“I finish my wash and take sunset tea in the doorway of my tent, watching the rivers drink the light… Figures dark beneath their loads pass down the far bank of the river, rendered immortal by the streak of sunset upon their shoulders”
― Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

Only, this is not a river but the ocean ‘drinking the light’. Dear friend, if you are not in a rush, come with me. Put away your footwear. Put away your apprehensions. And step on the gentle sand where incoming tides are bristling with child-like innocence and energy. Do you hear, the breaking waves are humming the paradisal hymn? See that big wave rushing in like a glissando going low? Allow it to be silly and play all around your feet. As it recedes, the grounds beneath you shift. Your senses tingle. Matthiessen’s ‘streak of sunset upon (your) shoulders’ shepherds your scattered thoughts, while the southern wind flutters them. In the far sky, time fades. Within this moment –this fierce moment– eternity is no longer an abstract yearning. It bears you.

Tags:   PantherBeach SantaCruz California CaliforniaCoast Sunset Sunset colors SunsetReflections Ramen Saha Desaturation ManuallyBlendedPanorama

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Poets say you are a living being (Nan Shepherd) but have no meaning because you yourself are the meaning (Peter Matthiessen), and within you –perhaps in a ‘motionless turmoil’– lie all the answers (William Stafford). At a glance, you appear stoic to some and savage to others, irresistible to conquerors but deserted to the ostentatious. Being of such varied reputation, I have often wondered what kind of a being you really are.

Let me tell you what I think.

I think, you are like all of us… a beautiful poem that is caressed mostly by dust. Your core may be all rocks, but your soul is diaphanous – like the air that sustains it. You let your glaciers rip and carry bits of you to faraway ports that your silence cannot reach. Because it does not rain in your frozen world, you can’t cry. Therefore, when melancholy comes, you clutch the darkness within, and wrench it to seethe up clouds and obliterate the world. Your clouds are your tears.

I wish I could quit the running sans destination and instead be like you. I wish I could be with you. When Time will let me return to dust, I will come home to you as ashes. Until then, please safekeep echoes of my soul in cirques of your rocks and poems.

PS:
Irrelevant information for photographers:
The following books were referred above:
1. ‘The Living Mountain’ by Nan Shepherd
2. ‘The Snow Leopard’ by Peter Matthiessen
3. ‘The Answers Are Inside the Mountains’ by William Stafford

Irrelevant information for folks of words:
The image is a stitched panorama of two diagonally-overlapping images shot from a small aircraft.

Tags:   Wrangell-St.EliasNationalPark Wrangell-St.Elias AerialPhotography Glacier Mountain Clouds Ramen Saha WrangellMountains Alaska

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First things first about this image… no, I have not Photoshopped in the pink hues. They are real... as genuine as the curious wonderment they may have evoked in you.

Want to know more? Sure, but I will need three minutes of your precious time… wanna trade? Nothing’s for free, my friend. I will give you my story, if you give me your time.

If you are still reading, you have likely chosen to trade. Well then, thank you for your time! I know you have many places and things to spend your time on; appreciate you choosing this little mote of creativity to do so today.

Alright, alright… here’s the story.

The plan was to view a Maine sunset from the highest point in the land, the Cadillac mountain, an old shield volcano right by the ocean. NPS has strictly limited the visitation here citing parking issues, which is all fine for the crowd factor, but is a nasty yank on the trip planning aspect. Undeterred, I secured passes for this evening three months in advance with the hope of seeing the Acadian Atlantic get drunk on some sweet sunset nectar. However, on that day, up there on the highs of the beautiful Cadillac mountain, an armada of clouds sauntered in. Yes, yes… clouds don’t always roll, they sometimes amble, as fishes sometimes fly. Our cloud of the day was thick, moist, and relentless in restricting the visibility to a few palms (new unit for metrics as my feet were not always clearly visible then). Dejection hung effortlessly in those misty clouds like a nagging nuisance. Forget viewing the nearby Atlantic, I could barely tell if all the surrounding vegetation was swaying to the chilly wind or to my frustrations.

Then something happened.

The sun, somewhere out there in the west, sank below the horizon. And the cloud, like an eager toddler, latched on to some of the prettiest colors in the palette. First, it turned soft yellow, then a pale orange, and ultimately an unapologetic pink (above). You see, the cloud was purloining the setting sun's gifts for the dying day. And I was right in the middle of that steal! Feeling it on my skin, kneading it in my bones. I was inhaling that fleeting apparition and letting the ethereal air diffuse past my lungs deep into aphotic depths where my words don’t reach. About then, I was colored identically as the mountain, the cloud, and the moment. In Cadillac.

Yeah, that’s why I said what I said in the title.

Did you like the story? Want to tip me for entertaining you? Alright, I will gratefully accept a minute or two more of your time, which you could spend looking at the above image. Just be warned, like me, you too could get splashed and spoiled in Cadillac.

Tags:   CadillacMountain Acadia AcadiaNationalPark NationalPark Fall FallColors Cloud Sunset Sunset colors Ramen Saha MountDesertIsland BarHarbor

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“The lake waters
come for us
at first
with slow unassuming
ripples,
then in earnest.”
~Tim Stouffer

You may or may not have heard about these gems of wilderness areas in northern Minnesota west of Lake Superior, which on our maps, go by ‘Voyageurs National Park’ and the nearby 'Boundary Waters Wilderness'. National Geographic keeps naming them as one of the top few wilderness places to experience for reasons such as viewing Northern Lights, paddling one or more of 1200 plus island-dotted lakes (many interconnected), abundant fishing, houseboating, or just finding peace a few layers of silence away from the cacophony of city life. Let me tell ya… it is a wild place! It is an utterly mesmerizing place!

In recent times, you may or may not have heard about the historic flood in this area. Due to late snow melt and excessive spring rain, the water level in Voyageurs lakes have swelled past all previous marks, wreaking havoc and devastation in nearby communities. Many properties (including cabins and boat-docks) are under water. The state deployed national guards in late May, who are still working around the clock with local volunteers to sandbag properties in a near futile attempt to keep the water out. This flood is one of those national tragedies that has been deemed unsuitable for national news.

Not to divagate, you may or may not have heard that Rishabh and I were recently at Voyageurs. The resort at Kabetogama lake, where we booked our cabin nine months ago, went under water in mid-May forcing us to find last minute lodging in a subpar nearby hotel. The Rainy Lake visitor center closed a couple of days after our visit; the raised corridors in the boat launch area behind the visitor center, that we walked on a few days ago, are now deluged and closed to visitors. While there for two days, we saw the water rising slowly but surely. It was surreal. At a glance, everything was calm on the surface; after a moment of reconciliation however, everything looked displaced. Under the raising water, streets were a sliver of themselves as debris marked their borders. Houses and properties were sandbagged as if they were war trenches. Wild animals, who had lost their grounds in the interiors to the incoming water, were often seen ambling (or, sometimes joyfully playing) in roadside water puddles. While shooting the above photo from the barely-dry middle of a flooded road just outside the national park boundary, a few deer came within a few feet and behaved as shy children in the wake of a stranger –– repeatedly coming close and running away in haste, splashing water all along. I wish they were included in the above scene, but I was technically ill-equipped to shoot fast moving subjects in dying light. Nonetheless, watching them play in the tapestry of the wild waters was a frisson of excitement and a reward in itself.

Tags:   Voyageurs VoyageursNationalPark NationalPark RainyLake Rainy InternationalFalls Minnesota Ramen Saha Sunset SunsetReflections

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That edge –that beautiful edge– is a philosophical reality where dimensions of my existence collapse all around me like a thunderous waterfall.

Tags:   SunwaptaFalls JasperNationalPark Jasper Ramen Saha Rock Water Waterfall Desaturation SunwaptaRiver Alberta Canada

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