Silhouettes

Silhouettes

 

In light bark

and dark bark

the trees stand

bare-boned

naked

against

the winter sky.

By Anna Grossnickle Hines

Used with permission.  From Pieces:  A year in poems and quilts, Greenwillow Books (an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers), © 2001 by Anna Grossnickle Hines.

www.harperchildrens.com

www.aghines.com

Clouds

Clouds are my favorite weather element.  The meteorologists have all sorts of long Latin names for the different kind of clouds.  I have four:  puffy, wanta touch, see through, and stormy.

The big white puffy clouds are great.  Lay back on a warm summer day and watch them roll by; there’s no better way to spend an afternoon.

Low clouds that look like you can reach out and touch them usually occur on cool fall or early spring days.  Sometimes they come before a storm.  They always have a cool ripple design.  It sometimes looks like waves moving across the sky.

See through clouds can sometimes be called Jacob’s Ladder.  Seeing the rays come to earth through the clouds always makes me think of God’s glory shining down to us.

Storm clouds can also be very interesting to watch . . . from the safety of your home.  One day I got home from work and decided to go for a walk.  It was about five in the afternoon a beautiful summer day.  My route was a circle.  I started traveling east.  I could hear rumblings behind me so I decided to cut the route short.  When I made the turn to go west back to my house I saw the storm rolling toward me.  My pace quickened.  The sky started to turn a green color and the clouds started to spin though no funnels formed.

I got to the house just as the tornado sirens went off.  I hunkered down in the lowest most interior room I had for about ten minutes very long minutes.

The tornados stayed away from my home that day.  That’s the closest I’ve ever been to a tornado.  After watching news stories of the damage they cause, I hope I never get any closer.

Pack out what you pack in.

 

Sources:

            Clouds by Trudi Strain Trueit, Franklin Watts, a division of Scholastic, Inc. © 2002.

www.truditrueit.com; www.scholastic.com

Consideration

In the wild, it’s kill or be killed.  Survival of the fittest.  Sadly, the trail is becoming that way as well.  Consideration is going to way of the dinosaur.

Sunglasses wrapped around trees.  Candy wrappers on the ground.  I see it more and more.  Yes, the sunglasses make a funny picture but I didn’t stage it.  The shades were there first.  A little critter could chomp on it and part of it gets stuck in their throat.  How do you do the Heimlich on a squirrel?

Hikers have a saying.  Pack out what you pack in.  I use it as a sign off for this blog.  It means simply this, everything you bring in to the woods, bring out.  All the food, wrappers, bottles – everything.

It’s a very small thing but it’s important.  Sunglasses and wrappers don’t disintegrate.  Everything goes back into the earth.  Well, everything but man made stuff.  That doesn’t disintegrate.  Animals try to eat it but can’t.  It has no value for them but they’re not smart enough to let it go.  The garbage we leave on the trail does kill the smaller animals.

Show some consideration to those who make their home in the woods, pack out what you pack in.  That makes the trail cleaner for my pictures too.  Thanks.

Pack out what you pack in.

Shadows

Shadows

Do you know what the trees

are doing in the winter

with their branches reaching

up and out

and all about

making crisscross shadows

little twiggy spriggy shadows

long lanky liney shadows

all around?

They’re sunbathing.

By Anna Grossnickle Hines

Used with permission.  From Pieces:  A year in poems and quilts, Greenwillow Books (an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers), © 2001 by Anna Grossnickle Hines.

www.harperchildrens.com

www.aghines.com

SUN

The sun is a good thing for a nature photographer.  Just look at the beautiful shots it creates.  It provides both direct and indirect light for my photography.

It not only provides light but heat as well.  All that heat and light only takes about eight minutes to travel 93 million miles.  I was going to put that fact into a bite size chunk, like 125 billion Miller Parks, but seriously how do you make 93 million of anything bite size.

As I was doing research for this blog I learned that the sun is one large nuclear reactor.  The heat and pressure from the sun’s core changes hydrogen (74% of the sun) to helium.  This creates a constant release of energy in a process called nuclear fusion.  I wonder if we’ll ever be able to produce energy as efficiently as the sun does.  But that’s a blog for another day.

Length of days is determined by the earth’s tilt.  That 23 ½ ° is why we have seasons.  So for me in Wisconsin summer is created when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun.  The earth moves the tilt toward the sun from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere.  That’s when we here in the North get fall.  Then winter is when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the sun and spring comes as the earth shifts the tilt again.  Fascinating.  I wouldn’t have thought of that.

So the sun is a good thing for everyone.  It provides light and heat and seasons and beauty.  Very Cool.

Pack out what you pack in.

  

Sources:

            A Project Guide to Wind, Weather, and the Atmosphere by Marylou Marano Kjelle, Mitchell Lane Publishers, Hockessin, Delaware ©2011.  www.mitchelllane.com

            Solar Energy by David and Patricia Armentrout, Rourke Publishing, Vero Beach, FL © 2009.  www.rourkepublishing.com

            13 Planets:  The Latest View of the Solar System, by David A. Aguilar, National Geographic Society, Washington DC, © 2011.

Introduction

Hey.  My name is Annella Grayce.  I'm a nature photographer and writer.  I live in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin (that's not far from Milwaukee in the southeastern part of the state).  I'd like to use this blog to share with you the stuff I notice while I'm hiking.