Yesterday I visited the Croatian National Park of the Plitvice Lakes. It was quite a challenge for me, because I have some problems with my balance and I need a walker which was impossible to use it on the irregular paths of the park.
I have a crutch for these cases but it was also difficult to use it there, so under my own risk I decided to venture myself without the walker or the crutch, but with the help of the arm of a good friend and leaning inthe railings that you can find in some places along the way thru the forest, the shore of the lakes and the proximity of the many waterfalls you can find there. I had to be extra careful to avoid a fall.
The effort was worth it. I/m glad to have been able to spend the day in that place.
if I would’t dare leave behind my walker and my crutches I would not be able to see and take pictures of these marvels of Nature.
After many years going out with the help of a walker, because of my balance problems, today I decided to take my chances and went to an outing with only a crutch. I wanted to leave the city and take a walk thru the uneven paths of the hills, where you can breathe fresh air and enjoy the nature.
The walker is only useful for the paved streets of the city or the villages. And the possibilities are limited. With the crutch you can slowly go a little way thru some easy country paths.
Everything went OK. I didn’t fall. The hills were still green and beautiful, and the views from there were nice. It was a short walk but enough for me to feel really rejuvenate.
Last Sunday I went for a walk to the country. The landscape was magnificent: Green meadows, powerful mountains, leafy forests… But I was caught like a child by the candid beauty of the little wild daisies I found along my path.
Last summer I was peacefully reading at home when somebody came hurriedly saying: “Quick! Your camera! there is an enormous bird in the garden pretty aggressive” .
I went out and certainly I saw a big vulture on the grass. He had been fallen from a tree top where he had been perched and once in the confined garden he had no room to take a run to take off and fly. So we had to call to the wild animal rescue service to help us get the vulture out of there.
But Oh wonder! it was a feast day, and the people at the public service didn’t consider our problem an emergency, even as our uninvited guest had blocked the garden door and our parking lot. They told us to wait till next day and if he continued there they would send some people to catch him.
For sure, the next morning the vulture was still in our garden. They sent a woman i a Land Rover with a cage and a blanket. The idea was throw the blanket over the animal to neutralize him and then put him in the cage. But the vulture wouldn’t let her approach and the cage was too small. So the gardener had to help catch the bird and I had to help with the cage. She prohibited me to take pictures of the process.
When the vulture was secure in the cage we went to the mountain to look for a hill with enough space for the vulture to take off and fly and we set him free.
We don’t have a zoo in my city, but we have what we call a mini zoo in what were the moats of the city walls. It’s a pretty big extension, no longer full of water to stop the enemy. Now that there is no enemy to stop, there is grass instead of water, and it forms an enormous green area all around the city.
Around a big park named La Taconera, it has several ponds with all kinds of ducks, goose, and swans. There are also other animals like roosters, peacocks, pheasants, and other birds and a small herd of deer that usually lives in the top of the wall in a higher level than the rest of the animals . Sometimes wild birds stop there for a while to have a rest and look for food in this area. I spotted recently a couple of grey herons, and a hoopoe.
Everything family scale and it’s free. People like to walk and look at the animals. The view is always different, because they move around the moat. The only ones that never move from its place are the goose.
I’ve visited zoos, when I was a kid, but they make me a little sad above all to see the big wild animals in enclosed areas.
Once, I think it was in Barcelona, we entered the zoo and we saw a hippo peeing. We made a tour and when we came back to the hippo enclosure, he was still peeing and had formed a big puddle around him. That impressed me a lot. ¿How many litres can pee a hippo? I looked for an answer and nobody would give me one.
I love big cats, but not in captivity, I prefer to watch a good documentary. But I like documentaries focused in the beauty of the nature and the animals, not gloating on the cruelty of the wild life. We have every day enough cruelty in the news, close to our lives, to search for more blood when we try to relax watching something simply beautiful.
Last Sunday I went for a quick walk to a picturesque village near Pamplona, the city where I live, with the idea to explore the surroundings. For me it was a great adventure, because I need a walker to move around and it is useless to go thru the paths full of stones. I’m confined to the city. But this time a friend challenged me and offered me help. So I ventured walking leaning on my friend’s arm. For the first time in years, I have been in the middle of nature. We left behind the houses, took a path and went on thru the green fields to contemplate the nice sights of the nearby mountains. We even spotted an eagle flying around. It was a short hiking. Only a few minutes, but enough to feel the charm of the nature. What a joy! I took some pictures.
Beach, mountain, forest, or somewhere else entirely?
It has been so long since my last travel, that I only can think on get out of this city at least for a day. Where? I don’t mind. Any change would be welcome. I’m stuck in this city. I can’t leave its maze of streets. I like my city. I’m lucky it has plenty of parks and green spaces I can enjoy. It’s also in a privileged place near stunning nature spots. But for me is difficult to leave the city even to go to those places, no matter how close they are. And this situation is gonna last for a long time. I was gonna say: I’m afraid. But I’ll rather say: I hope. Or better: If that is what God wants. Because what ties me to my city this way is my mom. She needs me every day to take care of her. And I feel lucky to be able to help her to have a better quality of life now that she can’t move by herself.
I have a lot of memories of wonderful places I visited when I was free and had the means to travel. Once, I won in a raffle a trip for two to spend a week in Cuba all paid. My mom was then saying that she didn’t want to die without seen her homeland again, so I asked in the travel agency if I could change the tickets from Cuba to Croatia and they say yes. We got a trip to spend 10 days in Dubrovnik all paid (out of high season). It was great. She told me a lot of exciting stories she lived in the medioeval city during the war. I got to know her courage. We enjoyed the art, the culture, the blue mediterranean sea. We took advantage of our trip to go to Kotor Bay in Montenegro to visit my dad’s family in Kotor city and Dobrota. We had long conversations at my aunt’s orchard next to the shore, feeling the evening marine breeze. Kotor Bay is a wonderful place where you have the sea, some islands, and high mountains together. It was a great trip. I would like to go back. But I know it only will be possible without mom and then I don’t know if I will be able to overcome the emotions and the sorrow.
What’s your idea of a perfect day off: one during which you can quietly relax, doing nothing, or one with one fun activity lined up after the other? Tell us how you’d spend your time.
An error message in my computer ruined my post. I’d just finished writing and was ready to save and publish when something went wrong. The message instructed me to refresh my page. I did it and everything disappeared without a trace. It was time to go to take care of my mom, so I had no time to rewrite it. Now is late at night over here, she is resting, and I have some minutes to join the prompt
I realize I just break one of the golden rules I had as a Journalist: never write about the difficulties found while doing a reportage. Anyway, this is not a newsroom nor a news report.
In my disappeared post I wrote that given my gloomy mood, I only can think on being alone in a quiet place doing nothing. I’ve written more than once that my idea of a perfect day have to do with a long walk on the beach, feeling the marine breeze on my face, listening to the roar of the waves, contemplating the changing colours of the sea.
But because I have no sea nearby, and I can’t drive to go out of the city to spend the day alone, admiring the nature, I guess I would end enclosed in my room and that’s not good. Thanks God I have so many things to do.
The Italians have the perfect formula for free days: what they call “il dolce far niente” , sweet doing nothing, delicious idleness. I would like to master that art.
Imagine we lived in a world that’s all of a sudden devoid of color, but where you’re given the option to have just one object keep its original hue. Which object (and which color) would that be?
This prompt reminds me to one of my nephews who was, as a little kid, deeply intrigued by the black and white pictures of her parents and grandparents. One day he asked my sister: “when you were small, was it everything black and white?”
He had imagined a world populated by people with grey skin, clothed in black and white in a colorless surroundings only highlighted by the contrast between shadows and lights. Just like in the old movies.
He learned then that there had been always colours in real life but not the technology to capture them in photos and movies. Now he is a man working in an auction house as an expert in contemporary painting. Colours are his life.
I have problems to imagine a colourless world with only one thing keeping its hue. Kind of sad. But let’s play. The most wonderful colours are in nature so I wouldn’t choose a man-made object, but a creature or a wonder of nature.
Because I love the color blue I would choose the Mediterranean Sea where the hue is in constant change during the day with a wide range of blues, mixed with green, silver, golden, pink and red depending on the hour and the weather.
If you had to come up with one question, the answer to which would determine whether or not you could be friends with a person you’ve just met, what would it be? What would the right answer be?
“Have you ever been in Croatia? If the answer is “yes and I liked it very much”, I don’t know if we would become friends but I know we would have something to talk about for a while.
The same would happen with other questions to find out if the other person coincides with some of my interests: Animals, Music, the Sea, the Nature… It would be a good way to establish a conversation.
“I’m bankrupted. Would you like to have some coffee and talk with me?” If the answer is yes and the person is sober it would be a good sign. But I don’t know what would happen. Probably would end badly. The premise is a lie and I should explain that I lied because all was a kind of litmus test. Not the best way to start a friendship.
I don’t believe in friendship with a total stranger on a one question basis. I prefer the traditional way to make friends.
We’ve all heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Do you agree? is all beauty contingent on a subjective point of view?
What about all the beautiful things the universe has and we have not discovered yet? Aren’t they beautiful? Should we strip them of their quality just because a beholder didn’t made a judgment about them? I think this proves that there is something objective in beauty both in nature as in art. But at the same time there are a lot of subjectivity in the perception of beauty by the human being. What is beautiful for me can be boring and even ugly for another person. I may like a particular aesthetic quite different to a dominant aesthetic. I think beauty is there for us, to discover and enjoy it, and depends of the sensibility of each person what we find in it. So an objective quality and a subjective perception.
You get to design your own planet: tell us all about your planet — the weather, the seasons, the inhabitants. Go.
I love planet Earth. I don’t need to “design” a new one. I don’t like to play god. I think when people play god the results are always wrong for the Humanity or the Nature. There are so many wonders in this world to discover and enjoy! The problem is in us, humans. We destroy nature with our wrong manipulation, we destroy each other with hate, greed, injustice and wars. I think we need to take better care of what we have. That’s all. So my planet would be my beloved Earth populated by men and women from different races and cultures, all kind of animals and plants. And all living in peace and justice. This way I would have a lot of loved ones and friends, humans like me to talk with them share life moments with them and learn from them. And I would have a lot of opportunities to enjoy nature, to spend time just contemplating it and be happy with all that God gave us.
Imagine, in great detail, an invention that could help reverse pollution — describe for us how your invention works and how it will help save the planet.
I have no imagination for this. Sorry. Seriously. I guess there are well prepared people working on it. I’m not a scientist or an engineer to have a great and original idea about what to do in such a serious matter. And I guess nobody would look for it precisely in this blog.
I only can think in the common responsibility we all have to preserve nature. I just read today a Pope Francis’ message in which he writes about “the legitimacy of interventions on nature if these are meant to be beneficial and are performed responsibly, that is to say, by acknowledging the “grammar” inscribed in nature and by wisely using resources for the benefit of all, with respect for the beauty, finality and usefulness of every living being and its place in the ecosystem.” “Nature, in a word, — he says — is at our disposition and we are called to exercise a responsible stewardship over it. Yet so often we are driven by greed and by the arrogance of dominion, possession, manipulation and exploitation; we do not preserve nature; nor do we respect it or consider it a gracious gift which we must care for and set at the service of our brothers and sisters, including future generations.” Good description.
We can invent wonderful gadgets anti pollution, but to find a sustainable solution to the problem, what we need is to reverse the greed, the arrogance of dominion, possession, manipulation and exploitation of so many powerful human beings with power and money to decide. And that’s another very different question.
For many of us the seasons are changing, bouncing unpredictably between cold and warm. Are you glad to be moving into a new season, or wishing for one more week of the old?
Autumn is beautiful.
I love when the season is already there with all the symphony of colors in display. The nature is beautiful. And if I can I go out to enjoy the sights I do. I would like to have words and the ability to put them together with some sense to describe what I feel contemplating the Autumn landscapes. I can’t. I prefer to show you one of them near to my city.
Because of my circumstances I’m lately tied to the urban environment, but I have in my city enough green spaces to enjoy the change of the season and I always can remember. When I feel down, which is often when the season is changing, I use to sing the old song from “The Fantasticks” that used to perform Jerry Orbach:
Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That no one wept except the willow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That dreams were kept beside your pillow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That love was an ember about to billow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.
Deep in December, it’s nice to remember,
Although you know the snow will follow.
Deep in December, it’s nice to remember,
Without a hurt the heart is hollow.
Deep in December, it’s nice to remember,
The fire of September that made us mellow.
Deep in December, our hearts should remember
And follow.
Describe your first memorable experience exploring and spending time in nature. Were you in awe? Or were you not impressed? Would you rather spend time in the forest or the city?
by OldGreySeaWolf
Sunset over the sea. The sound of the waves. The cries of the seagulls. A fresh breeze. The colors. The light. A constant change with an infinite calmness. I was small. That was immense. I would watch at it for ever without getting tired.
I have a crutch for these cases but it was also difficult to use it there, so under my own risk I decided to venture myself without the walker or the crutch, but with the help of the arm of a good friend and leaning in the railings that you can find in some places along the way thru the forest, the shore of the lakes and the proximity of the many waterfalls you can find there. I had to be extra careful to avoid a fall.
The effort was worth it. I/m glad to have been able to spend the day in that place.
