mountains – Serendipity Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth

CAPTIVATING AND ALSO, THE MOTOR VEHICLE BUREAU

Captivating. Adorable. Charming.
And then, there’s the Motor Vehicle Bureau

For me, that would probably mean dogs, cats, birds, horses … and anything going on in New England in the Autumn. And, okay … those first few minutes after snow has fallen when the world is hushed and completely white, blanketed in snow so that every little thing is hidden by that perfect white frosting.

Late afternoon with the sun low in the sky

The little white house with the big red tree

I hope you will find this all quite captivating. It makes me years to go out and shoot a few more pictures. Except today, we are off to the Motor Vehicle Bureau because — yes, it has come around again and Garry is past 75 and he has to go in and prove he can see and understand simple instructions. I think from this point on in our lives, we are never going to escape again.

At least we can still renew the registration by mail. I’m going to try to deal with this with as little stress as I can manage. Thing beautiful images, oh self. Think sunrise and mountains and rivers and don’t think about bureaucrats.

Today, I am thinking captivating, beautiful

THE SILENCE OF EARLY MORNING

SILENCE – WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge

Up in the mountains of Vermont, it is quiet in the morning. Not silent, usually. There are always birds and somewhere in the distance, the sound of farm machinery. But it is about as silent as our world gets in these times.

It’s another bright early morning.

NATURAL STRUCTURES – A PHOTO A WEEK CHALLENGE

A Photo a Week Challenge: Structures in Nature

Superstition mountain, Arizona – The mountains rise up out of the earth like monoliths in a science fiction movie. They are to my mind, unreal.

These rocks were probably formed from an ancient lava flow. They are entirely different than the rest of the hills and mountains in the area,m clearly formed from a different substance. Photo: Garry Armstrong

Super moon — bright but undefined and framed by branches

GROWING – THE WEEKLY WORDPRESS PHOTO CHALLENGE

GROWTH OF SPIRIT IN THE COLD MOUNTAINS

I remember as a girl, my mother liked to give me books she thought were important. One year was my “Nobel year” and all the books she gave me had won Nobel prizes for literature. Some were not bad at all. Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland (1915 winner) was incredibly long, but really interesting for a girl studying music because it is a fictionalized biography of Beethoven.

Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun which won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920, was a rougher go. It was about trying to survive on a hardscrabble, cold and barren part of Norway. I sort of hated the book, but I can’t forget it, either. These were people who lived terrible lives. They were so miserable it was almost art in its own way.

This prompt is about growth and I wish I had pictures from that hardscrabble land in Norway. For all I know, it has since become a tourist mecca. It has been a long time since the book was written and the world has changed. We now vacation in places no one could live 100 years ago and we think it very precious to be in these places.

Not so different than all the years we went to Jackman, Maine for vacation. An incredibly beautiful part of the country where you can — these days — easily survive. But work? Assets? Unless you came there already wealthy, you won’t find wealth in those mountains.

On the positive side, you may find a kind of spiritual richness there unavailable in easier climates, in softer environments. And so these are pictures from Jackman, at the top of the mountains in northern Maine. It is as beautiful a place as I’ve ever been and probably one of the most difficult places to live. In that roughness is growth of your spirit.

ARIZONA MOUNTAINS – NEW PHOTOS FROM LOST FOLDERS

I have been going through my folders. My photography folders. There are an awful lot of them and within each folder are even more folders. While searching for missing photographs, I have discovered there are thousands of photographs — good ones — which were never processed. Why not? Because I moved on to the next batch of photos and never went back. Two weeks later, I didn’t remember these photographs existed.

The good news is that I have some amazing pictures simply waiting for me to get to them. The bad news is that even after I find a great batch of waiting photographs, when I go back to work on them, I probably will have forgotten them.

The exception to this are vacation photographs because these are always in separate folders by events — so I know where they are. Which is why the first new batches you’ll see will be from Arizona 2016.