The-Hunter.jpg
Ok, my first PAD picture of the year is of my favorite photographer.
shell-.jpg
The chambered nautilus is a metaphor for life's journey - a continual evolution toward wholeness. It builds its own intricate, mother-of-pearl like shell, chamber by chamber, as it grows. We have the opportunity to do the same as we create our own lives. Viewed in cross-section, it reveals a balanced spiral, unfurling naturally. Each previous chamber represents an earlier, less developed state of being within the fragile beauty of its shell body. A symbol of beauty and mathematical proportion, the nautilus has attracted scientific attention since the time of the ancient Greeks. Fibonacci discovered that the organic construction of the nautilus spiral can be illustrated by a unique logarithm based on adding whole numbers together in a specific mathematical sequence.
In his poem, The Chambered Nautilus, Oliver Wendell Holmes writes,
“Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!”
The spiral of the chambered nautilus can be found throughout nature in pine cones, flowers, star nebulae and in the human body as the inner ear cochlea (meaning “snail” in Latin), natural sound amplifiers. It is also used in ancient art to symbolize a gathering of energy and connection with the spirit. Musical instruments such as the French horn mimic this shape.
As I've been playing with fractals lately, I've been most interested in these shapes. I took this photo of a shell that I've had a long time, I enhanced it in PhotoShop and then I overlaid a fractal layer onto it.
Phone.jpg
This phone is near a rice field back in the country where
we sometimes ride the 4-wheeler, and I thought it was
sort of funny. It has been there for about a year.
Bubbles-and-Daffodils.jpg
People come out to Wye Mountain to enjoy the spring weather and the acres of daffodils. This girl was happily making bubbles and told me that she and her friend had brought a picnic. I said, "Wow! You've got it all!" And she answered, "Today I have."
Those days when we feel we have it all are fleeting and as difficult to hold onto as bubbles drifting on the March wind, but they are joyous days and make the rest of our days bearable.
March-13.jpg
Too much excitement this morning. There was a loud crash, which I thought at first was thunder as I was on the treadmill with the TV turned up. It wasn't thunder. Two teenagers joyriding around the neighborhood on rain-slick streets had skidded across the yard and snapped off a corner post on the front porch. Police said they were driving 60-70 MPH in our neighborhood where nobody drives over 30 because there are usually children playing. It's a mess, and it will be a while before everything gets back to normal, but it could have been much worse if the truck had gone into the house.
Those are the two guys in the red shirts who were in the old truck. I would have liked at least an apology, but they wouldn't look at me and were both giggling before they left, so I guess it wasn't such a big deal to them.
Wye-Mountain-Daffodils.jpg
Each spring, when word gets around that the Wye Mountain daffodils are in bloom, I drive there to walk through 7 acres of daffodils, many varieties, in a field beside a small country church.
Luna-Trust.jpg
We spent the weekend at a cabin in the woods, and this moth
stayed in the same area the whole time. It didn't look injured
and clung to my fingers when I lifted it. The weather got
chilly in the evenings, and I thought about bringing it indoors,
maybe in a box, but I reasoned that if I were a wild thing, I would
rather take my chances outside than take up residence in a box.
It was clinging to the bark of a tree when we drove away on Sunday.
