Small Wonders.277
Lake Living.32
Mostly Hessian Lake, at Bear Mtn State Park, with one image in the middle below showing a turtle-abundant lake at Storm King, with a bit of Andy Goldsworthy’s Storm King Wall rising up out of the water on this side of the lake 🙂
Mountains.42
Our farewell, this and the next post, to Bear Mountain, the state park and bridge over the Hudson named after it, and other things we saw during our short stay there a few months ago for our small-family gathering to celebrate memories of Mom :-).
Village Views.82
Small Wonders.239
Mountains.39
Since our last two posts have featured guest contributions from my cousin Sam, I thought perhaps we’d use this turn in the series-go-round to feature photos from our recent family outing in celebration of things Mom introduced us all to. These all come from probably her favorite place on earth, Storm King Art Center, which is named after nearby Storm King Mountain. Sam’s one of three Oberlin graduates you’ll find the gallery below, the other (thanks for joining, Chris) being an additional contributing photographer for some shots. Thanks, Mom, for helping more of us get to know this fabulous place.
Mountains.37
Above, the Bear Mountain Bridge with the mountain named Anthony’s Nose to its right, on the east side of the Hudson River. At the bottom, and in the gallery below, Bear Mountain Inn & the mist-shrouded Bear Mountain (on the east side of the river) as seen on the misty, drizzly afternoon of Sunday May 5th when Steve & I arrived. We were here for another personal celebration of our mother, who hiked us as teenagers across that bridge, where the Appalachian Trail crosses the Hudson River and immediately climbs to the top of the Nose, having already scaled Bear Mountain and various other peaks in both Bear Mtn Park & the neighboring Harriman State Park. To really focus on our memories of the trails and be close to Storm King (which, yes, we’ll be showing you also soon), we splurged to stay in this lovely old Inn – and were so happy that cousins Sam & Maria also joined for the Mom-celebration stuff, that Neal and Elizabeth came for an evening, and Chris for the Storm King day. Thanks, everyone and especially Mom who was certainly with us in memory and spirit :-).
City Views.225
From The Air: Boston to Chicago
Regular readers and friends will have figured out that, in this smartphone-in-your-pocket era, I’m always on the lookout for views lovely, strange, new, interesting or otherwise engaging to photograph. Unlike most airplane travelers, I stare endlessly out the window when I’m fortunate enough to have a window seat. Below are shots, mostly in chronological sequence, as my plane from Boston to Chicago flew along the northern edge of the Finger Lakes in NY State, over Buffalo (pictured also in the out-of-sequence large photo at the top of this post), then over the southernmost part of Ontario in Canada, between Hamilton & Detroit, then across the US state of Michigan, the Great Lake named Lake Michigan…and north of a fog-and-rain-bound city of Chicago, into O’Hare airport. For readers who’ve not explored the Great Lakes regions of the US and Canada, or the Finger Lakes region of New York State – do. There’s a lot to see and do. 🙂
NYC & NJ In Winter & Spring
Every photo in this post was taken between March and May, in NYC or the area in northern New Jersey which my mother called home for the last forty-five years. Having returned early from my work in Bangladesh in order to be with Mom, I’ve now seen this part of the US through a cold, snowy late winter and into a wet, green spring. Between trips around various parts of the city for medical appointments with Mom or meetings with friends and colleagues, I’ve been around much of Manhattan and northern NJ when the trees were bare and snow was on the ground, through the first blooming of snow-bells and forsythia, to this past week of alternating thunderstorms and clear skies with brilliantly green trees and now the irises starting to pop out. Before leaving this area for more or less the last time after clearing out Mom’s house, it seemed fitting to do a final ode to the sights and seasons of a region that I myself have also called either first or second home since Mom brought us here during the Ford administration…
NY Harbor to SF Bay in a Day
So last week I flew home to the bay area after a month with family in the NY/NJ region. I always love flying into SF from NYC: the route very frequently goes more or less directly over my home town of Santa Rosa, then cuts down along the beautiful coastline in Sonoma & Marin counties, more or less directly over the Golden Gate Bridge and then in some manner or other executes a circle in order to line up for landing at SFO. These photos were all taken in the space of one day when I’d returned from my assignment to Central African Republic last year. I landed late at night at JFK, woke up near the NYC office for my debrief meetings and a bit of a presentation to the office team, then hopped directly on trains to the plane for the flight. Since it was a clear day on both coasts, I got morning photos from a walk along the shore at Battery Park & views of the Statue of Liberty; then took photos of Santa Rosa from above, Point Reyes, San Jose & silicon valley at dusk, and the coast south of SF as the plane began its circle toward San Jose then back up to land. Air travel remains a gift which I enjoy on days when the view out the window is so spectacular, even if the in-airport experience long since stopped having any pleasant elements whatsoever :-). Enjoy!
(so much world, so little time....) 