A blue moon is the second full moon in one month. This image (above) was taken at 5:27am on Thursday the 31st of August. The one below was taken at precisely 06:16:16 the same morning, and no I didn’t time it that way, I just happened to be up between “sits,” of which the first each day this week has begun at 5:45 and the last has ended a bit after 9pm – ideal at this time of year to view the setting and rising of both sun and moon when skies are clear. In all of the images in this post, you’ll find the full moon or the moon one day past full. All were taken either late in the evening / at night, or early in the morning, on the 30th and 31st of August, with a few also early on the 1st of September – yesterday, my last full day here on Star. Advantages to living (if only briefly) on a very small island include that it’s quite easy to watch both the sunrise and the sunset over the water, which means lovely reflections in the water and even possibly-nice panorama shots that show both the rising sun and setting moon, etc. In some of the latest-morning shots, you may need to enlarge the photo to see the moon still holding out low on the horizon even after the sun has risen above the water opposite it. This post celebrates these blessings on the day I’ll boat over the mainland then by various means convey myself back to Amsterdam, where I expect land early Sunday the 3rd and plunge directly into a full work week on the 4th. I’ll try to keep the daily posts going, I promise :-).
We’re back on Star Island, off the coast of New Hampshire, for a week of meditation retreat. As I’ve mentioned before, having this blog and its many categories spurs me to appreciate and notice things I otherwise might not. On past visits to Star, my gaze has turned heavily to the small (this post from 2014 is a good example); but this time, needing to photograph something for my Mountains series, I looked to the coast of NH and ME as seen behind Appledore Island, and … voila! :-).
One of P’town’s lighthouses – there are two that look pretty much identical, along the very narrow long strip that encloses P’town harbor and marks the true tail end of the long arm of Cape Cod, as seen from the breakwater as the tide slowly returned after a very low tide. If anyone’s confused by the way I’m switching around in country and continent with these posts, my apologies – after a slow winter where I didn’t get out too much after my last US visit (remember all those shots?), and even nearly ran out of legit shots for my Coasting, Islands, and Villages series…well, I’ve been out and about quite a lot since mid-July, and for the past week, I’ve been in Provincetown. Today I’m off to Star Island again — so you can search past entries which would be labeled New Hampshire, and very possibly tagged as Star Island, to get a sense of the sort of lovely views I hope to be adding to the mix in the weeks ahead. 🙂
I’ve spent the past week visiting Provincetown, at the tip end of Cape Cod, for the first time in more’n a decade. In the early 1900’s, Provincetown decided it was tired of Plymouth getting all Pilgrim credit, since apparently the Mayflower landed here first before traveling on and finally deciding upon Plymouth as their first village in this new colony. What you see above is nighttime P’town with the Pilgrim Monument – built to remind everyone of that fact – standing proud and tall on the right. 🙂
My friend Jean is one of my most loyal and longest-standing readers of the blog and me since I started this whole journey more than 18 years ago. A few months back, she shared photos she’d been inspired to take during a weekend in Galveston (TX) to visit a friend. She offered this explanation for these lovely photos that I’m sharing here (with her agreement) in our first ever guest post: “The island is big on ghosts, and we took one of the several ghost tours. They didn’t convince me of the existence of ghosts, but as we stood outside some of the mansions, I thought of your Urban Entrances. I’m not the photographer you are, but thought I’d share some of the highlights. Note the fruit and corn on one gate and the fencepost. And coreopsis makes a magnificent display in a cemetery–as spectacular as bluebonnets, in my opinion.”
Last photos from the airplane when I left SF after my last US visit in early April, all three in order in which they were taken as our plane flew north along the central valley not long after take-off from SFO. I’m reasonably confident that’s Lake Beryessa in the first photo, and then more of the Snow Mountain Wilderness area.
(so much world, so little time....) 