This week, now that the rain is over, looks to be heavenly, here in paradise, with temperatures heading into the 70’s. Next weekend might bring more rain, so enjoy the sunshine and warmer temperatures while you can!

Some days, when I drive down the mountain to run to town, I am in a hurry. Rarely so big a hurry I don’t stop to take a photograph or dozen. Usually, they are random shots. The other day, however, I kept noticing the textures of things.

It started with this dead pine.

“Touch me with your hand, your eye, your camera. Do you feel the stories of my life?”

“I sit in a small meadow, surrounded by living things, and peaks sitting over my shoulder, but rarely is my beauty seen, or the home I provide for critters appreciated.”

And then there was the downed Oak …

Even though the Oak is dead, the lichen lives on. There is so much we miss, when we don’t pay attention.

The ferns, in and of themselves, are texture, create texture, and become the background texture of the redwood forests.

Do you think about the water that carved these images for us to view? How long have they been like this? What did they look like before? I think about the water that shapes life here. Its presence or absence shapes the landscape it dominates. And the texture of the water’s path is everywhere.

And the texture the native wildflowers add to our landscapes …

Textures of the cycles of life and death, surround us in this wilderness … if we but pay attention.