Sunday bird blogging

A brown skua hanging out on King George Island in 2018.

Saturday reflections

Layers of reflections through the windows of the Fifth Avenue bus, a few months ago when it was still dark in the early evening.

The in-betweenish spring weather is lingering longer than usual this year: a day in the 80's is followed by one in the 50's. I met some students in Central Park today, and when I walked outside it was much colder than I had expected. As there was no way in hell I was walking back up the four flights of stairs to get a jacket, I made a quick stop on the way to buy a hoodie at the gift shop at the zoo. And I congratulated myself on this very clever solution, right up until the moment the cashier rang it up: $60!

I wasn't kidding about the guns

There was an entire wall of these guns. They also had quite a few bow and arrow sets—I guess for a game of Cowboys and Indians. And for a mere $15, you could buy a rope that had been used by a genuine cowboy.

Guns and meat

I marveled at all the new varieties of junk food I saw on this trip, and while Wall Drug seemed to be lacking in the chips category, there was an impressive selection of flavored processed meats for sale.

And toy guns. I'm an out of touch coastal elite, of course, so I did find this a little shocking. Not surprising, sadly.

Wall Drug

What started as a small drugstore offering free ice water to travelers in Wall, South Dakota is now a huge shopping complex offering Western clothes, a playground with an 80-foot dinosaur, a chapel, an art gallery, and excellent homemade donuts.

I think it was probably the strangest place we visited on our road trip and this was an itinerary that included the Corn Palace and the Spam Museum.

Farm truck

The canola makes a nice pop of yellow on this North Dakota farm.

Truck stop

This image of a truck in North Dakota is from last summer, so doesn't really count as a flashback.

I'm on vacation now, though attempting to jump through the hoops that are apparently necessary to get a gel injection in my poor, pathetic injured knee has turned out to be practically a full-time job. (I never had to deal with a specialty pharmacy before and hadn't realized it was so damn complicated.) Otherwise, I'm sorting papers, catching up on shows I haven't watched yet, reading, and oh yes, going through the photo archives.

Flashback: Mirror Lake

And that's it for New Zealand—one last scenic stop on the South Island.

Flashback: Milford Sound

Most of the pictures I never went through from New Zealand were of Milford Sound, and I made an executive decision that I didn't need any more waterfalls.

But I did like this picture: looking out the mouth of the sound to the Tasman Sea while a lone albatross looks for fish. And that fog, just waiting offshore.

Flashback: Mount Cook

I did post pictures of the moon over Mount Cook, but only one clear picture taken in the daytime. So here are a few more; who doesn't love looking at mountains?

Flashback: New Zealand

Clouds veiling Mount Cook in the Southern Alps.

This photo reminds me of a comment a co-worker posted on a picture of rays of light streaking from the sky in the fjords: Please tell God I said hi...

Oh and there was the time I saw a submarine

I think this is the end of Australia.

I had completely forgotten about this. We sailed out of Cairns to the Great Barrier Reef, and suddenly this submarine appeared next to our boat. After a few minutes it submerged again, but I'm not sure anyone ever explained to us what it was doing there. Looking at the picture now, I realize that it actually wasn't that big and was possibly some kind of scientific vessel, though it looked enormous at the time.

A suitably strange incident to wrap up pictures from a strange and wonderful place.

Sunday bird blogging

I don't seem to have any interesting Australian birds to post; fortunately I will never run out of penguins!

These king penguins were in St. Andrew's Bay in South Georgia.

Saturday reflections

Moving on—finally!—to Melbourne, here's a double-header of reflections, in the river and the botanical gardens.

Urban poetry

I did post several pictures of this at the time: Hosier Lane in Melbourne, considered to be the best place to see street art in a city that's apparently famous for it. But here are a few more.

Flashback: Simpsons Gap

Before I leave the outback—for real this time—here's one last rock formation, this one in Simpsons Gap, near Alice Springs. Never mind aliens--these rocks look like they're screaming.

Flashback: More Kata Tjuta

It is true that, judging by these pictures, the rocks don't look quite so otherworldly up close. They look a lot like—well, rocks, or any other desert mountains not inhabited by aliens. But I do like the red sands and trees in the surrounding desert.

Flashback: Kata Tjuta

When I said that Kata Tjuta wasn't interesting up close, I may have meant that it didn't have any of the hidden nooks with waterholes and rocks and trees that you find at Uluru. And it is easier to appreciate how very strange it is when you're far enough away to see it in some context.

The name means “many heads”and those domes do look like the heads of some alien creature making itself at home in the harsh landscape.

This picture, with some tiny humans for scale, gives a little idea of how big the domes are. There are 36 of them, and the tallest, Mount Olga, is taller than Uluru.

Flashback: Oops, not so fast! (Kata Tjuta)

I wasn't finished with the outback after all.

Uluru is located in a national park with another, much less famous, rock formation: Kata Tjuta, also known as The Olgas. In 2016, I only posted one picture, taken from a distance and promised more pictures later. (I suppose ten years counts as “later.”)

I also said that Kata Tjuta, unlike Uluru, was much more interesting from a distance, but I may just have been suffering from heatstroke, or exhaustion from swatting several million flies, because while I'm not sure that “interesting” is the best adjective for these deeply strange geologic blobs, they were definitely worth taking a good look at.

Flashback: Kangaroos

Finishing up my trip down Outback Memory Lane with some kangaroos from the sanctuary in Alice Springs.

Flashback: Standley Chasm

Many of the remaining pictures from the outback are landscapes of red sand with rocks and a few unhappy trees, and I think you get the idea without having to actually see them.

But I liked these pictures from Standley Chasm, near Alice Springs, because of how green and (deceptively) cool the landscape appears. You still needed a face net for the flies.

Flashback: Uluru–Just to be clear

This is Uluru: rounded top, steep sides.

(↓) That is not Uluru. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Flashback: Fooluru

 

That's obviously not Uluru—the shape is all wrong—but if you've been driving through the desert from Alice Springs for four hours and you see that big rocky shape in the distance, you could be forgiven for getting a little excited. I did!

But that's Mount Connor, also known as Fooluru.

Flashback: Uluru up close and from a distance

The path to the monolith from the Visitor Center, and the view at sunset. It's fascinating how all of the curves and complications at the base are invisible from a distance. It just looks like a big, pretty rock.

Flashback: Climbing Uluru

Humans love to climb things; sometimes the stupider and more dangerous an activity is, the longer the line of idiots clamouring to try it will be. Climbing Uluru has always been very dangerous; at least 35 people have died attempting it. (An ironic side note: Lindy Chamberlain, the woman who was convicted of murder after her baby daughter was killed by a dingo at Uluru, was finally exonerated after a climber fell to his death there and searchers looking for his body discovered the baby's jacket near some dingo dens.)

But in addition to being dangerous—and the fact that there's really nothing to see from up there except flat, mostly featureless outback in every direction—climbing Uluru was also disrepectful to the owners, the Aṉangu people, to whom it is sacred. They requested for decades that visitors respect their traditions by not climbing (and also not leaving their garbage and shit at the summit if they did) but it wasn't actually forbidden until 2019.

In 2016 people were still climbing, and if you look closely at the picture on the left you can see a few of them. The picture on the right zooms in on a few climbers taking a break, sitting on that hot, sun-baked rock. Definitely not my idea of a good time.

Flashback: Uluru flora

There had been an unusual amount of rain the year I was there, so it's possible that you wouldn't always see these flowers and grasses among the sandstone.

Flashback: And still more Uluru

Flashback: More Uluru

There are rock paintings—some of them 30,000 years old—around the base of the monolith.

Flashback: Uluru

I remembered Uluru, of course I did. I remembered drinking champagne while watching the colors change at sunset, and a different tour group accusing me of having stolen one of their folding chairs. I remembered that it was very, very hot. I remembered the beautiful waterhole, how magical it felt finding water in that dry, dry country.

And the flies. I definitely remembered the flies, and the nets we wore so they weren't crawling directly on our faces.

But I'd forgotten all the curves and undulations of the rock formations when you get up close, so that what looks like a sandstone cake with drippy icing from a distance is so much more complicated and beautiful than you expected.

Flashback: Sydney

Another Australia picture from 2016.

I'm not sure what this is a picture of—just kidding! I originally posted another image from farther away on the footpath under the Harbour Bridge. That one had some interesting shadows, but the closeup is definitely worth sharing, too!

Sunday bird blogging

I was looking for something else and stumbled across a few hundred unprocessed pictures from Australia ten years ago, including this pretty pigeon in Cairns: a Torresian imperial pigeon, aka Australian pied imperial pigeon.

Saturday reflections

The reflections are secondary maybe, but I liked this truck in camouflage colors I saw parked in the East Village last night.

More urban poetry

I really like this one—early evening, and the sunset reflected in snowmelt on Park Avenue.

Urban poetry

It doesn't get much more urban than this: Times Square on a winter's evening this past February.

I seldom carry a real camera around any more, and can't remember why I happened to have it with me that day. Maybe I thought I'd take something I could use in my class this semester—the theme was photography—but it took me three months to get around to looking at the pictures and classes ended last Saturday.