Islas Ballestras: Peru’s Galapagos
Sometimes where land comes together with water, that land is an island; and in Peru’s Ballestras Islands, it furnishes a wonderful preserve where millions of penguins, boobies, gulls, seals and other animals are able to live in a protected environment.
To see Cee’s incredible panoramic coastline view and other photographers’ work, go HERE.
Early Birds at the Beach
When I am at the beach, the first light of day for me is always the moon, which is still up at 6 when I begin my beach walk. If I’m lucky, I’ll make it the 5 miles to Boca de Iguana and back before the sun is fully up. Much as I love sunlight, my particular pigment demands that I enjoy it from the shade.
As the sun comes up but does not yet peek over the mountains and palm trees, the birds and I comb the beach. I find an already-drying starfish. The Caracara bird finds a fish, the sandpipers and gulls various delicacies barely buried in the sand. Before me, I see only two earlier human birds than I, their evidence left by their footprints.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/early-bird/
Leave it to Beaver
The color challenge this week really is “Beaver!’–a light brown color shown below –no telling what viewers this tag will bring into my blog!! Here goes:
http://jennifernicholewells.com/2015/03/10/one-word-photo-challenge-beaver/
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Sand Castles
Under the sand are palaces, I’ve seen them in my dreams.
Vast halls and empty chambers smooth rounded at their seams.
Every wall is made of sand. Each ceiling, archway, floor
carved by master craftsmen–each digging at its core–
so magnificent, you’d think they were the stuff of lore.
You, too, are free to see them, but you must provide the door.
For the chambers are filled in, though they are there without a doubt.
You are the one creating them by what you will scoop out.
The beauty’s hidden in the sand, waiting in your sleep
for you to dig the castles out from where they’re buried deep.
All your day’s exhaustion your dream labor will abort,
for what you build in slumber is work of a different sort.
Sand brought to the surface is what you get to keep
of subterranean palaces dug out in your sleep.
As you build above ground castles in the world that we all know
you reveal the outward structure of the inner rooms below,
furnishing the magic that the world will see through you,
showing what’s inside of you by what you choose to do.
The Prompt: Just a Dream
One day’s rewards for a very early beach walk. My other rewards were the shots I got of other early morning visitors finding their own rewards, as pictured in the other two shots. All pictures taken in La Manzanilla, Mexico.
Click on pictures to enlarge. Go here for more good photos on the topic of Reward.
The Prompt: Re-springing Your Step–Tell us about the last experience you had that left you feeling fresh, energized, and rejuvenated. What was it that had such a positive effect on you?
The Answer: Two months living on the beach in La Manzanilla really did leave me feeling energized, relaxed and a bit nostalgic. I posted some words and photos earlier here and here and here. Below is the rest of the story:
That good old salty sea air combined with grainy sand
defined my beach vacation and went great with being tanned.
Felt great under my bare feet and squished between each toe.
And left footprints behind me, wherever I chose to go.
It crusted up my toenails and powdered all my floors.
Seeped into my keyboard and creaked up all my doors.
It told the upstairs neighbors when I’d gone and got back home.
It sneaked into my ear canals and caked up brush and comb.
In spite of all the nuisance of the sand within my bed,
those memories of beach life still swirl within my head.
Yet I needn’t wax nostalgic, for I find behind each knee,
in pockets, luggage and the floor—the beach came home with me!
Photo by Judy Dykstra-Brown
Leavings
Do I walk the long kilometers of beach
to look for the next shell
or stand stable, like that woman
casting and recasting her hook,
patiently waiting to pull her world
in to her?
I’m gathering things
that I’ll collect into stories–pinning them down
to use like words.
Nothing wrong in finding meaning
through a piece of driftwood, a stone or shell.
Objects are only things
we cast our minds against
like images against a screen–
a shadow glimpsed crossing a window shade.
My shadow cast in front of me
is such a different thing
from one I cast behind.
In the first, I am constantly hurrying
to catch up to what I’ll never catch up to.
In the other, I am leaving behind
what I can only keep by walking away from it.
I take this place along with me
in clear images–
not as they were,
but as my mind has cast them;
so every picture
taken of the same moment
is different,
each of us seeing it through our unique lens.
We cast these things in bronze or silver-gelatin,
stone, clay
or poetry.
A grandma
holds out pictures of her children
and her grandchildren.
See? Her life’s work.
And then this and this,
without further effort on her part.
I share stories of children I don’t know
who gently unwind fishing line from a struggling gull,
hearts found on the beach
or other treasures
nestled in a pile of kelp.
I find my world in both these findings and departings;
the leaving each morning to go in search of them
the part I find most exhilarating–
perhaps teaching this
woman of the death-themed night-terrors
not to worry.
That longer leaving is just a new adventure.
People who do not remember
let me slip away
when I would have held on,
given any encouragement.
Yet fingers, letting go, flex
for that next adventure.
Life is
all of us letting go
constantly–
taking that next step
away from
and to.
A white shell.
I have left it there
turned over
to the brown side,
so someone else
can discover it, too.
Today’s WordPress Daily Prompt: Image Search—Pick a random word and do Google image search on it. Check out the eleventh picture it brings up. Write about whatever that image brings to mind. (Although the eleventh image was of a shadow on a beach, I’ve elected to reproduce my own photo here.)
Last night on New Year’s Eve, there were hundreds of globos (small hot-air balloons) launched from the four-mile stretch of beach that extends from cliff face to cliff face along the oceanfront of La Manzanilla. Graceful paper forms with wire assemblies at the bottom that hold sterno cans or other purveyors of flame, they were lifted by the hot air currents growing within to sail up and gradually southwards—either out to sea or up and over the stone mountain that ends our beach and extends in a small archipelago offshore.
A successful liftoff.
Very few fell to the ocean within our sight, and thanks to a calm night with little wind, none that I saw tipped to burn up during the launch. The sometimes dozens of balloons visible at the same time seemed to be either embers fallen from the near-full moon above or lost souls lifting to join one larger soul above.
Just before midnight, at least 50 globos were released to the air in a string that eventually grew into a freeform circle before spreading to fill most of the sky over Boca de Iguana, 3 miles away at the end of the curve of our part of the bay. Yes. It was magical. And with the exception of the 50+ balloons released in a solid string, most of the night seemed unplanned, or perhaps just one hundred smaller plans joined with no prior agenda.
Parties raged up and down the beach, each with its own bonfire. Gathered to experience together this last special night of the old year were people in beachfront houses with their friends and family, citizens and snowbirds and tourists and vacationers grouped outside of restaurants, campers under beachfront palapas or grouped closer to their fires.
Young boys and very old boys set off Roman Candles and Cherry Bombs, firecrackers, flying saucers and other messages to the gods of the night, the old year and the new. Fireworks shot sideways into crowds of other kids or adults. Amazingly, not a palapa roof caught fire. Towards midnight, more spectacular fireworks of a grander scale shot farther up into the pitch black sky.
Music swelled from each of dozens of groups up and down the beach to form one big symphony, as did the shouts, cries and conversations. Gossip mixed with the whispered blessings launched with each paper balloon. Profanity mixed with prayers. Raucous laughter mixed with the sibilant suggestion of conversations farther down the beach.
It was a very special New Year’s Eve. I mixed a big jug of Sangria that none of the tequila drinkers wanted, so I did my best to appreciate it on my own. I went with two friends for the weekly spaghetti feed at Guacamole’s (a beach restaurant). We were seated at the kids’ table, every other table being taken. The seven cousins, brothers and sisters at our table, age 12 to 3, all introduced themselves politely and asked our names. Remarkable little diplomats, they all spoke English and some were from Chapala, near where I live. Everywhere I’ve gone during this visit to La Manzanilla, it has been the same. Mexican children addressing me, saying they like my earrings, asking my name or where I’m from, explaining their family history.
After our spaghetti feast, my two friends departed and I joined Daniel’s raucous group outside the porch of my beach rental. I caused another ½ glass of sangria to vanish before parking my cup on the beach bar to leave the comfort of the tequila sundown club.
That’s my blue cup of Sangria on the “beach bar.” It was still there, icy cold, when I got back. Good cup!
Daniel had built a huge hardwood bonfire that lasted the entire night. I now knew what the big pile of driftwood he’d collected from the beach supply left by the last colossal storm was for. He had thought ahead.
We walked up the beach a mile or two, spying on groups gathered to drink and talk in the New Year. Every group had a bonfire. Almost every group was setting off fireworks and/or globos. It was an acceptable sort of peeping-Tom adventure as I attempted to snap pictures in the darkness.
A foray too close to a man with a fishing net who flicked it just as I snapped my picture had resulted in dozens of little saltwater stains on my lens that only seem to show up when I use the flash at night. Rubbing hasn’t removed them and the tedium of manually removing speck by speck with my editing feature has caused me to just forgo flash photography. This is why pictures are grainy, but you will get the idea, perhaps, of this magical night—my last as a citizen of the year 2014, my first as the very same person, now stretching out to embark upon the rest of her life. Thanks for taking my last walk of the old year with me.
My upstairs neighbors tell me the partying went on until 8 a.m. this morning, with one especially loud group (not the one pictured) parked right outside our porch. I had to admit that I was sound asleep by one a.m.. The street outside my bedroom was silent for the first time in the six weeks I’ve been here, with all partiers moved to the beach for their revelries. Since the upstairs renters’ bedroom windows are above the beach, they for once got the full brunt of the noise whereas I had blessed peace for the first time. Thanks, 2015, for this one-night respite from the noise. My first hours in your company were ones of glorious, unbroken sleep.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 