Nomad exploring life wherever I am
You’d think growing up in Southern California that I would have seen just about everything within a few hours of the place, but you’d be wrong about that. I didn’t know about Mojave Preserve until several years ago, when I convinced my roadtripping Jedi master, my Dad, that we should take backroads from Hemet to Vegas to visit my sister. One of those backroads ran through Mojave Preserve and we were both amazed and delighted to find some amazing geology as we drove from Amboy to Kelso to Baker.
Last week’s challenge was two-fold: black and white and minimalism. Hmm. I was in motion a lot of the week, making my way down from the central coast of California to the LA Basin, so I didn’t have a lot of time for searching out excellent locations or unique places. This shot was from my campsite at Pismo Beach, just after the sun went below the horizon. Venus is in the upper right area, but darned if I can see it in the photo 🙁 When I was still up in the Santa Cruz area, I found this little spiral…
One of the best things about full-timing in my tiny trailer is that I can go where the water is. Sometimes, like today, this is not all that exciting, because the water is all rain and it’s all the time. But I digress… Some images don’t make it into a post about a place but I love them anyways and want to share them. This surfer, headed out on a cold but sunny afternoon, is one of those images. Then there’s the Northern California coast on a stormy day, between the rain showers. And we’ll end with an image from…
There are sacred spaces built by humans: the ancient ruins at Stonehenge, the majesty of Chartres Cathedral in France, the great Pyramids of Giza. And then there is Earth’s cathedral: the soaring heights of trees in forest, creating a canopy of shelter lifted skyward by massive limbs and the trunks that support them. Photographs cannot truly capture what it is like to walk among the California Redwoods, completely alone, the forest silent except for late-season birds and the sound of my footsteps meandering down the narrow dirt trail. I crane my neck up at every bend, the trees soaring so…
I made it back to Kalaloch this fall, the campground where I started my full-timing vagabonding three years ago on September 1, 2016. So much has happened in that three years that trying to write about it has kind of stopped me in my tracks. I can use my campsites then and now as a metaphor. The first campsite was tiny and dark, with my shiny new Alto 1743 tucked under a tree, in a site barely long enough to fit trailer and Subaru Outback 3.6R without jutting into the narrow road. I spent a lot of time worrying about…