I saw these two goats foraging along the beach at Kiholo Bay. There’s slim pickings to be had, but there are no shortage of goats in that area so they must be finding something somewhere.
Posted in response to Becky’s January Squares challenge theme of ‘Up.’ See more responses here.
I’m a big fan of movie director Peter Weir and I’m a big fan of his 2003 movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (and I’m not just saying that so Russell Crowe doesn’t lash out at me on Twitter).
In the movie, there’s a scene of burials at sea where a standard prayer for the times is used. It features the words, “We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption.” These days, we think of corruption as being about perfidious politicians, crooked cops, bent businessmen. But another definition is that used in the prayer: the process by which dead organic matter separates into simpler substances.
But how to illustrate that? A photo of a compost bin is an obvious option, but I don’t currently have one. Then I saw this scene when I went down to Kiholo last week and thought it fit the bill. An array of downed coconuts, palm fronds, and other organic matter, which in due course will break down and return to the earth.
Posted in response to Becky’s January Squares challenge theme of ‘Up.’ See more responses here.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Glacier Blue.’ See more responses here.
We’re a little short on glaciers here on the Big Island, but the color description made me think of Kiholo Bay, where fresh water intrusion gives the water a different look to most places around here. The bay is also a great place to see turtles, which can be seen in the water and hauled out on the shore to rest.
This turtle was swimming in the bay where the gently rippling surface gave it an abstract appearance as it came up for air.
Also posted in response to Becky’s January Squares challenge theme of ‘Up.’ See more responses here.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Oldie-but-Goodie or Favorite Photo.’ (See more responses here.)
This seemed like a good opportunity to run a few of my favorite photos from the first year of this blog.
I came across this little scene on an early morning walk around Kiholo Bay. I looked around. There was no one in the water, no one visible on land. The gear appeared to be abandoned. But all I could think of was a Tom Waits song, The Ocean Doesn’t Want Me, and in particular the line in it, ‘All they will find is my beer and my shirt.’ The shirt is there, and this is Hawaii – no one’s leaving their beer behind.
Posted in response to this week’s Friendly Friday challenge on the theme of ‘Abandoned.’ See more responses here.
The view, to the northeast, from the scenic overlook above Kiholo Bay, as the sun rises over Kohala Volcano.
A bristle-thighed curlew making its way along the shoreline at Kiholo while searching for food. The middle photo shows it with a small crab that it plucked from one of the tide pools.
I visited Kiholo Bay again recently. At the eastern end of the bay is Wainanali’i lagoon, a stretch of water tucked behind a long spit of land. This protected water would be a prime snorkeling spot except that the bay gets a lot of freshwater infusion. This makes the water cloudy and gives it a distinctive turquoise appearance.
While it’s hard to see much when in the water, from shore the milky, turquoise water has an otherworldly look. Fish and turtles seem to ripple and float against a backdrop of nothingness. It’s a great place to wander along the shore, seeing what’s lurking in the shallows, and watching to see what floats into view before drifting away again.
Posted in response to this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge, ‘Out of This World.’
