Spring Came Early This Year

Thus, let ensue the foggy morning walkings.
And the Sunday strolls.

A spider webbed.

Loosing focus in a tiny forrest.

A trunk that blooms along with its branches.

After many months, I got back to editing some Antarctica photos. 

It was nice to return to that solitary place for a moment. 

I miss it.

On February 4th, 2012, 

I was spotlighted on the Pictory blog. 

Thank you to Pictory for that honor--I continue to admire their work.

(P.S. I was credited as Spencer-Taylor Harrison on Pictory)

A weekend in California with early mornings in my mother's garden. 

A trip to Pittsburgh, PA 
(original pronunciation like Edinburgh, i.e.
pitts-burr-ə)


In celebration of an engagement.
More photos impending.

After a certain point, the difference between being thousands of miles and millions of miles away from home doesn't matter so much.

This might as well have been Mars. 

But yet again, it was Deception Island,

and masterfully bizarre.

I would haunt this place in my dreams if I could. 

Ice on a lake in Argentina.

Have you ever thought about the fact that there 

are people in very warm, rural places who have never seen ice?

There are people in history who, throughout their lifetime, neither saw nor touched, nor perhaps even fathomed the solid state of water. 

Not the best of photos,

but we miss this place today.

We are neither the first nor the last to be captured by Oxford's charm. 

I would study and Spencer would wait for me in the cafe straight ahead, attached St. Mary's. 

The church was given to the University in 1320.

John Wesley preached there.

The cafe is new.

Spencer always had a scone and cream on his plate, with Camomile tea beside.

I remember this quiet Christmas walk.

The snow padded the particularly awkward cobblestones. 

This is quite an old photo that I fell upon again today.
It is of a mother I met whilst working in Ghana.
A fabulous color to her scarf.  

Deception Island. 

See this other blog entry for more information.

Of all the places I've been in my life, this is one of the most surreal. 

thus, also among the  best. 

My favorite fruit.
Its shape. Its taste, texture, and tone.

Sui generis, indeed.

The persimmon.

I even enjoy the shape of the word,
persimmon
(a word with rare Algonquian heritage)

A fascinating fruit to learn about
(teaser: ebony wood, ch'i regulation, tannin bitterness, and predicting winter)

This, to me, was the antarctic equivalent of a cattle skull in the desert.

It was snowing flurriously, so I didn't get a great shot.

Still beautiful. 

The flailed legs and outstretched wings - such freedom, it's hysterical.
A momentary flight for the flightless...like kiwi

I'm quite under the weather today, so I needed a pick-me-up.

A duo of shots demonstrating the personality of penguins.
It's hard to refrain from giving commentary to each one's expression. 

Sometimes you need to be the free soul who jump first. 

Even if the icebergers think you're crazy. 

No photo today, but rather a video. I apologize for the poor quality, but it was one of my first times filming with the camera. I'd like to get better at it...and then go back the Antarctica.

This morning we were headed south. More south than all other boats this season, thanks to a stalwart Captain Alexi. The others turned back in trepidation. We had floated like this through the night, and there was nothing but ice and gray sky in every direction. I quite enjoyed the claustrophobic feeling when I didn't think on it.

"After the Drake, it seems nice inside the ship," said the expedition leader, "but I want you all to know that we are in moderately severe conditions outside." Moments later a snow storm broke out and I watch the blizzard through the window.

I realized, both in that moment and apropos to life, that if I didn't dwell on just how far away I was from home and open water, it was quite solitary and spectacular. All I had to do was be right where I was. The best memories in life have come to me that way. And some of the worst have been moments of yearning for things past and future.

In floating over that ice with nothing of life around me, the rest of the world and history seemed like a story. Were there really wars going on? Were there really revolutions, and elections, and births, and deaths taking place? Were their really rain forests and sandy deserts? Had there really been a six year old me playing soccer in California? Had there really been a King Henry the VIII and a Michelangelo? They all seemed like make believe in this whitewashed silent world.

2
winter fruits.

Precisely, a pair of pears. 

Romans cultivated such pears, 

but would not eat them raw. 

I have yet to taste them poached, 

so perhaps a birthday will be a fitting
time to try, with pure honey.

Justinian was born on May 11th 483 AD.

A Roman Emperor with chocolate almond eyes.
Poached pears with honey and chocolate almonds
on May 11,  2012--hasten the day and be long.

He attempted to conquer lost territory and 

reunite the the Rome that once was whole. 

Unfortunately, a plague followed in his wake, which
is a most depressingly definitive terminus to aspiration.
No more Golden Age, only a raw golden pear left behind.

Justinian did, however, befriend a beautiful art movement.

The Hagia Sophia of spires, St. Mark's Basilica of Venice, the
golden mosaic of Justinian himself. It was the Byzantine. 

It was flat and gilded, geometric and iconic, black and white. 

To his name, Justinian also recodified Roman law,
setting the stage for civil law that lasts unto today. 

But back to the precise pair of pears:

their wood is fine for furniture and woodwinds.

Even Art Deco had a fetish for them.

And now I've made a pear
of words.

If anyone arrives at my door May 11th,
poached pears will be served with raw honey and chocolate almonds.
I say this with confidence that too few so near read my blog. 

Another cold day in DC.

Likely not as cold as this day in Antarctica, though I don't remember where I was when I took this shot. 

Sometimes, in Antarctica, I just felt like a bug floating in a giant's cup of ice water. 

For relative size, this icecube was probably double overhead.

This is a very large giant. 

last night was the coldest night of winter thus far.

spencer and i went for a walk in it. 

the memories of that walk include quite a bit of blue, so i thought an iceberg fitting.

i knew when i shot this photo that no one would believe the color. 

believe it or not. 

PLEASE CLICK ON THESE TO SEE THEM LARGER 

The other day I had a dream in which I was sad about something (though I do not know what).

To cheer me up, and old friend, Debbie Stapley, showed me her collection of dried flowers.
Not dried and flattened between the pages of a book,

but dried just as they are:

frozen on the stem, but drained of most color.

The dream inspired me to walk with Spencer yesterday, along the winter worn foliage of Old Dominion Trail.

I've had this object since I can remember.

At a lack of memory, I like to think of it as given to me the day that I was born.

What an appropriate gift for a new life:

A telescope of angled glass to break scenes into many perspectives at once.

The engravings read: 1987,  Dragon Fly and "patent pending"

Antarctica 2011, Day 20

Up and up in a new year. 

So, I fulfilled my promise of uploading one antarctica photo per day until the new year.

However, I still have hundreds more. 

Thus, I will continue to post one photo a day, but it now may or may not be of Antarctica. 

Antarctica 2011, Day 19

Today we ran a marathon.

A metaphorical thing to do on the last day of the year, 

beside a placid Potomac.

It was a trek along the fringe of 2011, which helped us to squeeze the final energies from an eventful year.
Now we can fall freely, and exhausted, into the open arms of something new.

I thought this a fitting picture post for New Year's Eve,

as many wonders may lay behind such a rusted door, 

and many behind such an arbitrary restart in time as tonight. 

2011 to 2012

twozerooneonetotwozeroonetwo.
Have you noticed the resemblances of dates lately?
10012011, 10022011, 10102011, 10112011, 10122011, 10202011, 10212011, 10222011, 11012011, 11022011, 11102011, 11112011, 11122011, 11202011, 11212011, 11222011, 12012011, 12022011, 12102011, 12112011, 12122011, 12202011, 12212011, 12222011, 01012012, 01022012....

Antarctica 2011, Day 18

Antarctica 2011, Day 17

This is the glacier noted in yesterday's post.
(please click on it, as the larger version has more detail))

I'm not sure which of my fellow epeditionist that is balancing the ridge, but behind them is a frozen lake and around them are snows and spotted lands.

This was one of those sprite moments in time, when you pause to picture yourself on the paper mache globe at home. You marvel and then ask yourself--almost as if you are not attached to the self standing where you are--"How did I get here?"

Inevitably, these same outstanding moments that one looks back on--now quite sure that they are not attached to the self who once stood there--and ask "Was that really me?"

Antarctica 2011, Day 16

This is technically Ushuaia, Argentina. 

We took a helicopter up to a glacier before leaving the country by boat.

A little insect of a machine was our mode of transportation.

I felt like a dandelion spore on the wind, but I quite enjoyed the feeling. 

I don't know that I'll ever come so close to being a dandelion again. 

Antarctica 2011, Day 15

The last few steps to the summit of this 2011 mountain.

Then, let us hope, up and up in 2012.

Antarctica 2011, Day 14

I missed Christmas.

I loved the friendly face of this fellow.

Antarctica 2011, Day 13

He is asking,

"Are you ready for Christmas?"



(footnote: This is not a peg leg penguin, although that would be sadly endearing, he simply lost his foot in the snow. If you stepped too hard in the snow, you could sink up to your waste.)

Antarctica 2011, Day 12

Seal tracks to match the sky.

Antarctica 2011, Day 11

I waited on a very cold deck for this shot.

I wanted the cloud hat to be perched upon the mountain just so.

I have another picture of mountain wearing a hat (it can be found on the United States page),

but it rarely happens. 

Mountains wear blankets of snow, and accessory climbers quite often, 

but rarely hats. 

Antarctica 2011, Day 10

Please, click on this photo to enlarge it.
You'll see a few of these. 

They were a project in perception.

We were ice-locked one night and the snow was falling  on the water around us.

As I looked at the water, a sooty blue, with snowflakes speckled upon it, I couldn't help but think of constellations.

The photo of this night is forth coming, but here is another example of the

"Ocean That Was Sky"

in Antarctica.

Do be sure to click on it to make it larger.
Try to imagine the ocean as sky on the right. 

Antarctica 2011, Day 9

The seals reminded me very much of caterpillars and slugs. 

This leopard seal's only movement was to curl like this once.

Other than that, he just laid like a monument to the lazy. 

Then again, who am I to judge. He's a water animal. I have legs and arms, where he has blatantly inadequate flaps as his mechanism for maneuvering the rest of his large blob around land. 

Surely under the ice our situations of awkwardness would be reversed. 

Antarctica 2011, Day 8

Antarctica 2011, Day 7

This is an iceberg. I wonder why it shaped itself like this. 

What does it remind you of?

No one ever comments on this blog, but feel free to tell me what you think.

I can make at least ten analogies. 

Antarctica 2011, Day 6

I miss this place.