Lights.
Posted: December 19, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: holidays, light, salt lake, Self Portraits Leave a comment »Merry Christmas everyone.
Color Migration
Posted: November 8, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: botany, light, plants, salt lake, seasons 1 Comment »
(Maple Canyon. Mid September. ps- I didn’t even saturate this photograph. These colors are the real deal.)
Fall colors. I guess that’s what they do. Colors fall. Over a month ago I danced in firey trees, but I had to drive high into the canyon to find the most extreme color palettes. In following weeks, the yellows and oranges and reds came dripping down towards me. The lowest skirts of the Wasatch Range were an unbelievable patchworks of lobulate colors, decorating the dips and channels where water flows.
Then the colors flooded down to the valley floor, starting at the upper tips of branches and working inward to each tree’s core. During summer months, plant life agrees on various hues of green. But come fall, each family proudly flags a different color. And the heavy branches reveal how successfully each species reproduced.
Now the high mountain paths are fading to brown and the valley floor is swallowing up its rosey copper meal. Only the lowest tree branches still wear firey gowns. The earth will hold the fallen colors in until spring.
As the earth thaws in spring time, the valley floor will awaken and the colors will travel—in reverse direction now—slowly across the valley floor, up into the tree canopies, and then up the mountain sides. It’s a journey that takes many months. Not until very late summer will the mountain tops again be decorated in a rainbow of flowers.
(Big Cottonwood Canyon. Late August.)
1-1-11
Posted: January 26, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: earth, friends, frolicks, holidays, light, salt lake, seasons, sunrise 2 Comments »For a few years now I’ve been welcoming in the new year by greeting the sun. This year at sunrise I hiked up a mountain with a dear friend…for eight hours…in 25 below zero weather. Stunning…in many ways.
Autumn or Spring?
Posted: October 19, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: plants, salt lake, seasons Leave a comment »The following two photographs baffle me. My neighbor’s crocuses are in full bloom. And, the ornamental pears on main street are blooming. In the tropics many plants bloom and fruit twice a year. Has anyone seen this happen in the Northern Hemisphere? I stand amazed.
Summer Memory Stroll 2010
Posted: September 30, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: earth, family, friends, frolicks, gardens, human beings, Leo On Wheels, salt lake, seasons, Self Portraits, sunset, Wisconsin 1 Comment »Fall is here in full force (nod to the full moon on the same day as the fall equinox)! While I anxiously await jumping into my first leaf-pile of the year, I thought I’d just give a little recap of some summer highlights.
- Summer began as any well-respecting Wisconsinite might wish: with snow!
- It did a number on my tomato plants, but my harvest is still plentiful. Here’s a look into my bag after a recent harvest from my community garden, and a photo I treasure of my cantaloupe babies. They are definitely adolescents now, but are still in need of the vine.
- Early this summer I was privileged to be present when my sister was called and set-apart as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She will spend the next year-and-a-half living on a small northern island in the Philippians, serving the people and teaching them about how the gospel of Jesus Christ can bring added happiness and peace to their lives. Here’s a picture from the last time I saw her, as well as one she just sent home:
- While the summer was still green and lush, I spend as many evening after work as possible roaming through the mountains:
- Here’s a shot from one hike with my friend Kelsey- just days before she took off on a mission to Florida:
- In June, my work flew me out to San Francisco to do some training at the nation’s oldest science museum, the Exploratorium. The PIE (Playful Inventive Exploration) training was hands-down some of the most inspiring education I’ve ever received. More to come shortly on how we’ve been using that training to inspire more innovation and creativity from the middle-schoolers I work with. Here is a picture of me outside the museum, inside the workshop space, and beside some lovely sea lions down on pier 39:
- I flew on an overnight flight from CA to WI to spend a week in the great outdoors with my dear family. Here we all are under uncle Bob’s tarp. The thunderstorms helped us to get extra cozy!
- I spent Independence Day with my brothers, sister-in-law, and nieces at the Bees Stadium. Nothing like thousands of people cuddled on blankets, watching small explosions in the sky:
- I also spent some time exploring natural hotsprings:
Discovered a new species of maple:
(kidding about the maple….well maybe. Have you ever heard of a variegated maple?)- Joined a group of daring souls on a search for the infamous kokanee:
Saw some sunsets that literally brought me to my knees:
Traveled through Utah wilderness with dear WI friends and family:
- And just spent at much time as possible gleaning from the wisdom of dear Mother Earth:
peek-a-boo with a pigeon
Posted: September 13, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: frolicks, salt lake, seasons Leave a comment »
I don’t go to fairs for the games or rides. I go for the animals. Not because I relish in rows of caged birds or delight in seals who dance to 90′s music on the hour, but because I think it’s in my blood. I mean, I come from generations of solid farmer stock, and somehow to mingle in a crowd of people who are so proud of their livestock feels homey. The hum of cattle, the mingled smells of funnel cakes and roasted corn and hay and digested hay, children pointing from their shoulder-top perches, the pride of the blue-ribbon bearers…you can’t help but feel like you belong there, right? This year a pigeon even played peak-a-boo with me:
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I, for one, never knew that pigeons could be so diverse.
and, here’s a bonus picture of a seal dancing to 90′s music.
I go to the hills…
Posted: June 5, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: frolicks, salt lake 3 Comments »When I sang this song at the top of my lungs, I meant every word of it.
The hills are alive with the sound of music
With songs they have sung for a thousand years
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music
My heart wants to sing every song it hears
My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds
that rise from the lake to the trees
My heart wants to sigh like a chime that flies
from a church on a breeze
To laugh like a brook when it trips and falls over
stones on its way
To sing through the night like a lark who is learning to pray
I go to the hills when my heart is lonely
I know I will hear what I’ve heard before
My heart will be blessed with the sound of music
And I’ll sing once more
welcome spring!
Posted: March 21, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: friends, frolicks, salt lake, seasons, sunset 1 Comment »
Photo collage from my Vernal Equinox hike overlooking Salt Lake valley.
Happy Spring everyone!
Smog Lake City
Posted: February 20, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: salt lake Leave a comment »A recent article in the Salt Lake Tribute made me smile. It features a video made by an artist who works in the same downtown office building as I do. The video shows clips of the blocks along Main Street that are most familiar and homey to me. The murky light owes its credit to the thick smog settled over the valley during the filming, which took place two days after the EPA declared our air to be the worst in the nation. I hope you enjoy the video:
I recently wrote a blog post for work about our unfortunate inversions…the #1 reason I look forward to spring.
Generations
Posted: January 19, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: family, salt lake, Science, spiritual 6 Comments »
This past week my mom and grandparents came out from Wisconsin to meet the newest (great) grandchild. It was a full, mind expanding week for these small-town Midwesterners. At one point I introduced my mom to some co-workers who apologized on behalf of the smoggy, cold Salt Lake weather. My mom replied in our heart-warming accent, “Oh, nO, this feels like spring tO us. This weather is great. We are just trying tO get Used tO all these big buildings. Da barns in WiscOnsin are nOt this big.” (I think she was joking, but that line still makes me chuckle. My mom is actually very well traveled).
Later that weekend I sat between my grandparents with my laptop and showed off some videos and photos from my work’s website to help them get a better idea of what I do. After the science-loving show-and-tell the following conversation ensued:
Grandma: “Harold, ask her to show you Moji Port.” (I learned that’s where my grandpa had been stationed in Japan during the Korean War, and just recently one of his closest buddies from that period of his life called him up saying that he could go on the internet and see photos of that same port).
Grandpa: “Oh, no, she’d need the internet for that.”
Me: “Actually, I am on the internet right now.”
Grandpa: “Well, do you have (pause) The Google?”
Me: “Why yes, I do have The Google!”
I proceeded to show my grandpa (who has never touched a computer in his life) the wonder that is Google Earth. We zoomed from satellite images of the farm where he grew up and raised his own family, to the other side of the globe where he served as a soldier 50 some years ago. This quiet man, who is usually just observing from his lazy-boy, kept pointing and telling stories, which trailed off in mutterings of “I was there… Gosh it’s changed a lot….” We found more photos of Moji Port on Flickr, which stirred more memories. I think we were all marveling at the wonders of modern technology and the impact it was having on my grandpa. After some time of silence my grandpa threw out a seemingly random question, “So, does anyone know what DNA looks like anyway??”
“Oh Grandpa, we do! Let me show you!” My grandparents only have high school degrees, and by the time the double helix had been discovered they were putting in long hours on the farm; DNA was familiar in name only. Using images I found on Wikipedia, I attempted to help my grandparents understand how it is possible to trace a strand of hair back to it’s original owner, and how it is possible to tell just from DNA samples how closely related two people are. My grandma was asking, “so the same exact DNA that in in my toe nail is also in my eyeball?”, when my little 2-year-old niece turned to show me something. She was playing a game on her uncle’s i-phone. While my grandpa will likely leave this world without ever using a computer, his great granddaughter will never know life without them.
The wonders did not stop there. That Sunday I witnessed the crumbling of a 30-year wall. When my mom joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, her Catholic parents were furious. They threatened to disown her as their child. She was the oldest of ten kids, raised in a home where holy water can be found at each entrance of the house and where a cross hangs above every door frame. While my mom continued to return home and we grandchildren were embraced with loving arms, we all note the silent tension when religion is spoke of. My grandparents didn’t attend our baptisms, strictly forbid other children from attending worship services with us, and frequently gave my mom anti-Mormon literature. In fact, my grandma would fly out to Utah only on the condition that they went to Mass on Sunday.
Last weekend, I was assigned to give a 10-minute talk on Christ-like Service during church, and I gave my grandparents an open invitation to come listen to me speak. When Sunday morning came, we attended Catholic Mass with my grandparents, and afterwards they joined us for Sacrament meeting, so they could listen to my talk. So simple. And so beautiful. That simple act of openness and love is still blowing me away.
