A perfect rake moved across the sand, though the hand that held it was less than steady... Then came the birds, the snake, and all those whose passage would mark the surface. As morning came and the first rays of the rising Sun shone on this tableau, even the imperfections were made perfect. Photographed August 2021.
For years, researching the connection between the Sun's magnetic field and that of the Earth, I studied the aurora borealis. Magnificent arcs of an otherwordly green stretched across the sky, lazily moved southward, then, more often than not, exploded into a shimmering display that took ones breath away. Standing at the banks of the Virgin River, the Sun's last rays barely a memory, I hoped for a similar conflagration as the arc of a cloud moved across the sky. Would it be set aflame by those last rays as they lifted themselves from the landscape to the skies above? The answer was an emphatic, but ephemeral, yes...
A quick morning jaunt to Antelope Valley found me within a nearly endless field of California poppies and a springtime green landscape painted with broad brushstrokes of orange. look closely, though, and yellow fiddlenecks, white forget-me-nots, and purple lupines do their best to shine through the sea of orange. Photographed April 2020
