Past midnight, the darkness all around dripped like liquid tar and the chilly air bit deep into everything like a livid canine. Spools of low inimical clouds crawled all over the lake trying to impose their melancholy on her. Instead they stirred the lake into a poignant melody that rose from her lips and raised up her philtrum into the thick air where it became visible to human eyes as steam fog. As the fog rubbed against my skin, its wet coldness reminded me of anxious human palms. In utter darkness, the soft splashing of her waves against shore rocks sounded like a tender longing. Amidst these elements that besiege sanity – like manikin clouds trapped on mountain slopes – I stood inebriated by the immortal lake and her pleas to melt with the darkness.
Tags: Lake LakeSiskiyou Night photography LightPollution Clouds SteamFog Fog FrostSmoke LightPainting Long exposure Water Ramen Saha
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“The rocks, the air, everything speaking with audible voice or silent; joyful, wonderful, enchanting, banishing weariness and sense of time. No longing for anything now or hereafter…”
–John Muir (My first summer in the Sierra)
The Wawona tunnel view is the iconic Yosemite overlook, visited by an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 people per day during the height of the tourist season (NPS website). It was therefore somewhat of a mild disbelief to see the dark overlook totally deserted on my way to the valley from the glacier point. It was past midnight and the air was filled with smoky whiff of several ongoing forest fires ignited by recent lightning strikes in the valley. Past the valley, behind the cathedral rocks, the waning gibbous moon sauntered towards the sky full of shy stars, revealing the swirling mist all around. The dreamy mist pampered those iconic granite peaks poignantly. Slowly, faint psalms of nearby waterfalls grew in my ears as the rest fell silent. The silence was everything he said it would be; ‘enchanting, banishing weariness and sense of time’. It also banished inherent urges to fit in with people, places, situations and times. As time meandered along that moonlit amphitheater of mind-numbing silence, the peace felt equally real and ethereal. Existential desires tamed down like a mountain creek in a meadow as his words echoed somewhere nearby in mute silence… ‘no longing for anything now or hereafter…', only wanting to ‘...cuddle down on the forest floor and die like the leaves and flowers, and like them leave no unsightly remains calling for burial’.
Tags: YosemiteNationalPark Yosemite TunnelView WawonaTunnelView Moonlight Valley YosemiteValley Ramen Saha JohnMuir GibbousMoon Night photography CathedralRocks NationalPark
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I'm not who I was
or, will be someday
I’m in now, as smoke
Hankering for
air…
Diffused and ruined
in moments of life
That snap my breath
away…
Tags: Infrared InfraredPhotography 690mm 690mmI-RayIRFilter SuperstitionMountain LostDutchmanStatePark Arizona PaloVerde ParkinsoniaMicrophylla Moon Ramen Saha TreasureLoopTrail Desert ApacheJunction
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You learn to take your coffee black
You learn to drink your whiskey neat
You learn to scourge the throbbing pain
Silently choking the heartbeat.
You learn to fall asleep alone
You learn to silence ticking clocks
You learn to sleep in a fetal pose
avoiding the dream and all it mocks.
You learn to speak so calmly when
Your heart would like to scream and shout
You learn to stop, and breathe, and smile
You learn to live without.
You learn, there is no shining knight
Your hero is you and your tears
And not to count the deadly days
As they fade into years.
You still die a bit when
the mind strums and plays her song
You still can’t understand
how giving it your all was so wrong.
But, You learn to stand alone at last
So brave, and bold, and strong, and stout
And then learn to live… again…
You learn to live without.
PS: Certain songs mess with the mind more than others. “You learn to live without” by Idina Menzel – quoted above in fragments and filled in with my nonsense – messed with mine more than those usual messy songs and kept playing in my head during our recent trip to the beautiful PNW. So, here we go…
Tags: OlympicNationalPark LaPush SecondBeach PNW Washington NationalPark SeaStacks Long exposure Sea Rock Water Air Ramen Saha Solitude Forks
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According to Kootenei Indian fables from Montana, gods have designated a special place for all people to dance. This place is secluded – much alike their genealogically isolated Ktunaxa language – and remains hidden to many, including those who stumble right upon it. Kootenei people say, it takes a special state of mind to see this place. Unless you are ready to quit the comfort of your cavern, you won’t see it. Unless you are ready to dance, you won’t see it. Kootenei Indians call it Ya.kiⱡ Haqwiⱡnamki – the place where they dance.
I did not know or care about a dancing place that other day when rain had soaked me silly and I was ready to reel into my cavern. The drive from Great Falls to that place was littered in clouds. The torrent came and went but the dampness stayed. On such cloudy days, as the inside gets gloomy, it is an inherent nature of thoughts to convene quietly – like stars at dusk – and tangle up into a mystified dimension. Trying to vie away from such wet and uncomfortable thoughts, I focused on the scene in front of me. Hanging low over the reflective lake were shadows of two mountains – Sinopah and Rising Wolf – that were likely lovers long ago but turned to stone waiting for the other to relent. Behind them were other mountains conversing loudly with the taciturn sky veiled in cold clouds. Suddenly, breaking the gloom, a shaft of stormy light sneaked into the scene and faintly illuminated Sinopah's peak and my mood. Those tangled thoughts metamorphosed into truth of a newer order where one is acutely aware of – but, is in peace with – disorders within. Now, all felt well and I wanted to… dance!
You see, I had found my Ya.kiⱡ Haqwiⱡnamki and I really wanted to dance!
Tags: TwoMedicineLake GlacierNationalPark NationalPark Lake Water Reflection Reflections Montana SinopahMountain RisingWolfMountain Sunset Stormy day Ramen Saha Ya.kiⱡHaqwiⱡnamki
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