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Rock Face
Sunset Bay, Oregon
2023

I really didn’t see this face until I was processing this image on the computer. It’s not often you get photo-bombed while taking close-in pictures of rocks.

Simon Says Hands Down
Cape Arago, Oregon
2023

Monkey Puzzle Tree
Cape Arago, Oregon
2023

Monkey Puzzle is the actual name of this type of tree. It certainly had the monkey in me puzzled wondering what survival advantages resulted in the species evolving to this form.

Shy Bloom
Cape Arago, Oregon
2023

Private Pool
Cape Arago, Oregon
2023

After spending a number of days exploring the rugged natural coast of Oregon, it was quite a contrast, and a pleasant experience, to stumble onto some formal gardens just off the shoreline at Cape Arago.

Bare Tree #111
Carl Washburn State Park, Oregon
2023

A well-weathered tree stump on the beach displays a nicely arranged collect of rocks. We saw a number of these firmly anchored tree stumps on beaches in this part of Oregon. It seems strange to see them out on a sandy beach with tides washing in and out. It turns out, according to what I read recently, that they are the result of a huge earthquake that happened some 1,200 years ago, causing the shoreline to drop many feet. That they are there is strange enough. That they’ve been there 1,200 years without rotting away is even stranger. I guess saltwater is a good preservative.

Little Landscape #59
Carl Washburn State Park, Oregon
2023

She Sleeps With the Fishes
Bozeman, Montana
2023

In this case, the Fashion Queen went down to the pond to feed the goldfish and I later found her like this. She said the sun felt good so she decided to lay down and catch a few winks. She wasn’t wearing a hat however, so she pulled her sweatshirt up over her head to protect her face from the sun. An odd place to take a nap perhaps but I wasn’t too surprised; one day 40 years ago when we were building our house, I found her stretched out sleeping in the bucket of a front-end loader parked on the garage pad. I’m envious of how she seems to manage to sleep just about anywhere.

(The title of this photo is a reference to but in fact, in a sense, the antithesis of the line used in the movie The Godfather: “Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes.”)

They’re Coming for You
Bozeman, Montana
2023

There I was last Friday morning early, innocently sitting in the cafe area of a local supermarket eating my weekly donut when I looked up and saw this in the window. Talk about something making you feel paranoid. Perhaps it was an omen suggesting that even a weekly donut isn’t particularly good for my health. Who would have thought! But I just laughed in the face of death, i.e., I keep eating the donut.

(Fully disclosure: It’s actually the rising sun shining through the top of an umbrella on an outside patio table, casting a shadow on a window screen.)

Sticks and Stones
Carl Washburn State Park, Oregon
2023