This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Straight.’ See more offerings here.
Last week, I revisited the Powerline Trail off of Saddle Road. This trail, when combined with the Pu’u O’o Trail, makes a good long loop hike. I like hiking the Pu’u O’o Trail because it passes through several kipukas (patches of old forest that have been spared by lava flows) and those kipukas have lots of birds living in them.
The Powerline Trail is a bit less interesting. There are fewer kipukas and it’s a long, exposed hike in a straight line across the lava. The reason for this can be found in the name. It follows an old 4-wheel drive road that serviced a power line that ran across the lava fields. The line is gone, but the sawn-off stumps of power poles can be seen alongside the trail (to the right of the trail in the top photo, to the left in the bottom photo).
One advantage the Powerline Trail has over the Pu’u O’o Trail can be seen in the bottom photo. This was near the end of my hike in the mid-afternoon as clouds closed in. It’s not unusual for this part of the saddle to be shrouded in thick fog and, if you happen to be out hiking in those conditions, the straight and clear Powerline Trail is much easier to follow than the Pu’u O’o Trail which, crossing the lava fields, can be hard to follow when you can’t see the cairns that mark its route.
The trail, of course, isn’t perfectly straight (though I suspect the power line was). It bumps around lava upwellings and collapsed tubes. But most of the time, one just needs to look up to see, straight ahead in the distance, the faint pale thread of the trail topping a hill or emerging from a dip in the landscape.
I think this is a spotted coral blenny on a head of purple cauliflower coral, and possibly a small trumpetfish.
This is a second response to this week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme of ‘Waterworld.’ (See more responses here.) Yesterday, I posted about the movie Waterworld. Today, it’s a probably more expected response.
These are photos I took during my swim yesterday. Visibility in the water was patchy with some good areas and some not so good. I didn’t see anything startling, though the mackerel shads aren’t a common sight. Last time I saw such a shoal there was a great barracuda lurking on the other side. I looked around and, sure enough, there was another one looking interested as it cruised low down, too low for a decent photo.
The other oddity was in the photo at left. I saw what I think is a spotted coral blenny on this patch of cauliflower coral, and snapped a quick photo before it took off. But it was only when I processed the photos that I saw something else, to the left and slightly below the blenny. I think it’s a small trumpetfish, but it could be something else. A lot of small fish and other creatures hide in coral heads so I must pay more attention from here on.
In short, it was a fairly typical swim.
A shoal of mackerel scad on the left with yellow tang on the right.Little fish enjoy the comparative safety of the shallow water in the surge zone.On the left, a fourspot butterflyfish and a cushion star. On the right, black triggerfish are cleaned by a Hawaiian cleaner wrasse.Just before getting out I saw this small Pacific trumpetfish with goldring surgeonfishes.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Waterworld.’ (See more offerings here.) So why this photo of Kawaihae harbor? Well, this was where the 1995 movie, Waterworld was filmed. Actually, most of the filming took place beyond the stubby rainbow in this photo, out there in the deep blue ocean.
The movie blew away its original budget, spectacularly overran its 96-day shooting schedule, and suffered a laundry list of disasters from start to finish. It started shooting without a finished script despite the efforts of multiple screenwriters. The director and the star had different ideas about how the movie should work. It was shot almost entirely on water. Actors and production crew got seasick. Two actors were dumped from a boat and then run over by it. Several of the cast were stung by jellyfish. A stuntman nearly died from the bends after a diving scene. The star himself was lashed to a mast, 40-feet up, for one scene but when it was over, a gale sprang up, and he and the boat couldn’t be retrieved for half an hour.
Bad weather often prevented any shooting and numerous delays carried the production into hurricane season. High winds duly destroyed one of the intricate and expensive floating sets.
The completion of filming didn’t end the movie’s traumas. The director quit before the editing was complete. Test audiences gave it a lukewarm reception leading to continued tinkering. Ultimately, the movie wasn’t a total disaster. While it didn’t do that well in the U.S.A., it covered its costs with overseas income. There’s even a popular Waterworld attraction at Universal theme parks.
I saw the movie when it came out and made it the subject of one of the weekly columns I wrote for my local newspaper. That column is reproduced below, as it was written at the time. Bear in mind that was 25 years ago and some things have changed in that time (if you don’t know what a VCR is, look it up!).
Waterworld on the rocks, no ice
I went to see Waterworld last week. That’s the movie that was supposed to be the most expensive ever made at around $100 million, but turned out to be the most expensive ever made at more than $175 million. It’s set way in the future when some cataclysm, such as the balancing of the Federal budget, has caused the polar ice caps to melt. The survivors live on wacky floating stage sets and dream of finding dry land and pizza without anchovies. Right from the start I was in trouble. Where was all this water coming from? I wondered. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, if all the world’s ice melted, sea level would rise about 230 feet. While this would bode ill for the likes of New Orleans and Miami, there would still be quite a bit of land sticking up, such as Asia. I would have thought that someone, somewhere would have bumped into some of this land by the time the movie started, possibly during the previews of coming attractions. Still, as readers of this column know, I am not one to let facts get in the way of a story. Perhaps, in addition to the ice caps melting, it also rained a lot. Or, maybe, the cataclysm that caused the ice to melt was a gigantic alien intergalactic water tanker crashing into Earth. In any case, in this water-covered world the only clue as to the location of dry land is a little girl with a map tattooed on her back and a glossy real estate brochure offering view lots at attractive prices. This girl is sought by bad guys whose bad lifestyle includes riding jet skis, living on the Exxon Valdez, and worst of all, smoking cigarettes. (Presumably they’re stale cigarettes since there isn’t anywhere to grow tobacco and or any government to provide subsidies.) The bad guys are even called Smokers just in case anyone might not realize how thoroughly awful they are. Pitted against the bad guys is Kevin Costner sporting webbed feet, gills, and a mean temper. This may be because his last three movies bombed or it could be dissatisfaction at the amount of money being wasted instead of going into his pockets. Unlike Meryl Streep, who tends to research her character’s background and come up with appropriate behavior and accent, Costner acts in the John Wayne tradition. He sounds pretty much the same in Waterworld as he does in all his movies. For all I know his dialogue is the same. That could explain why the couple down the row from me decided to chat all the way through the movie. Now, I’m not an intolerant person (and anyone who says I am should be taken out and shot), but people talking through movies is one of my pet peeves. It drives me bonkers when something happens on screen and I hear someone ask, “What did he say?” By the time the explanation is given, another scene has gone by prompting the question, “What happened there?” They never catch up. This is why God invented the VCR. VCRs allow such people to have no idea what’s going on in the privacy of their own homes. They also avoid the risk of having me pour hot buttered popcorn on their heads. Playing opposite Costner in almost the only female role, apart from the girl with the map, is Jeanne Tripplehorne. You can tell hers is a supporting role because she did not get as much material for her costume as Costner and consequently ran short in the bosom area. Not that I’m complaining. One reason there are so few women in the movie is because Waterworld is an action/adventure movie. Hollywood rules state that in action/adventure movies, women cannot appear for more than about 20 minutes and during that time they must be either naked and/or get killed. Because it’s an action/adventure movie, it also features a stipulated number of explosions, fires and, of course, meaningless violent deaths. There is even a mandatory car chase, not an easy thing to work in when the freeways are deep under water. Actually that scene is one of the many tongue-in-cheek bits in the movie. In fact, apart from Costner being permanently cranky, everyone else seemed to be having a pretty good time, albeit while acting as though they’re desperate and starving. It may be that this lighthearted attitude spilled over to the accounting department of Universal, the company that made Waterworld. That was my first thought to explain where the $175 million went. But then I noticed that all those fires burning through the movie were fueled by studio executives throwing actual dollar bills into the flames. I understand that, in an attempt to recoup some of their costs, Universal plans a sequel. It’s about a movie studio that drowns in a sea of red ink when the accounting department’s computers crash and burn. It will be called Realworld.
This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Surprise.’ See more responses here.
I see a lot of fishermen when I’m out walking and they undoubtedly catch fish, but I never see them doing so. I’m as good at getting photos of that moment as I am at catching fish myself.
When I first saw this fisherman he was reeling in an empty line, as per usual. I kept walking, but moments later I heard a cry, turned to look, and saw him winding away on his line. I nipped back to take photos, fully expecting it to be a false alarm – his line was snagged in the rocks or he’d hooked some debris. So I was surprised when he hauled this fish from the water. I don’t know what kind it was, but it was a decent size and probably destined to be that evening’s supper.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Awakening.’ See more offerings here.
Around here, awakening is usually courtesy of the dawn chorus. That occurs when the birds themselves awaken and announce to the world that they made it through the night. Pretty much every bird species that lives within earshot takes part, but there are some standouts.
Roosters (above) are the traditional greeter of the new day and that’s true here, though it has to be noted that they’re equally likely to sound off at any time of the day or night. This neighborhood used to be rooster-free for several years. Then one wandered in from across the road and now there are several in the vicinity. One in particular keeps trying to make my yard part of its territory. I am resolved to prevent this.
Gray francolins (right) are smaller than roosters but might be even louder. Their call has a little wind up before soaring to full screech. It gets people’s attention at any time of day, but at 5:30 in the morning it’s more effective than mainlining caffeine.
The northern cardinal (below) is a smaller bird still but, from its typically high perch, its variety of powerfully-sung songs tend to ride over everything. But rest assured, the other birds contribute, from the red-billed leiothrix, to Japanese white-eyes, to an assortment of finches, they make sure that I’m up to greet the sunrise, whether I want to or not.
Two days ago, while driving home after my daily walk, I was thinking it must be almost a week since I actually took a photo (Never mind that when I got home I found that I’d taken a couple of photos earlier, during my walk!). Then I saw a patch of white in the grass beside the road, realized what it was, and thought that I should at least get a photo of that.
The nearest of the cows was some distance away, but this was the pasture of the local dairy and these cows are pretty mellow. I’ve seen other calves, seemingly abandoned, but actually just resting in a quiet spot while mom catches up with some grazing.
This was a marked contrast to my last cattle encounter, which was that almost-a-week-previous occasion of taking photos. I went for a hike up Pu’u Wa’awa’a. This is a public trail, but the land is also used for grazing so there can be cattle, horses, sheep, goats, and even a donkey or two sharing the area with hikers. Bear in mind that these cattle are being raised for beef so they’re big. Also, the cows among them are there to produce future beef cattle. They’re not giving milk to anyone other than their calves.
On this day, the first part of the trail, an old road, was littered with cattle of one kind or another, including several small calves. I grew up on a dairy farm and I’ve walked through many a field of cows and the occasional bull. I’m used to them, so this array of cattle didn’t bother me. As I walked up the trail, the herd thinned out. Soon all I saw in front of me were a couple of younger animals. These looked bigger and older than the calves lower down, perhaps yearlings. As I got closer I noticed a couple of full-grown animals grazing in a ditch on the other side of the road. They were mostly obscured by grass so I couldn’t see if they were cows or bulls. It seemed to make no difference as they appeared to ignore me as I passed.
I marched on up the road, and as I got closer to the two yearlings, I realized that one of the full-grown cattle (the large, black one in the photos below) had moved in my direction. This didn’t bother me. Often times cattle run towards me as I pass. Then they pull up and just look, or even turn and run away. I kept going. So did the large animal. I still couldn’t see whether it was male or female, but as it started snorting at me, I began to think female. I looked ahead to the two yearlings, then at the cow. She came closer, still snorting. I stopped. For the first time in my life, I thought I was probably going to get charged by a cow. This might seem silly, but people get killed by cows every year. A cow will charge, especially if someone comes between her and her calf.
By this time the cow was about 10 feet away. I decided this wasn’t the time to get a photo of a charging cow and instead clutched my metal water bottle with a view to swinging it at her snout. But the cow didn’t charge. Instead, she snorted one last time, glared at me as she stomped past, and headed up the road to what was clearly her calf. She was followed by the other large, brown cow.
Once the four were reunited, they just stood in the old roadway. I thought they might amble off, as cows will often do, but they stayed put. I didn’t feel like threading my way through them in case the two big ones were still riled up, so I marched into the scrubland to the side of the road and worked my way around them. The footing was uneven, but it wasn’t hard going and I soon came out on the other side. They’d watched my passage with more typically bovine expressions and once I regained the road surface they lost interest and meandered into the trees on the opposite side of the road.
I watched them go and figured I’d have a drink of water before continuing up the trail. I reached for my water bottle and pulled it out with a bloodstained hand … bloodstained hand? I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Both hands were smeared with blood. My shorts had a giant patch of blood on one side. Just above my wrist, a small scratch continued to gush. Somewhere in my short trek through the underbrush I’d encountered something sharp without noticing, which is fairly typical for me.
I washed the blood off my hands and held a tissue to the cut. It quickly stopped flowing, so I carried on up the trail having rediscovered the wisdom of not getting between a mother and her offspring.
The top photo was my last of April and is posted in response to Bushboy’s Last on the Card photo challenge. See more responses here. Also posted in response to this week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme of ‘Covid Discoveries.’ See more responses here.
And if those four cattle ever get together and release a record, perhaps Music To Moooove To, I think the bottom photo would make a great album cover for them.
Puʻu Mahana is an ancient cinder cone near the southern tip of the island. It is best known for Papakōlea beach, the green sand beach, which formed when the ocean cut into one side of the pu’u, creating the bay seen here. The sand’s green color is due to the presence of the mineral olivine. (More photos here.)
Posted in response to Becky’s April Squares challenge theme of ‘Top.’ See more responses here.
Graham's Island 