Those who visit here very often won’t be surprised to hear that the highlight of my recent visit to Santa Rosa was my walks through this Sonoma County Park, NOT my wife’s class reunion.

The first time we walked there I was accompanied by Leslie, Jeff, and Debbie. Though I dragged my feet more than others preferred, we didn’t take the time needed to really get the best possible bird shots. Remarkably, I did manage to get a few good shots, particularly this shot of a Red-Shouldered Hawk, that flew into a tree right in front of us, the first I’ve ever seen.

My favorite shot of the day, though, was this one of a mature Green Heron, a bird I’ve stalked many times locally, but have never managed to get this good of shot of before.

The dominant bird in the park, though, was the Acorn Woodpecker and, while I got several shots of them, I never got a shot I liked that first day.

I also had left my wide angle lens home, so I couldn’t really take any scenic shots, a mistake I remedied the next day when I came back alone to take pictures. With no one anxious to get in a hardy walk, I had time to set up and take some scenic shots.

More importantly, I had the time to wait for the Acorn Woodpeckers to forget I was there and move in close enough that I could get a good shot.

In the process of taking pictures, I managed to get in a much tougher hike than the day before, nearly exhausting myself in the 80º weather.

We took the slow route to and from Santa Rosa last week so that we could spend time walking the Avenue of the Giants in Northwest California because both of us love walking there. I also hoped that my new wide-angle lens would help me to convey that love of the Redwoods visually.

Even with a 17mm wide-angle lens it was necessary to stitch several photos together to capture the height of these Pacific Coast Redwoods, and these were younger trees, not the fabled Giants that gave these groves their names. Even stitching doesn’t allow you to show the actual height because of the foreshortening of the camera.

Hopefully having to scroll compensates somewhat for the foreshortening.

Like any old-growth forest, part of the experience are the giant trees laying on the ground, as shown above. Equally important, though, are the spaces where ferns rush to fill in after a redwood has fallen.

ensuring that everywhere is green.

Though I’ll go on trying to capture the essence of these fabulous redwoods, I doubt it’s really possible to capture the beauty that has to be experienced firsthand. Only the human eye seems capable of capturing the subtle beauty of this place. Even my expensive digital camera can’t capture the full range of lights and darks that help to create it’s cathedral-like beauty.

R.S. Thomas’ poems about God continue to fascinate me, particularly ones like:

MEDIATIONS

And to one God says: Come

to me by numbers and

figures; see my beauty

in the angles between

stars, in the equations

of my kingdom. Bring

your lenses to the worship

of my dimensions: far

out and far in, there

is always more of me

in proportion. And to another:

I am the bush burning

at the centre of

your existence; you must put

your knowledge off and come

to me with your mind

bare. And to this one

he says: Because of

your high stomach, the bleakness

of your emotions, I

will come to you in the simplest

things, in the body

of a man hung on a tall

tree you have converted to

timber and you shall not know me.

Younger I was fascinated with science, particularly with the way things seemed to fit together perfectly. I remember the magical moment when I first saw an award-winning science short which featured microscopic close-ups and telescopic shots of the universe, revealing remarkable symmetries. I used to belief the purpose of science was to reveal those mysteries, though in recent years it seems as if it serves very different purposes.

Although I’ve never been able to feel God as the center of my existence, I envy many who have felt that way. In fact, that might well be what I most admire about R.S. Thomas’ poetry.

Of course, it’s the third argument that’s most shocking, at least coming from the pen of a minister. I’ll have to admit that, though the statement rings true to me, I’m also dumb-founded by it, unable to put my own reaction into words.

Monday and Tuesday’s trip down the Oregon Coast was one of the wettest I’ve ever seen in August, making it difficult to get any decent pictures of the rugged coast.

Of course, this is probably pretty typical of how most people see the Oregon coast.

I did manage to get some nicer shots of the coast in Northern California, but I don’t have Photoshop on my portable to join shots together. So, I’ll have to wait until I get back home to put these shots and shots from the Redwoods on my site.