Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
There was another volcanic episode in the news this evening. Mt Etna has been active in Sicily for weeks but now, Mount Sinabung in Sumatra is back in the news too. It’s been blasting volcanic ejecta five kilometres into the sky for a few days. The ash rains back down as choking, abrasive dust. That might seem awful but it’s relatively good news if you live beside an active volcano on The Ring of Fire.
I will be very disappointed tonight. I already see that the Harvest Moon will not be visible at moonrise from South County Dublin at 1930 local time. The skies have clouded over and that’s it for this moon. It will rain instead.
A few weeks ago, I took you on an allegorical journey from my gut to the soil. I hoped to make the point that there are many small forces that shape our world and whose impact on our lives is very often overlooked. You are breathing as you read this. We all take our autonomic breathing for granted until we can’t. The breathing happens unnoticed until it’s hard to do. Small forces, likewise, do their thing whether appreciated or not.
We spent a very pleasant ten days over Christmas in Lanzerote in 2017. There weren’t too many tourists though the number grew noticeably as the New Year approached.
At one point, we rented a car and took in a day of excursion north from our hotel in Playa Blanca. We visited lichen coloured but otherwise bare volcanic terrains formed less than three centuries ago. We drove past La Corona that erupted 20,000 years ago. We looked out from Mirador del Rio over to the island of La Graciosa which von Humboldt reputedly called ‘Hell’ when he visited in 1799. Hell wasn’t just about volcanic fires and brimstone, it was a name for a place at the bottom of the earth, somewhere unimaginably far away like Timbuktu in Mali or Tatouine in Tunisia. It has been said that stories of pirates and treasure on La Graciosa from the 1760s were the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island. Ah yes, Sir Walter Raleigh was mentioned in the Piracy Museum at Teguise; the English pirate Walter Raleigh.
‘Yesterday don’t matter if it’s gone’
or
‘Catch your dreams before they slip away’
The lyrics of Ruby Tuesday never made sense to me but what a melodic and catchy song it is. Perhaps it’s not anthemic enough to feature in a global top 50 of the best songs of all times if only because The Rolling Stones probably have a dozen other contenders. It’s one of my favourites and another is Angie.
What does a photograph depict? What are your expectations? Tag this one with visible elements such as sky, blue, mountain, egmont, ridge, tree, norfolk pine, tower, clock, shops and categorise it by landscape, travel or urban. But if you knew more you might add the contexts of spring, dormant, opportunity or shopping. And if you lived in New Plymouth, you might discard it entirely knowing you had hundreds of better shots. Because if you lived there you’d have the knowledge and time to realise better opportunities.
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