Tag Archives: nature

Memoirs -- fact and fiction, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Take a gander at these birds

PENNSYLVANIA — A gaggle of geese threads its way slowly up the Clarion River, paddling against a lazy and shallow, but persistent, mid-summer current. There are 10 geese, all mature. Long, elegant black necks, white wings. No fuzzy goslings.

They zig and zag, snatching bugs from the air and small fish from the river. Between the feasting and the faffing and the current, their progress is slow.

One by one, they follow the leader into the leeward side of a small rock outcropping. In the calm, they gather strength for the arduous upstream paddle ahead. Deeper, faster water awaits the geese.

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Memoirs -- fact and fiction, photography, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende, Scotland - West Highland Way

Lessons learned while slow-walking the West Highland Way

A long hike is never really over.

We finished walking Scotland’s West Highland Way on September 18. It is still very much on my mind and I suspect it will be hanging around.

There were lessons learned. Both about myself and the trail. 

That’s really what it is mostly about in the end, isn’t it? Nobody walks – let’s call it 100 miles – and walks away not knowing something new about themselves.

Even if it is only whether or not you love toe socks.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende, Scotland - West Highland Way, Uncategorized, Writings

Hiking the West Highland Way

There are many ways to hike Scotland’s often challenging 96-mile West Highland Way, between Milngavie and Fort William.

You can walk until you tire and pitch a tent. You can stay in posh hotels. You can stay in bunkrooms. You can stay in budget B&Bs. You can carry all your possessions in a backpack. You can have your luggage shipped to the next night’s lodging. You can dine in decent restaurants. You can eat in pubs. You can stock up on Ramen, fruit, and power bars at convenience stores.

One thing everyone has to do is walk the walk.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende

Egrets over regrets, every time

Nesting season has begun for the egrets, in the public laundry park just above Parque Juarez, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

But, with their watering and feeding habitat in Pressa Allende bone dry, I wonder what impact that will have on the annual trek to the trees in El Chorro?

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photography, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

How to look at flowers: A bird’s eye view of Candelaria

Today, I realized that I’ve been looking at the flowers all wrong.

The ones that have filled the wood aisles of Parque Juarez for the annual Candelaria Festival. Nearly every pathway is filled with flowers, succulents, cacti, saplings, herbs, seeds, soils, exotics, and verdant things indescribable by a casual traveler like me.

This isn’t my first Candelaria, bucko.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

An all-natural pod cast on a world wide web

“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.” — Pablo Picasso

Spider webs are beautiful things. Unless you walk face-first into one in the dark of night.

Then, not so beautiful. Or interesting.

My friend Sonny once sat for hours on the floor of our Cape Cod house staring at a spider as it wove a stringy orb behind a door. Sonny insisted he learned a lot from observing the construction of the web.

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Colonia San Antonio, photography, San Miguel de Allende, Uncategorized, Writings

Waddup? Nuttin, you? Nada. So, howzabout a cat and cacti picture then? Cool. And some dancing girls.

“The Cat in the Cacti” was one of my favorite Dr.Seuss books to read to my sons when they were toddlers. They did not grow up confused, but I did. Still am, I guess.

You want to hear about how my IT wizard supercharged my streaming media speed so that I can actually watch a movie uninterrupted (sometimes) off my FireStick?

Nah. Me neither.

How about the coming Sriracha shortage because drought conditions in northern Mexico are killing off the chiles harvest and the hot-sauce factory has closed?

You already know that one, huh?

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Memoirs -- fact and fiction, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

On the outside, looking in

These days, we walk around Parque Juarez.

No, not walk around in Parque Juarez.

Just, walk around. The perimeter.

We circle the park, as you would circle a fishbowl.

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San Miguel de Allende

Road trip: Taking a deep dive into the thermal waters of Gruta Tolantongo

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The Tolantongo River, close to its headwaters at the top of the canyon which shares its name.

From deep within the Hidalgo Mountains, voluminous thermal rivers rise up to the surface above the Tolantongo box canyon. The warm waters cascade down the canyon sides and pour through vents into the grottos and caves.

The canyon walls are dotted with about 40 manmade semicircular pools called chapoteaderos into which are collected the warm waters rushing down the hillside. Water overflows from the upper pools and cascades into the lower pools. All the pools are connected by stairways.

No matter how many pools are built to trap the water, it is never enough. Water finds its way around the pools, over them, under them, into spontaneous rivulets and streams. The sensation is of being surrounded by the roar and rumble of rushing water.

In every sense, this is a totally immersive experience. Continue reading →

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