Living Simple 1: beautiful

Selasa, 10 Juni 2014

The Desert in Bloom

uyguguygu 14.43 Comment

We went out to Moab, Utah for the holiday weekend at the end of May. I have never been to Moab on an overcast, rainy weekend but this turned out to be the most visually dynamic trip I've ever taken out there. In contrast to the harsh, direct light that is typical of Moab in Spring, the clouds acted like a soft box and the colors of the red rock and wild blooms changed as the sky changed throughout the day.

We camped in the desert outside of Moab and arrived just in time for the sky to clear up for a brief moment. I saw the Milky Way splashed across the sky and a meteor shower sparkling and streaking above me until I couldn't keep my eyes open any more. The second day it rained like crazy, with all six of us hiding in a car during a torrential downpour with epic lightening strikes. Right before the rain shower I took a quick walk with my sister-in-law and we photographed everything we saw blooming. Finally, on the third day it was overcast and cleared up around the time we left. We got to see the clouds rise out of the canyons, hiding just the very tops of the mesas and rock formations, forming islands in the sky.

Senin, 28 April 2014

Amber Waves

uyguguygu 05.00 Comment

The prairie hasn't woken up yet. It's still dry, despite our spring thunderstorms, but the snow cover is gone. We only get a few days of green here, at least for the spaces left on their own to grow and thrive, and we have to wait for them to come through the long summer, autumn, and winter. Usually I have a hard time dealing with the dust and the drab colors but sometimes you drive past an expanse rolling in the wind like waves on the ocean and you catch your breath, startled by the beauty of it all. The gold of the fields amplify the blue of the sky.

Also, there's a kind of vastness, that's another thing I won't soon forget. Even on the edge of the city there are fields and views where you can see for miles and miles, all the way up to the foothills and to the fourteen thousand foot mountains beyond, still blowing with their snow and covered in blue and purple.