Waterfalls are acoustic. Some roar, some sing, and a few weep. Every waterfall I know expresses themself using airwaves. Therefore, my ritual of visiting them is to set aside some listening time to hear what they have to say. An exception happened the other day when I met McWay in Big Sur. The exception was not with my ritual, but how the tidefall conveyed herself. She let the ocean speak instead. No matter how hard I tried, all I heard was the ocean’s grumblings. McWay – like Time – kept flowing and had nothing audible to say. And like Time, her mute beauty was incessant... eternal.
Talking about Time, how it flows! My beloved little wing-man turns nine soon. As he grows, he gives me reasons and excuses to grow with him as his everyday ally at home and in our travels together. Times I share with him remind me of times I have shared with my dad. Woods, rain, chirping birds, blooming flowers, moonrises, sunsets, stars, Milky-way… life flows on like beautiful waterfalls. It is a true privilege to pass on these endowments from dad to my son unadulterated and smeared with love.
To Rishabh, I say: Thank you for being such a kind and sensitive human being. Like McWay, we must keep flowing, whether our voices are audible or not. Time changes everything, yet it can’t touch a few songs deep within. Yes Rishabh, just as nine years ago, it’s still the same – you are why I am.
Tags: McWay McWayFalls BigSur JuliaPfeifferBurnsStatePark CentralCaliforniaCoast Carmel PacificOcean Sunset Ramen Saha Waterfall California
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“Nen is mindfulness, attention to the present with a quality of vibrant awareness, as if this present moment were one’s last.”
– Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
Prologue: Somewhere near the famed Monument Valley tribal park, a little piece of Mars masquerades as a pilgrimage for photographers. Images shared by past pilgrims have simultaneously warned and espoused my curiosity to experience this place with my own senses. I was keenly aware that the journey to this place is as rough as it gets, but the destination is what the eye craves and the brain disbelieves – a citadel of magnanimous mythical beauty that – as Matthiessen said – one truly sees by not trying to see. Researching the route and the tour initially, I morosely accepted that this trip was not meant for our dad-son duo – one, the ride seemed too challenging for my eight year old, and two, ogres are not supposed to be near such beautiful places.
Ah yes. But, thoughts change. After some deliberation and consultation with some of you here on flickr (thank you!), the mind was now ready –– Hey you, here we come!
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The Journey: After cannonading through sand, boulders, washes and hills for an hour, the revving 4X4 vehicle came to a brief stop like a bleeding bull from a Spanish bullfight. In front was a four-five feet high almost vertical slick-rock wall that seemed more like the end of a blind alley rather than the way forward. As if hissing off its painful banderillas, the 4X4 bull revved louder. It was about to climb up that vertical wall! The driver softly said, 'hold on!' and pressed the gas. Instinctively, I reached over from the back to Rishabh in the front passenger seat and held his head tightly as a makeshift helmet. I was certain, in its attempt to climb the wall, the 4X4 would certainly turn over into the deep ravine.
It didn’t.
However, after such gravity-defying climbs, the air thickly percolated with smell of burnt rubber. The driver-guide said, this vehicle requires new tires quite often, sometime every other month during tourist season.
But this was ‘off-season’, when everything was cold. Bitterly cold. After a sunny morning, cold clouds had moved in with their nefarious gloom.
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The Mesa: Hunt’s mesa is privately owned tribal land where the owner has approved only three Navajo tour operators to commercially operate within his property at the rate of $10 per visitor. While restricted permission is good for the frail ecology of this high-desert land, however, such limited supply to an ever increasing tourism demand has inflated tour prices; I have flown cross-country for a few dollars less than what this trip costed us. But pecuniary thoughts were the last thing on my mind when we reached the ‘camp’ on the mesa top. Weak sunbeams permeating through thick clouds were playing hide and seek with the vista and my mind. To tell you the truth, I was simultaneously exulted and humbled. The incoming snowstorm, that would later deposit a foot of snow overnight, forced us to abandon our plans of staying late. But we still had an hour or two to remain in the Nen, which was by then masquerading as the Zen.
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Epilogue: I stood at the edge of a protruding sandstone slab and tried to feel the silence of the above scene consciously. Interweaved with the wind’s occasional chortle, I could hear my deep relaxed inhalations. They say, ethereal beauty palliates mortal hearts and minds of their sufferings. I say, it liberates them too.
Tags: Hunt'sMesa MonumentValley Utah Arizona Tse'Bii'Ndzisgaii Sandstone Landscape Clouds TribalPark NavajoNations RedRock Ramen Saha
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Somewhere in the Kailua-Kona coast, a dangerous beauty lurks quietly. Called a sinkhole, blow hole, or lava tube, this open-ended natural conduit connects the ocean with the coastal Hualālai volcano lava flow as a ‘well’. An incoming wave rushes through this channel and pumps out hundreds of gallons of frothy sea-water, which soon after, recedes right back into the sinkhole forming several temporary enticing waterfalls. Occasionally, a random monster wave gushes up water all around to knee deep and poses a real threat to anyone nearby of being swept right into the hole and the purgatory beyond it. Despite these risks, many photographers seek and glorify such danger and the adrenaline rush they get from messing with it. Well then, now was my turn to get a shot of the ‘well’ adrenaline for myself.
After driving an hour from another part of the island, Rishabh and I reached this ‘beach’ 15 minutes before sunset. Two tripoded gentlemen, who made it easy to locate the otherwise camouflaged sinkhole quickly, occupied the best seats for the sunset-show. “Be careful, those rocks are very slippery”, one of them kindly warned me as I tried to squeeze myself into some sort of a decent view, all-the-while wishing for their prime spot. By the time they left, the sun had long set and the menacing twilight was all there was left. Other than the occasional whitish froth in the sink, I could barely see anything else with my naked eyes. The darkness – thickly dissolved in stillness of the air – prompted mild trepidation. However, the anxiety was kept at bay by the fuzzy acoustics of sea-water churning in the well – the siren’s song if you will.
Asking Rishabh to stay far back, I kept shooting, hoping sincerely that all monster waves stay away. The ocean obliged but only partially. Once, a semi-monster wave came in and drowned me up to eight inches above my ankle. As the wave receded, I felt the intense pull of the ocean in my legs. For a brief second, I didn’t know what I would do, if the grip of my hiking boots on those slippery rocks failed. Thankfully, it didn’t. I ended up returning with my dose of adrenaline, a few decent shots of the sinkhole, and fine memories of fiddling with a beauty that knows how to kill.
Tags: Sinkhole Blowhole Kailua-Kona Hawaii Hawaiʻi Limu BigIsland WawaloliBeach WawaloliBeachPark KeaholePointBlowhole Ramen Saha Twilight Twilight Reflections Ocean Sunset Sunset colors SunsetReflections
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Sea level. 2:30PM. Kahului, Maui. “So much cloud!”, I thought as we get in the car to visit Haleakalā National Park. The Haleakalā peak is shrouded behind a thick cloud bank. I fear, our trip will be in vain to a gloomy peak.
3000 feet. 3:00PM. We travel through a rich canopy of vegetation where Hawaiʻian spring is in full tropical bloom. Flowers of all colors are on display. The peak is still shrouded in clouds.
7000 feet. 4:00PM. Park Headquarters Visitor Center. The switchbacks are dizzying. So, we get out of the car to acclimatize with the rapid gain in elevation. As is my custom, I chat up the ranger at the visitor center front desk. The ranger tells me to expect clear conditions at the peak because the cloud bank remains suspended around 8000 feet. She says, “Stay for the sunset. It will be good.”
8500 feet. 4:30PM. Roadside brief stop. The vista here gets very moody as clouds swirl past us. It feels much colder as well (usually, 3ºF drop for every 1000 feet of elevation gain). Rishabh rolls down the window to catch some cloud. As he tries, our car fills up with wet fog. Wish, I could get out of the car to shoot the Hitchcock-ian atmosphere, but the narrow road forbids.
10,023 feet. 5:30PM. Puʻuʻulaʻula summit. Brilliant sunshine all around! I see tens of people in shorts and flipflops cringing in the cold. Rishabh and I pull our jackets on. The view of the famed massive shield volcano with unreal Mars like surface is impressive. At $5 per shot, I make some cryptic dollars shooting photos for families on their phones and tablets. Park advisories remind us that the air is very thin at this elevation and we should avoid exertion. I am breathing deeper and faster. Thin air or adrenaline from the grand view? Don’t know.
9324 feet. 6:45PM. Kalahaku overlook. The sunrise at Haleakalā is one of the top draws for Maui visitors. Because of the high demand, NPS offers limited tickets for vehicles to enter the park between 3-7 AM. I tried obtaining one online on three consecutive days, but those 80 odd tickets per day disappear in about 20 seconds of the sales opening at the .gov site. No sunrise for us! But, the ranger's assurance rings in my ears: “Stay for the sunset. It will be good.” So we stay back with about a dozen more people scattered thinly over the parking lot. Slowly, the tired sun-god – La – dips into the same bank of wet fog at 8500 feet, which Rishabh had caught a bit earlier. May be it’s just the elevation or it is lack of oxygen in my brain… everything around us feels insanely peaceful! Right in front of us, as legends promise, Maui – the mischievous demigod of Polynesian folklore – lassoes La for the day and takes him behind curtains.
Tags: Maui Sunset Sunset colors Sunburst Haleakalā HaleakalāNationalPark NationalPark Hawaiʻi Clouds Ramen Saha KalahakuOverlook Haleakala HaleakalaNationalPark Hawaii
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“I’m inhabited by a cry ’, she would say.
She –Sylvia Plath– was an extraordinary poet, who effortlessly amalgamated poetry and death. Controversial, ‘demonically intelligent’, repulsive even… her poems are not for those who haven’t ever ‘peeled off the napkin’ from their own ‘featureless, fine Jew linen’ face. But those who have, will know what she meant when she said, ‘I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real’. Reality, however, was not hers always. She likely suffered from bipolar disorder (“It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative—whichever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it" ), underwent electroconvulsive therapy and wrote her most celebrated poems during a few weeks immediately preceding her turbulent death.
‘The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red '
Red was her favorite sad color; sometimes, it becomes mine. On days, when the heart’s mutiny becomes a chilly winter, I read Plath. During such winters, the neurotic poet resonates like swirling twilight…
‘I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head) ’
Yeah, I know. I know. I made it all up in my head. And so, as Sylvia would say, ‘No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel, on the blank stones of the landing.’
Tags: DeadHorsePoint Sunset LaSalMountains DeadHorsePointStatePark PotashPond PotashRoad ColoradoRiver Canyonlands CanyonlandsNationalPark Canyons Mt.Waas Mt.Peale SouthMountain Belt of Venus Ramen Saha Twilight Reflections SylviaPlath Panorama
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