Dragon

After my roommate got back from a primitive skills gathering in the N. GA mountains, he was trying to start a bow and spindle fire in the living room to show us how to do such a thing. We became convinced after the spindle started smoking and moved onto headstands. Each of the four of us had a particular style of head and hand stand that we showed off to the group. I have not been in a group that body-aware before and it led to The Dragon:





I've never heard of AcroYoga, but thoroughly enjoyed it.
(i conjecture that the top and the front person could wear Mindfolds, but the foundational person needs too much balance)

These are Financial Times

Yes, a single link post. But you just can't get this kind of perspective inside the US. The last line drove me to post this.

Let us pay homage to Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte is my favorite painter. He is the analogist of the canvas.
(if you open the first link in a new tab or page it may be easier to just use the sideways arrows above the paintings than these links, I can't decide so here's both)

Clairvoyance--egg is to bird as i am to self portrait

Not To Be Reproduced--mirror is to face as perspective is to vision

The Listening Room--size is to memory as apple is to room

Mysteries of the Horizon--moon is to individual as soul is to man

My personal favorite, Homesickness where views are to nature as black is to wings

and of course, The Treachery of Images where painting is to understanding as word is to mind.

Forestry

We reached the ridgeline after hiking up the side of the Linville Gorge east of Asheville. We had been hiking a few hundred yards to the next border of burned forest for our guide, a Forest Reseracher, to take some measurements and program the coordinates into his GPS system for later data crunching. The fires here are special because one section burned one year. Then part of it and part of a second section were burned the next year. So you have three different sections: 1) burned the first time 2) burned the second time 3) burned the first and second time...setting up a great control group for a data-based inferential research to be done on forest regeneration timelines.

I was in charge of the 6-inch ruler and photographing duff, which is the layer of needles and bark scraps that stack up around trees. Here is a good illustration of how the duff burns away in a fire:




My own research consisted of gaining purchase on the unleveled logs full of branches broken off into spear points.
 


As well as the time lag of balance determination among carbonized tree-remains.
 


And of course trying to line my's elf between both a pair of foreground burned tree-remains as well as centering among the backdrop's pair of charred remains flanked by a pair of living trees.


All in all a fascinating journey that we ended with setting up camp on the top of the ridge. We built a heck of a campfire which ended with Freeflow making fire faeries.
While I urged him on.

The next day we closed up camp after being rained on overnight. This had us hankering for more than fruit and cold tea. So we went to Famous Louise's and ate in Avery County.

The view from the top