Hiking high trail
Dark clouds shroud mountains
Azure lake glimmers
Storm Clouds Over Mountains
nature
Winter
Snow wonderland
Wind singing through pines
Walking in Bonelli
Snow Blossoms
snow blossoms
falling in pool
a song of silence
One Book a Week-6: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
Even though I try to keep up-to-date on Nobel Prize authors, I was unfamiliar with this one until I saw this book on a table at Barnes and Noble. First, the title intrigued me; then the blurb added more mystery. I bought it–so glad I did. Once I started, there was no stopping–fascinated.
Written in first person, it is contains the thoughts and experiences as related by an older woman. Once a bridge engineer, she now resides in the Polish countryside near the Czech border. Winters are harsh; most of the people who live there live there only in summer. She stays and cares for the houses of the summer people while they are gone all winter. She also teaches English part-time to children at the local school. Her passions are animals and astrology. Even though a science type, she is totally convinced that astrology contains life’s secrets even to the point of predicting the time and events of a person’s death. The book is also a murder mystery with an ending totally different from what I expected.
Now I am going to purchase the author’s book, Flights, which won the Mann Booker prize in 2018.
Snow on Mountains
warm sun
snow-capped mountains
heartwarming joy
The First Time I Saw the Nile
Riding hours through emerald mountains
to Bahir Dar.
We drove up a steep road,
monkeys begging near the roadside.
Car parked, we climbed a steep hill.
There she was
The NILE
a silver ribbon far below
grassy fields
two white robed people
walked, hippos barely visible.
The NILE
I cried,
a life’s longing fulfilled.
The NILE
Flowing from Lake Tana,
she lay below me,
the legendary river,
ancient people, ancient stories,
builder of civilizations,
of life.
The NILE.
One Book a Week-4: FINDING THE MOTHER TREE: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
When it first came out in 2018, I read The Overstory by Richard Powell. Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard appears to contain the endless years of detailed research and life story behind one of the characters in Powell’s novel. In fact, in her Acknowledgements, Simard thanks Powell for helping to make her life’s research more accessible to the general populace.
Simard’s book is part memoir, part detailed scientific explanations of her research and how a forest works and lives, and part how difficult it is to be taken seriously in the science world if you are female and your research contradicts the norm. She grew up in Canada. Her family made a living cutting down trees. Her family and life was and is intricately interwoven with nature. Even as a child, she was obsessed with tree roots, crawled around on the forest floor to see what lived there. A specific fascination was all the types and colors of fungi that grew just under the surface. Why were they there? What purpose did they serve? Later this became her life’s work, leading her to discover how trees of varying species use these fungi to communicate with and nurture each other. Of special significance are the “mother trees”, older, larger trees who provide nurturance to all the younger trees around them, recognize their kin, favoring them as they nurture all the other trees as well.
Traditionally, loggers and timber companies clear cut, then replanted with seedlings of all the same species of evergreen. It took Simard decades of research to convince them that it was not only the poorest way to grow new trees but also the least economical. For decades they saw her as some nutty woman, laughed at her research, laughed at her, even using epithets to her face. Ultimately, however, her work led to changes in how forestry is practiced.
This book relates her long struggle to save the forests. For those who are science minded, the final pages of the book contain 32 pages of Critical Sources. If you are interest in learning more about “mother trees”, go to http://mothertreeproject.org. It defines the term “mother tree” and explains how trees communicate. It also contains videos.
One Book a Week-3
While wandering around Barnes and Noble looking for something new to read, I read the blurb for An Imaginary Life by David Malouf, an Australian writer. I bought it. Of course, I had heard of Ovid, seen parts of Metamorphosis, his most famous work, but knew little about him. Emperor Augustus exiled him to the remote regions near the Black Sea for reasons not totally known but perhaps due to the nature of Ovid’s erotic poetry which was very popular. Written in the first person, this book relates Ovid’s experiences, thoughts, and feelings while in exile. The urbane and educated Ovid now has to learn to live with superstitious, illiterate, poverty stricken people whose language he does not know, who possess none of amenities to which he is accustomed, who live in a bare survival mode. They find a “wild child” and Ovid becomes determined to catch him and teach him. The Child has lived with the animals and speaks their language, seems immune to weather even though naked, knows nothing of humans. As Ovid lives with and teaches the Child, he begins to question what it means to be human, to be civilized, to be different. What is the true meaning of life?
Note: If you look up Ovid, you will find a birthdate but no date of death. No one knows exactly when or where he died or where he was buried.
Strolling in Bonelli Regional Park
Instead of walking around the neighborhood, today my neighbor and I took a long walk along one of the paths in Bonelli Regional Park ten minutes from where we live. There are over 30 miles of hiking and bike trails in the park. We took the easy paved walk overlooking the lake.
In summer people swim and boat here. Now it is mostly hiking, dog walking, biking, and fishing.
On this side of the lake many houses, some very large, overlook the lake. A few have vineyards or orchards on the slope near the houses.
Mt Baldy rises in the background. Several of the mountains remain snowcapped.
Several species of ducks, but mostly mallards, and a few geese reside here. In this area we saw a man fishing.
Taking Photos on My Walk
Most days I take a walk around my neighborhood. Usually, I do not take my phone so no photos. However, earlier this week after seeing some lovely flowers and sights, I decided to take the phone so I could take some photos. Here is what I found along the way.
This is the back of the Taiwanese Buddhist Center near my house.
Poppies growing wild near the sidewalk.
Flowers near the poppies.
Southern California is bougainvillea heaven.
A lot of these colorful trees everywhere–a type of tree I always associated with way farther east not here.
Succulents and agaves do well here.
So many kinds of trees grow here including all types of eucalyptus which many consider invasive and also a potential fire hazard.
Referred to as freeway daisies because all colors can be found everywhere and all times of year.
This is also rosemary heaven and everywhere the rosemary is in full bloom.
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