Navaratri – Garba

JWise Photo of the Day

Part of the celebration of the Hindu Festival of Navaratri is this Gujarati dance called Garba

This was the first year we attended a Garba celebrating the Hindu festival of Navaratri. Garba is a Gujarati dance held in the first part of the evening, while Dandiya, which involves dancing with two bamboo or wooden sticks that are clicked together with the sticks of the person in front of you, is held later in the evening. During a break in the five-hour dance, a small meal and chai are served. Live music accompanies the dance held at a local high school gym each October.

Sonal Patel at Garba

We’d been invited to the festivities by Sonal Patel (on the left), who we’d recently met after she took over a local Indian grocery store called Indo Euro that we’d been shopping at for the past couple of years.

Monterey to Sequoias – Day 4

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Sequoia National Park in California

While the picture is a bit mismatched because I had to stitch two portrait photos together, there was no other way to photograph this giant. The General Sherman Tree is the largest tree on Earth. It stands 275 feet tall, or about 84 meters, and is 36 feet in circumference (11 meters). It is estimated to weigh about 4 million pounds or 1.8 million kg. We are visiting the Sequoia National Park today.

Caroline Wise and Mark Shimer in Sequoia National Park in California

This is not the General Sherman tree but just another random Sequoia with two ant people standing next to it for scale. The oldest known Sequoia is about 3,500 years old, while General Sherman is only in middle age at a spry 2,000 years old. It’s kind of strange standing next to a tree that is still alive after growing here for thousands of years.

Sequoia National Park in California

You can’t stand here and not be impressed by old-growth forest and simultaneously not be saddened that there are so few remaining. These trees are impressive in ways no words can convey, nor can photos help you find a sense of what it is to walk through such ancient and large growing things.

Sequoia National Park in California

Then, right next to those old giants is a fresh sprout of a delicate fern, and at once, you see that without our intrusion, the world and its ecosystem can remain in equilibrium.

Sequoia National Park in California

While many Sequoias and Redwoods can endure some minor fire damage, often carving out a part of the lower trunk, a tree can be destroyed, as is seen here. These hollow shells stand as a life support system for the myriad life forms that are still using its hulk as home. There’s a cycle of life that is happening all around us from the smallest to the largest scale and most of us are oblivious to its reality.

Sequoia National Park in California

This cabin is the interior of a giant Sequoia log that fell a long time ago. This guy Hale O. Tharp came along back in the 19th century and turned it into a part of his cabin where he spent summers until the place was turned into a National Park.

Sequoia National Park in California

I hope you agree that a place like this deserves our protection.

Joshua Trees at Sunset

With our long weekend hanging out with Mark now over, it was time to return to our desert abode and take refuge from the nuclear sky. Hmmm, what if those spiny things on the Joshua trees were actually cilia moving in incredibly slow motion and were surviving mutants of their distant ancestor, the jellyfish?

Monterey to Sequoias – Day 3

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

There’s a piece of music called “Kelp Forest” from Douglas Morton that plays here in this part of Monterey Bay Aquarium that I can hear when I’m looking at photos from this tank. It’s a short loop of music I’ve heard countless times, and it is yet to sound boring as it fits the vibe perfectly.

If you are wondering why we are not speeding down the road to the next stop, it is because two hours in the aquarium weren’t enough.

Just as we come here to look at sea life, the sea life looks back at us.

Well, I don’t think the jellies really look back at us, but for all we know, their cilia are performing double duty by acting as a kind of quantum antennae used for receiving our thoughts and broadcasting emotional triggers that talk to our sense of wonderment, and that’s why we stare in awe nearly hypnotized when we are looking at jellies.

Comb jellies, on the other hand, are the ocean’s disco, where plankton go to listen to clam music and dance.

I’m fairly certain some astrophysicists stole this design to explain how matter travels through a black hole to emerge on the other side of a parallel universe.

Mark Shimer, Caroline Wise, and John Wise at Monterey Bay Aquarium in California

After spending the majority of the morning in the aquarium, it was time to go hunt for lodging near our next stop, but first, we needed to deal with the four-hour drive to get within range.

Monterey to Sequoias – Day 2

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

We got out of the Los Angeles area early for the drive up the coast over Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo before reaching the Elephant Seal Colony north of San Simeon. By this time, I’ve lost count of how many previous visits we’ve made to this exact spot on the coast. I’m certain I’ve seen some of these seals on other stops, but there’s no way I’m going to identify one by name or markings.

Off in the distance is the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse, while in the foreground are more Elephant Seals.

Thistle sounds menacing, and those giant pokey thorns don’t help its image, but the sheer beauty of the neon pink, lavender, and purples in the flower certainly make it a visually appealing plant. This type is of the Silybum group, commonly known as milk thistle, which has health benefits for our livers.

We are on a slow drive north, showing Mark some of the places we’ve fallen in love with over the years and many visits that have brought us up and down the California coast. In the years Mark has been living in the Los Angeles area working for the film industry, he’s an animator and hasn’t taken much time to explore the world around him, so we are trying to get him off his treadmill.

If you get the idea from the indiscriminate photos of more coast that we have a broad sense of what constitutes a favorite place, well, you’d be right. We love the whole thing, well, except those parts that draw sunbathers to open beaches for tanning.

This is the common morning glory flower, and it is the seeds of this plant that some will seek to get a cheap high. The problem is that the person needs to eat hundreds for the psychedelic effects to work; I’m sure there must be easier ways to reach a psychedelic state.

I think this is part of the mint family, but I’m no botanist, so sue me if I’m wrong.

McWay Falls at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park in Big Sur.

This intimidating-looking creature is the yellow-spotted millipede, also known as the cyanide millipede, for its ability to secrete cyanide. Should you pick one up (they don’t bite or sting), it will likely curl up, and if you smell almond, then you know that this millipede is trying to defend itself. While it is not typically toxic to adults, it is usually fatal to birds and rodents. So, while you might be creeped out finding these in the California forest, you need not worry about them sending you to the hospital.

A bed of redwood sorrel.

Look into the treetops when in a redwood forest as these trees grow tall and straight. Now imagine that there have been people in our fairly recent history who would have had no problem harvesting every last one of these trees to trade them in for money. Our perspective of what’s important is myopic, while our thirst for what will allow us to imbibe group stupidity is unquenchable.

Groomed footpaths to idyllic settings are a luxury we all share, but few seem to find time to grace their path. For all who maintain these trails to the exquisite places, I thank every one of you.

This is Mark Shimer, our traveling companion for a couple of days. A long time ago, I gave him his first graphic design job following his graduation from a Phoenix design school. Today he is a pro and only getting better as he’s been tackling larger and larger projects in Hollywood. We are taking this photo at Garrapata Beach, which may forever be our favorite beach of all time.

Leaving Garrapata Beach, where every corner is a masterpiece of beauty.

That’s Caroline mesmerized by the jellyfish exhibit here at Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Not a great photo due to the poor lighting, but it’s a sea turtle, and in the background is a dolphinfish, also known as Mahi-Mahi. What’s not seen is the school of blue-fin tuna cruising around the tank.

This octopus has been one of the most difficult mollusks to photograph as not only does it frequently squeeze itself into some dark corner, but anything that moves with some speed wreaks havoc on my attempts to snap a photo in near darkness. Maybe it remembers my previous attempts, and it has finally given in to allowing me a perfect pic of perfect beauty.

Whoever said these lowly shrimps were cockroaches of the sea was only partly right. While they are detritivores in that they will eat any dead or decaying organic matter, they do likely taste a lot better than the common cockroach, but how would I know?

My hypocrisy works like this: I don’t like zoos as the animals are in no way living in anything that resembles their natural habitat. For the most part, I don’t like aquariums either, but when David Packard helped create this gift to humanity that opened back on October 20, 1984, he was well aware of the importance of the ecosystem that would be on display. With that in mind, he worked on the architecture and functionality of how this place would operate and its symbiotic relationship with the ocean at its front door. The water in these tanks comes directly from the ocean and is recirculated at the temperature that best sustains the life that is on display here. While certain fish and animals are not very well suited for the confines of an enclosure, I’d say that the Monterey Bay Aquarium is doing the world a tremendous favor in bringing our attention to the health, sustainability, and responsibility we all have for our oceans.

Our up-close view of shorebirds is one we never get to have in the wild as they flutter away as quickly as we approach unless they are seagulls and you are holding out food, and then the closest hundred will flock to you in a moment squawking in their ear-piercing shrill voices of utter annoyance.

This fish is known as the artichoke fish and is another member of the mollusk family. If you look closely, you can see its spikey protrusions; they are a kind of rasping tongue called a radula, and it is what these particular creatures use to eat. Maybe you aren’t buying this? Fine, this artichoke is not actually in an aquarium or living in the ocean; it is in Castroville, California, also known as the Artichoke Capital of the World, and grows in a field.

Camping in Arivaca – Day 2

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Arturo Silva and Caroline Wise at Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in Arivaca, Arizona

Ricky is on the left, hidden in his hoodie, Arturo Jr is holding the water, and of course, you all know my wife. Arturo is out of the picture fetching more stuff for his incredible hot breakfast feast he’s about to cook up.

Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in Arivaca, Arizona

We are out here scouting hunting locations for the guys who have a permit to grab a javelina.

Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in Arivaca, Arizona

Where would you go, hang out, find a friend, and something to eat if you were a peccary living in a desert with predators after your ass?

Picacho Peak, Arizona

Picacho Peak is kind of redundant like an ATM machine because Picacho is Spanish for Peak, so Peak Peak State Park is a bit weird. This shark fin rock is famous for being one of the sites of the westernmost skirmishes of the Civil War. Seeing this means we are traveling north or south on Interstate 10, and seeing we’ve been down south the last two days, I guess you can deduce what we are doing.