It was about time I noticed
It was this picture that instigated the thought in my head. I was pulling out of my driveway and had just straightened my car to face eastwards, ready to drive off the neighborhood, when I looked up. There it was — one of the most serene sights I had ever witnessed. The Sun was slowly rising in the east, gradually engulfing the world in its orangish hue. The shades of color were bewilderingly striking: The black, red, white, blue, gray, purple and orange streaks and splats were like palettes of color dabbed onto a canvass by a seasoned artist. The otherwise majestic Mt. Hood was but a spec in the background of the dark silhouettes of the evergreens. The white fence and the 2 street lamps that had yet to turn off added to the aura even as the trash can on the street added a touch of realism to the overall panorama.
It was about time I noticed the magnificence all around me.
Having captured the above picture with my iPhone 11 Pro camera, through my car’s windscreen to boot, I knew I will get great shots if I focused a tiny bit harder. Off I went, armed with my iPhone, looking to capture nature’s beauty over the next several days. All I did in reality was to make a mental note to point-click-and-shoot anything picturesque.
The above shot was taken at around 7am on a crisp January morning just as I was parking my car at work in Aloha, Oregon. All along my 10 mins drive from home to work, I had watched the stunning sky transform from a deep red to varying shades of pink to the bright orange in the picture by the time I pulled into the parking lot. The yellow ball of fire at the bottom had somehow created magnificent gravity-defying orange waves in the sky. The tree shadows added just the perfect amount of tranquility to the otherwise ‘fury of fire’. The picture is worth a thousand words, surely.
Talking about the waves, the picture below that I shot from the balcony of our resort in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico is an exquisite illustration of the more traditional surfs. We had just checked into the resort around noon during the last Thanksgiving break, when I ambled into the balcony of our ocean-side room to lay my eyes upon this wonderful sight. I could hear the infrequent din of joyful screaming overshadowed by the loud splashes of water hitting the beach. All I wanted to do at that very moment was to join those hysteric people swimming in the calm waters of the Pacific, which I did momentarily later but not before I took this lovely photograph.
Remember Fibonacci numbers from middle-school math? The sequence of numbers such that each number is the sum of the two preceding ones, starting from 0 and 1: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144,…There was another very important characteristic about the Fibonacci numbers: The ratio of two consecutive numbers tends to the ‘Golden Ratio’ (φ=1.61803) as n increases, that is, the ratio starts getting increasingly closer to the mathematical constant known as the Golden Ratio as one moves from left to the right. As I was taking the picture of this beautiful rose — note the drops of fresh rain on the flower and the leaves — in the front yard of our home in Portland, Oregon a few weeks back, I was suddenly reminded that flowers exhibit Fibonacci patterns (thank you my 10 year old for reading that to me a few days back). The Fibonacci numbers on a rose simply show that each petal is dependent on the others preceding it precisely in the Fibonacci series: Each new one is the sum of the two that came before. If you take the mathematical relationships of any two adjacent rose petals and divide them, they will always come out as the Golden Ratio, or 1.618. How cool is that! I couldn’t resist and took the following extra shots of roses in front of our home. There is a reason why Portland is called the ‘City of Roses’.
Ahh! my favorite Mt. Hood. I must have taken at least 50 pictures of this mighty mountain from our driveway. Only 2 hours by car from our home, Mt. Hood is the centerpiece of Portland. Visible from pretty much every elevated corner of this northwest city, its snow-capped peak is a sight to behold on every non-cloudy day. Below, I captured a few moods of Mt. Hood — The Serene Hood, The Golden Hood, The Dreamy Hood and The Spring Hood.
But my latest favorite is The Invisible Hood. Taken at dusk on a rainy, cloudy day, with the Sun setting on my back, I looked up to gaze at my favorite mountain but it was nowhere to be found. I knew it was there, hidden by the gray clouds, majestic as ever but shrouded by the darkness around it. The Sun must have caught a sliver of a break between the clouds behind me, wide enough for a few rays to sneak through to illuminate the foliage in front of me. The darkness above, the shadows below, twinkle of life in-between — truly poetic!
Bright sunny day, dark gray clouds, thunder, lighting, hail, rain, dusky gloomy weather, brightly sunny again — I had watched the transformation through my home office window even as I was trapped indoors “working from home” during the COVID-19 lockdown a couple weeks back. It was hard to focus on the work with so much action outside. It was the Spring season furthermore, meaning the Portland foliage was dressed in its finest. I had just started a meeting, I distinctly remember, when I peered skywards one more time. The Sun was shining bright again and there it was — a Double Rainbow! I knew the scene was evanescent, with no time to pause my meeting, wear my slippers, run outside, position myself perfectly and take a professional photograph; I grabbed my trusted iPhone and grabbed this one in a million shot through my office window. Not bad!
I took the above picture during our ‘family walk’ in April 2020 in Beaverton, Oregon. COVID-19 lockdown was at its peak, with paranoia engulfing everybody in the US. Long walks were the one respite from the clutches of monotony. During one such walk on a lazy Saturday afternoon, we stopped by the above lake in our neighborhood. The picture does only half the justice to the heavenly sight that beheld us for a good 15 minutes. The evergreens behind the row of homes and shops in the background, the reflection of white clouds on the deep blue lake water and the equally blue skies with streaks of gray had created as panoramic a scenery as we had ever seen. The lake itself reminded us of the Mirror Lake in Lake Placid in upstate NY, one of our favorite winter-break destinations.
And I met her on one of my morning runs in the neighborhood. She was not alone and was definitely not shy of posing. They all had stepped aside from the sidewalk, allowing me, the human, the right of way, except her. She held her ground and looked me square in the eye. We must have stared at each other for a good 10 seconds before I decided to whip out my iPhone and took this shot. She didn’t twitch once. She meant business: This was her lair and she had every right to enjoy the beautiful Fall colors as much as I, the human.
Having moved from the Northeast US (famous for its very pretty Fall season), I didn’t expect much colors on the trees in Portland. Boy! Was I wrong. I didn’t notice the splendor much during our first Fall or Spring in Oregon but the COVID-19 lockdown had forced me indoors this Spring season. I was amazed as I observed the Cherry Blossom tree in our front yard undergo the full cycle of transformation — from being naked after the last Fall, to getting adorned with pretty pink flowers, to adding dashes of green leaves, to shedding the pinks, to ultimately turning into a wholly green tree. Miracle of nature at its best.
The red Maple trees, green Conifers and flamboyant flowers add to the overall allure of Portland. The city is (naturally) colorful throughout the year. Not taking anything away from the gorgeous Northeast where I spent a better part of my 2 decades in the US, I won’t ever call the Northeast a place of ‘unparalleled beauty’ any more. A must-visit place any time of the year, a trip to Portland in the Spring is a must-have on everybody’s bucket list.
A singular view capturing the orange horizon, setting Sun, rising Moon, still water on land — enough said. I took the below picture just as my plane was getting ready to land at the San Jose airport in California. The timing was perfect even as the position of my window seat was not, but got a great shot nevertheless, especially if you ignore the closeup of the airplane wing. I personally love the orange reflection of the Sun on the far end of the wing — 3 circles of fire through one lens!
I will close out my tribute to Nature with the following final picture, a picture I like to call: Road to Nowhere. I cheated some. It’s not ‘purely’ Nature but is rather a perfect amalgamation of a man-made wonder and Nature — The Great Wall of China, October 2019.
Me and a colleague ascended the Huanghuacheng Great Wall (Yellow Flower Great Wall) — a not-so-touristy section of the Wall that our very well-informed guide brought us to — using a rickety iron ladder that was hung precariously onto a window in the wall. It was well worth the effort though. The beautiful misty mountains, high altitude, perilous slopes and unmistakably hazardous terrain underscored the audacity of the Chinese emperors who commissioned the construction of this wonder of the world. It was only after I trekked the upslopes of the Great Wall that I realized that the Wall was not a wall after all, unlike the hypothesis I had held all my life. The Wall is actually the polar opposite of what a wall is supposed to do — it was a means of connecting far-away regions of China, a ‘short-cut’ across the mountains rather than a structure to block access. It really is the collective name for a series of fortification systems to protect and consolidate Chinese territories against invaders. It is an artfully constructed roadway through the high mountains built in a fashion so as to guard the entire northern China with very few, sparsely spread soldiers. The roadway on the top of the wall (like the one in the picture above that I trekked) has 100s of in-built watch towers, troop barracks, garrison stations and signaling capabilities through the means of smoke or fire. The Wall further has enough ‘roadblocks’ to prevent the reverse inflow of invading armies should the Chinese soldiers lose control of a section of the Wall. Brilliant piece of engineering!
Road to Nowhere is a beautiful illusion: The Wall does extend downwards and actually connects to the path seen further ahead in the picture. I could only trek a grand total of 2 miles though. 2 miles out of 3,889 miles of The Great Wall of China that is.
