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Posts Tagged ‘wallace stevens’

Lake Mono Kicked Off the Bucket List

Posted in Birds, Lakes, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 8, 2011| 8 Comments »

“Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.” Wallace Stevens

 

Looking down on Mono Lake from the Highway 395 overlook. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

My trip back to Texas from my summer in Idaho was a hurried affair. Usually I plan on arriving for my winter rounds with family just in time for Thanksgiving But a grandson’s wedding, which takes place tonight, moved that up by about six weeks.

Even so, I managed to knock two things off my to-do list, now more popularly called a bucket list, on my way back to my native Lone Star State.

Mono Lake and Yosemite National Park now have check marks beside them. .

It may be easier for some of you to understand why Yosemite was a place I wanted to visit than it is to understand why Mono Lake was on my list. After all, it’s simply a shallow, very salty, often smelly lake As we neared the lake basin, My canine traveling companion, Maggie, perked up at the smell, wrinkling her nose a bit as she caught the scent. . I’m not sure what she was thinking.

 

California gulls along the shoreline -- Photo by Pat Bean

 The odorous shoreline, however,  reminded me of Great Salt Lake, a place whose beauty I came to greatly appreciate while living next door to it for 25 years.

The Utah lake is larger and much younger than the smaller and much older California lake. Both, however, are part of the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network that provides habitat for millions of migratory birds.

About the only species I saw on Mono Lake, however, was the California gull, which incidentally happens to be Utah’s state bird. It was given the honor after Mormon settlers in the Salt Lave Valley credited the gulls with saving their crops from a cricket infestation.

Neither lake has an outlet, and so remain the depository for everything that flows into them. Their importance to the ecosystem, however, has in recent years led to conservation practices engineered for their protection.

Mark Twain, in his “Roughing it,” called Mono Lake “a lifeless, treeless desert … the loneliest place on earth.”

I think otherwise.

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What’s Missing Just Might Be Important

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , on March 6, 2011| 7 Comments »

It's the missing part of Mount St. Helens that tells the story. -- Photo by Pat Bean

“Accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy of thinking.” Wallace Stevens

 Travels With Maggie

To artists, negative space is the blankness that exists around painted objects. Such space can sometimes be the most interesting thing on a canvas. Consider Rubin’s painting of a vase that when taken away creates the image of two facing profiles.

The professor in a drawing class I once took emphasized the importance of this empty space by having us draw it instead of the solid form before us.

I’ve learned since then that missing elements can tell us as much about what we’re seeing as what’s before us.

It's the negative space that's the more important image of Rubin's vase. -- Photo courtesy Wikipedia

How can one look up at the crater on Mount St. Helen’s without understanding that part of the mountain is missing? Such a conclusion can conjure up the image of a volcano erupting and remind us of how fragile life is.

When I’m out walking and the chattering of birdsong is stilled, I know to look to the sky. There just might be a hawk flying overhead.

Hollow footprints let me know who or what has trodden a path before me.

A branch with missing leaves might tell me a moose munched as it passed by.

A New York city street where no one walks warns me I might not want to walk there either.

The missing elements of a scene remind me of a saying among communicators, like journalists: Just because you heard what I said doesn’t mean you heard what I said.

So it is that just because you’re looking at a beautiful landscape doesn’t mean the painting is complete. Look again to find what’s missing. The story before you might change

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