Attentive readers may note that in a comment on yesterday’s post, my friend & fellow meditator Gretchen agreed that was indeed “country” – perhaps even wilderness – but expressed doubt how it could NL with that rocky hillside as a backdrop. Those of you viewing these posts as email alerts (thanks for following me!) and on mobile phones see only a simplified version, which for some reason hides the meta-data with Categories (in the case of both that post and this: Iraq), and Tags (in both cases again, Kurdistan region). If you go to a full website version, you should be able to see it all, in small type at the bottom of each individual post. I’ll still be working my way through these photos for a while, but still in reference to that last Country Canals post, I’m happy to to say just yesterday I found myself beside a lovely little canal in a verdant part of North Hollland where I was able to snap some new shots, so they won’t all be Iraqi “canals” of the borderline variety in the weeks ahead 🙂
I still maintain I’m allowed to call these canals, since it’s my blog after all … even if you consider them cascades instead :-). Though I do need to get out to some more-traditional canals in some Dutch countryside soon, or even my tortured categorizations won’t let me carry this series much longer. We can certainly agree this is the countryside, right?
When I flew back from that last trip to Iraq, we flew north towards a connection in Istanbul. That flight path took us directly over some of those historic, high and lovely mountains which house the sources of the Tigris, into which the various streams I’ve been showing you in some of these earlier posts flow. As you’ve seen also in at least one prior post, even the closer mountains were nicely snowcapped when I was there. So I stared and stared out the window, uncertain whether the white things I saw could be mountain tops, and whether I was maybe seeing some of the mountains named in ancient texts, or just more cloud peaks. Can you tell?? 🙂
During that break from blogging, I got back to Iraq again for a work visit, including a lovely Saturday exploring the beautiful touristy mountains and waterfalls north of Erbil. Finally getting around to sorting and posting some of those, now. This was not, obviously, peak season — folks flock to these cool, waterfall-blessed high-elevation villages and mountains for relief all summer when the sun cooks the plains. We, on the other hand, got to see snow (higher up on the mountains in the distance, below) and a glimpse of winter :-).
(so much world, so little time....) 