reeds and a partly-buried feather I noticed on a winter beach walk last month.
Number 4 was not taken on Fidalgo. I was at a Whidbey Island beach just across the water. A bridge that connects the two islands is barely visible in the first photo. I like the designs evaporating water makes on rocks. It’s all about timing – I happened to be there when tide, wind and sun worked together to create patterns that disappeared almost as fast as I saw them.
Number 5 is a window sill at home. I don’t remember where I found those pieces of wood. There are times when I want to sweep away all the collections of things from every surface in the house. Maybe I could think better then, without all the clutter around. But I like seeing interesting and beautiful natural objects so I try to find a balance between spare minimalism (never going to happen!) and excess clutter.
Number 6, the dark photo, shows a tree slowly collapsing in the woods at Washington Park. No one will clean up this wild “garden” because our city doesn’t tidy up the woods. Trees are left where they fall unless they land on a road or trail, or are a hazard. Their decomposition nourishes the ecosystem, keeping it whole and healthy.
Number 7 is from last June, when meadow grasses were ripe with seeds.
In the eighth photo, Madrones are reflected in the still, shallow water of a wetland. Powerful storms and rising ocean levels are submerging the smaller Madrone. An older one that grows higher is safe for now but the small tree will probably die in the next 5 or 10 years. The first time I saw the destruction wrought from an intense winter storm at this location, I was upset. The next time, I was still upset, and sad. Then came the third and fourth times. Now I’m getting used to it. The landscape I fell in love with when I moved here was a moment in time and space, it was not static. Life is change.
Number 9 is from a few days ago. Spring is here!
Number 10 shows a cliff roughly opposite the wetland pictured in #8. It’s September and the leaves have turned orange and brown. The tips of some branches that hang down are furred with lichens, probably because they’re frequently exposed to mist on the bay and spray from wind blowing over the waves of incoming tides.
Number 11 is – you guessed it- another Madrone. It’s normal for the bark to peel, which results in endlessly interesting patterns.
Number 12 is from a September afternoon when I hiked up the second-highest hill on the island and stopped below the top to photograph this field. At over 1000 feet (305m), Sugarloaf has fine views of islands and mountains. It’s a favorite little walk of mine. I can park beside a road and follow a half mile long trail to the top with just enough elevation gain to give a sense of accomplishment. Wildflowers line the narrow trail from spring to summer and after the flowers are gone, the grassy meadow still pleases the eye.
Number 13 shows a Madrone above the wetland shown earlier. This tree seems to have carved out a little niche for itself on a hillside full of Douglas fir trees. The Madrone will keep leaning out to gather all the sun it can. Douglas firs grow fast and I think the Madrone is struggling to get out of their shade. The dead bottom branches fairly drip with lichens, creating another layer in the forest ecosystem.
The last photo is another fallen tree in the same park as the sixth photo. It was just after sunset, on New Year’s Eve, 2025.
For a long time I’ve wanted to construct a memoir. I say “construct” because I’ve always envisioned a text-and-image memoir, probably a book – but not necessarily. One idea I had is to use a selection of my photographs, drawings, including a few from childhood, and texts (excerpts from letters and journals, old lists, school reports, etc.). They would be hung at eye level on three or four walls around a bare room: a memoir to walk through. It’s an ambitious project, and not necessarily one that would interest many people so the idea rests quietly, in the back of my mind. Having been intimate with mortality for the past year or so, I think I should get started on a memoir of some kind before it’s too late. “Life Bits” will be an ongoing series of posts, each one about a particular event or important part of my life. They won’t appear in chronological order. I have several in the wings already but they’re not easy reading because they tackle disturbing events from the past. I believe those times are important to write about, but I don’t want to begin this series with that kind of material. What then? Something a little different. This first “Life Bit” is primarily the work of an old friend. He has a riveting story to tell, one that I connect with in an unusual way.
I’m sure I’m not the only person who does google searches for old friends and acquaintances. A few days ago something prompted me to search the name of my old friend Chris Loekle. Honestly, it was because I hadn’t heard from him in over a year and I had the terrible thought that something could have happened to him. Too impatient to wait for an answer to an email, I googled. The first result of the search was an article that he wrote for Maine Public Radio in 2017. The article, which I had never seen, recalls his experience in the Vietnam War. I met him a few years after he was discharged from the Army, when we were students at School of Visual Arts in New York. We quickly became close and moved into an apartment together around the time we graduated. It was the first long-term, serious relationship for both of us and it ended badly after four years (my fault). He moved to Maine but we salvaged the friendship and kept in touch through the years.
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Chris in the kitchen of our third floor walk-up in Hoboken, circa 1973.
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A factor that’s particularly relevant to this story is that we both felt alienated from the culture we’d grown up in; the prevailing American dream of having a family and a two-car garage left us cold. We each grew up comfortably, in loving households where our Dads worked hard to support their families and everyone went to church on Sundays. Chris and I knew we didn’t want that life, so like many of our peers, we were exploring alternate lifestyles and figuring it out as we went. You might say we were seekers but neither one of us had any interest in joining groups. One alternative to the Protestant ethic that interested both of us was Buddhism. Back in high school, an older friend had introduced me to Jack Kerouac. His books functioned as a gateway to Buddhism and the counterculture in the 1960s. I don’t know if Chris read Kerouac in high school. He didn’t need to – he had his own introduction to Buddhism and to a lifestyle quite different from anything he had experienced. It all came about because he was drafted and shipped off to Vietnam.
Over the years I’ve worn a “Buddhist charm” around my neck many times. It’s a primitive image of Guan Yin, Bodhisattva of Compassion. Chris gave it to me half a century ago, the same one he was wearing in the story. I’ve moved ten times since he gave me that necklace and I never lost it. I don’t know who made it but I know it originated far away, in space and time. And it’s imbued with a rich story. Now it hangs from a hook on a wooden rack, waiting for the next time I feel like carefully clasping it around my neck. Chris and I are in touch sporadically, but meaningfully. I haven’t seen him in decades but I know he’s there on his island in Maine, polishing his boots, playing his clarinet, hauling compost for his vegetable garden. Once in a while we share news, commiserate about politics (we went through the Watergate years together), and compare the weather on our respective coasts. And every now and then I learn a few things about him that I didn’t know before.
On New Year’s Eve the gibbous moon looks like it was made to fit a bare-limbed tree.
In the forest at dusk, a twig sheds water. The ground below will make good use of it.
Madrone leaves turn rust and deep purple as they decay on the ground. What a fine contrast they make to a lush mat of Oregon beaked moss. Picture-ready, right at my feet.
A moss and lichen community. The fine moss with twirling white hairs is Elongate rock moss (Racomitrium elongatum); the cups covered with bumps are probably Pebbled pixie cups (Cladonia pyxidata). About 2 inches (5cm) square, this busy piece of earth was teeming with life. The larger view was just as exciting – I was on a small island plunked down in the middle of the deep, swift waters of Deception Pass. Steep cliffs and rushing water surrounded me. In spite of two lanes of traffic crossing the bridge over the island, the air is fresh and clean, a requirement for these lichens. The Ai mode of a google search for Pass Island, WA, will tell you that the island’s role is to serve as a support for the Deception Pass Bridge. No, please. This tough old piece of rock supports all kinds of life. Isn’t that its real, abiding role?
Two Orcas swim west through Burrows Pass; the setting sun illuminates their breath. I’m high on a hill overlooking the channel, planning to check the trails to see what plants are emerging. Out of the corner of my eye I see two smoke bombs hovering over the water. Huh, smoke out there on the water? The mind moves quickly, the head turns, and within a second, I know I’m seeing Orcas. You could sit on this hill for a week straight and not see an Orca but on this day, at this precise moment, I’m very, very lucky. I watch entranced as their bodies part the water like silk, their breath lagging just behind, drifting on the dark water of the pass. I quick-click the shutter. The lens I have, which isn’t very long, will have to do. Each time I put the camera down, my pleasure increases ,as I watch these powerful marine mammals doing exactly what they were made to do. Across the channel, the all-but-uninhabited Burrows Island is dark as night. Off to my left, a small knot of people who came to see the sunset are holding their cell phones up. I know they’re thrilled, too.
A semi-abstract of sunlight reflecting on the roiling currents of Deception Pass, darkened for effect.
In the distance, a “smoke signal” of steam from an oil refinery seems foreboding or beautiful, depending on what you know and how you read it. Closer in, a flock of Buffleheads swims past, probably on the way to a quiet spot to rest overnight. They won’t have any trouble finding a good spot here at Kukutali Preserve. With a history that veers from one extreme to the other, this place was once a gathering spot for shellfish digging by a local tribe, then was private property, then was considered for the site of a nuclear power plant. Strong objections to the power plant led to its current, unusual status as a preserve co-managed by Washington State and the Swinomish Indian Tribe. Today, land that teetered on the brink of ruin is appreciated by walkers enjoying nature and tribal members who once again can exercise their treaty rights to harvest the waters.
1. A strand of eelgrass caught in a piece of Giant kelp caught my eye at Dana Point.
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It started back in November with a sale I couldn’t resist: 30% off flights on Alaska Airlines, a convenient airline for regional travel from Seattle. I knew I would be craving warmth in January, so I booked a flight to Los Angeles, reserved a rental car, and found a place to stay. I was used to sharing all the travel planning with Joe. I can’t do that anymore but I was confident that I had everything in place.
It would be my first trip alone in 10 or 15 years. I used to love exploring on my own and going wherever I wanted to, on my own timetable. At the same time, traveling was one of the focus points of my relationship with Joe and I knew I would miss sharing the experience with him. I wondered how I would cope with driving and navigating on ten-lane highways in and around Los Angeles. For weeks before my departure I swung back and forth between anxiety and eagerness. I knew that a year ago, Joe and I took a similar trip that we thoroughly enjoyed. How would this compare? More to the point, how could I keep from comparing it to the past?
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The first mistake didn’t hit me until just before I left: I would be traveling on a 3-day holiday weekend. No! I do NOT like crowded beaches or crowded anything (except New York City streets). It was too late to change the reservations. I would have to live with it.
The departure date arrived and Colby drove me to the airport (thank you!). The flight went smoothly. Off to a good start! The rental car was ready and waiting: a shiny, white 2025 Jetta GLI. There was only one problem: I couldn’t turn it on. I found a patient agent who turned it on easily. It was then that I realized my foot wasn’t on the brake when I pushed the button. Humiliating. My own car is 20 years old and starts with a plain old key. With the Airbnb address put into my phone and the volume turned up on the maps app, I launched myself onto the freeway. Arriving at the Airbnb, I quickly saw…
The second mistake. It a was strange place! I should have seen how weird and uncomfortable the place was from the photos. I also should have noticed that it was in the middle of a vast, soulless, suburban sprawl that stretches for miles around L.A. Nothing but perfect-looking houses and big box stores, as far as the eye could see.
I fell asleep hoping things would look better the next day, but it was not to be. Heading to the beach that morning, I was confronted with a jam-packed parking lot, thanks to warm weather and the holiday weekend. Disappointed, I walked a short distance, turned around, and left. My fantasy of a quiet, meditative walk on the beach wasn’t going to happen. The beaches were packed, the weather was hot, I didn’t like the neighborhood, the house was uncomfortable. I tried, but couldn’t even find a quiet park to walk in.
And there was no one to share the frustration with. Suddenly, I felt lost, bereft. I would have to figure out how to redeem this situation by myself. I knew the holiday was only one more day, and maybe I could find a different place to stay? No, that would be costly and difficult. On top of feeling stupid for making mistakes with my reservations, my mind kept drifting back to one year ago, when Joe and I were ensconced in a comfortable hotel fifty miles down the coast. That turned out to be our last vacation. No wonder I felt miserable.
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Just as I was racking my brain about what to do, a message popped up in my inbox: the airline was offering $115 to anyone willing to switch flights from the date I was flying home to a day or two earlier. They must have overbooked. It was tempting but first, I had to see about canceling two days of the Airbnb and rental car. I went to work. I texted, made calls, and calculated price differences for well over an hour. By the time I confirmed I wouldn’t forfeit too much money by cutting the trip short, the offer had disappeared! Unbelievable.
It was time to pivot – again. Throw a few obstacles at me and I will get very determined. Working through all the scenarios, I figured I could still cut two days off the trip and come out ahead. I would pay a little more for the flight change but I would get two days of the cost of the Airbnb back. Once all the changes were in place, I began to breathe easier.
I had two and a half days left. I would devote one to Los Angeles and the other one to the beach, now that the holiday was over. On the last morning there would be time for a morning hike before my flight home.
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With only one day in the city, I wanted to make the time count. There were so many things I wanted to do – visit a museum, eat at a Jewish deli, walk around an interesting neighborhood, go to art galleries. But I couldn’t do it all in one day. I would be navigating while driving and trying to find places to park, no easy task. So no Jewish deli, no neighborhood walk, and no galleries. I would go to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and be overwhelmed by the art – in a good way, like eating too much sugar. That’s what I wanted to do most of all. And I would relax my nervous system after the drive into L.A. by visiting a botanical garden.
It was a good plan. A small garden, the Mildred Matthias UCLA Botanical Garden, was not far from the museum. I could get take out at a good lunch spot I knew and eat in the garden. As it turned out, I was underwhelmed by the plant collections but meandering through the garden, set in an arroyo with a creek running through it, was pleasant enough.
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4. Instead of flowers, cut bamboo stems and leaf detritus caught my eye.
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5. Calligraphy detail, Realms of the Dharma exhibition; Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
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On to LACMA, the largest art museum in the West. Scanning the “What’s On” list, I had no trouble zeroing in on what I must see and what I would check out afterward, if I still had the energy.
First I made a beeline for the Modern Art collection, where I saw favorites like Mondrian, Rothko, Joan Mitchell, and others. It felt good to be in an environment that feels like home to me. Not LACMA specifically, but any good art museum or gallery, especially one that focuses on 20th century art, has felt like home ever since I studied art in New York, decades ago. Peering closely at the Rothko (below), I noticed how beautifully he handled the paint where red fades to white. The staples where he attached the canvas to the stretcher bars, were perfectly aligned. I had just finished a book about him and seeing that painting was poignant. A complex man, he lived life intensely, to say the least.
I walked through Realms of the Dharma, a broad survey of Asian Buddhist art. Being among various renditions of monks, Bodhisattvas, and Buddhas felt comfortable and familiar. Asian art has always interested me and living in a Zen monastery for five years solidified the affinity. A too-quick look at a fascinating survey of woodblock printing across cultures left me wishing I could bring the whole exhibition home with me. I also enjoyed “Grounded”, an exhibition of work by artists from the Americas and Pacific region, whose practice involves the land. Several artists I had never heard of have beautiful, intriguing work in that show. Another artist I admire, Ana Mendieta,is represented by six photographs documenting a work from 1979 in which she made a silhouette of her body from gunpowder on a volcano-shaped bed of earth and set it on fire.
I would have liked to visit the museum three times to take it all in. I had to skip the Jean Arp/Paul Klee exhibit – but I know when enough is enough. Walking back outside, I felt blissfully happy. Dusk was falling over the city, infusing it with that inimitable Southern California light. How can I describe it to someone who hasn’t seen it? Particularly at dusk on a clear day, the light seems to be everywhere, at once around your body and yet infinitely expanding. Neither vague nor harsh, the light carries colors brilliantly, from deep blues to golden hues and beyond. I laid down on my back on a low concrete wall by the museum plaza and stared up at the sky, taking it all in.
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6. Clockwise from left: Mark Rothko; White Center, 1957; Pablo Albarenga; Nantu, 2018-2020. A documentary photographer, Albarenga is based in South America. In this photograph, Nantu, a member of the Achuar Nation in Ecuador, is seen next to the pristine rainforest he is working to protect by running a solar-powered boat collective. Xu Bing; Life Pond, part of his Five Series of Repetition, 1987. A contemporary Chinese conceptual artist, Xu Bing explored the idea of print as multiple in this series. He first printed an uncut woodblock, then gradually carved and printed until the final print was almost entirely carved out. The image above is from halfway through that exercise.
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7. Clockwise from left: Part of a scroll. This grass or cursive style of calligraphy is a style I’m very drawn to. Unfortunately, I didn’t record the name of the artist. Next, Jizo Bosatsu; Unknown artist, Japan, c. 1070-1120. The full statue, made of wood, is life size. Finally, Bodhidharma; ink and pigment. I didn’t note information about the ink drawing. Bodhidharma, a popular Buddhist subject, is said to have transmitted the dharma, or the teachings of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, to China in the 5th or 6th century. Depictions of him typically have the big eyes and nose and intense expression seen here.
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Wednesday was cool and overcast, the kind of weather that doesn’t draw beach crowds. Perfect. I drove to the beach where Joe and I took one last, long walk, one that turned out to be our last walk together. I knew revisiting that beach might be depressing. It seemed that each time I revisited the past, things went badly. Looking forward was proving to be more beneficial. Even so, I went back to Salt Creek Beach and it turned out to be the right thing to do.
Life doesn’t unfold in black and white or either/or. I stayed in the present that day but there was an important bit of dwelling in the past I needed to do. Tucked into my suitcase were two small bags of soil – Joe’s soil. Literally. His wish was to be transformed into soil after his death. Most of his soil went to a forest restoration project in the Olympic Mountains, the rest was shipped to me. I wanted to place the soil where it felt right. This beach felt exactly right. With no one nearby, it was easy to empty one small bag of soil into a curved channel of water flowing down the beach and into the ocean. Easy physically – but emotionally? Not so easy. I watched small, brown clumps of soil trace the curves of the channel and disappear into the ocean’s foamy fringe. I lingered, I cried, and then I walked on, slowly.
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9. Salt Creek Beach, Dana Point, California
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Rain was threatening the morning I hiked at Aliso and Wood Canyons Wilderness Park. Set in a densely populated county of cities and suburbs, the 4,000 acre wilderness reserve protects imperiled species of plants and animals and is a welcome respite for people.
The sky was dull that day. At first, birdsong excited me more than the landscape. Slipping my phone out of my back pocket, I turned on the Merlin app to identify birds I didn’t know, like Nutall’s woodpecker, a denizen of California’s oak woodlands with a loud, rattling call. Oh, I thought, that same call surprised us last year in another Southern California woodland. The dense brush hid most of the birds, but the app said a Wrentit, an Oak titmouse, and a California thrasher were busy nearby. I recognized the Blue-gray gnatcatcher, an old friend from spring vacations on the Georgia coast, over 2,000 miles from where I stood.
Slowly, the subdued beauty of the landscape sunk in. Clumps of willows lined the path. A myriad of understory shrubs and forbs I couldn’t identify stretched back to a hidden ravine, where I heard water gurgling. The view opened up to rolling hills layered on top of one another, each one paler and softer, the last hill a quiet purple-gray under a faintly blue-gray sky. Around a bend, the rounded silhouettes of Coast live oaks stood out on slopes of tall green grass.
The light dimmed. I felt the first drops of rain. As long as it didn’t pour, I’d be OK – it wasn’t cold and my camera is weather-resistant. I stopped where the trail crossed over the creek to watch raindrops splatter the water’s surface. Nothing stood out – the soft rain suffused the land with grayed pastels and muffled sounds. A sweet calm descended. I didn’t know if the best part was the mesmerizing quality of the misty landscape or the pungent scent beginning to rise from the scrub – yes, there it was – the distinctive desert aroma of wet sage. There’s nothing like it.
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15. There’s always another wave and another lesson to learn.
Writing about ordinary beauty is nothing new, but a reminder never hurts.
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Finding beauty, we recognize it
thanks to the beauty
within us. Beauty recognizes beauty.
Even in the shattered places
of the world and ourselves,
this beauty,
This.
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It’s not an isolated phenomenon
separate from ourselves,
other than ourselves –
no – isolation is delusion.
Everything is in relationship,
like the intimate beauty
of walking feet,
here and there,
there
and here.
Nearby,
beauty.
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1. Light tripped through the forest, picking out moss and lichen textures on a curved branch. Beauty was blooming right there, as much as it blazed in the sunset beyond the trees.
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2. I clambered down into a hollow carved by the tides that day and steadied my feet on the slick, round rocks. Curtains of mist rolled through Deception Pass. The fog vapor appealed to me, but the jagged intractability of the old anvil of rock did, too. Mist and rock in relationship. With each other, with the trees, the grass, the seaweed, the atmosphere, with me, and now in relationship with you, too.
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3. I watched a downy feather snagged on a stick as it disappeared under the pier where I stood and waited for it to emerge on the other side, a playful game that never grows old. As the reed and feather floated above the leaves of underwater plants, I pressed the shutter. Then I watched the feather and stick drift out of sight, glad for the gift of slowness.
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4. Wind enlivens the world, pushes things around and makes new relationships. Makes beauty in unexpected places, too.
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5. Is it my own too-curvy spine that responds with affection to the curves of the old, half-dead juniper? We exist together, our bones roughened by the weather of time, here in this unsteady world.
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6. Where the trail hugs the shoreline of Big Beaver Pond, I watched a pond lily leaf arcing downward toward its demise. I imagined water embracing leaf, softening it, and tenderly working it through the transition from life to death.
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7. As summer’s vigor was subsiding, another pond lily leaf broke the surface just enough to interrupt the dark, gracefully drawn shadow of a stem of sedge. Leaf and stem in relationship, such beauty.
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8. A tangle of branches filtered the colors of dusk: blue-gray-greens, purples, and stray bits of sunny orange. Ordinary ground and branches on an ordinary day. Beautiful.
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As “The Marine Detective”said recently, “Stand for truth. Put good into the world. Know the good and beauty around you. And protect the good in yourself, and others.“
It’s been a year of turmoil, difficulty, disruption, and I hope, growth. I could run through the photo files and look for pictures that illustrate turmoil but I really don’t feel like looking at disorderly images. Instead, this is a chronology of my year, through images and minimal text. I’m not going to review the year by picking images from previous posts – these are photos I haven’t published before. (You can enlarge small images by clicking on them).
In spite of the illness and death of my dear partner Joe, there is optimism and pleasure to be found here. There’s darkness, too, and confusion. But quaint as the idea may be in 2025, beauty inspires me to push the shutter, more often than not.
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1. January 5th. A walk at dusk. The ferns sprouting from mossy rocks on the right are Licorice ferns. They go dormant in summer, revive in fall, and stay green all winter. Because of them and the many evergreen plants and trees we have, winters are practically verdant.
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2. January 27th. Cardiff State Beach, California. We planned a winter trip to Southern California that, looking back, was a brilliant idea. Day after day, we wandered up and down wide, delightful beaches. We watched sandpipers, found marvelous patterns in the sand, and enjoyed sunsets over the ocean. I didn’t know then that it would be our last vacation, a precious hiatus.
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3. Our vacation extended into early February, with a walk at the Blue Sky Ecological Reserve near San Diego, Whimbrel-watching on the beach at Dana Point, and up-close looks at Brandt’s cormorants nesting in La Jolla.
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4. In March and April I focused on wildflowers, as I always do – but it was different this year. At home, Joe was trying to figure out how to live as normally as possible while tied to an oxygen supply, day and night. His breathing had worsened, resulting in a hospital visit in March. Now I was tiptoeing around long plastic tubing at home. My mind was split between being thrilled by Spring’s fresh beauty and being scared and anxious for the future. Joe was stoic, a fighter.
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5. May, my favorite month. No matter what worries dominate our lives, we can count on the sun to rise, flowers to open, and ferns to unfold.
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6. On June 1st, Colby, Jeni, Hudson and William came up to Anacortes to join me on a whale-watching tour. It did me good to spend time with them and we had a wonderful time out on the water. The high point was when an Orca rose out of the water and slammed back down with an ear-shattering splash.
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Joe was in the hospital most of the month, first in the intensive care unit at our local hospital, then in a larger hospital 45 minutes away. In early July he was sent home – there was nothing medicine could do at that point. It was time for Hospice. Joe said he never, ever wanted to go to a hospital again. He insisted on having control over his own death. As it turned out, he was home for only four days and took his last breath on July 6th.
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7. I made these photos in the weeks following Joe’s death, on July 13th and 15th.
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8. Through the summer and fall, friends circled around me, Colby called frequently, and people I spoke to as I handled the affairs that inevitably follow a death, were kind. In August, all things considered, I was doing pretty well.
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9. September was impossibly busy. I took fewer walks and labored at home over a strangely timed house renovation and the planning of a Celebration of Life gathering for October. I didn’t get out much, but even a short walk can yield a nice image of Madrone bark. Seeing it now, I think of a ruptured, torn life. A walk up Sugarloaf Mountain exercised my lungs and legs, a good feeling. And one day I took pleasure in photographing the billowing tarps that covered part of a ship under repair at Pier 1 in town.
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10. Friends and family arrived from as far away as New York for the Celebration of Life in honor of Joe on October 12th, his birthday. It warmed my heart to see people from different parts of my life and his all together in the same room, and to listen to what they had to say. At home I burned incense. Outdoors, light seeping into dark places drew my attention.
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11. In November I struggled to get out – the weather wasn’t cooperating, I was busy, I was uninspired. But perseverance furthers, as the Chinese saying (from the I Ching?) says. A tiny mushroom on a branch transfixed me – such delicacy! A single False lily of the valley leaf stood out near a wetland. Their boldly veined, heart-shaped leaves please me even when I’m glum. Sometimes I swung the camera because I simply did not know what else to do. As far as photography goes, I felt lost. As far as my life goes, I had put the hardest things behind me and I was feeling more confident and hopeful.
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12. In December, I still feel like my mind resembles this photo I made using intentional camera movement. A lot is going on but it’s not organized at all. Everything is in flux. Stability has not yet returned, but that’s OK. As I’ve said to my friends, I’ve reinvented myself before and I can do it again.
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13. At dusk, five months to the day after Joe died, I stood on rocky Rosario Beach and watched the waves swell and retreat. I have much to be thankful for.
The stalwart old tree trunk pictured above and below belongs to a picturesque Seaside juniper (Juniperus maritima) in Washington Park, on Fidalgo Island. Notable for its geology and plants, the park spreads across 200 acres on a square-shaped peninsula on Fidalgo’s northwestern corner. Though it’s surrounded on three sides by salt water and whales sometimes glide by its shoreline, the park’s location in Puget Sound is 93 miles as the crow flies from the Pacific coastline.
Weather, salt water, and geology have created favorable conditions for some unusual species in the park. The Seaside juniper is the rarest but no one realized that until recently, when a scientific paper published in 2007 reclassified the species. Ever since Europeans rowed ashore, the gray-barked trees with scale-like foliage were called Rocky Mountain junipers (Juniperus scopulorum), the same as a juniper that grows to the east, at much higher elevations. The trees do look similar but genetic analysis revealed the two species to be distinct. Unlike Rocky Mountain junipers, Seaside junipers favor exposures near the sea, growing only in a small area from Southwestern British Columbia to the Puget Sound trough, in Washington. In Washington Park they’re scattered across open, south-facing slopes by the water, but walk a few steps away from the shoreline and junipers disappear, replaced by the region’s ubiquitous Douglas firs.
Pacific madrones (Arbutus menziesii) also grow well on open, south-facing slopes near the water, and the two species can be seen together at the park. They make interesting companions aesthetically – the juniper with its rough, gray, striated bark contrasting with the madrone’s smooth, orange, wavy branches. You can see them behaving like conjoined twins in the small photo below, from a few years ago. When Seaside junipers reach a venerable age, they usually have attractive moss and lichen “accessories” adorning their nooks and crannies. Their furrowed branches can bulge like oversized arthritic knuckles, and dead branches stick out every which way. Even branches that drop to the ground have a way of settling into the grass and looking perfectly at home, especially when the grass has gone pale in the cold months of the year.
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On a November outing with friends, the golden leaves of a Pacific willow (Salix lucida ssp. lasiandra) growing by a lake at Deception Pass State park drew us in for a closer look. Yellow leaves are a tonic for the eyes on gray days. Backing away, I saw the repeating shapes of slender, oval leaves and wiry stems as a flat plane of color and line. That was my thought when I photographed the willow.
A wetland on the other end of the lake had an interesting mix of shrubs. The yellow leaves probably belonged to more willows. Small trees were shrouded in fuzzy, light green lichens, and many stick-like reeds crowded the bigger plants. The subtle autumn tapestry of color was attractive, but it wasn’t easy to translate into a photograph. The colors were repeated in more sombre hues on the caps of a cozy group of mushrooms I found in a dense, quiet forest two weeks later. As the solstice neared and the days shortened, the botanical palette was losing vibrancy but gaining subtlety.
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A madrone branch closeup (below) from early December revealed an especially subtle array of hues. This photograph, taken on a darkly overcast day when raindrops clung to twig tips, shows the cooler side of madrones – but the tree’s typical warm hues still peak through. I used a prime lens that I’ve found to be good in low light, moving close enough to zero in on some indentations in the bark that echoed a gentle wave of the edge of the branch.
The soft curve of a dead branch (right, below) is something I had noticed ten minutes earlier. Maybe curves were on my mind – they often are. In the photo on the left, soft curves mark the water-worn roots of a large driftwood log. That huge, heavy log has been in place for years, long enough for lichens to take hold. You may know that the yellow-green streaks on the wood are lichens, but the white patches are actually lichens, too. Driftwood rim-lichen (Lecanora xylophila) is a crustose lichen, which just means it forms a crust, in this case on driftwood. A fungal layer attaches the lichen to the wood, an algal layer is above it, and a cortex is on top. If you look closely or use a hand lens, you can see many attractive, chestnut-brown, roughly round discs dotting the white cortex of the lichen. The discs are apothecia, spore-bearing reproductive structures that allow the fungus to reproduce by dispersing tiny spores via wind or water. I included a photo from several years ago that shows the apothecia.
A grand sweep of shapes is interesting, the subtleties of different hues are beautiful, and the tiniest details can be fascinating. All we need to do is look and appreciate it all.
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Here at 48° 44′ N, the winter months are full of cloudy days. The same can be said for late fall and early spring so we have to find ways to bear it. Perhaps even embrace it. The photo below, of a forest reflected in a lake, was taken in early November at 4:19pm. The two photos under it were taken a month later around the same time, back at Washington Park. The murky, shadowy, in-between nature of that almost-dusk time of day can bring up sadness, but look how beautiful it can be.
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Maybe it’s all just a field of sensations, I thought. Always sensations. We are bundles of sensations: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting – even thinking is so often sensation-based. We exist as sensing beings among other sensing beings in a world of motion, from invisible, constantly vibrating particles to perpetually turning planets and expanding galaxies. Shimmering sensations enter our consciousness and create entire worlds, one after the other, after the other. This is our personal world, our field of being. Sometimes it’s delicious, sometimes it’s terrible. Sensations are where we begin. And end.
1. Threatening clouds above a massive glacier at Vatnajökull National Park, seen from the Ring Road.
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Mile after mile, the wild, empty landscape of South Iceland unspooled its magic. Jagged mountains leaned in like formidable eminences grises, fat sheep grazed in tawny fields, ancient blocks of lava reached darkly toward the sea. Spaciousness reigns in Iceland, especially in the South. One feels that the land answers to no one. A volcano erupts and a town shutters. A bridge is built and washes away – again. Sulphur colors the ground in strange hues that jump skyward as rainbows.
You know you’re small here. Life snaps back into proper perspective.
As we headed southwest on Route 1 that September, the weeks Joe and I had spent driving past land that was often barely inhabited were building to a climax. Our rhythm had been to follow the road and natural daylight more than any imposed schedule. We were usually outdoors, in the car, or asleep. Food choices were simple, in fact, all our choices were. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the abundance we have at home. But eliminating 90% of the picking and choosing that occupies so much of our time can be a healthy move.
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To untangle the knotted threads of busy lives takes time and openness to change. Largely occupying ourselves with indoor tasks, often on electronic devices, we hanker after rough edges, unfinished textures, the scent of earth. I think this is true for many people but I can only speak for myself. In Iceland, for me the scales were swinging back into balance with every inhalation of sharp, clean air, each step on rock-strewn, boundaryless beaches.
Iceland’s Ring Road, locally known as Route 1, offers a plethora of pleasures, one of which is being in the presence of glaciers. When I saw the first one out the car window, I wanted to get out and fly to the edge of it. What was that long, pale mound of old ice like up close? Such unmistakable grandeur the frozen beast possessed! There was nothing friendly or intimate about it – and nothing manmade, either. It was a landscape to be present for, not one to scroll quickly past on social media.
But before the ice, let’s see a softer and perhaps stranger landscape…
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Clouds glowered and lightened by turns. Perhaps it was the work of the Huldufólk, the island’s hidden people, those cunning, supernatural beings inhabiting a parallel universe in Iceland’s unpredictable landscape. We were headed to Reynisfjara, the famous black sand beach, when we noticed peculiar, greenish lumps everywhere, on both sides of the road. Curious, we looked for a place to stop, soon finding a side road leading to a dirt road. The world grew quiet once we shut the engine and got out. There was scarcely any sign of human habitation. What was this place? We’d never seen anything like it, not in books or online. And certainly not in person.
We slowly eased into the terrain, marveling at the moss-shrouded rocks that seemed to reach all the way to a glacier looming on the horizon. It was at once Lilliputian and extravagant. Shiny, black berries glinted on plants draped over mossy blankets. The bulbous shapes, the fine texture of the moss and the little plants huddled in crevices were enchanting. With no thought of time, I lost myself in a strange world.
7. This mat of moss has enough water for Crowberries (Empetrum nigrum), or krækiber, to take root, grow, and fruit. Crowberries are circumpolar and are eaten by birds, animals, and traditionally by indigenous people. They’re still picked in Iceland but aren’t as popular as blueberries or bilberries.
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Eventually I learned that those undulating lumps of moss cover an immense old lava field. In the 1780s, multiple eruptions heaved lava across 218 square miles (565 sq km). The historic Laki Craters eruptions spewed poisonous chemicals that wreaked havoc on Iceland’s crops and livestock, resulting in famine. A sulphuric haze reached far south and descended on Great Britain and Western Europe, causing thousands of deaths there. The eruptions may have affected India’s monsoons and caused one of North America’s worst winters ever. It was “one of the most important climatic and socially significant natural events of the last millennium.” (Wikipedia)
Iceland isn’t called the Land of Fire and Ice for nothing!
The eruptions scattered an enormous wasteland of sharp, black lava chunks across South Iceland. Over time, the bizarre landscape that stopped us in our tracks was created, thanks to a plant called Wooly fringe moss (Racomitrium lanuginosum). As a pioneer plant, it can grow and thrive on bare lava rock. Because the moss grows very slowly, a hard step on those plump, inviting pillows can destroy a century’s growth. I instinctively sensed that walking on the moss wasn’t a good idea but I was tempted!
Eldhraun – firelava in Icelandic – was a revelation. We hadn’t seen references to Eldhraun when we planned our trip, which meant we were free from preconceptions. That innocence bestowed on us the thrill of discovery, which in turn connected us to the landscape more intimately than if we had known about it. Traveler’s luck!
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Guides to South Iceland always reccommend seeing Jökulsárlón, an iceberg-filled glacial lagoon. The parking lot is beside Jökulsárlón’s narrow outlet to the sea. As we approached the area I could see dozens of tourists lining up by the water, competing for the best view. Tangled knots of cars and RV’s strained to enter or exit the parking lot.
This was not our scene.
Luckily, the guidebook I had mentions a smaller glacier lagoon just down the road. Easy decision! Fifteen minutes later the two of us were peacefully sitting on the rocks at Fjallsárlón, watching icebergs float away from an immense glacier called Fjallsjökull (“jökull” means glacier). There were only a few other tourists around the lagoon. We were quietly transported to an icy, otherworldly realm where rakish icebergs rested almost motionless in a mirror-still lake, their sharp angles mimicking the mountains behind them. Across the lagoon the glacier loomed large and glorious.
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I squinted at the jagged patterns on its deeply fissured surface: dark, sooty cuts, flanks of tropical turquoise, washes of palest gray – this ice seemed far more alive than a clear cube in a glass. There was a feeling of movement, a march toward the water or a slump down into it. It was some other entity: elemental, ancient, unknowable.
That glacier is an outlet glacier of Iceland’s largest glacier, Vatnajökull, which occupies 8% of the island. Again, Iceland is the land of fire and ice! Underneath this immense cap of ice are volcanos. Imagine what happens when one erupts under all that frozen water – it melts the ice, big time! The floods create lakes under the ice that can burst through, like they did in 1996, when 38 days passed before the water from a major eruption finally broke through the ice. Part of Route 1 was obliterated and the flow was so big that for a few days it was second in size only to the Amazon River.
As the sun sunk lower in the sky that afternoon, massive floods were far from my mind. I was mesmerized by the unlikely turquoise glow inside a huge, triangular hunk of ice resting quietly on the lake’s surface. The icebergs seemed to be full of possibility. Change is inevitable, isn’t it? I wondered how long it takes for the icebergs to melt, to change visibly. How long does it take for one to float into outlet stream and out to the sea? Beside me, tiny, bright yellow Saxifrage plants displayed the last flowers of the season between gray and russet cobbles. Joe and I barely spoke, not wanting to break the spell. Looking at the picture I took of him now, I wonder what was going through his mind.
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Iceland rewards the curious. Graced by wonder after wonder, I was captivated. Traveling across a sparsely populated land, meeting warm, honorable people, and experiencing a myriad of uncommon natural wonders was an unforgettable experience. Here’s a slideshow that hopefully offers a taste of the island’s charisma.
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That’s all from Iceland for now. Next up will be a look at late autumn on Fidalgo Island.
1. Stacked like building blocks, columnar basalt forms an extraordinary backdrop to Svartifoss.
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Two years ago Joe and I circled Iceland on the Ring Road and immersed ourselves in a unique culture and landscape for three unforgettable weeks. With its raw power and strikingly dramatic features, the landscape alone is reason enough to visit Iceland, but for us, meeting Icelanders made the experience far more meaningful than just visiting attraction after attraction. Over the course of a thousand years of human occupation, a unique culture manifested in Iceland. Life was rigorous in a place where arable land is scarce, winters are long, and the weather is challenging. A strong national identity resulted from years of hardships shared by the relatively small number of people who lived on this isolated island.
Now the post-pandemic spike in tourism threatens all that makes Iceland unique. Realizing how much could be lost, Icelanders are striving to preserve their traditions and protect the island’s extraordinary landscape. We admired the proud, un-pretentious, gracious nature of residents we met. I’m sorry I didn’t photograph more people going about their daily business; most of my photos show the landscape. But there are many ways to get a taste of Icelandic culture. Read some Icelandic sagas or Nordic noir novels, watch Gylfi’s videos, or better yet, go there yourself.
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2. Dreaming of the South Coast.
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Our itinerary began at the capitol city of Reykjavik and took us in the opposite direction from South Iceland. Heading north, we spent four stimulating days on the Snaefellsness peninsula, sleeping at a traditional guesthouse. Our room overlooked the backyard garden of a woman who checked on her chickens in a head-to-toe, pink bunny suit. We visited extraordinary yellow and black sand beaches and chatted with a man from Columbia who ran a small town cafe. That espresso was good! Driving farther north, we stayed in countryside guesthouses and explored Iceland’s second city, Akureyri, a place whose name twisted my tongue. We learned about the trails of very short growing seasons from a gardener at the botanical garden. I waited for a half-hour at a cafe for the coffee beans to be flown in from Reykjavik, and yes, it was worth the wait because I met wonderful people. We took a small ferry to tiny island, hiked hilly trails along the edges of fjords, and inhaled the warm, sulfurous stink of geothermal vents. Then we traveled east and south, tracing a zig-zag route through picturesque fishing towns huddled at the ends of fjords, where ice-cold water slapped the black slopes of forbidding mountains. Any of these regions – west, north, east – would have been more than enough. But on our final push across the south of Iceland and back up to Rekyavik, we encountered the most impressive scenery of our trip.
Every day, my camera clicked away but it was never as busy as my eyes! Whether hiking up and down hills or coursing across rugged landscapes in the car, my eyes were taking in far more than my camera could keep up with. I wanted to write a note each night to narrate the gaps between photographs. I should have written about how good it felt to be in a landscape that humans had hardly altered, how exciting it was to experience patterns writ large – giant blocks of stone, waves wider than I could see. But sleep always called my name too soon. The sensory impressions, spontaneous conversations, and countless surprises weave about like layers of filmy curtains in my mind now. Joe is gone and I can’t rely on his memory to bring the trip’s details back to life. I’m grateful for each picture I took of him in Iceland. I’m glad I published a stack of posts about the trip after we got home, too. Looking at them again, the thrill is rekindled. It’s time to go back and see a little more…
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3. Here is another rendition of Svartifoss. “Foss” is Icelandic for waterfall. It has a nice onomatopoeic quality, with the “sss” sound that water makes. “Svart” as German speakers will easily guess, is “black” in Icelandic.
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4. Hundafoss is a smaller waterfall that can be seen from the trail to Svartifoss. Learning that “foss” means waterfall and memorizing other Icelandic words like “fjall” for mountain and “kirkja” for church made the trip more rewarding. The effort to separate the syllables in typically long, Icelandic words helped me feel less like a stranger.
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As we approached Reynisfjara from the east, the landscape popped out of the horizon as if it was just hatched, hinting at the wonders ahead. One of Iceland’s premiere attractions, Reynisfjara is a black sand beach fronted by spectacular basalt formations. Sea stacks just off shore add to the drama. Tourists are greeted by signs printed with bold warnings not to turn your back on the water because unpredictable sneaker waves have swept people out to sea. As you might expect, the signs don’t stop tourists from posing on the rocks for their Instagram feeds.
A giant fan of columnar basalt that looks like a movie set is evidence of Iceland’s “Land of Fire and Ice” reputation. These formations result from hot lava cooling unevenly and cracking into joints that intersect with other joints when tensile energy is released. The variety of forms let loose by long-ago geological events was astounding. Drinking in and delighting in the patterns and shapes, I forgot about the other tourists. I was in a world of my own.
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10. Reynisfjara’s sea stacks interrupt the horizon with fearsome force.
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Part 1 finishes with a slideshow of rock patterns and shapes. Most are from South Iceland and some are from other regions. #7 shows patterns of deposits on the ground next to a geyser. #12 and 13 illustrate a variety of lichens inhabiting rocks.
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Note: I’ve ordered the photographs to tell a story about South Iceland’s landscapes, so they’re not in geographical order. If you traced our actual route from East Iceland to South Iceland, you would visit the Fjallsarlon Glacier Lagoon and Diamond Beach first, then Svartifoss, the Eldhraun Lava Field, and finally Reynesfjara, with its spectacular columnar basalt formations and black beach.
Most visitors don’t have time to drive all the way around Iceland. They approach South Iceland from the capitol, Reykjavik. Busloads of tourists leave every day headed for South Iceland, disgorging tourists at several different sites and returning to Reykjavik by nightfall. People who have several weeks usually choose the Ring Road, traveling either clockwise or counterclockwise. Arguments can be made for either choice – we went clockwise and were tired by the time we reached South Iceland. But beginning our trip north of the capitol took us to a quieter region with small villages and striking scenery. It was good to begin with a taste of small town Icelandic life. If we had gone the other direction, we would have seen South Iceland first and would not have spent time in towns. The region has always been sparsely populated because harsher conditions there make farming and getting around very difficult. South Iceland’s economy is very tourist-driven these days. Other regions invite tourism but also depend on fishing and energy-related industries. If I go back – and I would love to – I’d want to see the West Fjords, explore more of East Iceland, and visit the Central Highlands, which are only accessible in the summer using 4WD vehicles. Dream on, Lynn!
