I walk, hike, climb and I carry a camera. My days are filled with this activity. And now I am breaking  ground trying to  create a regular blog to share the visions and thoughts that come to me. I am on a meandering path of discovery with each new day.

 (November  9th , 1934 Carl Sagan born)

 

 “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” Carl Sagan

 “Life is worth more than man will ever know. Each of our choices open up the possibility of a different world. Every time we wake up, the universe puts itself in our hands. So many paths. So many choices. Our discernment is the only way to tell which one leads to happiness.” Thierry Cohen

 “Change will force you to step off the path, to venture from the nest, to close your eyes and dive right in, knowing that the greatest opportunities in life are found in the sink or swim, do or die moments.” Stella Payton

“First, he says, you have to go out into the world. This is not a simple matter of going outside one's door. No, that is simply going out. That's what one does when one is on the way to the store to buy a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a bottle of wine. When one goes out into the world, one is shedding preconceptions of past paths and ideas of past paths, and trying to move freely through an unsubstantiated and new geography.” Jesse Ball

“No single decision you ever made has led in a straight line to where you find yourself now. You peeked down some roads and took a few steps before turning back. You followed some roads that came to a dead end and others that got lost at too many intersections. Ultimately, all roads are connected to all other roads.”  Deepak Chopra

 Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

 When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you never forget it. - Carl Sagan

---

If you can't fly, then run.

If you can't run, then walk.
If you can't walk, then crawl.
But whatever you do, keep moving.- Dr. Martin Luther King

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls. Some part of our being knows this is from where we came. We long to return. These aspirations are not, I think, irreverent, although they may trouble whatever gods may be. - Carl Sagan

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.  Carl Sagan

 

My Friday began by seeing a heart wrenching story about the death of a  whale. This gentle giant of the deep had been beached in the Netherlands and died. I have checked various sources and the stories vary on when it happened but the  same  bottom line exists. this dead whale had pounds and pounds of plastic in it's belly and the death was due to intestinal blockage due to the ingestion of the unnatural substance - plastic.
     It is called the Pacific Flotsam or Pacific Garbage Vortex. This place out in the middle of the expanse of the ocean where the currents carry all the mess that finds it way to the ocean :  be it polythene plastic bags, bottles and containers, plastic drums, polystyrene packing material, polyurethane foam pieces, pieces of polypropylene fishing net, discarded lengths of synthetic rope, traffic cones, disposable lighters, six-pack plastic container rings, vehicle tires, drink can and bottle koozies, condoms, syringes, toothbrushes, and all variety of non-biodegradable trash.
     These great gatherings of plastics also become ''chemical sponges'', places where toxins adhere and linger. The plastics do sometimes begin to break into smaller pieces or pellets, These are easily digested by marine animals and birds, filling digestive tracts with non-digestible plastic, plastic that is also laden with toxins.
     The pictures are available for anyone to view all across the web  and in other publications, you know them, the turtle deformed into an hour-glass shape as it had a six pack container ring stuck around the middle of it's shell as it grew, the dead seagull cut open exposing the belly full of plastic.I was a girl in elementary school when I was shocked and horrified by a television special  explaining what pollution was doing to our planet and wildlife. I took my camera then to the creek at the end of my block the next day and took photos of the litter in the water and the rainbow oily sheen upon the water and I sent the photos in letters to newspaper editors and presented them to my teacher hoping to change the world .
   

I am a greying grandmother now and I fear for the climate changed world my grandbabies are inheriting. As a teen i swam in the beautiful pacific and now Fukushima is irradiating it and jellyfish are turning to blobs of slime.Usually I walk in nature seeking peace and soul soothing and I photograph the miraculous beauty I stumble upon. After reading of the whale and new declaration that the African Black Rhino is extinct I walked along the river and in the woods and  today I did shoot photos of ugly   human presence I see even deep in the woodlands. 

For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.  ~Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962

 We have to shift our emphasis from economic efficiency and materialism towards a sustainable quality of life and to healing of our society, of our people and our ecological systems.  ~Janet Holmes à Court

The magnificence of mountains, the serenity of nature - nothing is safe from the idiot marks of man's passing.  ~Loudon Wainwright

 Our modern industrial economy takes a mountain covered with trees, lakes, running streams and transforms it into a mountain of junk, garbage, slime pits, and debris.  ~Edward Abbey

Our environmental problems originate in the hubris of imagining ourselves as the central nervous system or the brain of nature.  We're not the brain, we are a cancer on nature.  ~Dave Foreman, Harper's, April 1990

 
To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.  ~Theodore Roosevelt, seventh annual message, 3 December 1907

 This is a beautiful planet and not at all fragile.  Earth can withstand significant volcanic eruptions, tectonic cataclysms, and ice ages.  But this canny, intelligent, prolific, and extremely self-centered human creature had proven himself capable of more destruction of life than Mother Nature herself.... We've got to be stopped.  ~Michael L. Fischer, Harper's, July 1990

Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given.  But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer.  Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.  ~Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya, 1897   

 Human destiny is bound to remain a gamble, because at some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back.  ~Rene Dubos, Mirage of Health, 1959

My city is built on the banks of a river. I try to spend time each day walking, hiking in nature and most often I seek to walk beside river, stream or lake. My city has suffered major flooding in the recent past and even in the midst of a 2 year drought we had flooding in the late spring. Water too much , too little. Water is life. water can be death. Lack of water can be death. Water is soft and free in it's form yet it is phenomenally powerful and capable of great destruction. Our planet , our bodies and primarily water. So today some thought and pictures on the subject of water.



   “Water is the driving force in nature.”  Leonardo da Vinci

“In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference”

 Rachel Carson quotes

“It is life, I think, to watch the water. A man can learn so many things.”Nicholas Sparks

Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go.  ~Blaise Pascal

 

 
''A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature.  It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.'' ~Henry David Thoreau

But I do see the good side of water now. How good it is when you're really thirsty, how it glitters and gurgles! How alive it is! ~G.K. Chesterton

"If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water."

Loran Eisley

 '' We need a new global culture that finds the existence of millions of thirsty people thoroughly and immediately unacceptable."

Jean-Michel Cousteau

"Water is critical for sustainable development, including environmental integrity and the alleviation of poverty and hunger, and is indispensable for human health and well-being."

United Nations

 “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.” Norman Maclean

 

Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it.”

Lao Tzu

'' You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you."

Heraclitus of Ephesus

 “Water is life's mater and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.” Albert Szent-Gyorgyi 

 ''Thousands have lived without love, not one without water."

W.H. Auden

"We have the ability to provide clean water for every man, woman and child on the Earth. What has been lacking is the collective will to accomplish this. What are we waiting for? This is the commitment we need to make to the world, now."

Jean-Michel Cousteau

"Water links us to our neighbor in a way more profound and complex than any other."

John Thorson

"A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure."

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

"By means of water, we give life to everything."

Koran, 21:30

 ''Rivers, ponds, lakes  and streams - they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do - they all contain truths.'' Muhammad Ali

 “The sky broke like an egg into full sunset and the water caught fire.” Pamela Hansford Johnson

In one drop of water are found all the secrets of the oceans.  ~Kahlil Gibran