Posted in African Safari, Nature, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged breakfast, game drive, kenya, Little Governors, postaday2011, safari, weekly photo challenge on November 22, 2011| 2 Comments »
“Expect problems and eat them for breakfast.” — Alfred A. Montapert
This is the setting where my friend, Kim, and I, ate our last breakfast in Africa. The setting is Little Governor's Tent Lodge in Kenya. We were up early to take our last game ride through Masai Mara National Park. -- Photo by Pat Bean
Our breakfast table this morning looked out on herons feeding in the swamp that surrounded our tent lodging. -- Photo by Pat Bean
Posted in Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged Dallas, lao tzu, pat bean, postaday2011, thanksgiving square chapel, weekly photo challenge, wonder on November 13, 2011| 4 Comments »
“From wonder into wonder existence opens.” – Lao Tzu
Thanksgiving Square Chapel, Downtown Dallas -- Photo by Pat Bean
“Wonder rather than doubt is the root of knowledge.” – Abraham Heschel
Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” – Greek Proverb
Wondering is healthy. Broadens the mind. Opens you up to all sorts of stray thoughts and possibilities.” – Charles de Lint.
Posted in Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged Colorado, mesa verde national park, pat bean, weeklyphotochallenge2011 on November 6, 2011| 4 Comments »
Windows into the past: Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. -- Photo by Pat Bean
Posted in Nature, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged buddha, lions, pat bean, weekly photo challenge: Hidden on October 30, 2011| 7 Comments »
Three things can not be hidden long: The sun, the moon, and the truth.” Buddha
A wide awake cub hidden among the foliage near a half-dozen other cubs and their mammas, all fast asleep in the heat of the noon day sun. --Photo by Kim Perrin
Posted in Nature, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged hazel lee, moonlit sky, opportunities, pat bean, postaday2011, weekly photo challenge on October 23, 2011| 4 Comments »
The magic of a moonlit sky makes anything seem possible. -- Photo by Pat Bean
“I held a moment in my hand, brilliant as a star, fragile as a flower, a tiny sliver of one hour. I dripped it carelessly, Ah! I didn’t know, I held opportunity.” ~Hazel Lee
Posted in Art, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged children's art, donna favors, pat bean, Picasso, possibilities, postaday2011, walk in the park, weekly photo challenge on October 16, 2011| 6 Comments »
My shadow and Maggie become part of the basket ball court art. -- Photo by Pat Bean
“ Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” – Pablo Picasso
Travels With Maggie
The park across the street from my son’s home in Lake Jackson has a basketball court, but I’ve never seen it used for that purpose.
The big green snake with big teeth -- Photo by Pat Bean
Perhaps that is why some young artists – I suspects students from the school next door to the park – decided to brighten it up a bit. While I was away for the summer, they dabbed the rough cement court with color.
The bright images include a river running across the court, a few houses and trees, a hop scotch layout and a couple of gigantic snakes, the kinds of things young artists have been doodling on paper since they could hold a crayon.
I found it enchanting – and so in tune with the week’s photo challenges about possibilities.
Grackles join the cacophony of color -- Photo by Pat Bean
“A picture of many colors proclaims images of many thoughts.” – Donna Favors
Posted in Nature, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged crowfoot saying, Idaho, pat bean, poplar trees, postaday2011, sunset on October 3, 2011| 3 Comments »
“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”Crowfoot saying
Tangerine frosting coats the clouds as a tall poplar tree looks out over an Idaho sunset. -- Photo by Pat Bean
Posted in Nature, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged bangor, Colorado, cumbres pass, Maine, pat bean, postaday2011, reno, weekly photo challenge: fall on September 24, 2011| 3 Comments »
“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.” George Eliot
Travels With Maggie
Fall high up in the Combres Pass in Southern Colorado. -- Photo by Pat Bean
Maggie and I are just outside Reno today, where I’m catching up on laundry and house-cleaning chores before I get back on the road tomorrow. Maggie’s spent the morning smoozing with our next door neighbors here at the RV Park.
It’s still summer here, with huge sunflowers lining the roads and wild grasses tall and browning from the long hot summer. But, just as mother used to say it was 6 o’clock somewhere when she wanted an early afternoon beer, it is fall somewhere.
Two landscapes that pop immediately out of my memory banks when I think of autumn are the one I saw last year in Colorado and the 2006 autumn that caught me in Maine. I still thrill remembering the orange, lemon and strawberry colored cocktails that the landscape served up.
Fall is truly my favorite season. And in that I find myself not alone.
Ode to Autumn
Maggie and I spent five days beneath this tree at the Paul Bunyon Campground in Bangor, Maine, in the early fall of 2006. Each day the leaves turned more scarlet. -- Photo by Pat Bean
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
–John Keats
Posted in Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged hemisfair, olmecs, pat bean, postaday2011, san antonio, weekly photo challenge: faces on September 18, 2011| 4 Comments »
“I have never been aware before how many faces there are. There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
Olmec head, HemisFair Park, San Antonio, Texas. It's a really big face. -- Photo by Pat Bean
The discovery of the Olmec Heads, like this one that was put on display at the 1968 HemisFair held in San Antonio, which I was privileged to attend, provided archaeologist with many mysteries to solve. It was finally decided that the heads were created by the mother culture of the Mayans. it’s a face from the past.
“A man finds room in the few square inches of his face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Posted in Travel, Uncategorized, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged cowgirl hall of fame, cowgirls, fort worth, pat bean, postaday2011, Travel, weekly photo challenge: texture, women on September 15, 2011| 3 Comments »
“Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told ‘I’m with you kid. Let’s go’” — Maya Angelou
I was looking through my photos for a picture to illustrate texture and came across this. Certainly the textures found in the lives of these strong women qualify. I find it awesome to just think about the softness of their hearts, the hardness of the steel fueling their gumption, the kindness of their hands on a child’s feverish face, the hot rash of passion in their lives and the rough calluses of their ranch worn hands. And it’s all beautiful.
“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters.” — Ursula K. Le Guin
Pat Bean is a writer, avid birder, hiker and passionate nature observer with wanderlust in her soul. She spent nine years living and traveling in a small RV. She now lives in Tucson with Scamp, a rescue who was supposed to be a Schnauzer mix but turned out to be a Siberian Husky-Shih Tzu mix who is as stubborn as his owner, her granddaughter says. She was also a journalist for 37 years, and can be reached at patbean@msn.com
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