I wish I could remember more specifics about the area where these photos were taken other than that they were labeled as East Fork photos on my hard drive, but alas, I have no other information.  I do know that the stream where these were taken is off of Highway 299 about 20 miles away from Blue Lake, California and that it is a lovely stream that I’m hoping to visit again this weekend.

Click on the image below to go to the gallery.

Click on the image below to go to the gallery of photographs taken at the Trinidad State Park in Trinidad, California in July 2008.  Most of these were taken at the mouth of a small creek that flows into the Pacific from the hills above and is one of my favorite spots near home.

Here is another small gallery of images taken in September of 2008.  I had just returned from Michigan with a new macro lens and went up to Trinidad (California) to try it out.  These are the best of the results.

A small gallery of photos taken at Stone Lagoon in Humboldt County, California earlier this year.

There is an Eastern legend that has come from centuries ago that says that, when God created made man out of clay and asked the soul to enter, the soul refused to enter this prison house.  Then God commanded the angels to sing, and as the angels sang, the soul entered, intoxicated by the song.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

from the Mysticism of Sound and Music

Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not wisdom, Wisdom is not truth, Truth is not beauty, Beauty is not love, Love is not music and Music is THE BEST

–Frank Zappa

That is all

There is only one ‘real’ and we are all that. When we cease to identify our self with the myriad distinctions and distractions that fill the content of our minds we are left with only that which is; consciousness.

Most of us here live our lives in ignorance of this and look for beginnings and endings, but what if there is truly no such thing? What can anyone point to as a definitive ending to anything? All experience changes and becomes something other than what it was, but can we call that an ending? The body dies and decomposes but the matter that made that body still exists. The consciousness that manifest as that individual person is no longer available to those that remain but their impacts and effects in life carry on through the thoughts and actions of those they knew (and sometimes even those they never knew). Is that truly an ending?

This may be something that we can never know so long as we remain in our single bodies and self identified as those bodies. Who knows?

But what if there really is no ending and no beginning to anything? What if we are already in infinity and there ultimately are no boundaries? What if death is a merely a passage to another state of being? What if this place was never created, it has always existed and always will?

The answer to that final question is the one that drives us collectively mad I sometimes think. We seem to long for an ending, a time when it will all be over and we can start over. But what if there is no over, what if it is all an endless continuum from which there is no beginning and ending? Madness, surely so long as we remain our small and individual selves, trapped in a body for this finite period of compromises and triumphs, tragedies and laughs. But what if the the punchline is that we are truly infinite, that we are the same as the consciousness that has been called God, or Brahma, Allah?

I sometimes fear that this is what terrifies the heart of mankind more than nearly any other possibility; the fear that we are the same as the infinite that we worship, that it is all in us already and that we are living the manifestations of our own awareness right now. That there is no other authority or power to blame or petition. That we are That.

I’m standing on the bow of an enormous battle ship hundreds of feet tall. The background is all cartoon grey, nothing but a wash monochrome emptiness. Somehow, I find myself falling over the edge of the ship and falling into space. The ship is gone and I’m alone in my descent. I can feel the panic and adrenalin building as I plummet toward the ground, aware of my own impending demise once I reach the flat earth below.

As I continue to fall, another sensation begins to grow in me. It is an appreciation of the pleasure of falling. The exhilaration of being drawn by gravity ever downwards begins to fill me with a joy that exceeds the dread of impact.

And then, it is over. I hit the ground and my fall is through grace is done. I pick myself up from the ground and stand up. Slowly it begins to dawn on me; I should not be here, like this, now. I have just fallen hundreds of feet and hit the ground. I should be dead or incapacitated with broken bones and agonizing pains. But instead I’m standing here thinking to myself how much of a blast that was and how I could do it again.

I reveled in that strange state of contradiction for a moment longer and then returned to my dreams, unaware of the significance of what had just transpired in me.

I was three years old and had no idea how that night would change me in the years to come.