Buddhism through the ages at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Ajanta, India — Inside the hushed darkness of the cave, I closed my eyes and could almost hear the tap, tap of ancient chisels carving into stone. All around me, the faces of various deities and Buddhist monks peered back at me. Brightly painted figures from the ancient Jataka tales, about the many…

May Six Word Photo Story Challenge: “Water” — A place where time stands still Liquid sun melting over the particles cast into the air from cooking fires, the jingle of cow bells and of school girls’ anklets as they ambled down the waterside path — these are my memories of the Coconut Lagoon in Kerala, India. We had come to take an old restored…

A poem from the mountain bike — Focus. Weave. Cross over here. You’re sliding. Breathe. Stay on the trail. That rut’s grown deep from winter’s rains. From mud to sand, spring’s new terrain. I’m sailing now through mustard fields. I sit up high. It feels like flying. And then the hay, it catches light and waves like water up to…

May Six Word Photo Story Challenge: “Water” — Circle three times before you dive Wide-eyed, we turned to each other, unable to control our excitement that we were actually seeing a group of Humpback Whales bubble-net feeding right in front of us. We’d watched National Geographic’s “Secrets of the Whales” right before we left for our trip to Alaska. And we hoped that being…

Listening to the whisper of the wild places — And this is what they told her, you will hear the words, the songs of poems, and they will be sweet and will strum the chords of your soul. Amongst the hay and wild grasses, you will find them there, in the melodies of birds and wild cricket wings and frogs and in the…

Exploring the mysterious Petroglyph Beach of Wrangell, Alaska — Icy shards of rain prickled our skin, and fragments of shell mixed with tiny round pebbles, worn smooth from the wild Alaskan seas, crunched underfoot. Tendrils of fog drifted over the bay and gathered into a low-hanging tapestry of mist hovering over the water. A lone cormorant, a silent sentry…

May Six Word Photo Story Challenge: “Water” — The circle of life in bubbles. We had just settled in with a glass of wine on the deck of the little thirty-two-passenger catamaran, The Alaskan Dream, which we were roaming through the backwaters of Alaska in. Captain Eric’s voice came in a bit crackly over the loud speaker — “whales!” I already had my camera…

One Color, Different Shades —

The daffodils of spring — I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. — William Wordsworth Ever since I read these lines, by William…