Friday, November 12, 2004
The Northern Lights and Fall Colors - Nature's Phenomena
A friend from north of the border (St. Albert, Alberta) transmitted an image of the Northern Lights over their town. An amazing display.
It revived memories of a trip north a few years ago when I went there to attend a wedding. A bright, young, vivacious Bengali woman married a bright, somewhat quiet, young man whose parents hailed from Croatia. After the ceremonies (in the local Catholic church, followed by Hindu rites with all the formalities and pagentry) and the dinner, the guests were cutting loose on the dance floor when someone announced that the Northern Lights were out. We rushed out for a look. For me it was the first time. We stood out in the cold to wonder at the show in the sky put up by mother nature.
An aside: the bride's hands were decorated with mehendi too!
The Fall colors in the San Francisco Peninsula have been much more vivid than in the past. The right attributes---temperature, rains, sun---clicked together to produce an unusual display. In my neighborhood we don't have too many maple trees. They can be found along the Foothill Expressway in Los Altos. Selby Lane, further north in Atherton, has some pretty Maple Trees. One has to travel to higher altitudes to find aspens, but the gingko and pistache trees are in their glory. The leaves of the gingko trees on my street have turned from yellow to gold, almost like aspen! The hues of the pistache leaves run the gamut from bright yellow and red to umber. Not going to last much longer but now the colors and the leaves are sights to admire. We are lucky.
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"Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers - for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are."
---Osho
It revived memories of a trip north a few years ago when I went there to attend a wedding. A bright, young, vivacious Bengali woman married a bright, somewhat quiet, young man whose parents hailed from Croatia. After the ceremonies (in the local Catholic church, followed by Hindu rites with all the formalities and pagentry) and the dinner, the guests were cutting loose on the dance floor when someone announced that the Northern Lights were out. We rushed out for a look. For me it was the first time. We stood out in the cold to wonder at the show in the sky put up by mother nature.
An aside: the bride's hands were decorated with mehendi too!
The Fall colors in the San Francisco Peninsula have been much more vivid than in the past. The right attributes---temperature, rains, sun---clicked together to produce an unusual display. In my neighborhood we don't have too many maple trees. They can be found along the Foothill Expressway in Los Altos. Selby Lane, further north in Atherton, has some pretty Maple Trees. One has to travel to higher altitudes to find aspens, but the gingko and pistache trees are in their glory. The leaves of the gingko trees on my street have turned from yellow to gold, almost like aspen! The hues of the pistache leaves run the gamut from bright yellow and red to umber. Not going to last much longer but now the colors and the leaves are sights to admire. We are lucky.
**************************
"Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers - for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are."
---Osho
