mountain moments / alpine skies

homesky... always more special on the evening before going on a journey. 

(even when it's just a short trip). 

*

On the way to Tyrol / passing the sign of my hometown / light memory reflections 

*

Road moment: when the mountains appear at the horizon ... together with that feeling of larger horizons. 

*

Mountain view from our balcony :) so good to be here, and to have luck with the weather. 

*

Giant alpine lift construction. All the things mankind developed...

*

Mountain zen with silver horizon

*

Water, sky and stone.
And a timeless horizon :)

*

Flower windows :)

*

Saturday: Today brought sun and rain and sun and thunder... and a beautiful sign: we went up to Timmelsjoch, an alpine pass. There's a crystal up there, as hope and sign for world peace. So here's a wish, for peace , and sunny skies.

*

Ötztal-Bike-Marathon 2017 - Start of 4500 participants!

*

Sunday morning in the mountains - taking the "Sessellift" in Vent.
Blue skies and views opening.

*



Up at 2235 meter altitude.
A sunwarmed bench, a dream of flying.
Stone paths and stoic cows.

*
more photos, notes to follow...

The colorful pretty vibe
of a single flower
in a world of greens/greys/browns

*

... and a second mountain/lift tour, after a rain pause:
Gigijjochbahn Sölden.
The view, like a reflection on natural monuments + human monuments.
Both pretty amazing

*

the timeless + rough beauty of alpine grounds

*

Mountain balance: creating a stone cairne.
Looking up, a flock of crows:
the lightness of today.

*

Trail statue: the winged guardian angel of all who wander....
or just a hiker with backpack :).

- as always, we see is what we think

*

Cherry cake at the Gigijoch alpine cafe at 2.238 metres
- a delicious mountain moment :)

*

A different monday: driving back home from the mountains along a scenic route: via the "Fernpass", past the "Zugspitze". This feeling of open roads, of possibility.
And a quote: "One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure".

*

 *
More moments: instagram/lifeasjourney
More skies from around the world: skywatch friday

july skies

July - when green turns yellow 
and the fields turn into cubicles of color 
under an open summer sky



cloud dance  
swallows crossing
evening is all up



rain arriving
like a train
headed - right here
fascinated, we stand and watch
who catches the first drop?

*

more skies: sky friday

Storm for goodbye, but also: a stunning sky evening

It's our final island day. And it is: storm. Heavy wind and rain. With some short sunny breaks between - so we still could have breakfast outside, with some sun. Now it is back to rain.

Would have been nice to have a sunny day for goodbye. But we had rather good weather during our stay here, and almost like a "grand final", a string of amazing sky moments yesterday evening, with a most amazing sunset at the lighthouse. So glad I went for a walk there and had my camera / phone with me.

On the way to the lighthouse, a rain cloud moved through and created a rainbow. Then, an amazing sunset. And walking back, the full moon was just rising. Happy :) ...and lucky, too: just an hour later, the storm front started to move in, and it started to rain.
I tried to film all 3 sky moments, and then combined the videos (with Youtube Video Manager, first time i tried such a combination, and it worked well).


Now: packing, sorting, and with the rain: time to prepare some things for next week already, following the motto: "If you can't change it, try to make use of it..."

September, Leading to, Modpo

September. And the August-theme of noticing small moments, putting them into words and sharing them ... continues. So nice. Here's the link to the facebook group.

September brings an own theme, too, though: ModPo is back, the online Mooc of Modern Poetry. It was one of my fav courses so far, and I look forward to it. Today it is starting again, here's the welcome mail: "Dear Dorothee & all those participating in ModPo 2016: Welcome to "ModPo." We founded this community of people interested in modern and contemporary U.S. poetry five years ago and are delighted that each year more folks want to join."

And a third beautiful thing I am grateful for: we will have go to Mallorca at the end of September, for some late-summer island time. It's an idea we had last week in the Black Forest, yet we weren't sure if it would work out - but now it did.

So in celebration of all this, a poem I wrote in Mallorca once, and another photo of the horizon:

*



Leading to

A circle. A destination. This day.
The everlasting question: how far is it still?

My expectations. The reality of life.
The stones that count down the miles, in red paint.

Another photo of the horizon.
The fact that we are always (t)here.

*

more skies: sky friday
modpo memories: life as / modpo

Vive la Mannschaft

Thursday evening: walking out of the Mercedes Benz museum, and walking ... right into this sunset moment. Reading the words on the flags: "Vive la Mannschaft" - for the German team. Back then, the half final was still upcoming. All things were still possible.

Here's another view, almost the same place, but seen from inside, with the "star" rotating in the sky.



More skies from everywhere: Skywatch Friday

Friday thunder + a sky / moon letter

and a sweet update ...the sun came back and the raindrops started to shine:

**

Friday 4 pm and after a morning of clouds and sun, the clouds gather and turn dark - and then rain starts to fall. Some minutes later, it's a full-blown storm, with lightening and thunder. The week of troubled weather news in Germany continues: so much rain. The rivers are high and brown. Hopefully, the weekend will bring a rain pause. 

On the upside, there was:  a sky / moon letter. From the Frankfurt museum. I visited it last month, to see the Miro exhibition (more about that, here: Miro: murals and dreams). Still I was surprised to receive a letter from them. When visiting them, I left my card there, which also includes the link to the comic-website I freelance for. And it seems, they picked up on that: the letter is an invite for their next exhibition, which is about: comics. The moon is the invite, with details on the back. So nice.  Here's more about the exhibition: "Pioneers of the comic strip - a different avant-garde."



After taking some photos, I also tried to catch the atmosphere in a rain video. The gloomy sound you can hear in the second scene is thunder, if i had started to film some seconds earlier, i might have caught the lightening, too.




more skies from everywhere: skywatch friday

Under this different sky

when i woke this morning, i remembered the weather forecast: storm warning. so the first thing i did was: look outside. and then i went and picked my camera, to catch this sky. turns out, so far the storm isn't crossing this region. the wind got stronger for a while, but then faded again.

i walked up to the reception, to check with them: the nice news is, we can stay in the appartment we have (that wasn't all sure). and they expected worse weather, too. "if that's the bad day that was announced, we are happy to take it," was the general mood.

i also looked for books, and picked 3 to read into. which lead to this moment:



The second line says: "Das Glück sich lebendig und frei zu fühlen..." - "The luck to feel alive and free.."

And I tried another short video, to catch the mood of this unexpected light day:


and here is the written version of the moment:

Under this different sky /
hours vibrating in 3 kinds of blue /
this luxury of light time

sunrise, vine + memories

Monday morning. A week that starts with an ocean sunrise. Yesterday  was windy, which brought stunning waves and made the surfers happy. Today the sky is smoother. I put on my jacket, stepped outside and played with Vine, trying a sunrise-mini-video:



The vine videos also go live on twitter, which brought some visitors to this blog, and a shift in the list of the "most-often-read-posts": the notes from one of the previous stays here are now surfacing h. Back then we had some rainy days, which is unusual for the island. It's nic e that this time, the weather is sunnier - but it's also sweet to revisit those posts, especially with the rainbow moments they include. And in  to see how different the same island looks in different weather:

here are some links to the previous journeys:
2012: change of skies 
2012: journey to Lanzarote, day 5 & 6: rain/bows

sundogs in the neighbourhood

Last week, I was on the way back home when I spotted this sky phenomenon: a halo around the sun. Also called "Sundogs". It looked unreal, and remained there for some minutes. I parked in the next possible spot to catch the picture. There also is a larger version of the photo online.

This happened about 5 minutes from where I live: a sky miracle directly in the neighbourhood.

Here's more about the sun dogs:

Sun dogs, also called mock suns or phantom suns (scientific name: parhelia / singular parhelion), are "an atmospheric phenomenon that consists of a pair of bright spots on either side on the sun, often co-occurring with a luminous ring known as a 22° halo. Sun dogs are a member of a large family of halos, created by light interacting with ice crystals in the atmosphere. (More here: wiki/Sundog) 

Such a surprise. Earlier this year, I already spotted my first-ever sky halo, one that looks like a rainbow-colored cloud: a "Circumhorizontal Arc". While figuring out what the cloud was, I learned about the types of halos, so this time at least I knew that this was a natural phenomenon.

Here's the photo of the Circumhorizontal Arc:

That was June 27. And the sundog was: October 27... seems like someone in the sky likes to play on 27ths.

*
more skies: skywatch friday

skywards

for skywatch friday: step by step towards the sky

between rain and night

yesterday was rainy, with strings of dry sky and some sun in between.

in the afternoon i waited for a gap in the rain to go jogging - time switched here already, so it starts to get dark at 5 pm already. this is the view from the window at a quarter to 5. yes i went for a round. and was lucky, and the only person out there in the fields. then another figure appeared, dressed in a dark jacket and trousers, walking in my direction. turned out, it was another woman. we smiled when we passed each other.

i usually feel safe out there, but there was this eerie atmosphere in the air - dark sky, black birds, black silhouettes of trees. but also, the wind, so full of november energy.

PS
there's a larger version of the image up in the photo blog: evening.
(the link connects to the starting page, as the sky clicks so well with the evening image from 10 days ago. at least in the current version of the automatic collage

today: equinox + a 360° video

it's equinox: the day when the hours of daytime equal the hours of nightime. the German word for it is: "Tagundnachtgleiche" - "Dayandnightsameness". in September, equinox marks the end of summer and the beginning of fall. in tune with the shift, the sunny sky of yesterday turned overcast and rainy today.

last year this time, just 2 days before equinox, i was in France, at the ocean, where i went to see the sun rise. the moon had been visible the evening before, above the water, in red. it was still there in the morning, on the other side of the sky. i tried a photo, then thought twice, and tried a 360° video, from the waterfront: Narbonne, France: sun and moon in September 2011

**

more moments in time: life as a journey through seasons

colors of summer + a rare satellite bird

the new photo friday theme is: Summer Colors.

red blue pink yellow azur
i thought.
and went looking for this sun reflection photo.

& a sky moment from last night: it’s a weekend of high temperatures here in Germany, today maybe a record 40° centigrade. we sat outside yesterday evening, watching stars and trying to spot satellites. there was a smaller one crossing, and following its course, i said: “i wish ISS (the international space station) would pass through one of these days again”.

5 minutes later, it appeared. if you once seen ISS, you recognize it – it’s much larger and brighter than all the other satellites. we checked with a sat-app. and yes: ISS. it was like spotting a rare bird. so good.

i just looked for a video and found this timelapse: International Space Station Flyby

PS: there's also a webpage that lets you calculate your local passing times of ISS and satellites, and that gives the current position of ISS: Heavens above  (you need to register with your local coordinates for the site to calculate your local crossings.)

attempts to capture the now

the second monday on the island. after yesterday's rainy morning, the sun is there for sunrise today. and with it, a photographer who tries to capture it, together with a friend/assistant who comes running with a bit of missing equipment, for the moment won't wait.

those attempts of us, to capture the vastness of now.

and this question, lingering here, on the edges of the resorts, in the sand: what defines a life well lived?

(the island were this took place is Lanzarote. more moments from there, in inversed order, thus starting at the end and moving towards the beginning, here: island moments)

moon over city

the sky & the challenge

a sky quote, from the book i started to read this weekend, "the idea of perfection" by Kate Grenville (orange prize 2001):

"The country made the city and all its anxieties seem small and silly, and yet when you had been too long in the city, you forgot how the sun moving through its path was a long slow drama, and the way the sky was always there, big and easy-going."

the quote made me go and look for a sky photo, and realize there havn't been much photo-esque skies so far in july. so i revisted last year's july file, where i came across the sky photo above.

in contrast to the lack of skies, july comes with a gathering of challenges - in form of stories, essays, photos and poems, received for the next issue of blueprintreview: #28: challenge. when all works out, the issue will launch tomorrow. like the previous issues, it will launch in steps, to give the challenges some space and time to unfold. more about it, hopefully, tomorrow.