White Sands, and the Malpais, New Mexico

Some photos from a visit to White Sands with my friend Georgia about a decade ago.  Another mysterious place, one I particularly would have liked to visit by moonlight, the glistening white sands reflecting moon shadows.

White Sands National Park is in the Tularosa Basin, a vast field of white sand dunes composed of gypsum crystals. Approximately 12,000 years ago, the Tularosa Basin featured lakes, streams, grasslands, and Ice Age mammals. As the climate warmed, rain and snowmelt dissolved gypsum from the surrounding mountains and carried it into the basin. As the lakes dried up selenite crystals formed, which broke up and were transported east, producing gypsum sand.  About 45 species live only in the Park, and 40 of those are moths. Given the high heat in the summer, most of those are nocturnal, illusive "moon moths".   It's believed that the oldest known human footprints in North America are found at White Sands.  These are fossilized footprints found buried in layers of gypsum soil that can be dated to  21,000 and 23,000 years ago - remarkable, as the present consensus for human arrival into North America is placed at 13–16,000 years ago.  

Legend also has it that there is a ghostly woman who wanders among the sands at night, mourning her lost children and her lost life. 

The nearby "valley of Fire", a vast volcanic field called the Malpais ("bad land") is also fascinating and darkly beautiful.   

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Sands_National_Park

Salisbury Cathedral

This is pure tourist joy, this post.  No reflections, no commentary, just some photos from my trip to Salisbury and the magnificent Gothic  Salisbury Cathedral.  Unfortunately we were not able to take photos of the interior as a service was going on, but I was able to take photos of a Nave, the courtyard, and an area that must at one time have been the Cloister where the priests or monks lived.  And I had a chance to hear the choir sing inside - the acoustics are amazing.

I am as ever astounded by the rising ceilings of these Cathedrals. which seem to me to resemble, and be modelled upon, trees rising up.  I actually find a great deal that is "vegetative" about the shapes, the interior shapes at least, of the Cathedral, if not the ascending towers of the exterior.  The ancient Cathedral of Salisbury is certainly an awesome work of art and accomplishment, once the towering and beautiful center of the city.

This is a contemporary statue of a saint that stands outside the Cathedral.  I do not know who she is....once there was a plaque, but it seems to be gone, that described the statue.  But she has great presence there.  

One of the Personae of Salisbury, hidden away in a corner.  An angel?  But there are no wings.  She holds vessel with perhaps water........perhaps she represents St. Brigid, who was always associated with wells.

I love the floor too, being an artist who has made tiles.  

The installation of some contemporary sculptures look quite odd in the Cloister courtyard, in contrast to such history.   

 

This is from a room that has a running Biblical story above each arch, carved in marble.  This one is "Adam and Eve".  Under each arch is also a face, which I assume was meant to represent local people who were involved somehow with the construction of the Cathedral.  Some of them are quite funny, in contrast with the seriousness of the stories they underlie.  This one especially made me laugh.........he looks like he's rather cynical about the whole "Adam and Eve" thing.  Or maybe he's leering. 

 As awesome as these great Gothic Cathedrals are, they are not without their touches of humor too.

And there was a kind of bench with special embroidered cushions in one of the Naves, each dedicated to an Angel or to a Saint.  I found them beautiful, and wondered if they were kind of like "reserving a seat of honor" for these holy ones.

Zoe's Camino de Santiago

All photos are copyright Zoe d'Ay (2014)

My friend Zoe d'Ay, who lives in Glastonbury, England, in 2014 walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain at the age of 68......something I have so often dreamed of myself!  She brought the Camino alive with her photos, and it was my delight to make a Blog for her and share vicariously her stories of "The Way" along with her beautiful photos of her Pilgrimage.  I wanted to  re-visit the Blog,  and walk with her again. The posts go backward, with the beginning of her journey at the beginning of the Blog. 

Zoe's Camino

 

 

 

 

The scallop shell is the symbol of the Camino, pointing the way all along the long pilgrimage route.   After Compostella, many pilgrims, as Zoe did,  continue on to Finisterre, "Lands End", where they truly finish their pilgrimage before the vastness of the Atlantic ocean.   As David Whyte wrote: "Because now, you would find a different way to tread, and because, through it all, part of you could still walk on,  no matter how........."

FINISTERRE

The road in the end taking the path the sun had taken,
into the western sea, and the moon rising behind you
as you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way
to your future now

but the way your shadow could take,
walking before you across water,

going where shadows go,

no way to make sense of a world that wouldn't let you pass
except to call an end to the way you had come,
to take out each frayed letter you brought
and light their illumined corners, and to read
them as they drifted through the western light;
to empty your bags;
to sort this and to leave that;

to promise what you needed to promise all along
and to abandon the shoes that had brought you here
right at the water's edge,

not because you had given up
but because now, you would find a different way to tread,
and because, through it all,
part of you could still walk on,
no matter how, over the waves.” 

― David Whyte
 

All photos are COPYRIGHT Zoe D'ay

Spring at Santa Fe Dam, a Preserve in Los Angeles

Finally processed these photos from May..........this is actually the park, near Azusa and right in the heart of Los Angeles, where the California Renaissance Faire is held.

More travels on the Coast..........

Just to be with the Pacific Ocean, north and south.  The strange knarled trees right out of Tolkien that line the edge of the world at Casper.  I notice that I always seem to find them as entranceways to somewhere else, perhaps some strange door to the world of Faery............

When I emerged to the overlook of Jughandle Beach, I was just in time to see a wedding in progress, just in time, in fact, to snap "the kiss".

This solitary  tree, clinging so tenatiously to the edge of the cliff, is an old friend of mine.

And here is South, way south of Casper, at La Jolla down by San Diego.  I am eternally fascinated by pelicans, graceless birds on land, but when they fly they are as precise and elegant as any air show imaginable.  Might like to come back as a pelican next lifetime, living above the ocean and fishing when I'm not preening my wings.  Seems very pleasurable.

Not to mention the seals, basking in the sun when they're not barking at each other.  Swimming dogs, fascinating to watch them play with each other in the water.

And schools of brightly colored  rainbow kayaks, ignored by the bored looking pelicans.

It's been so healing to be on the ocean, to visit Mother Ocean.  Thank you and great praise, Yemaya.

One last hibiscus...........................